Rules to Live By, Regarding Love

1.    You’re going to feel lonely.

2.    Your heart is fragile. Very fragile. Don’t give it away. Protect it.

3.    You can’t protect your heart. But God can.

4.    Just because you tell yourself not to fall for anyone, and not to want a bf/gf, doesn’t mean you’re not going to have that one person you can’t help but think about.

5.    Just because you fell for someone doesn’t mean they have or will ever fall for you. And you can’t interpret everything they do regarding you to mean that they do like you. (Or that they absolutely hate you.)

6.    You can’t stop yourself from thinking. You can, however, pray every single day and force yourself to focus on God. The more you do this, the better it will work.

7.    No, you and your person are not different from every other couple. There is no such thing as individuality, everyone is human and will make the same mistakes.

8.    You cannot love someone at first sight, unless that person is God. You can’t love at second sight either, and you really can’t “fall in love” with a person until you’ve gotten past mutual like and you’re very, very close to that person. This does not mean dating for a week. This means, steadily being together for at least a year.

9.    Always pray first. Always.

10.    If you haven’t had the chance to talk to God first, say no. And don’t convince yourself you heard God just cause you really, really like the person. If that was God talking, you’d know it.

11.   If you can’t decide what God’s saying, listen to your friends. If they’re all saying no, then the answer is no. If only most of them are unsupportive, the answer is still no. If it’s fifty-fifty, you should probably still say no, and you should press in really hard to God.

12.   Having a relationship with someone to prepare for a future relationship (or many future relationships) is an incredibly dumb idea. The best way to build a basis for a relationship is by having a good relationship with Jesus (Who is the ultimate Lover). Anything else will just get you hurt.

13.   If you were Romeo and Juliet, this means you would both die young. Keep this in mind.

14.   If you and this person are meant to be together, you will end up together on God’s timing. Cause your timing really sucks.

15.   The best way to get over heartbreak is to run to God. (Though, stuff like chocolate does help…)

16.   If a person has a bad history with relationships, you’re not The One to change him (or her).

17.   DO NOT be alone in a car with your gf/bf or someone who might soon be that. You don’t have as much self control as you think you do.

18.   Don’t go to movies alone with this person either.

19.   If you must break rule 18 but nothing happened, then you’d better have someone else picking you up so you don’t break rule 17.

20.   A relationship where one is (or should be) in college and the other is still a junior or lower in highschool is just begging for trouble.

21.   Your body is about as precious as your heart. Don’t talk yourself into or let yourself be talked into physical stuff that you know you’ll feel guilty about later. Cause if it makes you feel guilty, then it was probably most definitely wrong.

Ok so, that’s my Valentine’s update. Yeahhh it’s a little late and I’m sorry about that…

But this isn’t just for Valentine’s day/Single’s Awareness day.

This is kind of a very, very brief “guidelines to your love life.”

Please feel free to leave me feedback, or email me at endlesstunnels@gmail.com… And of course… you’re always more than welcome to share this with your friends.

Peace out and Goodnight!

~Silver

I have returned! Now let's take a look at your imagination...

So, over the past month or so, my (new) computer has been breaking, and about two weeks ago it died. That's what you get for buying refurbished, I guess.

We sent it off to Apple since it was still under warranty, they basically had to replace every main system, and they sent it back. 

We thought we'd backed everything important up, but somehow the two most important things, the music I've recorded and Everything I've Ever written, failed to copy. So I lost almost everything.

The good news is, an auto-save of my book managed to copy elsewhere. So I still have that. But pray for me, please, cause... Well, I did lose a lot. And not only does it hurt, but I have a terrible memory so pray I can remember so I can re-write it all... Thanks =]

And now moving on to stuff I usually write about. 

Where do books and movies come from? Where do writers get the intricate (or dull and useless) plots for our entertainment? 

Well, the greeks had an answer: the muses. Humans in general can take inspiration from anything, from their friends to leaves in a park. But almost every story follows the same path as the rest in its genre. Nothing is truly 100% original. 

Actually, that's not true. There was a first, a precedent. And everything, absolutely everything, is branched off somehow from that.

The original can be found in the Bible. It's the story of God and Humanity. 

