.threadless design submission.

Lady & The Umbrella

I created a design for a threadless t-shirt. Please visit threadless.com and join to vote for my design.

.character development 1.

This fist blog will be about my newly created character who I call Mr. Jack. This new style of mine is greatly influenced by the Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett, and my good friend Matt Nelson.

Mr. Jack looks like a band member/ government agent but is neither and yet could be both. I have a mental image of him as a guy who randomly shows up at church and weddings. Through the early stage of him being a government agent with large glasses and actual eyes I envisioned him being darker. So I took away his eyes and made a black liquid draining from his empty eye sockets. That was the first step.

I gave him a nasty habit of smoking cigarettes and his personal 'effects' of a silenced pistol.

The next step of change that Mr. Jack underwent was the razor sharp teeth. I was a little worried that maybe he was too dark but then I thought of what this character meant to me. He was the symbolism of what Americans have become. The evil that he wears and does is almost mockery of morals as he always appears happy. But take this lightly because he really doesn't have a solid meaning for symbolizing something. That was something I thought of after he was already created.

The final addition I have given Mr. Jack is the long pointed tongue that hangs out of his sharp toothed mouth and the shoe-less foot.

More changes may come but I am really happy with this guy I've created. Ill keep his profile and story updated as I continue to work on his character.

Peace.

Eric Ludy - Depraved Indifference

powerful?

.thanks.

I see God in so many people. The different ways they love and care for one another. Everybody wants love but some are lost and don't know where to search. To those who are candles in the night I want to say you have been a huge impact on my faith. Even now I feel God shining through the different people I encounter. He's in there but sometimes He is being kept in. Lets let Him free and burn like a torch for Him. Thank you Lord for the relentless love and never-ending forgiveness.

.if you really want to know me. (a brief summary)

I have an image of myself. I want to be this super cool guy with an awesome, beautiful girlfriend. I want to have so many friends that I have to decline requests to hang out. I love God but my love for my personal image is equally important to me. I want people to hold high respect for me and in return I will show them the love of God. This image of me doesn’t struggle with anxiety or minor depression. He doesn’t think the worst of situations because he is confident that it will work out his way. He comes from a perfect dysfunctional family but one that is publically loved and known. He’s the guy who declined offers as prom dates to go alone and not hurt feelings, but danced with them and the prettiest girls there. He’s a rock star and an artist. Everyone loves his ideas and dreams. They encourage him and love him, but he is missing something more important than all of this because I’m creating him because I don’t find myself good enough for myself.

God has an image of me. He loves me more than any scale, tape measure, or calculator can measure. An infinite amount of galactic spaces cant tip that scale. He loves me more than anything can describe with words, money, or shiny new gadgets. Yet this image still is dreaming of himself as someone different when he has it all. The same power that created the stars, planets, dinosaurs, Chuck Norris, and Mount Everest created me. Why? I wonder why God would waste clay on me? Love. Really? Love…the thing I’ve ben searching for my whole life through failures of relationships and popularity. Something I want so much is being rejected by my shields I put made out of personal wants and desires. God’s image of me never changes. I’ve been loved since the beginning. Even when Adam and Eve took the apple and betrayed this love. He loved me through the flood that He created to destroy the sinful world. He loved me through the wars, disease, and pains of living. When I blamed Him for everything that was wrong with my life His only response was loving me. Through heartbreak He tried talking to me. When I needed Him most I pushed Him farther away. When I smoked weed and got drunk I laughed in His face. A God who I’ve never seen, heard, or felt present in my life. A God who couldn’t top the feeling of a high or drunkenness. A lie.

