In my spare time I'm an acrobat, flipping, bending & sliding through my emotions
Usually hoping to change them, while they churn me, while I toss and turn
Another night, another dreamless wake, another stark contrast to hope
Your own mind creates a more tiring maze than anyone else made you
I'm not ashamed but I may be asleep, when you get this, when you answer
The truth may be cut up and turned into an envelope, it won't have to be sent
I won't need to be spent, won't need to tell you, you're the only one who owes me
Who owns me, who broke me, who spent me, who used me, who crushed me, who had me.
Who had me, who held me, who turned me and tried me world without end Amen
And again till death do us part, til death do us wake, till death do us... don't.
And for all the love and the being had, I don't think we ever got past what you wanted
Just like you skipped that in pre-school & other areas of early childhood development
I wish I had skipped a few of those gifted and special classes
and what intuition forced on me, on the chosen few, the smart ones, the old young ones
Who know better than what they feel, and who think better than some machines
And who endlessly, tirelessly, anxiously, methodically, addictively, analytically, passionately wish that they didn't.
Those still looking, there's hope for our lost souls, hope for the ones that took the detour right after you let your heart decide when you've always known your head was right.
There is a salve, a healing, mending, effervescent peace, but be forewarned,
It passes all understanding, so unlike you thought, the intellectuals don't always finish first
what's still in your pockets
My mind is not entirely dry.
I have something worth reading being written down on little napkins & all the other places I forget I write them
sometimes when I find these I want to kick myself for not stopping & seizing the moment in the way that it almost always needs to be seized and writing a full page or two instead of those three lines that I probably will never come back to the same.
My children, if I ever have them, may feel the same way or they may not.
I'm always sorry about these things though, the things I didn't do, didn't say, didn't finish and after I'm through being sorry for myself I'm sorry for everyone else. Not in vanity but just in a knowing way that has to admit it would have been worth it for me to stop everything else at the time and complete those things. Why didn't I speak the truth in love while I still could?
It's over now, they've come and gone, with their glorious moments, their hardships, the teary eyes, the upward battle, the almost in-expressible happinesses, the mountaintops, the valleys, the oppression, the falling, the beauty, the breathlessness of all of it. It's all done, but I... I am not. If the spark is in me, it remains. Everyday is a new chance for expression, empathy & creativity in communication, in footsteps, in how we touch the lives around us and what we leave behind.
Some things may be wasted, but there's always, always the new
I have something worth reading being written down on little napkins & all the other places I forget I write them
sometimes when I find these I want to kick myself for not stopping & seizing the moment in the way that it almost always needs to be seized and writing a full page or two instead of those three lines that I probably will never come back to the same.
My children, if I ever have them, may feel the same way or they may not.
I'm always sorry about these things though, the things I didn't do, didn't say, didn't finish and after I'm through being sorry for myself I'm sorry for everyone else. Not in vanity but just in a knowing way that has to admit it would have been worth it for me to stop everything else at the time and complete those things. Why didn't I speak the truth in love while I still could?
It's over now, they've come and gone, with their glorious moments, their hardships, the teary eyes, the upward battle, the almost in-expressible happinesses, the mountaintops, the valleys, the oppression, the falling, the beauty, the breathlessness of all of it. It's all done, but I... I am not. If the spark is in me, it remains. Everyday is a new chance for expression, empathy & creativity in communication, in footsteps, in how we touch the lives around us and what we leave behind.
Some things may be wasted, but there's always, always the new
blinded
so much to say but so little depth
and the measures are rarely straight these days
counterfeits slip through what used to be the hands of the elite
unabashedly followers compromise
leaving leaders with legs to stand on but weary knees
exhausted with asking, prayers are muted
yet a loving God answers the cries of our heart
and the measures are rarely straight these days
counterfeits slip through what used to be the hands of the elite
unabashedly followers compromise
leaving leaders with legs to stand on but weary knees
exhausted with asking, prayers are muted
yet a loving God answers the cries of our heart
God In Our Grief
God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, no sorrow, nor crying. Revelation 21:4
Despite it's universality, when sorrow comes to us, each of us is certain that no one has ever suffered such a keen sense of loss. And it is at that point that we can allow a poisonous self-pity to enter. Anger at God then often quickly follows.
But when we shut our heart against our friends and family and allow bitterness to creep in, we are, in a tragic way, insulating ourselves against the healing and re-energizing love of God.
