Even If

A single question was presented during a performance by one of my favorite bands-- a question that someone suffering had heard from God. It’s a question that absolutely wrecked me this summer, because it captured in a single phrase what I’d wrestled with. For a long time now, more and more earnestly, this is the question I have heard from God:

“Would you still trust Me even if I never told you why?”

That is the crux that is eventually reached in every major chapter of my journey as a follower of Christ. It’s one of the questions that led to me first accepting Christ, and it’s the question that has driven me deeper into Him over and over again-- when I let it.

I think we (by which I mean especially I) have a tendency to drastically cheapen our faith. We pray and we trust and we claim the title Christian so long as it doesn’t cost us anything. It’s easy to believe in God when He makes sense to us.

And that is why I often find the tragedies in life to be their own kind of grace-- they ask the question, over and over again, challenging me to answer it even in the dark: would you still trust Him even if He never told you why you lost that friendship? Would you still trust Him even if He never told you why you lost that job? Would you still trust Him even if He never told you why you had to abandon those dreams, those things you hoped for? Would you still trust Him even if He never told you why there is so much suffering that your hands can’t heal? Would you still trust Him even if He never told you why He won’t heal you right now?

I am finding more and more that my faith finds its roots at that crossroads, at that moment where I stand in a world that has ceased to make sense, where maybe even God seems dreadfully silent, and yet I choose to open broken hands and say “yes. I trust that You are who You say You are, even if You choose not to tell me why.”

And that is the answer that I pray to bring my heart more and more in line with, even in the dusky hours where I can’t yet tell if it’s another night falling or the moment just before dawn. There is peace there, and there I plant my flag.

I will still trust Him.

“This solemn truth I will depend on: that You could never even think of failing.”
- Disciple

- Elraen -

For Nights My Heart Turns Back

I had a moment the other morning.

I was standing in front of the cleaning cabinet at my new job (a part time cleaning job that really barely counts, but it’s income, and I’m not rejecting that at this point). The cabinet was about as disorderly as you can imagine-- bottles on their sides, used latex gloves piled around old keys, trash bags in a heap. And I burst into tears.

It wasn’t necessarily because it was a mess. I can handle that-- put it in order, organize it. Learn to use what is available to me efficiently and effectively. I’ve been doing this since I was a child. It was more because I remembered 12 years of working under my dad, and I knew there was no way in this world that his supplies had ever been or ever would be in that state. And suddenly I was desperately homesick.

I haven’t blogged much about this adventure, but most of you know the basic outline: God told me to go to Colorado when I graduated, so I did. I threw a few bags into my battered old car and set off for a summer of sleeping on a friend’s futon, praying every night in the semi-dark and asking God if I heard Him right.

There are good things here. I am surrounded by some of my closest friends. I am healthier than I have been in five years, due to getting 8+ hours of sleep every single night, eating three meals a day, and walking or hiking between 4 and 6 miles over the Colorado hills at every opportunity. I am rediscovering the creative part of me that 4 years at an engineering school almost crushed.

But at the same time, some days everything in me aches for the familiar-- for the way my 11-year-old brother screamed my name and ran to hug me when I got home from class every single day. For the hours of working with my dad, being able to trust that no job was too awful for us to endure together. For the sharp warmth of the cheap coffee in my library. For the professors who each had a greeting for me when I passed them on the sidewalk. For the structure of a schedule and a system I knew by heart. Even for the slow-spoken southern drawls encountered in Wal-mart.

In those moments where my world seems to be nothing but that ache for the things I will never know in the same way again, I have considered turning back a million times. I’ve run over and over in my head ways to get back to Texas, to just be there-- being unemployed and restless in the familiarity would feel a bit less lonely. But somewhere in me I know that wouldn’t be best. There is a fight to be faced here.

I’m not even fully sure what the fight is yet, but I know it has to do with defining myself by a name much greater than the things I’m familiar with. I know it has to do with recognizing truth that transcends socially constructed concepts of success. I know it will involve fully taking hold of gratitude for what is and hope for what will be. In other words, it’s going to have a lot to do with grace... which means I won’t be the one to win it for myself. The Author of grace, the One who promises He has already overcome the world... He will take the victory in these battles to come.

But for these nights, I have a surety to cling to of things that are beautiful, that shine even in shadow-- I have friends who love me more than I will ever deserve. I have a beautiful family who, despite all my failings, loves me and accepts me still. I have been gifted with music that keeps my heart beating in rhythm with truth. I have hope burning like an adamant star caught on my hand-- before long, I will be married. And I have a Rescuer who calls the weary to Himself, who holds rest in His hands...

