wild melody

of thoughts. scribbling them out in paper, prob post some but for now I just want to say. I am grateful for hard painful truth. for the strange way it gives solid comfort where pretty, nice, but not so much true words leave a bitter taste in my mouth. give me a sword to swing and I will fight to see light. but don't tell me the dragon is in my head. nor that the fight will not draw blood, lest I be overcome. dang I hate when I get all metaphorical and make no sense. {updating hours later} memories flood. Україна. sitting on the cement. several age 8- 12-looking like 8-10 under-nourished children scramble for crafts. they seem happy to have colours, glitter, markers. their faces are hungrier than thier stomachs. hungry for newness, for beauty; mostly for attention. hungry to be noticed. "good job!" & a hug. enough to light up one of those faces. (how rare is affirmation in this place...how can they have a concept of their value?) I am smiling & praising &...

don't give up.

that night, 2.3.12 I will never forget. it was full of ordinary things, the typical weekend night of an american female 20-something. 3 girls met up at Starbucks. took pictures. went to a civil wars concert. sat in the car for hours after; talking about Jesus n life & how those two meet & intertwine. but for me, it wasn't ordinary. ordinary at that time was panic attacks. fear, doubting my sanity, doubting my interpretation of scripture, doubting God's promises by wondering if His best for me involved me losing my mind. that night I felt...not stable. but at least able to fake it. I saw, for the first time potential that I might return to life before January. me & ok was real. in the future. I laughed out loud that night. damn i have great friends! it startled me. I was shocked i could laugh & yet. also shocked to realize I couldn't remember the last time I'd truthfully laughed out loud...Christmas? surely I laughed that day. it was one of the f...

i'm sitting here trying to write to a few of my Ukraine orphans...miracle of miracles, one is being adopted!!! he was especially on my heart last year, one that i'll admit i maybe cried a lil harder on the plane about leaving. God hears prayers. He may seem to rescue on such a smaller scale than we ask for, but He DOES rescue and He DOES see and hear the suffering, the weak, the small. He has plans for all of the oppressed. who am i to question what He does with His people on His earth? especially as i know how very good, very holy and ever so much more powerful He is. anyway. its harder to write than i thought it was. what do i say? that i pray for you still, that your pictures hang from ribbons in the corner of my room so i will not forget? that my heart aches to free you, how can i say that?! how can i speak of light, hope, love; when their circumstances are entrenched in darkness, soaked in seeming hopelessness and full of abuse? hello world that i wanted t...

I write letters in my head all the time. if I actually followed through on them, the outgoing pile in my mailbox would look a lil like this: Dear NFL mobile, The season is over. I am ok with admitting my boys played with heart but still lost. so why do you keep sending me "why did the packers struggle?" "what's wrong with green bays defense" articles. please stop. Sincerely, packs fan To the boy who walks around campus singing at the top of his lungs: nice pipes. bro, seriously, you should be in musicals bc you've got a classic broadway sound. thank you for sharing it. thanks for pulling me out of survival mode & into really living mode. cheers! Dear student who cannot see past his emotions & is incapable of separating other's mistakes from their actual intent, my heart aches for you. I wish I could give you new eyes. I wish I knew how to reach you. I wish you could hear me when I try to show you the positive outlook of a bad situat...

where oh where to begin. i apologize in advance for the condensed rambling about to spew forth. i've wanted to write about 2012 and this song for months, actually. long before the new year. differing threads of connected thought have been tangling and aligning themselves in my head but i've had no time to write them. and i still don't. so in betwixt fixing mistakes already made in the first week of class (screw technology why can't i just use pencil & paper like the old days?!) i'm throwing a little mess here so i don't drown. usually i run out of words but these days, with no time to write and not truly conversing with anyone i have more thoughts-words in my head/heart than i am used too. i've also been a little bit... hesitant. vulnerability has not been my thing as of late. i've been reverting back to let's-protect-ourself-and-life-is-a.ok-but-not-amazing-as-it-could-be. its hard to see beauty when Christ is not center. ther...

so much I could (& will) write about where Gods brought me in a year etc. but tonight I just want to say He is beautiful. number one .01. reason that my life can be! I'm so grateful for a God who delights, who is happy, who is not just good but perfectly Holy & Sovereign. grateful for His work in friends hearts & lives. grateful for the ever patient forgiveness of my family. grateful for target clearance & $4 sky blue backpacks replacing the torn brother cast-off. grateful for the past taxes I paid that I'm getting back via school money. grateful for education even when I disagree w my profs. grateful for an imagination that can spark curiosity in the boringnest classes. grateful for physical therapists grateful for bicep tendons (please heal quickly little guy!) grateful for littles grateful for theme songs; today was desert soul by the rend collective. (they're Irish! folksy! love Jesus! what's not to love?)