One, two, three pills I dump carefully into my palm.  Not long now and I'll be lying in the chair getting my braces tightened and tweaked for the millionth time. 
The swelling of my finger, a nasty hit from a paintball, has gone down, though it's been replaced by tenderness and an ugly purple color. 
The back door comes open with a bang and a wail erupts.  With a glance over my shoulder at the girl in strange clothes, tears in her eyes, and a minuscule cut on her bare foot I carefully dump one more pill into my hand and gulp them down.

~kaPo

Emilie and I have been talking recently and we're both completely bewildered.

The more I listen to secular music the more I hear the crying out of their souls for Christ. And it's devastatingly frustrating!

There's a Linkin Park song that could easily be mistaken for Christian, if fact, they play it on Christian stations sometimes, I've heard it done. Anyway, the song is just this guy pouring out his intense desire to be forgiven of all the things he's done\doing.

"Let mercy come and wash away what I've done."

Hello! Is that not the making of a worship song or something?!

This guy talks about erasing what he's done and basically doing a 180 with his life. Everything about this song is a lost soul screaming for Christ.

AND YET THEY WON'T LISTEN!

It's driving me MAD! We (Christians) have managed to get such a bad rep. here in America that as soon as a someone knows what we believe they completely turn off to us. It's ripping me up. I want SO BADLY to be able to go to this guy and hold out my hands and say, "Look, I know what you need. What you want. You don't know it but I've heard how much you long for this and I want to help."

And yet...I don't even know if that would have any effect except to get me thrown out on my face on the sidewalk.

I forgot my other example, so I'll use this one instead:

There's a guy, Glen Phillips, who writes amazing songs. He's got a crappy life but it doesn't stop him from being a powerful songwriter. He does one song that's called "Cleareyed" and, honestly, I don't have a clue what the heck it could possibly be about if it's not about God. But he's not a Christian.

"Blind me with love. Make me blind because I've seen to much of this life and now I only see you."

I'm so frustrated with this.

Another song he wrote goes on about getting back into the groove of Christ, or that's what is seems like.

"I’m not sure what it takes, I’m fuzzy on the rules
And everything’s so dark, everything but you.
I’ve forgotten how to pray, forgotten what was true
And everything feels bought, everything but you."

Another line says something about all the entertainment and stimulation of the world's just leaving him empty and longing.

And, unfortunately, the lyrics I pulled up claim that he uses some nasty language in this song but, trust me, I've heard him preform it and I've got the CD, he doesn't say any bad stuff in this song. So, if you look up the song...those aren't the right lyrics.

"You terrify me. You are everything.
I'm proud to be your fool, everything's a crutch, everything but you."

AND THEN he does a song called "Thank You" and the opening line is, "You made this world, thank you." Chorus: "Your love is everywhere."

AND HE STILL WILL NOT say he's a Christian.

I am so confused.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is this: Why can they (secular artists) g e t stuff that most Christian artists can't? Why can they get the emotion and passion underneath their songs that aren't even written with a knowledge of what they r e a l l y mean, when a majority of our singer\songwriters just can't?

I think there are a couple good Christian bands but, in general, I don't like Christian music because it all starts sounding the same. And, a great deal of the time, just focuses on how crappy and sinful we are, which, of course, is true but we don't need to dwell on it and write song after song after song just tearing ourselves down. I feel like the songs are loosing track of what exactly the point is. They talk about how we're so bad and He's so good and how could He love crap like me? Yeah, okay, we know. Now, let's stop focusing on how much we suck and just write some songs that really truly praise HIM and talk about HIM not us, unless we're standing in complete and total awe of HIM.

Okay, I think that's all I have...

Oh, on a side note, the famine's this weekend and I'd like a lot of prayer for that--I've got some tough stuff my family and I've got to hammer out with God, you know, get an idea of where He's leading us as of the next several years of our lives.

~kaPo

So, it's finally time for an update on the life of Kapo!

Don't get too excited.

Life's been really good lately.  Unlike a couple of months ago, when I think I was going through a bit of a depression, which isn't all that unusual for me.  Anyways, I feel--happy again.  I've been reading my bible a lot, I think that has a lot to do with it and hardly a day goes by that I don't belly laugh at least once a day.

I am blessed.

God is so good to me and my family!  I feel like I get to relearn just how good He is every single day. 
And I love it.
I've gotten really into taking pictures since I bought a camera in January and so have been given many, many opportunities to see the beauty of God in the strangest of places (I like to think that I can sometimes capture a glimpse of that splendor in my little camera to remind me later).

I've started drawing too.  I've finally uncovered at least a bit of the key to drawing people (meaning that they don't look like alien blobs with eyes anymore and only kinda almost look like humans) and I've been discovering faces in my head that I couldn't see before except with the words I'd used to describe them in my stories.  That makes it especially grand when I hand over a finished product to Sabe (who has read most, if not all, of my stories and knows my characters well) and she excitedly exclaims their name, without it being written or any hint from my mouth about who it might be.

I guess it's the little things, huh?

We went to San Diego last week, which was fabulous!  We ate at so much excellent food and went to so many beautiful places!  Ah!  It was fantastic!
But me and California...I don't think we're ever meant to be.  I mean, it's beautiful and has wonderful weather and great cars--it would just never be a comfortable fit.  Still, I'm glad I got to visit and, after a little while, I'll be anxiously awaiting my next set of adventures in that "paradise" as Sam calls it.

Anyway, so, here I am. Sitting in the Rhino's basement praying and waiting for the house to rouse and the rest of our little band of warriors to show.  It's going to be a long night but God's going to be glorified tonight, no matter what.

God will move tonight.  I don't know how and I don't know the outcome, but He will move and He will be glorified.

God, give me words--cause I'm at a bit of a loss.  Move in me to speak for You.  Let me be open to Your Spirit and use me tonight to strengthen my brothers and sisters.

All praise to You, Father.

Amen.