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

There is grace even here. There is more grace to come.

Peace to fellow wanderers tonight.
- Elraen -

Charis: Four Years

I have observed increasingly over the past few months that a lot of my friends are confused about a sudden shift in my behavior and outlook regarding my school and my four years there. They have every right to be confused; I think in a way it still confuses me. I had always planned on writing a blog post to wrap up college, but what this post has become is miles away from what I once thought it would be.

My years in college were hard. There was a time when I kept trying to force a post that detailed why, justifying and laying out my martyrdom in bold black pen strokes to somehow make me feel my complaint was properly heard. But that has come to seem incredibly unimportant, even childish.

I went into college as an incredibly young Christian still recovering from a deep soul-sickness, and I was carrying a lot with me. It took years to feel I had permission not to blame myself for the struggle. The bottom line is that sometimes life is hard. Some things are supposed to be challenging. I don’t regret the sorrow anymore, or even the causes I had for it. The only thing I ever find myself regretting now is this: it never even occurred to me that I could have asked for help.

For four years I wrestled and struggled to pour out every drop of who I was just to barely maintain a lifestyle I hated. Perfectionism is far too dispassionate a word to describe the reality of the demon that kept me awake for days on end. If it had been a matter of academic perfection, I could have overcome that-- there comes a point where you can let go of grades (particularly when your degree does not particularly matter to you) and simply enjoy the process of learning and exploring. But for me the point of perfectionism that haunted me was more than that. It was looking at the impossible demands that faced me outside of school every day, finding myself failing, and in the burned-out aftermath trying to convince God (and myself) that He hadn’t made a mistake when He saved me.

In those early years, I maintained enough of a pretense of self-reliant independence and ability (even to myself) that I think people were either intimidated or else didn’t particularly think I was worth noticing. Though I never would have voiced it this way, I had this perception in my head that to reach the elusive goal of “good enough” required meeting a set of standards. But perfection is still a traitor, even if the betrayal comes with the sweet kiss of success. I could reach places of achievement I had once seen as being the goal, and still I wasn’t satisfied. Something I didn’t recognize until much later was that what I often perceived as falling irredeemable short, others saw as climbing impressively high. This disparity may be why so few people worried about me, in the first years. When there’s a college kid who’s working 30+ hours a week, taking a full class load, has never once been late or absent, and routinely makes 100s on assignments and tests, no one is going to think too hard about it if she shows up to class for weeks on end with black cloth bound tight around her wrists.

I still remember a friend’s words to me when we said goodbye after time spent in Colorado in 2010, words that marked a turn in the way college went for me: “You are going to thrive this year.” He stated it like a fact, so determined that I had to believe him.

His words proved to be true for the next two years, though in ways I didn’t expect. Junior year was the year that I began to watch my perception of perfection be dismantled. I saw the structures of validation I had built crumble, and in the hurricane that darkened my sun to black, I learned what it is to sing in the dark. Some terrible things happened that year. Some beautiful things happened that year. I lost friendships, I lost a family member, I was faced with my own failure... I was befriended by the lead singer of a band who offered me more kindness than I had imagined possible, I had friends who provided a haven even at my school, and the boy I had been in love with since I was 15 fell in love with me.

The final year of college began to take the songs I had learned in the dark and to burnish them until they shone. I lived a thousand blessings I will never forget... running around backstage at rock shows with a camera, late night drives and way too much coffee with people I love, flying halfway across the country to spend two days singing along with favorite songs with dear friends, coffee shops in Nashville. But by the time graduation was nearing, there was a regret that was eating me alive. All my complaints about the unanswered suffering still stood in my heart, smouldering, the bitter smoke choking lungs that were finally trying to breathe. I was frustrated because I was nearing the end of the night and I still couldn’t understand why it ever fell to begin with. I was bitter because of the thousand things that (in my perception) every other college kid had and I never would have. I was lost in the sense that somehow I had still missed the mark, even in accepting the inevitability of my failure-- there was a piece still missing. The only kind of legacy I would leave, the only marker for those four awful years of struggle, were some grades and honors no one would care about a few months down the road.

I always assumed, in the final two years where I started actually recognizing what needed to happen, that the final event necessary for me to find an identity outside of my own achievement would be a failure so spectacular and undeniable that I would have no other option left. I was wrong, although my failure was a part of it. In the end, what broke me was grace.

