I lost myself

The last couple days I've been thinking a lot about the question: "What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?"

My world is a flood

I took another trip upstate this weekend.  This time, to my cousin's house in Albany.  It seems that every time I go visit her, it rains or snows either on my way up there or coming back down.  I remember a few years ago hitting torrential rain, to the point where I couldn't see, all the way from about New Baltimore to home.

The thing I find most amazing in amazing grace is the chance to give it out

It occurred to me today that one of the most tragic things about my brother is that he has no room for grace in his life.  He is the type of person who gives people no chance to atone for their wrongs.  He holds a grudge for years on end.  And by "wrongs", I mean things that he deems wrong.  They don't necessarily have to be wrong.  They just have to be wrong in his eyes.  This makes him a very bitter person.

He might show more grace to those who can do things for him, especially if those things are monetary in nature.  And that makes it all the more tragic.  He's living for money and making himself a sadder and sadder person in the process.

If people treated him that way, he'd be alone.  If God treated him that way he wouldn't be on this planet anymore.  If God treated us all that way, the human race would have ended with Adam and Eve.  We are the recipients of so much grace, and it's tragic when we don't see this and pay it forward to the next people.  And I pray to God I never turn into someone who has no grace to give away.

I used to write letters, I used to sign my name

I remember when I was a kid, when something bothered me, when someone bothered me, I would write to them.  At first I'd actually send them the letters.  This was back before email, before blogs, when the only thing you could do quickly and easily is take out a piece of paper and write it out.  And I would.

I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling

I just had to move my car so my dad could get his out.  Of course, it had to be just after the skies opened up that my dad knocked on my door and said, "All right, I'm leaving now!"

So I grabbed my keys and ran outside to the car, getting drenched the entire way.  A couple days ago I was running and got similarly drenched.  Except, because my car was over a mile away, instead of a few feet, the drenching lasted longer, which made me even wetter.  It got me thinking about the movies.  Mainly the ones with girls getting drenched in a sudden summer downpour.  The scene from The Notebook where Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling are out in the boat and it rains, and they kiss.  The scene from The Sound of Music where Liesl and Rolf get stuck in a downpour and dance in the gazebo, and they kiss.  There's a lot of kissing of hot blond guys in the rain.

Where's my hot blond??

Hanging above as the canyon comes between

For the first time in a long time I heard the Cable Car song by the Fray (I think it's really called "Over My Head", but I like the cable car imagery).  Anyhow, supposedly, this song is about the singer and his brother and how they didn't get along together.  When I heard that the lyrics made total sense to me.  Because it's the story of me and my brother.  Except without the end where everyone makes up and lives happily.  Maybe not ever after, but at least for awhile.  Yeah, there's no happy ending with this one.  At least not yet.

New York City, I'm coming home again

This weekend, I took Friday off and spent Friday and Saturday in the family's summer house in Yulan, NY.  Well, I didn't just spend it there.  This weekend was hot like hell, and the house has no air conditioning.  Which is fine overnight, because it gets really cool.  But when the temps are a very humid 100+, that's no place for human habitation.  So, I took my sweet old time driving up there.