Truth and Grace Above All Else

Up above it all In my high school years I went to more camps then Yogi Bear in search of a picnic basket. These were not just camp grounds with smelly toilets and tents though, these were camp grounds with high ropes courses, mountain biking, giant swings, lakes and a ton of other fun activities. It was a paradise for me to test my limits and face my fears head on. I only had a few fears in my teenage years: The fear of not impressing the lady folk, the fear of accepting a dare that I really shouldn't have and the fear of heights. Of all of those fears, the last one could stop me in my tracks. I didn't become an ice cube of fear or anything, but I had an extremely difficult time getting past the fact that I could fall to my death at any second. I was not the kind of kid to pass up an awesome opportunity though. If I did, I knew I would regret it for a very long time. So instead of saying no, I said yes. Even if it freaked me out.  I woke up in my bunk to the smell ...

Boom When I was younger, I was obsessed with army men, tanks and things that went boom. I loved the Fourth of July. Me and my brother would walk almost a mile one way to the only gas station in our town to buy fireworks with change we had collected. Once I had used up most of the change I had collected, I would use my money from doing chores around the house. I didn't understand the concept of throwing away my money back then, but I think when you are eight to twelve years old, you don't really care about the value of money, you just care how much it can buy you. A dollar could buy me five packs of those snapper things that you throw on the ground and they make a sharp pop. Me and my brother would have competitions to see how many of these snappers we could throw in one handful in order to get the coolest noise off the surface of our driveway. I think we set an unofficial record of five boxes in one handful. It was cool for the second that it lasted for all of them to hit ...