It started with a group of Bible and Christian Ministry majors. Despite my complete lack of social standing and my silence that so many people have told me is intimidating, it was like there was some kind of unconscious, unanimous decision to adopt me. Those guys gave me something more valuable than they will ever know-- they gave me a place to feel safe at my school, for the very first time. Day after day, I stumbled into Doctrines or Greek class (my favorites-- those classes kept my heart alive). Often I was running on 2 hours of sleep, sick and exhausted. Sometimes I hadn’t eaten all day and knew I wouldn’t get to until late that night. Usually I was already on my fourth or fifth cup of coffee. I was hardly the kind of lively addition to the room that people value. But somehow, after three and a half years where I often went days or weeks at a time without having a conversation with anyone at school, those guys thought I was worth talking to. Even though I was so completely undeserving, they seemed to decide that I mattered. And that began to change me.

In the midst of that ever-intensifying clash of regret and blessing, my last month of college was characterized by things that brought me a lot of heartache, pushing me to weariness and ultimately desperation. When I finally reached a place of need deeper than I had ever known, for the first time in my college career I swallowed my pride, went to one of the professors I respected most, and told him I needed help. He offered me something unexpected.

He didn’t provide an option to work to get where I needed to be or a way to get back up to the standard I thought I should meet. Instead, he offered me grace-- complete forgiveness in the face of my desperate need.

I panicked, at first. I wondered how I would make it up to him, how I would prove I was worthy of what he was offering me, how on earth I could ever recover the strength I was supposed to have. And then in a terrible stillness I realized I couldn’t. There was nothing left to work at, nothing left to do but to accept the quiet freedom of grace.

I went home that day, a week and a half before my college graduation, two days after my 21st birthday, and curled up in my bed and cried for hours. Somehow, in the very place where I had completely failed, I had been called enough.

That catalyzed the change. I had been waiting for so long to get the blessings everyone else had, the ones I wanted, the ones I thought I deserved, while all along God had been giving me a much different set of blessings-- the blessings that I needed. And that is a stern grace, the kind of grace that demands you drink deep in surrender and die to everything you thought your story was supposed to be. I needed to learn to thrive in the face of suffering, to be willing to give up what I wanted, to see some of my worst fears become my deepest failures and to learn that Love still held me in the aftermath.

When I started to see this, the endless aching complaints were uprooted by an intense gratitude. I am grateful for how I was carried through the storm, but also grateful for the effects of the storm itself, this hurricane that changed everything I thought I knew about myself. Even for the wounds that I have yet to see the reason for, I am grateful. I am learning more and more the freedom that comes with recklessly abandoning the pursuit of my own understanding. I don’t have all the answers. God never said He would give them to us-- He said He’d give us Himself. And at the end of the four years that I so often called the worst experience of my life, the Person I found in answer to my question is more loving and gracious than I had ever dared dream.

I had so many conversations I will never forget in those last few weeks of school, after grace gave me the freedom to be honest. And at the very end, as I sat in the commencement ceremonies surrounded by others who had all fought their own battles and been granted their own grace to be there, everything quieted and I simply asked God “did I do OK?”

And as I ducked the brim of that ridiculous square hat to hide my face, I could hear His voice gently whispering “well done.”

And that too was grace, this radical, counter-intuitive movement that shakes us to our core, that states that when we are the most aware of our need we have the most potential to be whole. At the end of the four years I took my efforts, so pitifully inadequate, and I handed the mess to God and let Him take it. There His grace filled all the holes, shaping insufficiencies and triumphs into something beautiful.

They say that college is to some extent about self-discovery, about learning who we are.  If there is anything I will take away from those four years, any picture of myself to remember, it is this: I am more needy than I had ever imagined it possible to be... I am offered more grace than I had ever imagined existed. That grace has named me and it brings me to life again and again, calling me out of the nightmares and into the gentle fading in of the dawn.

- Elraen -

P.S. - There are so many people I could thank for walking with me through this, for being living pictures of love and grace even when I barely believed it still existed. My family, who ultimately became my friends. My CleanPlace family, especially those who came to Texas and shared my room and my life even when I barely had a few hours to give them in return, and the mooters who made me a little more myself every summer. My “boardie” friends, both Skillet and Disciple, especially those who shared Wisconsin with me in November. The friends from before college who went through it with me, providing long walks and longer conversations.The faculty in the Bible, English, and History departments, particularly the professor who put up with me for nine classes and taught a 17-year-old infant Christian more about following Christ than I had learned in a lifetime growing up in the church. The library staff, student workers, and patrons, who made all the long hours and early mornings worthwhile. The many band guys who took time out of busy schedules to look out for me. The incredible staff of NewReleaseTuesday who consistently encouraged me, made me laugh, and taught me that I really did have something to offer and a place where I could serve. The A-Uers who still follow my facebook posts even when most of us haven’t been on the forum in years.

