Barneyisfat

Milestone! 150 blogs! Yeah, I'm pretty prideful, but I'm not going to involve Jesus in the matter - I think He wants me to work it out myself. After I get rid of all the sin in my life I will go to Jesus. (Sarcasm, note the sarcasm.)

I've been thinking about my great aunt Mabel's last will and testament. No, not because it paid for my college. I've been thinking about it because it was filled with love. I have been running a comparison of it and my grandmother's will.

In my grandmother's will everything went to her children. If they were dead it by-passed their spouses and went right to any grandchildren. If there were none it went to cousins. There was no way my mother or my uncle Terry would get a dime. My mother and uncle are both wonderful Christian people who showed nothing but kindness to my bitter grandmother.

Aunt Mabel's will had the money going to her nieces and nephews. If my father had already died, his share was to be given to "Debbie Airgood, of whom I love dearly." Of Whom I Love Dearly. O'WILD. The same line was put beside everyone she mentioned in her will. It was all true. She loved everyone dearly.

I've started referring to a lot of my friends as "Lover." It's refreshing. I've been trying to love more openly - I think it's working. It hasn't been easy taking less for myself and giving more away. It helps if I refer to people as lover. I read, when I was a lowely Freshman, that the largest accusations about the new Christian church was that they were athiests (they weren't praying to a visible God) and that they were homosexuals (they loved each other openly and didn't hide it.) I realized that at my college we had built a lot of idols to represent God. We put up a lot of unatainable moral perfectionisms so that we had something visible to work towards. We also would never be accused of being too loving. Not only would no one think that a Falls student was gay - no one would even think we loved each other. Sad, but true.

I remember in middle school, Jared put a nickel in Ben's locker so that it would get stuck closed. I saw him do it and was really upset that Ben would take the blame. I wrote a note to the principal. He, of course, called me to the office and told me that he had asked Jared and Jared had accused me. I seem to remember being on crutches at the time. The punishment was a day's ISS (In School Suspension). Everyone was talking and taking sides. My mother told me, "Michael, always live your life so that the only things people can say against you are lies. Gossip can't hurt if it isn't true."

I think that this is the greatest lesson I learned in my middle school years. People say a lot of things about me. They are all either lies or something true that I'm proud of.

I want to love openly and honestly - always. I want to be able to list all of my friends some day with "of whom I love dearly" tagged beside their names. I want people to wonder why I love with such intensity, hug so often, and laugh so loudly. I want people to see the love of a Messiah within me. Let them say what they might, I want to love like Christ.