I know you likely read that title and thought that it could be read multiple ways. That, my friends, is a deliberate choice in ambiguity. Many would read that title and think I am going to talk about how it is so difficult to be a Christian. I am instead going to pose the question the other way: Why does everyone else think it is so hard to be a Christian? This is part 1. I am going to focus on the topic of sacrifice.

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We're on the way to a rally to hear our freedom ring.
To protest for the truth my heart will joyfully sing.

Though truth is the minority,
My God is the majority,
This my song shall be:
"May God's freedom ring!"

Now I will stand up, give my answer to the call,
And with God to hold me up by His grace I won't fall.

Though truth is the minority,
My God is the majority,
This my song shall be:
"May God's freedom ring!"

I fought the rain. It slashed at my bare arms and legs, water streaming down my head into my eyes, threatening my vision. When I felt I couldn’t fight it any longer, I saw The Fence. My legs felt like lead and my chest was aching, but I made myself run to the hole in the barbed wire. I dove through it and sunk under a near pine tree. I shivered in my wet clothes and tried to calm my breathing to a normal pace, although I suspect my heart was racing from more than just running.

Freedom is like a tree that has been growing on the street-corner ever since I can remember. It was tall and green when we moved in, but it gradually had more and more dead branches. Nobody noticed that it was dying until one day when it fell over.
Our freedom has been gradually taken away from us, but nobody has noticed because the government has been taking away one little seemingly unimportant right at a time, and nobody will notice how restricted we are until we are all in chains.

Wake up, America!

I hate Amerika, but I love America.

I.
I don’t have a confidence problem
In fact, I am a little vain
I don’t mean to insinuate
That I think I am perfect
Because that is entirely untrue
However,
I like myself not just physically
But as a whole
And I don’t think that is a bad thing.

II.
I often wish that I could
Be eight years old again
Times were a lot simpler
Way back when

III.
I don’t have a best friend
Right now
I get a little lonely
But
It will get better

Chapter Eight

WHEN DAWN CREPT OUT OF NIGHT’S ROBES, SO DID IRIS. She crawled out of her tent and looked about the camp. All of them were sleeping. She turned and watched the slumbering Bear and noticed that the new one was missing. Maybe Stilicho sent him out to hunt, Iris thought. She slung her satchel over shoulder, tightened the laces on her otter furred boots and snuck her way into the depths of the forest.

I. Overexposed
Lying exposed in the fluorescent box
Surgical paper crinkles against my back
Impersonal hands press soft tissue
Those intimate parts of me no one is supposed to touch
Inhale, she says, I breathe in hand sanitizer aroma
Exhale, she says, I breathe out the sterile remains
Removes the ice metal from my ribs, the signal of the end
Put on my shirt and I'm no longer a lab specimen
They call a "patient".

I woke up on December 31st feeling relieved. 2013 was not an awful year until I realized that I was giving my all to someone who didn't feel the same way, and that my friends didn't feel like my friends anymore, and that I had sorely neglected my overall education for my first two years of high school.
New Year's Eve was wonderful. I went to an old friend's house and we shot off a firework display that would put Macy's New Year's Eve to shame. I felt optimistic, I felt happy. It was 2014, and I would get a fresh start.

DISCLAIMER: Mild language, edited out with asterisks :).

Monday.
At 1:15am the moon will rise over a greenish Uranus, I don’t know what to say to him, I say I’m in love but yet I hate these awkward pauses, football football farmer’s almanac, maybe I’m not as desperate as I thought, yes he is attractive and wonderful, but this is sort of liberating, we’re just friends I am declaring it as true.

"We're fools whether we dance or not,
so we might as well dance."
-Japanese Proverb

o~O~o

Make me stop smiling.
I dare you, for it is impossible.
Squash my dreams?
Inconceivable as they are to your small minds,
you are incapable.

I feel joy:
I dance, unashamed.

Experience sorrow:
I weep, unabashed.

Your small-mindedness will never move me.
I am unfazed by blind hatred.