wild melody

my thought are as wild as a sea before hurricanes, but much less cohesive.  i ache for Ukraine.  so many thoughts & fears for their future. can't believe I won't be going this summer. that's where I belong, how can I stay here when everybody else is? don't i need to go NOW more than ever?! i want to prove my loyalty & love for these fierce beautiful people. but I shouldn't need too. it's not about me. it's about serving & spreading Gospel. God doesn't need me to do that. HFO doesn't need me; I know. but I feel...I need to be there.  I want  to be there. I want precious stinky orphan hugs. I want to play games that break language barriers. I want to be surrounded in Ukrainian & Russian until even my own voice speaks broken English.  I want to see my dear Liliya, hug her & take care of her & talk all night. i want to absorb Nicoli's patience & peace, Jenya's vision, Dana's self-sacrifice, Yulia's energy, Mash...

this is Finian. aka the shamrock plant i came home to one day after school, the week before st patrick i think. mum knows how obsessed i am with all things Irish. (also how i secretly want to be a gardener, because i like dirt and color and fresh air and hard work) i named him because he's lived somehow for almost a month now. i thought an irish name was fitting, yeah? it brings me a smallish smile in my heart to see greenery and life in my bedroom every day. its a reminder that i'm still growing. that God is still in the business of planting, watering, feeding, renewing souls. it's also a spark of distracting thought trains that never reach a logical conclusion. sometimes i get lost in thinking about aerobic respiration and what's going on in the miniscule cells of that little plant; not unlike (yet so different) what's going in on my own miniscule cells. but i have God's breath of life that creates (soul). pretty much the biggest difference in the definitio...

rained all day. drizzling damp or fierce drenching, water fell from the sky like a proper Irish thursday. I made soda bread, as if the rubbing & kneading of the dough could smooth out my tightness. but knots of the soul are not so easily released.  should have, could have, why-didn't-I's, & only-if-I-had's dance around the edge of my consciousness. I can't let them in. I'm already as tense as a rubber band stretched much too tight. snappish & harsh to the unfortunate innocents who bump into me. it's not that i'm angry. don't mean to lash out but this knotted-ness from deep down spills forth. tense heart leads to tense tone, tense body & a person miserable. can't say why exactly. don't really want to know why or i would've sorted it out already.  g r a c e. allows me to slam the door on regrets & if-onlys. says its never too late to start fresh. even if there's 45 minutes left in a day. maybe that can't be redeemed,...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooiwXyo4N9s  oh my dear Ukraine. my heart is breaking as Kyev burns. i know Independence Square well, I've walked those streets and sat on the curb exhausted with coffee from Coffee House in my hand. I've been in St Michael's. how i love this country... if i had any medical training i would be on a plane to Kyev now. literally,  i'd be on my way: here  . i'm ashamed at the way our government has let others maneuver the political field in this situation, how we have not made any counter offers or helped negotiations move toward the people being heard. i never thought i would see the day when we only cared for a "democracy" of name only, when it was in our own interests. how can we the free not help those who know what it's like to live oppressed? God forgive us. this is my theme song today, shared with me by a good friend who loves Ukraine as well. (i see fire by ed sheeran)

Kiev from a hill above Independence Square, taken in 2012 I found this article from an Israeli paper to give refreshing a non-american, non-bbc (read: not afraid to take a strong stand on the side of an argument) view on the protests in Kiev. You can find it here:   http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.573142 i want to DO something for my heart country, but i cannot. i'm powerless. all i can do is pray pray pray and talk to my friends in Kiev. please join me in praying for their safety.  also pray for this resilient nation that has already suffered oppression and violence under other nations for longer than we as Americans can fathom. pray for peace, pray that democracy will win, pray against civil war and against Ukraine becoming a pawn on the stage of international politics.

i'm fascinated by space. it terrifies me. but i always wanted to experience it at least once. it's constant, logical, beautiful. vaster and deeper than i can fathom. a burning stillness. tonight it's comforting (not "comfort" for when one is sad, more like cozy & enjoyable to dwell on). stars & galaxies & planets all spinning through the still ink of our universe... constant. yet always changing. stars die, things shift & alter, planet systems break down. | yet | not one.single.atom fails to an extant that would disrupt the fragile balance of earth. our solar system remains stable. it is continually being upheld by Christ. no matter what happens in my small world, the "real" world is safe. Jesus maintains the world of matter with all its laws & orderly mathematic precision so it can remain unshaken. steady.  hearts and minds falter. nations fail. moments of felt (or actual) weakness is a sure common experience acros...

I had a realization while in Wyoming. i saw my heart in the land, and it gave fresh perspective. My writing skills are rusty as hey. but i'ma try to write it down at least for myself. it's been a few weeks, & I need to remember.  the day before the funeral was freezing--literally, around 17f-- but I needed physical space to work my mental knots out. so Nate & I went for a walk in my aunt & uncle's neighborhood. it's the kind you'd expect to find on a prairie outside Cheyenne, Wyoming. no streetlights. no sidewalks. long driveways. acres of land between houses, usually with a barn & or round pens. the street signs seem out of place. as if the houses are there by permission of the prairie, but the street signs are intrusive. the land can be inhabited; but street signs bring a sense of taming & ownership that can never be truly believed. the prairie is not tame-able. that tangent probably doesn't make sense to anybody but me (which is w...