joshgandy

[joshgandy]

“It’s not about being there for me, it’s about respecting me enough to tell me why you’re not. So I’ll just sink back into this sleep because there’s a demon in my casket, and I think we’ve fallen in love.”

— Lose one friend

[joshgandy]

Words by D.T. Niles

[joshgandy]

I did this thing. I got a tattoo. I got a tattoo of my dog; a dog I did not like or want in the beginning. But that changed quick and Luna and I became best buds. She is just a dog but she is also God’s grace made tangible. Luna is a reminder God loves me, He cares about me, He is intimate, He is active and present and working in my life, and He is in control even when I can’t see it or feel it. God knew exactly what I would need to survive some of the darkest and hardest moments in this season of life. He could have chosen to sustain and comfort me in an infinite number of ways but in His all-knowing and all-loving wisdom He chose to show me Himself and His grace through this loving, deaf, 25 pounds of pure joy - a beating heart, a wagging tail, and a wet tongue that never tires of licking away tears. So I got a tattoo of Luna to always remind me that God is good, even when I don’t understand it or feel it. He is loving and active. He is kind and intentional. And God taught me all of that through just a dog. Luna is God’s tangible grace.

About the tattoo: done by @ethan_smt at @sickleandmoontattoo in Columbia, SC. Luna is named after the Harry Potter character, Goose is her nickname, Luna means moon, the stars are from the pages of the Harry Potter books, Luna has a tattoo to show that she’s spayed that is the same teal color, and there’s a semicolon that represents “when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to.” It’s pretty freakin’ rad.

[joshgandy]

KEEP FORGIVING.

keep forgiving. when all is not what you thought it was. when the lynch mob pulls back the curtain on all that is ferocious and majestical, well we are each of us small men to varying degrees, projecting the great and powerful oz with booming voices so much louder than we are confident.

keep forgiving. when you hate what you loved. i don’t want to be a pendulum swinging from one ivory tower to another. not everyone is competition. i pray for you on the days that i pray for my enemies (the same days that i pray for myself). life tends to beat the binaries out of you. it’s healthy when you and I become we, but we’ve got to

keep forgiving. if you write for everybody, you write for no one. so i write for my friends. i’ve watched all of them grope for understanding like a pipe dream. heard everything they’ve said through eyes watering, wondering if God really hates them as much as they think he does in the deafening, inarticulable silence. their lips are all sealed the same not because they have nothing to say but because none of them know how to say it and neither do i. maybe you can relate.

keep forgiving. that goes for yourself as much as anyone.

keep forgiving. when pledged allegiances poison the body, and civil war breaks out between limbs and you tuck your children into bed at night remembering the way you treated their mother as somehow less than, though you are the offspring of yours without the power to multiply and you would not be here without her, and neither would they. perspective, perspective. and the last shall be first and she deserves every trophy for being your trophy for so long. i’m sorry.

keep forgiving me. this goes both ways, with fingers for pistols firing indictments and blame at celebrities as machines i made, the bullets - sometimes - stand to temporarily tame the bitterness, but it’s still self-medicated anger, and the gun shot residue only fans the flames. i’ve heard you say that fostering the festering pain is a match struck in the forest, and the faintest whisper: enough of a gust to set it ablaze.

keep forgiving. did it set your skin on fire as a boy trying to reconcile how a father could hurt you like that? i used the past like funeral pyre thinking i could burn it away (and tie you to the stake while i’m at it). i wanted to be the broken link in the chain, but when i set the torch to timber, it was i who found myself burning from the inside out, and i see how hell is as here and now as anywhere else.

keep forgiving. have pity. is there a drop of water for my tongue? i used scissors to fork it and spoke blood, spoke blood and tinctured the saliva to serve on a sponge. called it compassion. called it death by love. well, no wonder we’re so hellbent on hanging someone.

keep forgiving. when the disconnect seems to beat the poetry out of you, and the joy isn’t quite there but you can’t quite remember where or why it went, and the lenses protecting your vision continue to cloud and spread reflecting eyes as opaque as the dimly lit mirror they’re doubling up on just for the hell of it – well it was never just for the hell of it, but who really believes that in the midst of the dispersion, or setting a broken bone? the bloodletting felt like murder, but you had to get the poison out of me.

keep forgiving. when we come brandishing swords for the ears of those who spoke to what they should have given over to silence. when i steal the right to vengeance. when i think that i am justified in my anger like holding onto it is doing something other than picking at wounds that i don’t have the scope to see as a cell block - solitarily confined with the pus at neck level.