I was saved from such isolation by a miracle of God's grace and by the loving church congregation that surrounded me. I use the word "miracle" because my basic nature has been that of fleeing encounters with people whenever possible. Yet somehow I was strengthened to will myself to return to church the Sunday immediately following Peter's death, to sit in the pastor's pew as usual (though at times during the service I could not stop the tears), and thereafter to open wide the door of our manse-home to a procession of friends.
:: Catherine Marshall
unexpected lull
Sometimes I am so low I don't know how I let myself get here.
I need to sleep, I need to forget, I need to embrace things
By withdrawing I prolong the need, the repetition, the rotation
But there is no rotation, there's a pattern, but it's not moving
It's interesting in these valley's and lull's how bad news links together
And laces through, as imagination and reality race to outdo each other
In bad tiding's, in discomfort, in letters and memories. It just keeps going
Everything rises up and I won't sleep for days while it lays here, heavy on me
my immunity is low,
I've spent a long time letting it deplete,
letting you and every lying voice passing and in my head deplete it.
I need to sleep, I need to forget, I need to embrace things
By withdrawing I prolong the need, the repetition, the rotation
But there is no rotation, there's a pattern, but it's not moving
It's interesting in these valley's and lull's how bad news links together
And laces through, as imagination and reality race to outdo each other
In bad tiding's, in discomfort, in letters and memories. It just keeps going
Everything rises up and I won't sleep for days while it lays here, heavy on me
my immunity is low,
I've spent a long time letting it deplete,
letting you and every lying voice passing and in my head deplete it.
of car wrecks and good things
Today, I'm taking more Ibuprofen than my liver should be able to deal with and not for the reason's you might think (by this I only mean headache's.) girl's can take Ibuprofen for many reason's and no one needs to raise their eyebrow's and nod understandingly at me. The reason is simply this, night before last I, along with my lovely family got in a car accident. It was a minor wreck by most standards, our vehicle was rear ended we went spinning, screaming, jerking around the highway & we are all very aware that if there had been a few slight differences, if the car that hit us had been only a little bigger we would have flipped instead of sliding. But we didn't flip and we are all still in one piece, for this we are truly thankful.
I personally would like to take this moment to mention seat belts, I had just sat down in my seat as we pulled onto the main highway. I sit on the end of the back seat along with Ben & Jessica, like 3 dominoes we are set up in age and height order leaving me on the end to protect them both...should our van be hit on the back left corner at 55miles per hour, lifted off the ground and spun around Ben will fall on Jessica, Jessica will smash into me (while making a valiant effort to hold Grace firmly down on the seat in front of her.) and I will fall off the seat hit the wall be yanked around and ram into the metal (very hard) on both the seats that I'm now wedged between. This is a fool proof plan to protect the favorite family members. And yes, maybe I would have been safer if my seatbelt had been buckled within 30 seconds of getting on the highway. But I'm prone to think the impact of Benjamin & Jess and the centrifugal force smashing my head into a window while my lower body was strapped to a seat, would have been more damaging than the inflammation, bruising and minor whiplash I am experiencing now. However I recommend that everyone always put your seatbelt on before trusting a moving vehicle... In fact I would further recommend, not trusting a moving vehicle at all.
A few other things of importance happened this weekend.
I am coming to terms with some minor & major life changes, and coming to terms with how much I should accept God's hand in my life. If I truly trust Him I need to also trust that all the details, sequences of events, variations and plan changes, in my well laid plans that I'm daily "surrendering to Him" may very well be His well timed answer to prayer. This does not make me comfortable, but it makes me appreciate the fact that the creator of the universe, very well may sit back with a mild smile on his face and an occasional laugh as He watches me stumble around, trying to believe that He really is exactly as good as I say He is, and His will for me, really is exactly as perfect as I daily say it is.
Also, this weekend specifically, I spent a day with one of the friends I've been closest to the longest. She's a good friend, and I am so thankful to have her's as one of the amazing friendships that makes my life more complete, as we walk that road of friendship that makes good times good and hard times more bearable.
I'm starting to realize why God gave Jonathan to David, we need people in our lives, for laughter as much as accountability, for teaching us to relax and feel accepted as much as for helping keep our hands to the plow and occasionally holding our arms up.
And last but not least, yesterday morning during my Dad's set after HLF's national meeting he performed a new song, for the first time in a long time. I think a part of me had started to fear and feel a little ashamed that since he gave me his guitar years ago, I had somehow taken from him the very thing that he spent my life trying to give me, the gift of writing and self expression. I felt like by walking on into my own, I was somehow taking away from his, if that makes sense. However yesterday morning I found it wasn't true.