I hope to keep in touch with all of you as much as possible even as my life changes so quickly and so radically. The diploma I earned in some ways belongs to all of you much more than it does to me-- thank you.

Living in the In-betweens

A few weeks ago, my Greek class went out for coffee. Instead of the usual hour of wrestling with textual variants and translations, we spent time in conversation. As I enjoyed the usual rush of caffeine while watched my longtime classmates interact, I felt a deep, bittersweet ache: I am going to miss them.

I have realized that more and more, this school year. As most of you who have talked to me know, my placement at my University is far from ideal. There have been a lot of really bitter struggles in my time at LeTourneau, enough so that it used to make me feel incredibly trapped and sometimes angry. I eventually burned myself out, but I found grace when I let the ashes cool. And then somehow I began to be given blessings.

It is an odd kind of ache to be given blessings but to only experience them in part. There are finally people who I feel comfortable having conversations with. There are classes I enjoy. There are professors who have shown me unbelievable amounts of kindness. But I still don’t get to spend any time with people outside of the class setting. I don’t get to study most things I’m passionate about, the things that make my heart come alive, the things I would have chosen to study. I am still busy beyond the breaking point and so limited in how much I can do.

So I have these things in part, and I have just begun to have them, and now they are about to be taken away. I will graduate and move on just as I had finally begun to find safe places at school. And that is hard. The temptation is to be angry and bitter again, to let myself turn a hardened heart to my environment. It would make it easier to leave.

A hardened heart is not an option. And since it is not an option, I have to choose: I can either let myself mourn what I’m losing and what I never had, or I can embrace what I do have and choose to offer thanks for each moment, even with the bitter edge of regret. Yes, my world is changing. I will lose my stable workplace and my classmates and my professors and my life with my family. But I can’t cut my heartstrings loose, even when they are stretched nearly to breaking. Love requires a softer heart. Love requires me to keep my heart open, and grace requires me to keep my hands open to whatever I am given.

I think we get this idea that the fact we’re going to lose something means we shouldn’t ever really take hold of it at all. I see this attitude in relationships all the time (including in my own life almost constantly). If we convince ourselves that we’re going to lose people, that the relationship is really only temporary and it’s going to come to an end sooner rather than later, we can use it as an excuse to lock ourselves up. It becomes a reason for detachment, or fear. The problem is, you can’t love anyone that way. If you’ve put yourself in a room and closed and locked everyone on the other side of the door, how will you be able to get through the walls to give them something? For that matter, how will they be able to give you anything?

So how do we live now, in this tension, in these awkward in-betweens when we know losing something is a possibility or even a reality, when these days and hours can’t last? The conclusion I have reached as I face change, and losing things, and trying to get past regret, is the same conclusion I began to reach a year ago: we have to spend more time being thankful for what we have than regretting what we don’t. Yes, these things will soon be changed, but that doesn’t lessen in any way the value of what I have now. I have been given some incredible classmates and professors and classes and coworkers. I have found kindness this past year in places I never would have hoped for. I am certainly not going to be so ungrateful as to turn a hard heart to that now just because I’m losing it.

I think we are called to live in this gratitude, even when it’s not the easiest road. As I live these last days of college and say goodbyes and remember, I am trying so hard to have the grace to say thank you more often than anything else. This is a part of living fully alive... this grateful acceptance even in the face of loss.

I am going to miss my school. Not because it was in any way an ideal or an easy experience, but because I have received so many undeserved blessings in so many unexpected places from so many people. I am not going to let the reality of coming separation deny me the moments I have. I am so tired, but I am so grateful. And on the day of graduation, my prayer is that my gratitude will be greater than my regret.

- Elraen -

Still Breathing: 21

I think that we human hearts want milestones. We like to have a road marker where we can stand and look back, mentally flipping through the pages of our story thus far, reviewing the highs and flinching as the lows come back to light. Sometimes I think that it can be unhealthy, if we look too intently for too long. Other times I think it can be helpful.