This story has everything; it's a love story, with Jesus as one main character and you as the other. Sometimes you ignore him, or maybe you think he's stupid, or whatever. But he still loves you and thinks you're perfect. 

It's an action story, with cool epic fight scenes. Jesus comes back with a gigantic army and slays everything that stands against him. Plus it's an action/love hybrid, since he's coming back and epically destroying everything to save us (you) whom he loves. 

It's even a horror story, if you're one of those that stands against him (Which seriously isn't a good idea.)

Of course few read the Bible and then run off and write Romeo and Juliet or Transformers (Though I must say, with the Fallen, and the transformer's heaven, and Optimus rising from the dead and all, they may have read the Bible first...)

So how does this answer the question of where inspiration comes from? It doesn't, not directly anyways. Inspiration comes from a built in longing in the human soul, from the world we live in and the typically ignored story of it.

We were built for love, we were made to be rescued. Humanity has written stories that are only a poor re-telling of truth, because that truth is inescapable. Mankind has humanized an eternal tale of true love and true glory many times over in attempts to satisfy this longing in people without them having to turn to God.

Not that christian writers don't do the same. There really is no other kind of story to tell. Even real life follows similar patterns, though not usually to the same extent as the books would have us believe. There is only one truth, whether it's written as a story darkened by sin and wrought with things to capture the heart of man, or whether it's written in an attempt to give Christians books they can safely read. 

What do we do about this? Is it bad? Am I saying to stay away from entertainment, and relationships, and pretty much everything?

No, this post isn't to tell you that all entertainment is evil and horrible (though, there's a lot out there that is...) 

But yes, you should stay away from it all... To a certain extent. 

Similar to relationships, stories can capture your heart. Not in the same way, obviously (then again, maybe it is the same way. Which is why people stalk actors and wish they could marry book characters. Or even game characters.) 

If you're going to spend your time in the beautiful world of books, or the fantastical world of tv, or even playing computer and video games a lot, make sure God has your heart first. Spend at least as much time in the Bible and talking to God as you do with fictional characters. As humans we are so easily caught up in the things of the world, and with so much out there the more we let ourselves go the harder it is to find God when we need him. (Which, we really need Him all the time but that's a matter for another post)

And, naturally, try to stay away from stuff that encourages immorality and glorifies sin. And after you watch or read something, as yourself was it really worth it? What did you gain from that tale? What did it teach you?

I'll hopefully post again later this week. Oh and hey, if you read this, comment! I would love to know that people are out there listening... And if you read this and like it, suggest it to others too... And read the other posts... Yeah. Anyways. 

Have an awesome day!

~Silver

And now that I'm thinking a tad clearer...

I just read through my last post. While it did have some good points (therefore I shall leave it where it is), it also proved to me that writing at 5 in the morning is not a good idea.

So allow me to try to remedy this.

We'll start from "The point is, what do we as humans value? And what should we value?"

Though I did like what I answered to this before, looking over it now I noticed that I missed quite a bit of the answer. I only said what we do value.

So what, then, should we value?

Think about it. What in life is going to matter? The easiest answer is that nothing matters. And that's the answer I usually would give.

But the idea of this blog isn't for the easy answers. Otherwise it wouldn't be Trains of Thought at endlesstunnels.blogspot. It would be The Train at onetrackmind.blogspot.

What matters is things that will last, things that will make you think. Things that will push you to question your answers. And, most importantly, things that will push you to God.

What we should value is conversations where we end up with new and improved concepts, not conversations where we learned some new random bit of gossip.

I payed attention to myself and to my friends yesterday and today, after writing the last post, and I noticed my favorite friends are the ones that don't waste time talking about the stuff that won't matter. Not that I don't like my other friends. I love them all. But if I were stuck in a car or on a plane or on a deserted island with one of them for a very long time, I know which ones I'd rather have around.

Think through your friends. Who would you rather have around? Why? Where will your friends get you in life? Will the things you talk about now make an important impact on your life and how you think and act in ten years? Or will you look back on any of those conversations you actually remember and ask yourself how you could have been so juvenile?

I'm not saying ditch your people. I'm just saying, maybe try to take control of the conversations. Bring up important subjects more often. And if you doing this at all, ever, makes your friends uncomfortable... Well, honestly, maybe you do need better companions.

