From where I came.

For whatever reason, I'm feeling very sentimental about the past lately.

Actually, I know why. I've been reading old notes and poems to my girlfriend lately, notes and poems I wrote long ago. I've been copying them from Facebook into my (very private) notebook of writing entitled "The Dream That I Dreamed" ...Sound familiar?

Anyway, it's interesting to relive, through my old writing, the thoughts and views I held at earlier points during the past year or so of my "Great Growing Up" as I will call it for the sake of convenience. To tell you the truth, reader, if my girlfriend wasn't such an amazing person I would be awfully worried about what she would think of me in relation to some of the writing I did from late 2009 to early 2010.

It's really apparent from the beginning that all along I knew, in a hazy manner, what I was looking for. I had some ideas right about love, about God, how the universe worked...but I was too immature and had too big of a monkey on my back (in the form of a heavily addictive video game) to take full advantage of it. When I finally got the slap in the face I needed in November, things changed. But first, I was bitter for a while. You don't have to be very clever to see it in the things I wrote. But yet, the words on the page had some ring of truth to them. Reading them again, I see now that many times I was only one step away from something really wise...but I was too hurt and too out of touch with God to know what it was.

As 2009 turned to 2010, I seemed to begin to heal. I wrote a lot of poetry about peace and nature...about who I am...occasionally a poem to vent frustration. As winter waned, my poetry started to take on a new tone. I was searching for God...truly searching, not just in a fake, half-hearted manner. I began to learn who I was and who God made me to be. The hazy, vague realizations in my writing from 2009 turned to full, honest truths about my relationship with God, my relationships with other people, the nature of love, and who I really am.

And from even this point, I know I had so much growing up to do. It makes me realize that as far as I've come now, I must still have so far to go. I'll never be perfect until I die and my maker makes me so.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was that we could all grow into who we were born to be.