wild melody

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” --Atticus Finch (to kill a mockingbird) I find few things more frustrating than if I open my mouth about my experience as a woman and a man jumps in to point out all the reasons my reality isn't valid. I shut down faster than an open submarine hatch; but it's not because you're convincing. It's because I'm quick to realize you can't listen. you'll never find empathy when you're more concerned with changing my mind so i don't see you as some sort of monster just because you're male. FYI, if I'm being honest I probably already figured out you're not...See, I have brothers, cousins, best friends who I know are good honest men because action proves character. I've also had men I thought were friends who proved to be the kind who view every woman's body as something made for them....

" Come in and trade your tears All worry and ease your fears Your burden is not unknown Don't run friend you're not alone For all confined come be set free For all the blind that long to see Come and receive the perfect relief  Come and believe He bore your grief Rise up as the war has ceased No bondage you have been released Come all you weak and contrite He'll strengthen and clothe you in white" Relief--Wolves at the Gate [ I am not the first ] whispered it's way into my mind along with the pressure to let go, to rest. I'm not the first to be here, in this seemingly never ending winter-desert.   I was crushed under the weight of all the people i have lost. as if memory were a blanket made of steel wool suffocating my heart. it's been a long time since I've felt so desperate for my grandmothers' prayers & laughter. my grandfather's steady safety, great-grandma's delighted treasuring, Aunt ...

I wrote this shortly after my 27 birthday; and while I'm in a different place I wanted to post it here so I don't lose it.  I'm sitting here reading a memoir from a Jewish boy who escaped the Soviet Union with his family in the late 1980s. I thought it would expand my mind, & my heart; put myself in another's very different shoes for a while. Maybe gain a little more insight into the history of the Ukraine I know & love so fiercely.  I didn't think I could possibly relate. I didn't expect to find myself reflected. I didn't foresee having to  move the book so the pages don't wrinkle--not from tears of empathy for his pain, but of familiarity.  I didn't expect to hear I wasn't alone from such a vastly different experience.  as he explains his self-loathing, his need to run from who he is. the journey of realizing the communist hatred for his ethnicity has become his own. as he talks about trying to run from himsel...

The Lone Bellow - "Watch Over Us" Unplugged from Michael Leiato on Vimeo . ^^this band for me embodies things that i doubt they have any idea of: that beauty can be born from struggle. the truth that hard fighting doesn't leave a pretty face behind it, that some sorrows scar & forever alter our hearts. something powerful happens when they sing. it's as if the songs are crafted no longer with words & notes but instead with honesty, blood, sweat, pain. a weakness refusing to shatter; hope refusing to surrender. it bleeds into the music and creates a great exchange: what overflows onto the listeners is a beautiful courage, a fierce grace, a real and messy hope. it breathes the gospel without one bible verse ever being stated. maybe it's just what deep souls sound like when they allow themselves to spill over with the rawness of everything they have. maybe it's so rare because few people engage their sufferings and let it deepen them. or maybe so man...

is all we are to you just near lost causes? do you see the things that are happening? or is the compounded cries of the suffering so heavy that you turned away your face from us? have you given up on your plan of redemption? is there even a way to restore things this broken? is there anything that can heal a mind and heart so shattered they are not living, not even surviving; only existing because the medical profession took a pledge to do no harm and is therefore committed to keeping one alive? what are we to do when the mind is sick, when it cannot be healed by medicine or therapy? didn't you promise to be our healer? didn't you die and rise and take on our demons to set us free from them? // hope is believing in things unseen // the Lord is near to the brokenhearted & He restores the broken // He is making all things new // even the creation groans in waiting for restoration to appear // over those in great darkness, a light has dawned // I came to set the capt...

"so, where is she?" the voice drew her out of her head, up and out of memories tinged sepia. ones with the dust of years around the edges, locked for so long in a box she thought had been destroyed. she couldn't remember where the conversation had been when she left it. "what girl?" "the one who stood up for justice. the one who pushed back, who said how she was being treated was wrong. the one who would have called it injustice if she saw it happening to anybody else. where is she?" "15" the answer came immediately. startled, she stopped to think for a moment and realized this was true. it's a funny thing, memories. awaken one and a whole series comes to life. it turns out she was good at hiding things from herself. after six-ish weeks of not really knowing, of being blurry there was clarity too surprising to be painful. at first. "she's 15, locked in a closet somewhere. duct tape over her mouth. because how else wou...