Of course, as I said before, the pointless stuff is ok, in moderation. Meaning talking about the important stuff that makes you think is awesome, but if that's all you ever talk about your brain might implode within your head. But if you make those kind of topics take priority, eventually you'll get so used to it that everything else will seem useless anyways.

Not that I'm saying you should strictly have philosophical debates all the time. My brain would die if I did that. I'm just saying you shouldn't settle for drama.

Find the balance of what has value and what doesn't. And girls, (I can't really speak for guys since I'm not one) if you're talking about guys, who's cute, crushes, who's a cute couple, etc, that automatically has no value. Talk about Jesus instead ;) (No seriously, try this. I don't care how many times you've heard this, I really want to see a group of seemingly average teen girls who, as they walk past me, are talking about the awesomeness of God. It would make my day. No, scratch that, it would make my Life.)

Hopefully, that makes a lot more sense than last night's post. And, even more hopefully, you'll read this and decide to try it.

I have to get up early tomorrow (Early being before 10...) so, goodnight for now....

May God bless you awesomely today.

~Silver

Oh, the weight of words!

Everyone has them. That one or two people in the group that just can't stop talking about their boyfriend or girlfriend, or their current crush.

They're that one person, or two people, that you really don't mind it if they're not around.

If you don't have one of those in the group, but you've noticed you get ignored a lot, that may be you. Pay attention to what you talk about. And don't feel offended if you're reading this and you know that's you.

I don't hate you. You just annoy me a bit.

Anyways, the point of this isn't to try to eradicate those people by informing them of their existence.

The point is, what do we as humans value? And what should we value?

The people we like to hang out with are the people that either listen to our problems, or the people that don't tell anyone about their problems and therefore are fun and interesting.

Makes sense, doesn't it? If no one talked bout life's issues, the world would seem like a place of peace and happiness. Not many really do care when they ask you, "How are you?" And if they do care, chances are they're going to stop caring if you tell them.

Then again, if a person really does keep caring about other's problems, they'll end up overloaded with everything. And half of it probably won't matter in the grand scheme of things (i.e., a person's love life and its obstacles. It matters, but not enough to consume everything you talk about)

So where is the balance? Obviously, ignorance is not an option. The external bliss of ignorance comes with a price of deep internal damage.

But life isn't exactly something that people like to hear about, either. It just goes on and on, until one day it just stops. End of temporal story. Then eternity begins and nothing human really matters anyways.

How do we gauge, then, what is important to share?

I guess the only thing I can think of is, if you're talking about a single thing all the time, and the person/people you're talking to are not involved in any of what you're talking about, you're going to bore the person to death.

Meaning that tv show you always watch really won't matter to anyone who doesn't watch it. And how you met whomever is better kept in a diary, or only for when someone asks.

Judge by relevance. Judge by whether or not it has absolutely no relevance to who you're talking to, and it isn't something they can pray for or just generally help you with.

Weigh your words. They will each be counted in eternity, each remembered and judged.

Note: If it's something that you absolutely have to tell someone because it's imperative that they know, it's perfectly fine.

AND furthermore, talking about things that aren't relevant is fine IN MODERATION.

Now hopefully I've made myself clear... And obviously, these are just my thoughts and opinions. But in my opinion, this would help a lot to keep people as friends with each other.

Anywho. I'm an hour an a half past my bedtime. But I had the pressing need to write something, and this is what came out..

Peace to you all!

~ SILVER

Want great Heart Protection? Allow me to introduce you to... God.

You know what I don't understand?

Teens who get out of a relationship, say they feel so much freer, and then go find a new guy.

Honestly, where is the logic in that?

Especially the kids who get out of a relationship so they can get closer to God. It goes so fast from "Freedom! Now I can draw close to the heart of God!" to "Whoa dang. Good thing I just lost my boyfriend/girlfriend, cause this new person is totally better. It must've been a God thing, the timing being like this!"

What are they thinking?! If you're planning on devoting your heart to God, what's more likely? God providing you with someone new, or you being tempted right back into your old situation?