All of this to say I hope your weekend wasn't quite as full as mine. And though I don't care about the football game the rest of you may have been worshiping, I will say I will always love Pennsylvania.
I personally would like to take this moment to mention seat belts, I had just sat down in my seat as we pulled onto the main highway. I sit on the end of the back seat along with Ben & Jessica, like 3 dominoes we are set up in age and height order leaving me on the end to protect them both...should our van be hit on the back left corner at 55miles per hour, lifted off the ground and spun around Ben will fall on Jessica, Jessica will smash into me (while making a valiant effort to hold Grace firmly down on the seat in front of her.) and I will fall off the seat hit the wall be yanked around and ram into the metal (very hard) on both the seats that I'm now wedged between. This is a fool proof plan to protect the favorite family members. And yes, maybe I would have been safer if my seatbelt had been buckled within 30 seconds of getting on the highway. But I'm prone to think the impact of Benjamin & Jess and the centrifugal force smashing my head into a window while my lower body was strapped to a seat, would have been more damaging than the inflammation, bruising and minor whiplash I am experiencing now. However I recommend that everyone always put your seatbelt on before trusting a moving vehicle... In fact I would further recommend, not trusting a moving vehicle at all.
A few other things of importance happened this weekend.
I am coming to terms with some minor & major life changes, and coming to terms with how much I should accept God's hand in my life. If I truly trust Him I need to also trust that all the details, sequences of events, variations and plan changes, in my well laid plans that I'm daily "surrendering to Him" may very well be His well timed answer to prayer. This does not make me comfortable, but it makes me appreciate the fact that the creator of the universe, very well may sit back with a mild smile on his face and an occasional laugh as He watches me stumble around, trying to believe that He really is exactly as good as I say He is, and His will for me, really is exactly as perfect as I daily say it is.
Also, this weekend specifically, I spent a day with one of the friends I've been closest to the longest. She's a good friend, and I am so thankful to have her's as one of the amazing friendships that makes my life more complete, as we walk that road of friendship that makes good times good and hard times more bearable.
I'm starting to realize why God gave Jonathan to David, we need people in our lives, for laughter as much as accountability, for teaching us to relax and feel accepted as much as for helping keep our hands to the plow and occasionally holding our arms up.
And last but not least, yesterday morning during my Dad's set after HLF's national meeting he performed a new song, for the first time in a long time. I think a part of me had started to fear and feel a little ashamed that since he gave me his guitar years ago, I had somehow taken from him the very thing that he spent my life trying to give me, the gift of writing and self expression. I felt like by walking on into my own, I was somehow taking away from his, if that makes sense. However yesterday morning I found it wasn't true.
All of this to say I hope your weekend wasn't quite as full as mine. And though I don't care about the football game the rest of you may have been worshiping, I will say I will always love Pennsylvania.
It's better to have loved and lost?
So, I'm not okay...
Tonight, I am nothing. I have everyone I need & I love them, but at least one person I want I will never have now because I'm not sure that I will ever want him again. The question that's been plaguing me lately is why I loved in the first place, and more pertinent, why am I still pretty sure that the things bordering on hate in me may prove how much I still love.
Maybe I found a truer answer than I want to admit...
The other day I stumbled across a quote on my friends facebook. Unlike the long list on my page, while I'm always wanting to add another judging by the hundreds of quotes on napkins in my pockets... She doesn't have this problem, It's the only one under her favorite quotations,
"It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
Maybe she only needs one, it explains a lot. Enough even.
I have to admit I've never been fully satisfied with that quote, I haven't liked it as much as I should.
But that's probably due to a strong desire not to be okay with losing things I love. That may be unhealthy but I really think it's just based in loving "too much" and being a little selfish about it. Not wanting to allow the things I love or have loved to move away from me, to die, to stop loving me, to not want me, to forget me.
I don't know if it's worse to think that someone cannot love you anymore or simply that they won't. They've chosen to stop (if you really loved to begin with I'm not sure how this works). I don't know how to take it when I say I love you and someone says "well, I don't love you." in all seriousness.
