Life and the pains of Death.

My family, which has a larger span than just blood and name, has lost an amazing man this month. This sad awakening reminds me that life has no promises but the promise of God and His grace and strength. If you are not a believer in God and you want to stop reading this, I encourage you and ask you to please read this through. I know life is short and you each choose how you spend your time wisely and you dont want to waste any of, i hope this isnt a waste. But read it and take it all in as it is, my words written down, some of it may apply to those who follow Christ, and some can be for any person of any faith base. But either way, it is about Life. Life and all that that entails. Life is nothing short of amazing, but there are deserts and valleys along the way. It never made a vow to be easy, and no one has in writing that Life said it would take a break on us. Sometimes our vision is blurred or our muscles are weak, but life continues on. We are able to continue on because God is good, and He is great, that is why He is God. That is why I am not. I am human, as are you. We see the moment as it is, a moment. Fleeting and ending. Our moments are simply and yet His, oh how massive and unfathomable are His moments. His moments, which to Him are nothing but breathes are like lifetimes to us. Yet, even as He is so much greater and larger then we can imagine, He continues to meet us where we are.

He met me where I was this week, a place of frustration, sadness and full of questions. I sat with my girlfriend one night, a night or two after I heard news of our family friend dying, angry at God. I was disappointed and confused. I called God a bully and so many other things that left me even more upset than I was at the beginning. I questioned God and I started asking questions that ended up giving me answers to so many different things. I realized that my life is about having a relationship with Him, getting to know Him and helping others to get to know Him. It is about seeing God as You see Him. Not how others tell you to see Him, but sitting down and seeing Him for who He shows Himself to be, to you. For me, Jesus is my passenger. Seriously. I have had a commute for the past four years. A 40 min commute one way and sometimes longer coming back with traffic. And Jesus chills with me in my car. Sometimes we argue, sometimes we listen to good music, sometimes we laugh and sometimes...Sometimes we cry. This week Jesus and I cried. Part of the week I spent crying and yelling, part of it I spent crying and asking. But no where in this week, or last week or last year was Jesus unable to carpool with me. Nowhere in there did He say, sorry Allie Cat, I just can show up today, maybe tomorrow. No Jesus, God and The Holy Spirit show up, prepared for my emotional, stubborn and questioning soul. They do not get angry when i ask questions or doubt them. They do not act out or walk away, or tell me to stop talking. They listen, and when I stop rambling, they speak. They speak quietly and softly, a faint whisper almost. But nonetheless, they speak. It is us, who doesn't listen. We forget to listen. We forget to stop what we are doing, put down the pen, laptop or job and just be. See the beauty in the world that is there, and for those who live in Lancaster, i totally relate when you say "but Allena, what beauty are you talking about.." its because you guys are in the desert phase of your life, but someday i hope you find a better place, like the northwest to live. ;)

But still Life and all that it is, is short. It feels like yesterday I was running around on the Ranch, being raised by 20 different people from all over the world. I am now 22 and my life is so different than I thought it would be. I have seen people dying of AID's in Africa, orphan's needing homes in Mexico and homeless people needing food in the cold streets of Seattle. I have seen heartbreak and felt it myself. I have fallen in love and felt the beauty of simply holding hands with the love of your life. But I have cried and held those I love as they shed tears from pain. I have lost loved ones and seen those i love lose people as well. Life is a roller coaster that one day will end. It will be abrupt and for those around you, it will have come to soon. But God will know how it fits into His mapped out, planned out way. And I trust that, with all that I am. I will ache when those I love dearly pass away. When I get that call of my sisters, parents, Dana or those i call family dying i will ache. But i will have trust that somehow, somewere in the mix of all that pain, there is a point to it. A reason that it happened. I may never know the reason behind the pain of death, but it is there. Just as much as the beauty behind the sacrifice of Christs death. It was painful and in that moment of pain God cried, He felt the exact pain that we as humans feel. He relates with us, and mourns with us. Like I said God meets us where we are at.

I Have A Hope..

Today is a day "off" for most. We are taking the day to relax, making it a holiday. Today is Martin Luther King Jr.'s day. The man starting a change that rippled and turned into a wave that impacted a whole nation. He changed lives and did so without hate or the thirst of power or money. He did it using respect, words and intelligence. Mr. King had a dream and it is in the process of being lived out. Today, people still don't really like talking about race, discrimination, minorities or people who shouldn't be here. I want to spend today thinking about what needs to happen and what has happened in the past.
 The US is full of bad things, good things and neutral things. The honest reality is that the world, all of it, is full of good and bad. The way we handle it though is the pivotal issue. Martin Luther King Jr. stood for more then just accepting people who are black. It is about respecting people of ALL differences. Races, sexes, genders and class ranges. Our world needs to understand what the word respect means, not tolerance. Tolerance leaves room for disrespect and annoyance. Acceptance is about respecting the rights of others, whether you like it or not. We all have morals we live by, religions we address our lives too and so on but the reality is our worlds are not everyone else's and their worlds do not revolve around ours. I want to stress and help you understand to take a step back and realize, your way of living is not always the best. Hard to swallow, i know. You are not always right and even more than that, I am not either.
 You will read this and "like" it or comment on it, but are you living it? Are you judging gay people behind their back or voting to take their rights? Are you throwing out racist jokes to make a few laugh, or taking a step even deeper and only hiring people based on their looks or races?
Where do you stand? Where? Because that is the place where you have to own up to. Lets go back to the past. Lets take a step back to the day Martin Luther King Jr. took the change into his own hands. Would you have told people to sit in the back of the bus or sat in the back with them. Would you have invited a black family over for the saturday bbq or hired them to be the maids for the day. How would you have been a part of the mobs yelling our hate towards AID's patients or been on the streets finding them and bringing them medicine. Clicking "like" is so, undeniably easy. It is as easy as making a joke or typing a discriminating status update. But standing up on the bus, marching down the street when you know your whole families reputation is at risk and standing infront of the nation you live in and demanding change, that is difficult. That is change worthy. Life is not about status updates or blogs, it is not about weight or make up, strength or wealth. It is about compassion, relating and building. Martin Luther King had a strong hold on that and worked to use that to change the world he lived in.  Today, imagine the world Mr. King imagined. A world with compassion and respect.
We act like we get to judge people because of what they wear, or where they work. Judging is the first step in feeding the mindset that tells yourself you are above that person. Judging allows you to believe you have the right to judge. You don't. If a woman is beating her husband or a man is beating is wife, we are supposed to step in and help and i truly think most of us can agree on that. But seeing a gay man loving his husband doesn't give you rights to beat them. You don't get to switch the two.
 I started writing this because in the past few months I write status updates about discrimination, and people "like" them. But those same people have had conversations or write status updates about how angry illegal immigrants make them or how grossed out gay people make them, so on and so on. So focus people, please i am begging you to focus on these words and listen to them. Do not settle for judging, but instead fighting against the habit and find equality with those around you. Equality.
Study that word. Memorize it. Life is hard alone, we do not need to add hardships onto other peoples lives.
So tomorrow, no today, when you run into a moment that makes you uncomfortable step back and reevaluate that situation and yourself. Think about how you would feel being judged like that. Think. Thats all I'm asking of you. Take an extra moment to reevaluate yourself because you may not be as respectful as you think.