home

It was absolute perfection -- no.  Better.  I was aching and every part of my body was screaming for me to stop jumping, to lay down and sleep for two days straight.  But I didn't.  I couldn't.  Not when Matty T. was only a yard away and Hoopes was playing right there before my very eyes.  It all felt like a dream -- a beautiful, long-awaited dream that was finally coming true.  I had never felt so alive.  So at home.  The whole room was singing at the top of their lungs, every lyric memorized by heart.  Never in a million years would I have thought that here in the midst of strangers is where I'd feel like I belonged.  But I did.  And it was all I could do to keep from crying tears of joy.  Because these people got me.  They got me and they didn't even know my name.  And so I sang and I danced and laughed and prayed that this could last forever.  But as I well knew, all good things must come to an end.

Relient K was everything I could've hoped for and more.  The five years of waiting was worth it in the first second I saw the back of Matt Thiessen's curly head.  When I saw Hoopes' grin and the sincerity of the Matts' friendship.  All I knew to do was breathe it in -- to close my eyes and capture every detail so it wouldn't slip away.  These guys were the real deal.  Are the real deal.  And no one's ever going to change my mind about that.

While being united in the love of Relient K is seriously one of the best feelings ever, I know heaven will be that times a million-gazillion-trillion.  Because we'll all be united in the love of Jesus, and the gratitude we owe to the One who saved us from ourselves.

"Take a good look at yourself and know
You've got yourself a ways to go
But difficult is not impossible
You can take back all the lost control
Take a good look at yourself and see
That you'll emerge eventually
As long as your heart's not too far gone
From the only Thing that can save you from yourself."
hope for every fallen man by relient k

I have a lot to learn and even more to do, but as long as I've got Jesus, I'll get there.  It's reassuring that Matty T. feels the same way.  Him and thousands of others.  I'm not alone.

photo credit goes to my dear friend and fellow fangirl, alex.