Craig D. Lounsbrough

My heart says, __his way._ The world says, __hat way._ God says, __ am the Way._ And if perchance I choose to listen to the first two, I__ going to find myself so far off the __ay_ that being lost becomes the __ay_.

To deny the battle is unwise. To believe that I can fight it without God is insane. To actually do so is suicidal. No wonder so many of us walk around looking like death warmed over.

If I had any hand in it at all there__ a chance that it might be beautiful, but it simply cannot not be majestic.

How often is my tidy and well-appointed world nothing but the thin veneer of an imagination that I__e chosen to use in the service of denial, rather than a gift I__e chosen to exercise out of a passion for change?

To pretend is to do nothing more than imagine life as something wonderful so that we don__ have to incur the pain that it takes to actually make life wonderful.

The only thing I have to wait for to change my life is my attitude.

An exceptional future can only be built on the transformation of the mess I__e made, not the elimination of it.

I am thankful that there are those among us who have sacrificed dearly on behalf of us. And I ardently pray to God that I might be less like myself and more like them.

The sacrifice __f_ self for the greater good is the greatest calling imaginable, and it is the bedrock of the greatest nations. The sacrifice __or_ self is the most pathetic calling imaginable, and it is the quicksand within which nations perish.

Discerning the difference between a dictator and a leader is quite easy. The former cannot help but see __eading_ and __erving_ as stark contradictions that by their very nature are utterly incompatible. The latter can__ tell the difference

We know enough to know that all of this is not quite right. And we know enough to know that settling for what__ not quite right is quite wrong.

Is it possible that my walls are specifically erected and intentionally reinforced out of the fear that God calls me to an existence without walls? And if this is so, do I realize that I am the warden of prison that I created in which I myself am the prisoner?

Sometimes what is said to be a gift may appear more of a curse only because the greatest gifts of all are the gifts that have enough disruptive force to break us out of everything that__ breaking us. And God loves us far too much not to give us exactly those kinds of gifts.

The world brazenly touts freedom as both the inalienable right and morally liberating justification to mindlessly play in the filth that lies all around me. And the slight bit of sanity that yet remains within me asks, __hat raging madness would prompt me to incessantly wallow in the very things that will eventually swallow me?

If I have become so pathetically dulled that I hold freedom as my right and the privileges of liberty as my due, I can stand beside the stilled graves of a thousand soldiers fallen in defense of freedom and not feel a thing. And my most solemn prayer is that I will never be this.

Rare are the handful of principles that incessantly drive us to stand even when we face the stark realization that we will likely perish in the standing. And rarer still is the person who will surrender all to protect such principles. Yet, the rudimentary principles of freedom and liberty pristinely untarnished by greed and selfishness took captive the hearts of simple people and raised this nation up from untamed wilderness and unchecked tyranny. And let us all be warned that without renewed adherence to these principles, we will rapidly return this nation to untamed wilderness and unchecked tyranny.

It is at the precise moment that I take something for granted that I have placed myself in the precarious position of losing that very thing. And if that thing I risk losing is liberty, taking it for granted is foolishness of the most foolish sort.

Independence that has declared its __ndependence_ from the sure and certain compass of sound morals is nothing more than rogue greed having scantily dressed itself in the garb of independence while running off the cliff of anarchy.