Currently Listening The Ringing Bell By Derek Webb see related

I'm not exactly sure why I picked tonight of all nights to revisit my old friend xanga.  Sure, it's a pleasant Sunday evening and I find myself at my place of work (still no Internet at the apartment...oh, someday), but I've found myself in this very same situation many times in the last few months and yet I just couldn't get my fingers to find their way to the keyboard.  I suppose that tonight is special because there is nothing at all special about it.

I have many self-examination moments in my life.  I am what you would call over analytical, therefore I spend a lot of my time processing life and how everything works together.  In the past I have held the view that everything has a purpose and meaning.  This may very well be true, but sometimes life just seems so random.  Why did that slice of tomato fall out of my sandwich and I hit my head after retrieving it from under the table?  By the way, I did not hit my head on a table recently nor do I eat sandwiches with tomato slices in them.  I still stand by the example of randomness, however.  How much of life is God's intervention, how much is Satan's intervention, and how much is us just stumbling through it all doing the best that we can?  I suppose that my viewpoint is somewhere in the middle of all of those.

I had a recent conversation with someone close to me, and we were talking about taking risks in life.  I told her that sometimes we have to open ourselves up to life - to relationships, to opportunities, to the unknown.  If we never open our hearts then we will never feel deeply about anything.  Sometimes we get crushed in the process, and sometimes we feel life in an amazing new way.  The truth is that we will never know until we become vulnerable.  It's part of the risk, and part of the beauty.  I concluded my thought by saying that it has to be worth the risk.  Even when life is painful, it is still beautiful. 

I don't think the process ever ends.  There will always be risks.  Challenges face us every day.  For the most part, it is ourselves who shape our lives the most.  We choose what we do, we choose who we know, we choose what path we take.  Even though I will never completely understand life, I do know that it is worth the risk.  My heart is open and ready to embrace the joy or the pain, because beauty resides there.