I have to question myself. Why did I not feel good enough for myself? I feel it was a result of always keeping things private. I associated myself with others who also felt they had to impress people. Truth was I was only lying to myself. I was attempting to fill a void too large for any image of myself. Only God could cap that gap. Once I let Him I saw how others felt inadequate. I felt His love solving all the problems in my life, not only fixing myself but also streaming through me. I felt like a cup being overflowed with water and just having to find place for all of this extra love. How was I so ignorant of this power before? Truth is, His love is the everlasting high. Something that smoking weed was trying to replace but only causing harm. Alcohol gave me the satisfaction of changing myself, but in the end it made me sick of who I was pretending to be. Kind of ironic how Gods love changed me as well. I see my old image as a monster in the hands of Satan. Something God hadn’t created. It was the definition of darkness. And the real truth was that who I was, was actually the false image I had given myself. The image God gave me I had locked away. This was why I never felt loved. My minor depression took hold because of this. The part of me that could feel this love was separated from my mind of the modern world. When I rejected Gods love I felt the darkness covering me. I really was alone and I wasn’t the real image God had given me. If I was the person who God intended to be I would have never felt alone. I blamed others but it was my own fault for being someone I wasn’t.

My biggest killer now is anxiety. I want things to be perfect. I don’t like being rejected. I’ve found the things that trigger this. Girls and family, but both in different kinds of anxiety. With girls that I get attracted to and become interested in I expose my emotions differently. When things don’t work out as I expected I panic. I don’t think she likes me. I assume she is ignoring me. She would rather spend her time with another guy. My heart sinks into my gut and I sit quietly while my mind explodes in panicky thoughts. I don’t want to do anything when it happens. I act sad but don’t ever bring it to light in conversations. Sometimes I even fake sick. With family it’s more of stressful anxiety. Constant arguing annoys me greatly. I’ve been a lazy kid my whole life. When mom asked me to do something I wined and complained rather than doing it and helping out. Its anxiety I've brought upon myself but still relate it to my household. It pains me to say this honestly but I don’t like to go home. I really only miss my dog. This breaks my heart. I want to have a stronger relationship with my family. I feel more mature but I’m scared of the anxiety that is triggered by being home. This is what I’m currently battling.

Both of these anxieties are because I’ve valued my time more than God. I want to find an awesome girl who I can settle down with but I haven’t listened to what God was saying. Just recently have I opened my heart to what God is directing me towards and I feel I am on the right track of beating the anxiety with girls. Also with the anxiety at home I have valued my own time more than my family that God has blessed me with. The physical reason I'm here writing this. I love my family and I know its normal to be slightly dysfunctional. I think I'm just too selfish. I still have encounters with my created image of myself and the selfishness is because of that. The peace of heart and mind that the love of Christ brings erases all of my worries, anxieties, depression, and selfishness. I want to share this feeling with others. I want them to know that their struggles are human. But the force behind them are not of God but of this world and Satan’s claws. To be fully content with ones self can only be accomplished by fully succumbing to the infinite and embracing love of God. His love stretches my heart into infinity.

-Why should my struggles stay a secret? Especially
since the cure to them is the proof of God’s love…

.enough questions.

I just finished reading Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time". All through the story the main character Meg is constantly asking questions and quite frankly she becomes annoying. Im not going to tell what the story is about because my main point is on asking questions.

Our culture today is set up to tell us whatever we want to know. Everything is at the tips of our fingers with the internet. But is it all true? School science books tell us that our universe is billions of years old, and that the dinosaurs were killed by a meteor. But were they? We assume because of what we are told, and the fact that there is no other "answer" out there, that it is true.

As Christians we are told by God to obey His Word, the Bible. In Genesis God destroyed the earth with a massive flood. But before this he commanded Noah to construct a massive boat and to take two of every KIND of animal. Not species, this is where people doubt the size and capacity of the ark.

This flood was so massive and powerful it covered the highest mountains and swept away everything into destruction and death. God was unhappy with man and what he had caused the world to be so God was restarting. We look at fossiles and the sedimentary soil layers they were buried in. This flood was so massive and powerful that it swept soil and animals all over the Earth and deposited them in layers as the soil and debris settled on the bottom.

Everything was destroyed. We have the evidence, but millions and millions of years of soil deposits seems more rational than a few months or years. Why dont we question the age of the earth? Or the validity of carbon dating? Have we become too lazy or prideful on our findings to question them? As citizens we want answers but dont want to put effort to find the truth. After all...the truth is out there. God has given us the evidence of the truth. Through creation, through His son, and through our capacity for faith. We are His beloved creations but like a puppet who has cut the strings and tried to live on his own.