They tell me that 21 means that I will be an adult. My driver’s license will lose the “under 21” caution, my insurance will change, I’ll have more choices opened up to me, and (most importantly for me) I’ll never again get my hands marked with big black sharpie Xs at club shows. And maybe it is fitting that I take on this new status in society so soon before I graduate from college and move out on my own for the first time. I am, in simple terms, labeled as “grown up.”

And yet, this birthday of all birthdays, I feel like life is incredibly fragile. I feel no self-assured acceptance of this new status, no looking back and feeling like the world is finally starting to make sense. In fact, in some ways-- in many ways-- I feel like I am still a 16-year-old trapped in 21-year-old skin.

I have had so much to reflect on lately-- maybe too much. As I get ready to graduate college I look back over my years here. As I get ready to move away from Texas I have a whole lifetime here to reflect on. And as I prepare to move away from my family I have so many relationships to think back on and analyze and pick apart. The result is inevitable for me: regret. I look at the person I have been and the days that were wasted and I wonder if it could have been different. I ask myself over and over again “did I love well?” Often, the only answer my past has to offer me is an uncomfortable silence. My life embarasses me. It’s embarrassing because I could have done so much more and yet I haven’t, and it’s embarrassing because I seem to be so incapable of moving on anyway.

A little over two years ago, a friend of mine stood on stage at a concert and screamed out into a dark, crowded room “if you woke up this morning and you were breathing, then that means that God is not finished with you yet, and He has a purpose for your life. He's not done yet!” It’s a simple thought that I have remembered often. I do not believe that any life is a mistake or chance or coincidence. My life has a purpose beyond myself. And if that is the case, then it’s not a mistake or a coincidence that I wake up still breathing on the morning that marks 21 years since I first drew in this tired air. My mistakes and my regrets haven’t disqualified me yet. We’re only getting started.

There may be times when the air tastes awfully bitter every morning. There are times when I am asked to leave things behind, times when I am asked to bow in obedience to suffering, times when I am called to sacrifice. There will be many of these times. I am only a story barely begun. But the reality I am having to learn to cling to as I survey this narrative of my life is that none of that is the whole picture. Essentially, the imperfect is not the end. I can be little more than a soul-sick cynic at times, but this cynic still believes in the light at the end of the tunnel.

I don’t know yet why I was born or what I am meant to do. I’ve come up with a lot of answers to those questions over my lifetime, but I am continually finding that it is better to live with the questions open than to try to force my own answers. One step at a time, I learn more of love, of hope, of faith. One step at a time, I wake up and see another chance. I may not really know who I am yet or why I have lived my story, but I believe wholeheartedly that it will be worthwhile. Our lives are miracles. We hear them like whispers when they should be screaming like the most piercing song ever sung. I am still breathing. This is a miracle. I get to know you, to write words you will read and maybe even connect to-- this is a miracle. There is beauty still.

Maybe this is all to say that I am hopeful. More hopeful than I ever have been on my birthday, I think, since it is usually the day where I choose to focus in on a new year’s worth of failures. I am not denying that I fail-- I fail to love, I fail to be faithful, I fail to hope, I fail to recognize joy. What I’m beginning to focus on is not that I do not fail, but rather that failure is not all there is. There is breath in my lungs. There is reason to believe that God is not finished writing my story.

For those of you reading this, thank you for being part of my story. Thank you for sticking around through some of the more confusing chapters. Thank you for offering me kindness and grace.

21 might not really mean that I’ve got my life together or that I’m all the way “grown up.” But it does mean that I’ve made it through another year, and maybe if I’ve come this far, there is hope for the days to come...

- Elraen -

Spoiler Hunting

I can't fully understand people who don’t like hearing spoilers for movies and books.

Well, I understand it on principle. People like to be immersed in a story, to experience it as it unfolds, and I get that conceptually. But I have never been that way. I was often the person who would look up the ending of a book online or ask a friend because I couldn’t bear actually reading it through. I ask for a full plot synopsis before I go see a movie.

The best example is before Pirates of the Caribbean 3 came out. I was excited for the movie, because even though I wasn’t thrilled with the second one, my loyalty to the first kept me hanging on. So I spoiler hunted. I ended up seeing large portions of leaked script, all kinds of details about plot, and I knew the ending of the movie months in advance. I collected rare pictures and spent hours obsessively piecing bits of plot together. I wasn’t as good at it as some others I knew, but I certainly invested a lot of time in it (keep in mind, I was 16). One of the major reasons I did this was because I had to know the answer to one question-- did Will and Elizabeth end up together? Because if they didn’t, I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch the movie at all.

