Happening

I can’t believe this is

happening

like the fairy tale of

my life finally

happening

Like you peeled away

the layers

and opened up the pages

and finally someone liked

what they

saw in there

And I was afraid

so afraid

to let you in

but you pushed

just a little

so I let you win

and I don’t think

I’ll regret it

no matter what’s ahead

’cause I’m healed and

transformed

by everything you’ve said

You can’t seem

to contain it

and that undoes

my resistance

and I begin to trust

you and your gentle insistence

and I gave you

everything dead and dry inside

with a bitter smile

waiting for you to

give up trying

And you look in my eyes

hypnotized

and you fan a spark

and I’m alight

and I’m dreaming again

and I’m terrified

and I’m breathing you in

as our stories collide

and I melt on your chest

putty in your hands

but you don’t take advantage

and I don’t understand

This is impossible

this is surreal

I’m so overwhelmed

I don’t know what to feel

consume

believe

love

desire

accept

embrace

inspire

me

you

are becoming

consistency

hope

addictive

hope

my best friend

hope

so hold me

tight

hold me…

I can’t believe this is happening

birds

her wings are spread, she's stuck here on the ground. she's not heavy, she's my world, i'll carry her around

lately i have just fallen in love with birds...

i love the freedom they represent. the fact that they can just go whenever, wherever

i'm like a bird, i only fly away, i don't know where my soul is, i don't know where my home is

and then there's the irony of a cage.



and that part is kind of sad. that a creature with total freedom and so much beauty would be caged. that its wings would be clipped. that it would be stuck within one square foot of living space when it has all the blue skies of our world to explore.

may 15, 2008 i wrote "i am not a child with a skinned knee. I am not even a teenager with a broken heart. I’ve moved to a new level. I’m a broken spirit, a broken smile; I’m a bird with broken wings – unsure of my purpose and only able to see from the perspective of one grounded. My heart is so desperate for something it can’t have that it gives up what it already possesses." - and o how little has changed in ways. but in so many ways, so much has changed.

because the thing a bird caged and the thing a bird in the air have in common at ALL times is this - no one can steal their song away from them, even if they try. the only one who can stop their singing is themselves.

though my song be taken from me, yet will i sing

every season shall fade away, either in bursts of hopeful song, or in suffering silence. i shall not lose my voice.

"Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her; still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings."

i want to thank everyone for all of your encouragement. you help remind me that inside me lies a song of victory and freedom, of hope and of life. no cage, self imposed or otherwise, can keep this voice contained.

i know this wasnt very eloquent. just a mess, like my thoughts.

My whole life I have always thought I was made to help people. When I help people, I feel like it's what I was born to do.

Somewhere along this week... I realized no one I've ever tried to help has really changed. They all just get worse and worse. And I am almost out of hope.

Strength

"It was a beautiful letdown when you found me here... yeah for once in a rare blue moon, I see everything clear. I'll be a beautiful letdown, that's what I'll forever be. And though it may cost my soul I'll sing for free."

Often these days a thought comes into my head. It comes randomly, like when I am washing my hair in the shower, or at night when I switch the light off and climb between the sheets alone... is there any great love story that isn't colored with tragedy?

I would submit that there is not. There is always a struggle. There is always a fight. Even our Great Romance is colored by death; having to enter into it in order to overcome it.

And then I think about this; why is it always so much easier for me to remember the bad stuff? I hold onto every hurtful thing someone says to me and paint it into the picture I have of myself in my mind. I heard some painful words from people this past week. The kind that cut deep into my heart more because they reflect what I also see when I look in the mirror than because they "offend" me. And when that happens, I try so hard to remember the good things people have looked in my eyes or taken time to write down over the years that they see in me... but even if I recall them, I find them difficult to reconcile.

A few days ago, with that in the back of my mind, I was digging through my mom's filing cabinets. She has several folders labeled with my name. And I was looking, quite unsuccessfully I might add, through all of them trying to find my Social Security card. And instead I found a note from my grandma.

... Remember the prayers that were said for you. Believe me when I say they stay with you your whole life. And when you get older and you are tempted to abandon the things you were raised to believe, remember it takes a stronger person to say no. It is weak to say yes.

It felt pretty epic, digging through a bunch of documents, finding a random old note from my grandma and breaking into hysterical tears there alone on the floor of an empty house. But for the millionth time, something broke in me and I found the strength to fight once again, if only for a while longer.

I have been exhausted and disappointed by the notion that the wretched mess I am is going to be a once and for all fix. I am sick of feeling like a a failure simply because I am an emotional roller coaster. I am tired of losing battles merely because I am overwhelmed by the time and strength it will take to win them.

I don't know much... I don't know if the good things people have said are more true than the bad things. I don't know how much longer I will be confused and frustrated and living off of just enough strength to make it through a day at a time. I don't know how long it will take for me to move forward and stay forward.

But I do know this. I am a strong person. I will not succumb to the temptation to give up, no matter how much easier it would be. I will say no. Though I may be unsure of any other qualities that may or may not define me, this I am sure of.

So what if I'm a letdown? I'm loved, and that makes me strong. And strength makes me beautiful.