I started shaking, my insides felt like they were a million pieces coming apart & shifting into tears into bewildered thoughts into shaking hands a trembling, still beating heart and a horrible, unending, sinking feeling in my stomach. Someone else can hold me still to stop the shaking and eventually the tears dry, but no one can change, or help, or stop what's inside me now. The brokenness stretches out, the lights get darker, all the magnified sounds, the words in slow motion, that montage of memories like a life flashing before your eyes, everything is acute and dull in an instant and then that instant stretches out for weeks & months and a few years... eventually you'll heal. We will all eventually experience losing something or someone to death and most of us will also lose someone right in the midst of life. Probably as you lose them and come to terms with it, you will stat to feel everything again, you'll remember how deep the happiness was, how perfect their adoration for you, how you followed their every word, loved their voice, believed in them and sometimes believed that it really couldn't get much better than this. There are different types of love, but somethings about love are the same. The things at the core. Maybe you, like me, lost a boy, maybe a girl, a brother, a sister, maybe it was a Mother or your Daddy, your Grandparents, your Uncle or your Dog, whoever it was... Loss is Loss, and Love is Love.
And I think I'm starting to think maybe that quote is enough to almost complete all thoughts and feelings on the matter. Once you've loved you are changed, and no matter how it's lost, it has touched you & you will never be the same again. That love will stay with you and somehow, you will always one way or another be better. You can get better if you let it run it's course and that part of love, that part of your life, will help make the complete you. Whoever that is. It is better to have loved and lost...
Maybe there's room for another quote,
"Nothing touches our lives but it is God Himself speaking."
Or "It all happens for a reason, even when it's wrong... Especially when it's wrong"
Okay, I've emptied my pockets of quotes for the night & my racing mind. I'll leave you with it.
Tonight, I am nothing. I have everyone I need & I love them, but at least one person I want I will never have now because I'm not sure that I will ever want him again. The question that's been plaguing me lately is why I loved in the first place, and more pertinent, why am I still pretty sure that the things bordering on hate in me may prove how much I still love.
Maybe I found a truer answer than I want to admit...
The other day I stumbled across a quote on my friends facebook. Unlike the long list on my page, while I'm always wanting to add another judging by the hundreds of quotes on napkins in my pockets... She doesn't have this problem, It's the only one under her favorite quotations,
"It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
Maybe she only needs one, it explains a lot. Enough even.
I have to admit I've never been fully satisfied with that quote, I haven't liked it as much as I should.
But that's probably due to a strong desire not to be okay with losing things I love. That may be unhealthy but I really think it's just based in loving "too much" and being a little selfish about it. Not wanting to allow the things I love or have loved to move away from me, to die, to stop loving me, to not want me, to forget me.
I don't know if it's worse to think that someone cannot love you anymore or simply that they won't. They've chosen to stop (if you really loved to begin with I'm not sure how this works). I don't know how to take it when I say I love you and someone says "well, I don't love you." in all seriousness.
I started shaking, my insides felt like they were a million pieces coming apart & shifting into tears into bewildered thoughts into shaking hands a trembling, still beating heart and a horrible, unending, sinking feeling in my stomach. Someone else can hold me still to stop the shaking and eventually the tears dry, but no one can change, or help, or stop what's inside me now. The brokenness stretches out, the lights get darker, all the magnified sounds, the words in slow motion, that montage of memories like a life flashing before your eyes, everything is acute and dull in an instant and then that instant stretches out for weeks & months and a few years... eventually you'll heal. We will all eventually experience losing something or someone to death and most of us will also lose someone right in the midst of life. Probably as you lose them and come to terms with it, you will stat to feel everything again, you'll remember how deep the happiness was, how perfect their adoration for you, how you followed their every word, loved their voice, believed in them and sometimes believed that it really couldn't get much better than this. There are different types of love, but somethings about love are the same. The things at the core. Maybe you, like me, lost a boy, maybe a girl, a brother, a sister, maybe it was a Mother or your Daddy, your Grandparents, your Uncle or your Dog, whoever it was... Loss is Loss, and Love is Love.
And I think I'm starting to think maybe that quote is enough to almost complete all thoughts and feelings on the matter. Once you've loved you are changed, and no matter how it's lost, it has touched you & you will never be the same again. That love will stay with you and somehow, you will always one way or another be better. You can get better if you let it run it's course and that part of love, that part of your life, will help make the complete you. Whoever that is. It is better to have loved and lost...
Maybe there's room for another quote,
"Nothing touches our lives but it is God Himself speaking."
Or "It all happens for a reason, even when it's wrong... Especially when it's wrong"
Okay, I've emptied my pockets of quotes for the night & my racing mind. I'll leave you with it.
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