Sure, I can understand if you've been faithfully searching after God for a year or whatever and you feel He's been speaking to you about a guy, but when it's only been a month (or less), it's much more likely that you're being attacked in a weakness, before you find your balance standing in God's hand.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Don't Give your Heart away. Rather, give God your heart and let Him take care of it.

This is the conclusion I've reached; as humans we are too weak to protect our own hearts. Sure, we can try, but we all fail eventually, either by shutting down our emotions so they don't plague us any more, or by giving our hearts to other humans.

God is uncreated strength. Whatever you can't do, he can do. His strength and protection are available to you, but when you skip off to other things you lose touch with Him. The further you go, the harder it is for you to come back (Unless you're one of those rare, fortunate people who had a huge encounter with God and were saved in an instant).

His heart never moves, but you do. If you pursue Him and devote yourself to finding His heart, you will eventually, just don't give up and go chasing whatever piece of humanity you deem to be safe.

How do you tell when you're close enough to God that you can stay close and have a relationship at the same time?

It's easy (mostly). The closer you get to God, the more automatically discernment comes to you. Also, talking to God and hearing Him will be pretty simple too.

Pursue the heart of God. He's been pursuing your heart since before you were born.

(Note: if you're under 18, this automatically makes you not ready. This also applies to most 20 year olds. Not all, but most. 20 is only 1/5 of your life, if you stay healthy and live to be around 100. You have plenty of time to get close to God and then get married. I promise.)

Oh and one more thing, before I forget. If this is your first time reading this blog, please don't stop here. The other post on relationships is important too.

So that's that for now, I don't know if you can tell but teen love and teen drama's been kind of on my heart lately... Meaning you can probably expect more written lectures on that sort of stuff XD

Just a warning ;]

Goodnight, world.

~Silver

Twilight...

OMG EDWARD CULLEN IS SOOOO FREAKING AWESOME!!! BOOO TEAM JACOB STUPID SNARLING BRUTE YOU SMELL FUNNY!!!

….

Actually, I’m not a twilight fan. I haven’t chosen sides, and I won’t. I have read the books though.

Honestly, must we have all this hype about a sparkling vampire and a werewolf with a six pack?

Is that seriously how we want our generation to be marked?

The books weren’t written very well, but they’re basically porn for girls. No one’s going to complain because it doesn’t break any of society’s current morals.

This is written to any twilight fans, but especially the Christian ones. Because they make my heart hurt the most of all twi-lovers (Though, it’s a near tie with the twi-moms. They scare me.)

Let’s take a quick glance through Twilight.

How it came to be;

“I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately.”

Skip a bunch of paragraphs (Note, this is taken from S. Meyer’s site, stepheniemeyer.com/twilight. If you go to the site, note how the publishing and all that gets done by women.) Stephanie talks about how even though she’s a very busy mother of young boys, she writes a bit every day etc etc… and then…

“All this time, Bella and Edward were, quite literally, voices in my head. They simply wouldn't shut up. I'd stay up as late as I could stand trying to get all the stuff in my mind typed out, and then crawl, exhausted, into bed (my baby still wasn't sleeping through the night, yet) only to have another conversation start in my head. I hated to lose anything by forgetting, so I'd get up and head back down to the computer. Eventually, I got a pen and notebook for beside my bed to jot notes down so I could get some freakin' sleep. It was always an exciting challenge in the morning to try to decipher the stuff I'd scrawled across the page in the dark.”

Does this not sound wrong to you? When vivid dreams that stick to you happen in the Jesus world, we tend to call it prophetic. When it happens in the secular world and then results in something like Twilight, I’d have to classify that as demonic.

Now that that’s been said, you’re probably reading what I just wrote and quoted and thinking I’m just another one of the crazy conspiracy theory people. But would it bother you that much to keep reading? No? Ok awesome.

Basic story of Twilight. Edward and Bella experience love at first sight. Edward faithfully loves Bella and does whatever is best for her. He would die for her. And he would never hurt her. He’s a vampire, thus is perfect and never dies, and once she becomes a vampire too, their love is forever.

The basic story of the Bible. Jesus loved mankind from creation. And he has always faithfully loved mankind. Jesus would (and did) die for mankind. He’ll never leave you, all he wants is true abandoned love in return. And he is perfect and eternal.

Do we maybe see some similarities here?

