Should-be-studying-not-shipping - 👀

my kids are gonna be like mommy what’s an ipad and i’m going to be like we DONT use that word in this house. play with worms.

Falco Peregrinus, pencil drawing by T. S. R. Hardy, June 1942.

Robert Hardy was a competent artist, and kept a small number of his own pencil and watercolour artworks produced in his later teenage years during the early 1940s.

you will feel so alive again.. like so incredibly alive. i dont know when that will be but it will be. u are gonna feel so alive that ur cheeks hurt from smiling oh man oh man i promise that day is coming. you do have a future, you do have good things coming, and you’ll survive everything that’s thrown at you until you reach that day

glory to the newborn King actually

they should invent a day that does not exhaust me and suck the life out of me

many problems are caused by the mindset that the world is divided into good people and bad people and the bad people can be "found out" and removed, eventually leading to a utopia containing only good people.

I don’t tend to see Christians talk about this much, or in a very nuanced way, and I think it’s worth talking about. and that is that suppression and surrender are two different things.

suppression is the refusal to acknowledge feelings you’d rather not feel. it’s stuffing them down out of shame or guilt, or the belief that you’re not “supposed” to feel them, in favour of pretending that you don’t experience them at all. suppressing anger, for example, leads to long-term bitterness, grudges, and burn-out from pretending you’re a happy peppy optimistic Christian all the dang time. it is deeply unhealthy.

surrender is the active, honest acknowledgment of your feelings, desires, and temptations, without attaching undue shame to them, and then bringing them to the feet of Jesus and choosing to live by His Word anyway. it is not a dismissal of feelings but the very act of bringing them to light so He may show you what to do about them. 

surrendering to God’s way does not mean shoving feelings of anger or bitterness or anxiety into a dark crevice, or acting like you can brush off years of pain in a moment.

surrender is telling God you are hurt, letting yourself feel the pain of being wronged so that your pain may be healed by Christ’s tenderness and love. 

surrender is telling Him you are anxious, you are desperately frightened, and letting Him be present in your trembling, letting Him be peace and steadiness and unconditional love while you breathe and count and grounding-technique through the wave of panic.

surrender is allowing yourself to say you did not deserve the abuse, you will not stand for abuse, you will not return to your abusers, and working day by day to forgive your abusers and pray for them anyway. 

surrender is telling Jesus you are sorely tempted- to cheat on the exam, to cheat on your partner, to objectify your cute coworker, to talk shit about your boss- and allowing Him to lead you away from acting on it and into doing the right thing anyway.

surrender is the exact opposite of suppression.

I so often see this message online, explicitly and implicitly, that whatever you’re feeling is valid– and it is!– but then it just… stops there. if you’re angry, good, stay angry. you shouldn’t have to forgive anyone. you shouldn’t have to treat people with dignity if you don’t like them. nobody has the right to tell you to act in a way that doesn’t completely indulge your feelings. treat yourself. you do you.

I disagree. indulgence may seem like the right fix because it’s surely the polar opposite of suppression. but being a slave to your thoughts and emotions is no better than being a slave to shame. it is good to express anger. it is also good to place limits on your anger so you express it in healthy ways. it is okay to have a mental illness. it is also important to not let that illness define your very being, to remember you are more, to fight for recovery. it is completely normal to be tempted in a thousand ways. it is important to resist temptation and seek to do the right thing, and run to the grace and overwhelming love of God when you don’t.

true freedom in Christ comes when you are open with Him about all you are, and willing to let Him lead you through the maze. true freedom makes room for limits and boundaries, ones that will help you grow and flourish.

My photos of bumblebees on my lemon tree just weren’t coming out today so I just drew what they were doing instead

An incomplete list of Narnia/Bible analogs that are gorgeous and make me want to scream:

Shasta and Moses (They come out of the desert to meet God on a mountain. Raised among strangers and foreigners, without any idea of the glory for which God has destined them, they run for freedom and find themselves leaders of their people. When they ask, “who are you?” the strange voice answers only, “I am who I am; that is, myself.”)

Susan and Martha (Your sister sits at the Lord’s feet and runs to his side every time, as though nothing else matters. Yet you have people to worry about, practical concerns to consider. People need to eat, after all, and who will care for their needs if not you? Should you weep when your Master chides you for the busy anxiousness of your heart? When you come to him crying for your lost brother, you know that he will comfort you.)

Lucy and David (Glittering, righteous children after God’s own heart who are only too fallible. Writers of songs and dreamers of dreams, both of them. You can’t convince me that Lucy wouldn’t have danced before the Lord in a linen ephod, or that David wouldn’t have run at Aslan to bury his face in that golden mane. Stubborn, both of them, yet able to face correction and turn guilt back to praise. Brave, faithful youngest children turned great kings and queens.)

Emeth and Rehab (We ask ourselves how those who never hear the Gospel can have any hope for salvation and are given such small, human answers. The road is narrow, yet here this stranger says “I know your God.” How did He reveal Himself? we want to plead. No answer. The road is narrow, yet these few strangers know His character and His saving power. Someday, we will see them in Heaven.)

Edmund and Paul (“Why are you persecuting me?” calls a voice from above, and just like that the spiteful child is saved. What great things they shall do in the name of the Savior, sure in the knowledge that the Lord came to save sinners, of which they are the worst. They sail across many seas; sometimes, they sail smoothly on and sometimes they are shipwrecked. Still, the King is just and good.)

Reepicheep and Elijah (I am enraptured by stories of a righteous, brave soul who is taken home without tasting death. One is taken in a ship on the water, the other in a chariot of fire. Full of joy and ready to meet the King, both are taken beyond sight. Yet we are sure that their arrivals were safe and that they are in that Far Country even now.)

I don’t (do) mean to alarm y’all but apparently I had unfettered access to Twitter back when I was 11.