what do you do, when you know it in your head...but your heart is unresponsive? I don't need preaching-I can probably tell you which book of the bible your fix-it bandaid or your sledgehammer conviction came from. yeah, I've to said it all. i thought hope wouldn't leave me. in all my darkness before, I've had small {sometimes painfully faint} existence of hope within. this time. nada. i fight to believe God is good. a rescuer, restorer of wasted time & making faithful the weary. but my heart stopped. & i never noticed. don't tell me to just believe. I know it's real intellectually...but deeper? I feel like God has done nothing. I KNOW its my perspective! but i can.not open my eyes of faith. so desperately want to remake the choice to always believe His Words no matter what my eyes see. i'd relive the hell of 2012 where I knew He was enough & I knew I treasured Him most over this apathy. my heart is so dead. what good is mental assent?  something...

i'm not editing this (not like i ever "edit" this writing) but i'm not even mentally pre-forming my words. sometimes i'm really sneaky at lying to myself. i don't like feelings so i'm not always in touch with my own. a silly thing for an introvert to say. sure i can over-think & psycho-analyze toooo death. _but_ it doesn't follow that i analyze my emotions. what i think is far more important, right? ;) when real things are happening i tend to shove it down. don't think don't go there don't feel. so i'm gonna spill my guts & maybe get a handle on what's really going on this lil person. i need honesty with myself and the Lord. i want so much to be brave & beautiful (on a deep character level). right now it doesn't look like i'll get there. that takes faith in Jesus, since both spring from vital, unshakable hope. i don't have hope right now. some days God fills me with it. but then i wonder later if it w...

I just read this article  http://natepyle.com/confronting-the-lie-god-wont-give-you-more-than-you-can-handle/ I agree. wholeheartedly! the verse taken out of context has always bothered me. isn't the whole point of life that we can't handle it alone? it's where I am. I have questions I need to ask. not bc I need answers, but bc admitting them bringing them into the light will expose the lies I'm believing. I need to be gut-level honest with God about all the doubts I've been trying not to think.  I know I won't get answers. it's not all going to get from head to heart in one night. but. there will be peace. and God can fill my unbelieving terrified aching heart with hope. he can get me to the place of expectant waiting, the one the article ends with & where I, quite frankly, am sick of being. right now I don't want to go there. but bitterness is a pair of glasses that blocks all the good & beauty in life. all the quietly redemptive works. psalm 3...

sometimes, I battle regret. fiercely. usually I'm pretty confident in my decisions once they've been made. I've grown in receiving grace & walking away from my mistakes once I own them. I don't second-guess my actions much anymore, I don't reply conversations wishing I'd said differently. but today...aiy aiy.  today has been good. so beautiful this morning. answered prayer in quiet time with Abi's Hebrews recommendation. but so...painful. the sharp healing cut of God's Word. revealing. good hurt, like ripping off a bandaid to find the wound is healing but still stings.  this morning I had a revelation I wish I'd had the first week. so simple! so clear as I was praying. if I'd taken more time alone--truly alone, still--before God I would have seen it sooner. how could I be so blind?! how proud I have been. how grasping of good things that seemed pure. but I forgot in all my praying to submit. I forgot how to actually   release worry, fear, des...

I found the following reposted on a tmblr I check often called bloom. I don't know the original author (A tmblr called heartbeat-of-a-twentysomething ?) but wanted to share it. bc it's really good, & it's a place I've been before. it's a place I'm entering again...I need Jesus with me. I always do, but lately I've been livin as if I don't. I forgot that one needs Christ in ALL seasons. even here. here in the in-between of seasons without any high or low. & I think. my denial of need, my desperately wanting to be *not* wanting of anything, (ha.ha. im ridiculous no?) my "if i pretend im great maybe i will be"...this has caused me to live in the flatland of just getting by. merely existing. so if you know me, I need help. I need people asking me if I'm fighting or just standing. ask me where my sword is. ask me if I'm inviting God to be _here_ in my life as is. cause i use to live like this girl does. I've been at the ...

tom petty, some mat kearney... modern day drifter & something that wild on repeat. the only time i felt ok today was driving the truck with all windows down. wish i could write out the restlessness in my heart. it won't stop the ADHD of my soul, but maybe it'll ease, if i try. ever since i was small, i'd get these fierce restless moods. i feel trapped. & i don't want to take it out on those i love so i tend to withdraw. i need to be alone, so i don't bite anybody's head off. cause i can't sit still & i can't do small talk & i can't keep my mind in the present. i forget to ask Jesus for self control & love. i'm try explain what i mean by restless: physical_spiritual_mental. i mean, i always have a bit of wildness in me. but feeling wild doesn't always involve restlessness. it's different. i want to be anywhere but where i am. i can't breathe deep. its not that i want to leave the people i love. it's not...