The truth is, the human soul was made for an eternity of love. What Twilight has provided is a cheap way for that; granted, it’s only obtained in exchange for one’s soul, but that’s not too terribly bad, right? And what use is a soul, anyways? The Cullen’s are fine, and they’re vegetarian!

“You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” ~C.S. Lewis

I’ve seen too many girls who are waiting for their Edward or their Jasper (or their any Cullen guy), or even their Jacob, who is basically the tropical version of Edward.

Forget what I said about not choosing teams. I choose team Jesus. He doesn’t sparkle in the sun, he Shines with a light Greater than the sun. In fact, he Made the sun.

And he doesn’t have a creepy group of ancient paper-like indestructibles to judge him. He judges everyone.

And now I leave you with that. Please just give up on Twilight and pick up a bible somewhere… It may be long, but it’s way a better love story, complete with long battle-scenes and love songs. And it won’t leave you longing for something that not only doesn’t exist, but if it did would end at the end of the world.

Find reality. If you search for it, you’ll find it. (Unlike a Cullen…)

…. Go Team Jesus!!!!

…

~Silver

Relationships

Relationships.

Everyone has them. Relationships with friends, family, lovers, those random people you know because they’re at your school or work, but you really don’t know them… And they all have names too.

Brother, sister, mom, dad, (best) friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, acquaintance…

Now I should get to the point, which today is love relationships. Most specifically teen love, and mostly related to girls since I am, in fact, a girl. But this relates to guys too.

In our culture, having a boyfriend (girlfriend) is only natural for a highschooler. Consequently, teen pregnancies are running high, as are suicides and self harming caused by break ups or bad relationships.

I’m not talking about physical harm though. Maybe some other day, I’ll write a long rant about the irresponsibility of my generation, and how people are complaining about things that they’ve caused themselves.

But today, I’m talking about emotional harm.

Have you ever thought about the heart, like really thought about it?

If you ask a 16 year old girl who’s been through a few relationships, and you ask them why they’re out dating if it’s not like they’re going to marry the guy for a few years, they’ll probably tell you that they want to see exactly what they do and don’t want in a guy.

That sounds reasonable, right? Making sure that when you’re ready to be serious, you can pick the right guy near immediately?

Now think about it this way.

Ladies, how do you feel when your boyfriend becomes your ex? I’ve yet to meet a teenager who, when her man decides the relationship is over, sincerely couldn’t care less. And the ones who say they don’t feel loss, you can read in their eyes and tone of voice that they really are hurt, just a little.

So why do teens do that to themselves?

A lot of them throw themselves to the wind, hoping someone will catch them and hold them safe.

That’s fancy phrasing for flirting and constantly guy/girl hunting.

The problem with that is that whoever hold you safe can let you go at any time. And (s)he takes a part of you, the part of your being that they got when they caught you.

It’s like a leaf. Every time it hits something as it flies by, it breaks a little more. And in the end, you have a very tattered leaf.

Society today is filled with broken leaves, They throw themselves off their trees and fly around until finally something catches them permanently.

Ok, so you have the safety of the lamppost you just ran into. That’s great. And there you go flying again, only in a different direction.

Oh look, all must be well now. You have your dream guy, the captain of the soccer team. He’d never hurt you!

Would it be too much to ask for you to stay out of it all until you’re ready to be serious? Do you really have to date a guy?

What ever happened to courting, anyways?

Sure, there are plenty of other ways for you to get hurt (i.e., the guy you’ve had a huge crush on is now in a “very serious” relationship with someone else)

But could you at least spare yourself from this?

You can’t have a truly serious relationship with someone until you’re old enough that you can have a healthy, long lasting relationship.

Don’t give yourself away. Don’t ruin yourself. I don’t care what you think of yourself, or how much you hate your life. Define yourself as a priceless object. Define all humans as priceless objects. Some of them are already ruined. But the least you could do is guard your heart, right?

Think about all of that. What harm could it do to protect yourself? Peer pressure won’t kill you. (At least, not in this sort of situation)

Happy new year, by the way. And happy new decade too.

This year’s resolution for me is to keep this blog updated.

The next entry will probably be about something else involving relationships. They seem to be one of the biggest drama-causers for teens.

Goodnight all!

~Silver