Those early tendencies to gather information obsessively have stayed with me to some extent, though my ethics now constrain me a lot more (as in, I am very unlikely to look at anything that is leaked without permission). When an album I like is about to release, I spend months eagerly soaking up every new bit of information-- every review, every new preview released on iTunes or Amazon, every snippet of lyrics, every hint a band releases on twitter, every live video of a new song that goes up on YouTube. I spoiler hunt. I have to know the ending.

I’m like that in life too. I cannot count the number of times I’ve told God “I could do this if You’d just tell me how it’s going to turn out.” I wonder if He smiles at me when I tell Him that.

I like to set down plans. I write lists. I make calendars. I budget and I talk and I think and overthink pros and cons, writing my life like a business plan. Every decision comes from a carefully calculated list of what-ifs. I agonize over the details.

I have reached a point where that selfish degree of control is slowly being wrested from my hands. It started a year ago, when all my plans for the summer were wrecked by unexpected financial turmoil, three internships falling through, and a boy. Over and over this past year, God has led me to what looks like a chasm, simply saying “trust Me.” Sometimes I’ve fought with Him, wrestling on the edge of the void, telling Him it was never meant to be this way, He must have the script wrong. But in the times I had the courage to jump, I found adventures.

I have found that there is a problem in this obsession with spoilers, with knowing the ending. Usually, we only get bits and pieces of a movie’s plot beforehand-- we find out about a beloved character’s death, or that the couple we were cheering for breaks up. These things are enough to make me not want to watch something at times. But the problem is, those are just fragments. When I get these pieces without experiencing the whole story as it unfolds, I don’t see how the character’s death pushes the other characters on to something greater, some change that grants the death beauty and peace. I don’t see that a loss clears the stage for something new and vibrant to grow. I just get facts and decide to turn the story off.

I think this may be part of why we can’t know our stories in advance. If I had known five years ago about some of the chapters I have lived, some of the people I’ve lost and the bitterness I’ve tasted, I would have told God I was done. Shut down the projector, close the book, turn out the lights-- this thing’s over. But I didn’t get the spoilers. I had to live it, one day at a time. Doing so gave me so much more chance to see how loss sometimes pushes us towards gratitude, how bitterness turns sweet, how darkness can turn to morning in a sudden dazzling plot twist that leaves me breathless.

No, I don’t need the spoilers this time. If my life is a story, then I’m going to stop trying to flip to the final pages. I believe in the irrevocable reality of an ultimate happy ending-- what else could I ask for? I will live these plot twists one breathless moment at a time. My story so far has had all the best elements-- life and death adventures, narrow escapes, long journeys, redemptive characters, love. If that is how it’s been so far, I’m going to stop wishing I could skip ahead. Instead, I will learn to hold to the promise that is eternally held by my Author, my Screenwriter... the best is yet to come.

- Elraen -

New Layout: 2012

As you may have noticed last month, I changed my blog layout, as I traditionally do every February. As usual, here is a record of what it used to look like:

I really enjoyed the red for a year, but I was ready to go back to my more typical color scheme. I also wanted something pretty minimalistic, as you might be able to tell by the fact that there’s no kind of visual border around the body now, for the first time-- just a simple background and header banner. I considered completely taking all the color out of it, but then I decided that a bit of chill blue could still be acceptable.

I’ve heard that there might be some alignment issues with this on some computers, so if you’re seeing anything a few pixels off (particularly the header banner), let me know-- I’ve tested it in four browsers on at least three different devices, and it looks fine for me, but I’m still troubleshooting.

The header picture is one that I took while doing my photoshoot inspired by the Disciple song “Worth the Pain” last summer.


The background image was featured in my last post-- it’s a shot of cell phones and camera flashes at the Rock and Worship Roadshow during Hawk Nelson’s song “Everything You Ever Wanted.” I wanted something that subtly connected to music without being overly noisy, and I love the idea of contrast and light in the dark.

I got rid of some old elements that weren’t working anymore. I kept the little black music note buttons because I like those, but I also made a new button in the shape of a guitar pick.

I have a few blog posts waiting and tumbling around in my head. It’s been a while since I posted one, but stay tuned-- it shouldn’t be too much longer.

- Elraen -

P.S. - For reference, here are the last two posts from changing the layout: 2011, 2010