Love is a Shelter.....

"Love is a shelter, in a raging storm. Love is peace in the middle of a war."

I absolutely adore the song "Love is Not a Fight" by Warren Barfield. I've loved it ever since I heard it first in the film "Fireproof" and then at my friends' wedding. It's a beautiful song that talks about love being a house that we enter in to, committing to never leave.

For me, it's always spoken to the level of commitment God has to loving us and the commitment he urges us towards in our relationship with Him; obviously, it can be applied to relationships with one another as well.

There's a line from the song that says, "And if we try to leave, may God send angels to guard the door." When I listened to the song tonight, it really struck me that whether life is easy or difficult, whether our days are short and sweet or long and challenging, God calls us to the same level of obedience. He calls us to that level of obedience because He loves us and He knows that we need Him in order to be truly satisfied and at peace in life.

I have continually attempted to challenge this notion, unintentionally. I'm not sure why, exactly but I am sure it comes down to a general feeling of undeserving. Why would God want me to be His child? We all wonder that from time to time because we know how imperfect we are. The beauty is that God began loving us prior to even creating us and that means that He knew exactly how annoyingly rebellious or dreadfully questioning we were going to be. He knew it and yet, He loved us enough to create us and send His son to death for us.

Life is unbelievably beautiful when looking through the lens I have been given as God's child.

Thank you Jesus, for your love and your forgiveness. Someday, we'll laugh about my foolishness....

Throwing darts in the dark....

"Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some under culture but mainly to save themselves, to survive."

An octopus whose tentacles were detached in a tragic accident. A cat whose whiskers were singed off when curiosity got the best of him with that sweet smelling candle.

Writing sustains this little soul and allows me to feel my way through the dark.

Sometime in the last few months, I stopped courting writing, however handsome he was to me at one time. I stopped making him dinner. I stopped telling him how dashing he looked in his smile. I allowed him to whither from lack of attention...from neglect.

Shame on me.

There's a scene from a movie where a woman describes the need for a man in a remote village to create a totem pole. She details his conversations about how the creation of the totem pole allowed him to fill a hole in his heart. She admits that she cried when she saw it, standing tall and carefully carved before her.

A visually artistic bone does not exist within my being. I'd force that realization upon my friends and family by taking art classes and sending my "works" across the country to sit atop mantles but...I love everyone too much for that madness.

My totem pole may not be visually striking but striking it is nonetheless. It is my personal belief that we are not given choices as to those things in life with which we are granted the ability to do with great ease. Writing happens to be a choice I was given.

As I sat mesmerized by a new album I acquired this weekend, I almost felt as if I was sitting in my old bedroom in high school. Hours spent listening to music (some good, thanks to the musical tastes of my family. Some, not so good thanks to youth and idiocy). The lyrics were what grabbed me. The words of someone who I never had the opportunity to meet (I'm holding out for a dinner date, Ben) somehow wiggled and wormed their way into my chest and compressed and released.

I read an article recently where the author purely and simply gave an urging to souls floating who felt as though writing were their insides. He said, "Write for no pay. Spill the guts of who you are onto paper or keyboards whenever you can. Tell your story or the story of others as if someone will one day give a shit. It matters. It all matters. What's floating around in there? It has substance because it is. So write without the paycheck and click clack those heels together the day someone offers you one."

Building totem poles one letter at a time.