ffxvi jote

Maybe you and I do deserve to suffer for our wrongdoing. If that’s so, then it means that when things get painful, when things get difficult, we don’t have the luxury of quitting. We don’t get to end our lives to escape what we did. Whatever form the pain takes, we bear it, we endure it, we welcome it, all while we try to make this world a place where people like us, like how we used to be, have no place, and the people who would be hurt can instead live in peace. The next time you encounter an obstacle you cannot overcome, when you just want to curl up into a ball and quit on the world, remind yourself that you don’t deserve the peace of surrender. You have to keep working, to keep fighting, to keep suffering, until the day when you’ve fully repented.

Once the electricity coursing through her body had run its course, she waited a moment, just making sure her dad was still asleep. His breathing was still steady, loud yet muffled by the machine around his face. She was safe. Although she knew she should head back to bed after pushing her luck, she couldn’t get over her new discovery. She had to go back for another smell. A bit less careful now with her excitement, her hand quickly ventured back to her father’s patch of pubes, fingers running through it as if it where her own hair. Sarah propped herself on her elbow, and moved her head closer, chin rubbing gently against her dad’s thigh as she dared to take a direct whiff.

“If God was angry at you, do you not think him capable of clearly telling you? You say you have dirtied your soul in the eyes of God, but that is because you feel that way, not because God appeared and told you. There are two errors that people make regarding their faith. The first is believing that they understand God, that God shares their values and thinks like they do. To think that you can know what God feels, wants, believes, and demands is the ultimate hubris, surpassed only by declaring yourself God.