Give Me Love

 "In the end we are all just humans, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness." 

~Christopher Piondexter  

Like with every instrument, there's always that one song that you aspire to play that gets you through all the frustrating fazes of learning an instrument. For me this song was Give Me Love by Ed Sheeran.

 I love this song despite the fact that it doesn't fall under my usual preferred genera. I think the lyrics are beautiful. There is so much pain in this song. It is the pain that is the human desperation for love left unfulfilled.

The story of our lives are all outlived by tragedy.

But there's something even more tragic that happens when we break. It is not our brokenness that becomes our tragedy. 

Our tragedy is that we believe that we need others to become anew. We are convinced that love and love alone will be enough to fill the cracks in our little glass hearts. And so we dismiss every other possible fulfillment. 

When we no longer feel whole we seek for others to fulfill us. We ask for love like never before because we are so utterly desperate for it. 

But even those who love us most will always come short. Even those who we trust with the most vulnerable pieces of ourselves will not treasure us like they are meant to. 

So I look to God to Give Me Love.

His love alone is enough to fulfill me. 

I challenge you to stop counting on broken people to heal your own brokenness. Stop counting on others who are hurting to heal your own wounds. 

After all, who could be more suited to mend your broken heart than he who created it.

Word Conductor

I used to pretend I could read. I would open a book and invent a story, all the while telling my brother I was reading to him. When I was 6 years old, I learned how to read, for real this time. I was 8 when my Dad read The Hobbit to me for the first time. That same year I wrote my first story.
In the years that followed, I would reread The Hobbit again and again. I would also discover legions of other books. I fell in love with literature numberless times. I would find myself lost in a book more often than in reality. 
When I was 12 years old I started writing the novel that would become my greatest passion. That same year I won an award called the Future Novelist Merit Award. It was the moment my English teacher told me that I would be the next Tolkien that I realized this was all I wanted to be.
In the years that followed that aspiration never faltered. Just when I thought writers block had gotten the best of me I would stumble upon more passion to sustain me. Pages get caught in my hurricane. Pencils get shredded to the stub. Notebooks get inked. What once was blank and paper-thin is made bountiful enough to get lost in.
Then, everything changed, and as a result, I stopped writing.
My year away from writing changed my life completely. No pages were filled. My finger tips became unfamiliar with pencils. Words began to fall off pages. Sentences were left unfinished. And I, the girl that used to dance and breathe with words, I think she forgot how to feel. 
I searched for life in a lot of places. I looked for a substance that could fill a void. But I could not fill oceans with water droplets. I could not rage a storm without breathing. I could not fill pages without passion.
So, instead of writing about life, I started to write about death. Instead of writing about emotion, I learned to write about the pain of not feeling anything.
Somewhere in that fight, I heard his calling. I always wondered where this passion came from, and now I asked myself where it was that I had lost it. The Lord called out to me, and that was when I rediscovered my sustainer.  
This is my calling, and I am the listener. Now I have discovered that I cannot cease to fall in love with this aspiration. Plot holes have been filled with mountains. Writers block has been blown away by breezes, and the words have found me yet again.
My palms are stained with pencil. My finger tips are tinted with ink. They have called me book worm, but really I am the aspiration of a master novelist. These words are my addiction. These words tell me that I am still alive. These words, they are my catastrophe, and he is the conductor.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

 "But answer me this; how can a story end happy if there is no love." 

~Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

I recently read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane to my little brother Marc.

When I was his age I was completely entranced by this magical tale. The enchanting and extraordinary journey of a China rabbit named Edward who learns how to love is evidently a children's tale, but it has not lost any of its magic, even ten years after reading it for the first time. 

Marc enjoyed the book so much he told his older brothers all about it. They however were puzzled how the story of a toy who can neither speak or move could be of much interest. Although Edward Tulane is the main character, the story is hardly about him at all. The story is about the people that Edward meets. It is about the rebuilding of a toys heart. Through pain and heart ache, through love and sorrow, his heart is transformed. The story is absolutely beautiful. Heart warming and heart aching for children and adults alike. 

Edward learns that love is not romance. Love is not sweet and love is never easy. Love is painful. Love aches and it captivates. Love is kind; love can be cruel to the heart, but love is also the fulfillment of the soul.  And, most importantly, any life without love is hardly a life at all. 

As Robert Tizon said "I would rather have eyes that cannot see; ears that cannot hear; lips that cannot speak; than a heart that cannot love." 

Winter Odyssey

 "In the depth of Winter I finally learned that within in me there lay an invincible Summer." 
~Albert Camus 

Here ends the Winter season. 
Can't wait to continue sharing my Odyssey with you in the spring!

 

   

Winter Reading List

I get most of my reading done in the Winter. Reading is my favorite Winter activity. 
There's nothing like curling up with a good book inside where it's cozy and hibernating from the cold. 

Some of my Winter favorites include Whiteout,  Unravel Me, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Winds of Winter, Skybreaker, The Watch that ends the Night and East.

Wilted

"All that is gold does not glitter, 
Not all those who wander are lost; 
The old that is strong does not wither, 
Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
~Tolkien


I have a collection of dead flowers in my room. Some I keep in boxes. Others are in vases or in my pencil jar. Some of the pebbles have fallen on my desk, and I keep them there. Scattered among my books and art supplies. 

Every where I look in the world I see metaphors. The world is paralleled condensation; a mirror of the things we cannot see. It's as if God wanted to give us a paralleled description, a scientific version of the incomprehensible. The invisible as seen in a simplified version. All this is merely a replica resembling that which is beyond scientific explanation...Even those  wilted flowers. 
A dried flower is a classic example of the tole that time has on beauty. There is something that I find intimidatingly beautiful about dead flowers. That is why I keep them in my room long after their color has faded and their pebbles have wilted. Long after time has taken its tole and the flower has dried.
Beauty, as seen on the outside, is only valuable for a moment. This makes beauty low in value. It passes and changes like value changes with the market.
Only beauty in its parallel condensation is eternally in bloom. It is a worth that never becomes low in value; A non glittering gold.  
It is that with which we feel beauty, as oppose to simply seeing beauty;  the kind of beauty that can be felt with the heart is beautiful through all the seasons.
It is more precious than gold. It is strong even when it is aging. It is deeper than the frost can bite. It is never shriveling, never wilting, never withering.