<3

Hurt and Hope

The defining moments of my life are always negative.

Seriously. And it makes me sad... that whenever I think of the biggest, most life changing things, it seems to be the sad things.

Should I try harder, maybe, to let the good things stick instead of the bad things?
Should I try to forget the hard things, and throw myself into the happy things?
It seems like the right thing to do, for a moment..

But then I realize most of those painful things are things that don't hurt me anymore. They are just stories, stories that remind me of how far I've come. Stories that prove what I was rescued out of.

They have become the beautiful things.

And every time I accomplish a deed I am sure I will spend every second of my remaining days regretting, redemption surprises me once again, turning a broken cry into a song. Sewing up a broken heart with threads of beauty and purpose.

And then I think, how can I feel bad that my life is woven through a series of painful events? Because though pain may be at the beginning of everything memorable, beauty comes out the victor at the end of every battle, wiping a slate wrought and muddled with desolation clean, and painting a delicate symbol of life across the top.

Hurt is the roots. Hope is the flower.

And every memory is beautiful.

Knowing that You'll save me

"And this is how I choose to live, as if I'm jumping off a cliff, knowing that You'll save me, knowing that You'll save me, and after all the stupid things I did there's nothing left there to forgive, cause You already forgave me, You already forgave me."

Yes I have broken through, yes I have felt the recent downpoor, the lifting of the sorrow I bore in my desert season, yes I have had the privilege of not reaching a point of despair...

but this is what I have found in my heart this week.
bitterness.

And lots of questions why... why does it always take me taking the long road, why does it always take sacrifice... why do the things that please Him seem to pain me so much? And why can He not give me an answer?

And I find my relationship so defined by revelations other than my own.

And this is the most difficult thing of all, because when I try to approach Him, when I try to read His word, or worship, or anything else... I find before His voice reaches my ears, before His touch can quicken my heart, before I can grasp His presence with my spirit... I am met with a thousand other opinions and speculations and angles, all from outside sources... messages I have heard, books I have read...

not that those things are bad, but I think I am getting to a deeper place with it. I think I am down to the foundations now. I am realizing the cracks in it. I am seeing the need to fill them.

With His voice. With His revelation to MY heart. With my trusting HIM instead of trusting what I have been told or taught about Him.

And I have stayed away, because I don't want more pain. I don't want Him to ask me to give up anything else.

But I can't stand being apart from Him any longer.

So tonight I am going to fight.
Tonight I am going to jump.
Tonight I am going to trust.
Tonight I am going to cry.
Tonight I am going to sing.
Tonight I will be romanced again.
Destroyed
made new
and ultimately set free.

I fling wide my arms, He will fling wide His gates, and so will be the embrace I have long closed myself to.


<3

All we are, we are

I'm so tired, but so restless. I keep thinking of this idea I've had for a poem for months, but every time I try to write it, it becomes a huge mess and I scribble it out and toss aside my notebook in frustration. I think my revelation on it must not be full enough for me to write it yet. So instead of attempting again right now, I am pondering the skeleton, the basis, the foundation - the idea around which I attempt to weave the words to paint the picture that lives in my heart. And I was reminded of a blog I wrote back when I was 18, on my myspace, right before my first year in master's commission. A blog I've gone back and re-read a few times. A blog that reminds me... that anchors me once again. And I thought I'd repost it..

How many times have I lived in the past, wishing to make things different, pining after things I couldn't have, dwelling on my regrets? Or how many times have I thought about how if I could just make it through a certain moment and into the future, everything would be so much better? Why do I live like that? Why is it so hard for me to live in the present and enjoy every moment of it? The past is just that; the past. Over and done with. And the future is the future, I'll make it there eventually. But these are the moments when every part of my life is shaped. Why do I choose to let them slip by so often?

People say its what you do that defines you; I used to agree with that. But recently someone told me its not what I do that defines me - I have been defined from the beginning and all I have to do is allow God to make me into what He designed me for in the first place. So all those times in the past that I've been hurt in and haven't been able to put behind me - those will be the scars I'll be the most thankful for. The mistakes I've made and hated myself for - they will become my greatest strengths. The future Ive longed for to escape the present - it's huge and boundless and waiting for me. And this is now. This is where I wanna live. Through this moment while my heart breaks thinking of having to leave those I love so much. Through the tears and smiles, the light and darkness. Through the good times and the bad. By laying it all down and letting God break me out of this shell and mold me. These are the moments I'll cherish. I won't forget where I came from and I won't worry about where I'm going. I wanna be open. Free. Vulnerable. I wanna feel alive again.

So here I go.

This got me thinking to a book I love, called Hope for the Flowers. In it a caterpillar learns about becoming a butterfly and as she begins cautiously to spin a cocoon, she thinks to herself "if I have inside me the stuff to make cocoons, maybe the stuff of butterflies is there too."

I think right now I am seeing again, just as I began to see when I was 18, that I am who I am. All I was and am going to be is curled up somewhere inside of me, waiting for a reason to burst through my skin and become present. But it takes risk, it takes risk to live in the present. It takes courage. It takes a yielding of your will, to be who you are.

"Right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection"

-The Time Traveler's Wife