Old Thoughts...

When I was in the Marines and some in High School, I wrote a lot of poetry. I thought a hard drive crash a few years back had wiped out most of it. I found some old hand written journal portions of it recently and was thumbing through it today. Much of it is sappy and hopelessly romantic writing from the countless times I “fell in and out of love” and is pretty cheezy looking back at now. However, some of it still speaks to me. I thought I’d share a little at the request of a friend. I actually found one that was pertinent to this "looking back" - back when I was blogging before there were blogs. This is from 1997 or so.

"Write." What kind of command is that? But this is what I feel the Spirit of God telling me. I search the wrinkles of my mind for something worth writing, some insight, some new concept that would possibly be worth someone's time and effort to sit some quiet afternoon and delve into. Yet nothing comes to mind except a silent melody that has been written on the stanzas of my life and whose harmony finds its way every now and then to perceivable decibels of my heart's ear.

Everyone has a symphony of sorts etched into the fabric of their souls that God has been playing and writing since the dawn of time and even before our recognizable history. Each staccato cry of a newborn begins another symphony's opening night. The Psalms say, "All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be." Perhaps it isn't a book that God keeps of our lives, but a concerto. Maybe each experience, each moment in our existence is another measure being played on the strings of our hearts, the percussion of our thoughts, and the winds of our souls. We can learn lessons in the music if we listen close enough. Maybe you'll find some of the same harmonies in your life's song that you see in mine as I attempt to play some of the most important movements on an, often inadequate, instrument of written language.

Memories are funny things, as I'm sure you know, they came be clear as crystal one moment and the next be nothing more than a faint and diminishing dream. We're lucky to live in the age that we do that we can go back and jar the stubborn memories free with photos and diaries, home movies and even public, though hopefully not criminal, records. We all enjoy every now and then seeing an old yearbook or a drawing we made in school when our grips were not so refined and pencils were held more frequently as "swords" than as instruments of expression. To look back in our lives at the valleys of pain and learning, the mountains of joy and ecstasy, the woods of doubt, past crossroads of decision to where we find our selves makes the dim view we have of our futures seem not so bleak- but hopeful of a better day.

I think I know why God told me to write, and that can be best wrapped in words that aren't mine but for the life of me, I can't place who said them at the moment: "You know best where you're going by looking back at where you've been."