So... this morning I found myself awake after three hours of sleep at about 2:00. I couldn't decide whether to lie down again or what I should do. I lay still for a while... listening. The world seemed... I guess the word to use would be dead. I don't live anywhere fancy... anywhere where there is constant hustle and bustle. But everyday, from about the time of 5:30 to about 12:00 am maybe... everything seems alive... the birds chirping, people laughing, crying, moving around, loving, and in general feeling. But for four days straight I couldn't sleep... and before the end of it I didn't want to eat.... I thought for sure that I was getting sick or something was wrong. Little did I know that this was a blessing in disguise.

Throughout the past few nights I've experienced thoughts and feelings I'm not sure many people really feel until later years.... when they begin to wonder on death. I've had thoughts of how do we know we just don't die and that's it, or how do we get to see all our loved ones in heaven one day if they weren't all Christians? I've felt after talking to people pain, remorse, restless, even no feeling at all, the feeling that made me think of absolute death. It made me wonder... does it really even matter. The answer is, do you believe it does? You see... I got to think this stuff and then go... Satan.... you're fighting me to think these things just so I give up, but I'm not going to have any part of it. Even if I was to just die and that be the end, to believe that it's not and live for something I have faith in... to believe in an eternal life after death, which either my soul goes to you, or to my Savior... well, you know what, get behind me and stay there... where I know you're there but I don't have to see your ugly face. I'm striving for a life after death that doesn't include you. My internal struggle has never been such an epic battle until now... when I'm living, breathing, and finding love again everywhere I look. I have family, they get to be the love of my life forever... from start to finish, and in heaven. I have my friends... some come and go it seems, but the thought of them while they around still let's me love them, and I will see them again in heaven. You have the future children, adopted or biological, that I will get to see from birth until hopefully I pass on into God's hands, and then them too will I see in heaven. Last but not least, the one person I could love like no other while on earth, my future wife, whether I've met her not, which from the moment we meet till one of us departs will I love everlasting and so unconditionally even through fights we may have, and then, I will see her in heaven too. To have to think that I never will have to say goodbye forever... well... to me that makes it worth it there. But God supplied a bonus to me.... he called me son, and friend, and he said you're worth anything to me, so he sent his one son to die for me. But then he sold it to me... he said to his son.. arise... and he did. He overcame death, which was caused by sin, inspired by Satan, to say I am greater than even death, nothing will keep me down.

So after I woke up this morning... I took time... listening to the still and quiet... listening to "death" as it made me think of it. Finally at about 4 I decided I was going to kill the silence, but keep my mind on death. I ended up watching an anime movie called "Appleseed." To sum up the movie, humans and bioroids end up living together in the year 2131 A.D. in a Utopian society. Denuan Knute is a young female solider that is brought to this utopia to join in a militant force group. She in essence has to end up saving Olympus, which is the Utopian society. Just on a side note here... It is a very good movie even you don't watch anime (I don't usually which is how I can say that), and I'd recommend watching it. Anyways, several things occurred to me while watching this movie even though this wasn't my first time watching it. The first one struck me while the prime minister of Olympus says "What creature is a man that he would cage himself so willingly?" This struck me because in being home I have so many times felt like a wild animal stuck in a cage. I want to run again, encounter adventure, take a risk, and see what happens. Instead I'm stuck in Sanford, where I don't talk to many people, not even family really, and I have next to nothing to do. But so many times it's the other way around for man. Many times they want to play it safe... they want to have to not do too much, they don't want to have to take the risks.... so instead they willingly cage themselves to a safe little job, in a safe little home, where they encounter the same people daily and think nothing more except on the rare occasion... when they might ask themselves "is this really what I want to be doing?" I don't want to be stuck in a cage... a Utopian society where we interact with people whose feelings are suppressed as the bioroids' emotions are in the movie. The next thing that struck me was that in the movie there is an artificial intelligence system call Gaia that governs the city supposedly, but the truth is that it has been shut down and the Council of Elders have taken over the decision making process saying the whole time it's what Gaia wants. We do the very same to God at times. We shut down God because he's not saying what we want to hear, only to make up what we want to hear and pass it off as God saying it should be. The third and last thing specifically that really caught my attention was the last bit in the movie. Spoiler alert.... good guys win, whoo hoo! Anyways... at the last part of it the question is what now? Or at least that's the basics of it. Briareos answers by saying "It's up to us. It's been left in our hands." The last bit is a monologue from Deunan that basically says the sins of man may get worse for years to come, but if we teach them right, maybe, just maybe, our children might learn from the mistakes we've made and won't have to fight the same pointless battles we have been for years. It got me thinking... Jesus came down... specifically had 12 appointed apostles... but left it up to only a couple of them (for one had betrayed him and most the rest had been murdered) to lead the church. I know at least once those couple people he left had to be like, dude... uhmm... what do we do now. The only answer they had was to trust God and that it was up to them. As Christians seem to forget sometimes... it's up to us to lead others to Christ so that hopefully one day.... one day there might be less of all the sin and pointless fighting. Maybe we'll fight for love, instead of loving the fight. Maybe we'll be able to see past the differences of others to love them and live in peace. Maybe, just maybe, we can learn to honor and respect each other while trying to help those with different opinions. At the end of the movie I looked up to see a little bit of light coming through the windows, and I heard the birds chirping, dogs barking, people leaving to go to work or getting ready to, I heard and saw life.

I consider myself blessed to of had these past few days. I don't know how many people would call me crazy for saying that... I've only seen death about fifteen times up close... but once again... and maybe this time more than the others even, I get blessed to experience it. This one was different in that no one actually died, but it seemed close enough to multiple deaths that it took a toll, and in the end it has made me see that death being the end or not isn't the question... but for the time while you know you have life are you going to live?

Carpe Diem... Seize the day.... one of the best mottoes I know... because if you don't live for the day you're in now you don't know if you'll see tomorrow. Why not do what all you can now while you know you can?