Sam...

The lord has blessed me with the best friends, girls that lift me up, better me and reflect my relationship with the king. girls that are honest, loving and offer third party perspective when i am only seeing things one way. These girls that i am surrounded by are unique, smart, beautiful individuals that inspire me in countless ways.

John 15:12-15

12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

When writing and rewriting sam, at times I become obsessed with structure. I have to be careful not to mistake my progression as a writer for naivety. I want the book to show growth and lessons learned and by allowing things in the beginning that may seem naive to me now to be in the book, it will ultimately show how far sam has come.. I never wanted it to be a religious book, and while I still desire to avoid that cookie cutter, soul surfer religious theme, I want this to be a spiritual book, or better yet documentation of a spiritual journey

I have come to understand emotion as the deceiver of truth. Why’ll insecurities are the idols we worship, we use our emotions to justify these idols both in our lives and our relationship with God. In one day I can find myself cycling through my emotions multiple times. Happy to sad, hopeful to hopeless, angry to hurt and in the midst of these ups and downs I accuse God of being absent in my life. What if uncertainty were not the absence of Gods peace but the test of faith. We must overcome the emotions that threaten our faith by aknowlaging that God is always God and always in control and truth is always truth despite the circumstances that deceive us.

In attempt to make you understand the careful words I’ve chosen are twisted into lies. When you only have your own best interest in mind, I know the God you worship is the sin of pride.