keep forgiving. when the memories of what was threaten to shut your heart down, and the laughter you can still hear from the mouths of friends who are no longer around make you wish that you could change the channel. if you write for everybody, you write for no one, so this will be for you.

keep forgiving as forgiven. as every pointer finger bent backwards and broken like the moment all of my indictments return to me, and the bullets ricochet straight back in on my gunsights… well this is a small lens from which to view the world.

keep forgiving as forgiven. we don’t always get to wear the white hat. pardon is not always preceded by repentance. in fact, i think it’s exactly the opposite. if it were not for love, i would have never come back.

keep forgiving. you can’t unsee what you’ve seen, but the world is colorful, ferocious and majestic without small men or straw men or me to blow smoke and mirrors from our machinery. the toggle switch is reductionistic. let the pin go. decrease.

hate is a prison.

keep forgiving.

keep forgiving me.

i’ve told my stories, but they’re yours.

you may never get your apology. on the day you do, it may not mean a thing.

- Levi the Poet.

[joshgandy]

Jesus, if you’re not alive, call us pitied, call it off, call it empty. But if the tomb is empty, call us family, call us finished, say that our seeking can cease. Joy seekers, you have found him. You have been found by him. You are free.

levi the poet (via cl1ffordclose)

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How Does It Feel? - Citizen

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Kristen Bell on double standards and how there is no shame in having Anxiety and Depression.

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[joshgandy]

Today I will choose the joy of the Lord. Not because my circumstances have changed, not because my life is perfect or anything to envy. But because God is good. Because my Savior has won my victory already. Because I know how this story ends, and it ends in love and mercy and grace so deep I can’t even fathom it right now. Today I will choose the joy of the Lord because my God has saved me and loved me from the very start, and today, that is all that matters.

[joshgandy]

[joshgandy]

[joshgandy]

There sit two lovers, one’s eyes intently chasing the other’s. She doesn’t love him anymore, but he’ll stick it out till the end. This he had sworn, lying awake in bed. Feeling the spot on my chest, where you used to rest your head.

The Hardest Part Is Forgetting Those You Swore You Would Never Forget - Being As An Ocean (via thaboi)

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“Who knows why God allows heartbreak, but the answer must be important enough because God allows His heart to break too.”

— Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way

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“Jesus told the story of the Prodigal Son to make a simple point: never mind what you’ve done, just come home.”

— Unka Glen (via amyelizabethlove)

[joshgandy]

How beautiful it is that you are learning to cling to hope even in a tireless sea of things. All by grace, you are learning to keep your eyes fixed on The Light finding His way into your life, even in the most subtle and unexpected places.

And even though things have felt particularly heavy lately, and you have grown weary under the weight of the world on your shoulders, somehow, you have kept breathing, you have upheld this quiet strength. And even though there are times where it does not seem like much, all that you are giving has not gone unnoticed at all. All that you are giving has not gone unnoticed at all. And even here, in the deepest sea, you are still being guided right where you need to be.

Even when the room you are in has grown all too quiet, and there are no adequate words to describe the depths of these particular doubts, there are still all of these places where The Light gets in, reminding over and over again, your hope is still secure.

Gravity might pull at your heart more than it ever has before, but even there, there is an anchor, a hope for something More. And may you know it is still okay to not always be okay. It is okay if there are days where the weight of what you lost feels as present as the air you breathe. For there is still grace for this, and you will be given the strength you need.

This is the harder part of life, and it is filled with tireless unknowns, but all by grace, there is this hope that you will not walk through this alone. God is with you, God is with you, every step of the way.

And one day you will look back and see that all along, the hope that you chose to audaciously believe in long ago has always been real, making space for you to grow, making room for you to heal. For even when the waves washed into the boat and knocked you to your knees, hope was still the anchor. You did not fail. You did not sink.

And now, you are here. After a thousand endless nights you never thought you’d make it through, you can now rest assured knowing His Light has never failed at finding you… out here in the waves, far away from shore, hope is still the anchor that points to something more.

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul.

—Hebrews 6:19

Written by @morganharpernichols

[joshgandy]

God looks at the anxious and says, I tore my Son to shreds for you, and you’re afraid I will not give you what you need?

Timothy Keller (via heartcrymissionary)

[joshgandy]