God answers prayer. He's going to lead me, take me deeper than my feet can wander. He's teaching me to walk on waters that threaten to drown me. I may flounder but I will never sink. (ps 37.23-24) this, the sickness of disappointment, is where my trust is made borderless. adventuresome fears are easier to trust God in, easier to leap into. fears of being left behind or unusable are much tougher. the places i think will create a trust without borders, are not really stretching, refining places. in those seas I could sail by my own power; or my faith would crack & fail because I think more highly of my strength than I ought. but here? here in the mundane, in the seemingly insignificant, in the temptation of "every time I'm *actually* most excited about something I lose it" place? this is where my faith loses some of its boundaries. this where God smudges the sharp edges of the boxes I use to contain Him. here my faith learns to separate expecting good thing...

i am not enough. i am (fragile) and breaking, my heart is bleeding through. the blood dripped slowly yesterday, just a few spots. but it grows more, and tonight is coloured crimson. i feel like all i do is colored by the stream pouring forth with every beat. how can i focus on graphing? life is so much greater, heavier than school. yet at school nobody noticed. somehow, keeping my thoughts locked in a box mentally has been working. my heart refuses to seal itself but even i failed to notice when the drops became streams. i've been able to compartmentalize. its how i functioned today. i used to go whole days, weeks like this. i locked hurts from my teen years up so tight they didn't see the light of day until i was 22 and a very brave foolish boy insisted on dragging them into the light. cause somehow he knew those sealed boxes were the reason my heart was sealed shut. dead. dusty. cold. i don't want to go back to that. i don't want to bury, shut down, not f...

fuzzy static. there's a radio connection between my heart & the Spirit. the sounds of a station one click to the left, almost clear. bit the words are garbled. i keep it fuzzy. do I really want to tune in? or not. it might make me change my current course of action. it's probably going to piss off one person in particular, & I really don't want any flak. but I'm the shittiest liar/faker on the planet so I'm already being a fun-killer bc of my internal indecisions. the tension is obvious. //I fear man more than God.// I could hear it, loud and clear. Wouldn't even have to move or leave the people around me. it would be so simple. one click. "alright Lord, what are you saying? I'm listening..." but I don't. //i care more about approval & fitting in then I do about communication w my God// mmm, but. excuses flood my mind. but I'm really sick if being "that" girl. I'm always alone in these things. why me? if ...

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...

some days i am fragile. today it's mostly caused by sleep deprivation, hormones that i can't control & forget to take into account. & school stress...i don't know if everybody has shattered days or if it is just me. (i used to have them rarely, on a small scale. as in my version of "shattered" meant "my heart is a little bruised and i maybe could cry if i tried." ha.ha. funny, you old locked up unfeeling heart self) well. then i went through the whole depression thing last fall- march. jan-april 15 was especially the worst season of my entire life to date. which is ridiculous, because life was grand and really? after all the awful things i've walked through in others' lives? for some reason i fall apart when it's peachy keen. go figure. anway. i told myself every.single.day "you'll get through, this is no big deal it just *feels* like a big deal". i barely made it. i literally focused on getting through day-to-day life...

"Fear of man is a horrible way to live. It’s absolute bondage. Our idols own us. They own us, they control us, they dictate the directions of our lives and the impulses of our hearts. Our idols get a grip on us and nothing will get a grip harder than this one: the fear of man. It will tell you how to think, it will tell you what to feel, it will tell you how to act, it will tell you what to wear, it will tell you when to laugh, it will tell you what to be… We will use people to make us feel right, to justify our existence, to escape our insecurities and to gain a verdict that we are desperate for [that says we are valuable]. We’re trusting in other people, using them to heal us, validate us, to restore to us our glory. To save us." — JR Vassar (via  modernhepburn ) " The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from them for their daily ration  forty shekels  of silver. Even their servants lorded it over the people.  But I did not...