Gathered from the muck, and presented again as so much more than beautiful.

Today I went out for a walk and a cup of tea with a dear friend's mum. Yes, that's right, not my dear friend, but her mother.

Sitting at a patio table, able to look out on the beauty of the breakwater - people strolling toward a lighthouse, birds collecting unbelievable amounts of twig, and glorious blue sky breaking through the clouds. This dear woman turned to me, and began to talk about when she was a young girl. I am so honored, and a little taken aback that she felt so at ease to share it with me, and it blessed me more than she could possibly know.
Her story is so very similar to my own, oh thank Jesus that he gives us stories, that he pulls them up from the muck, and presents them beautiful and polished and new.

I think back on only a day before, when I was writing to two dear friends who have become my family. In a spattering of poorly connected paragraphs, I tried to get out some of the many hurts and anxieties that plague my head and my heart. Nearing the end of the letter, I entered into my fear in even sharing these things with them. To hold out my heart was, and often is something that demands fearfulness. I recalled the hurt I felt toward my own parents. The way, only a few years ago, I would go home after school and cry myself to sleep, every single day. Inside I was crying, pleading for an answer "Did you not hear me? Why didn't you care? Why didn't you do anything..you didn't do anything." I simply could not understand why I wasn't worth caring about.

Re-enter sitting on the patio by the water, hearing a woman's beautiful story. "I was a very sad girl" she said, "I was depressed. You know, I used to put the same sad song on repeat. I would sit there and listen to it over and over again, and all it would do was make me more sad. It would stop, and I would play my sad song again. No one in my family noticed, because they were all already damaged from life."

They were already damaged from life.

These words transformed my thoughts. They renewed my vision.
I see.
I see!

I can look at that hurt through the eyes of Christ. No longer feeling that I was unworthy of the love of a mummy and daddy, but that they were already so damaged themselves, they missed how I was being hurt. They were too were hurting, and they know not what they do.

My bind of crippling unworthiness is loosened.
I am free.

Words fail me.

Lately I have found myself staring blankly, tapping on the keyboard, or clicking my pen as I leaf through pages of one of my many notebooks.
I love to write, and if you've known me for long, you would surely know that I spend every free moment jotting down thoughts, lists, ideas, prayers...anything that can be written. Recently this incessant writing has slowed, nearly to a complete stop. And the reason, I feel, is that I am utterly tired, and perhaps lacking encouragement.

I write thought after thought, with the hopes that it will touch someone, even one person's heart. And so, writing without response, leaves me feeling quite defeated. Why write when it doesn't mean anything? Why not move on to something else?
And perhaps, in the more intimate parts of me, why keep holding out my heart?

I'd think that this is a feeling most of us can relate to. For the most part, we prefer to hide, contradictory to the deep longing we have to know and be known.

It leaves me in a pickle, because as much as I desire to persevere, I love to write and share my heart, but when it recieves poor response, or equally as painful, no response, I start to shut down. My heart is weakened, believing that the things I am going through, maybe they really aren't relatable. Maybe it really doens't matter whether or not I share my heart.
And so I am left, staring blankly at a screen, frustratedly tapping at the keys.

We're all in this together

A week ago I sat cross legged in a hall way, with Mr. Clean's magic eraser in one gloved hand, and a oxy-soaked rag in the other. With enthusiastic work music, sung by the Jonas Brothers, and the cast of High School Musical, myself and 5 other middle school kids scrubbed the walls of a lodge.

I'm amazed by the way the two boys with us scrubbed and worked, and didn't complain even once about the musical accompaniment. Not a peep!
I don't know a single person my age who wouldn't complain.

It's funny, you know, the way we want to be "mature" we want to grow up, when what we need to do, is to embrace the sweet breath of childhood.

They just...get it.

Kids amaze me. They are unashamed of their age, their sense of adventure, or of fun, quietness, touch. It's quite incredible.