Hope.

Just when it feels like your heart can't beat one more beat... It manages. Have you ever had to labor to breathe...you know- it isn't how it usually is where you don't even pay attention to the oxygen flowing into you lungs. No, this kind of breathing requires focus, your heart feels to big for your chest, and deep intentional  breaths are the only way you get any air at all.
I hate that kind of breathing. I hate that heavy heart. But that's what I have as of late. I lost my dad March 27th of this year. Almost 2 months ago. That's one of the reasons I started writing again actually... I figured the processing had to go somewhere.
Life doesn't feel real right now. I fully expect to see his name on my caller id. I wait for him to walk out of his bedroom with an ashtray and his "jammies" on, ready to watch his shows, and laugh, and on commercial break go on a snack run. I almost feel him pat my feet as I lay on the couch and ask me how I'm doing. I hear him laugh, and know just how he would tell me he loves always adding a term of endearment at the end. But no, my memories betray me to easily these days. Someone...Get me out of the twilight zone.
I have no current lesson learned. I have no advice or wisdom. I have heartache, but that's not something I'm interested in passing along. And I'm sure it's not something anyone is interested in taking. The only thing I can somewhat toss around in my mind right now is
Romans 5:3-5
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
I'm not yet rejoicing in my sufferings, so I'm still at the beginning of this verse. But it is in my head for a reason. Because I believe that as foreign as those words look like right now, someday they will be a reality for me. Up until this point in my life suffering has been a more ethereal idea, something I hoped was limited to dealing with my inner life and getting along with difficult people. And now my body feels physical pain and restrictions from the emotional pain in my heart. Big leap for me in the realm of trials and suffering. So I'm grabbing on to this seed of hope: that hope does not disappoint, that I will not be put to shame... and I'm riding it out. Both hands on the bars here, now isn't the time for stunts or showing off. Now is the time to hold on.

Simple Beginnings

I have tried to blog time after time each time ending soon after its beginning. Still here I am again, hoping to set out into this sea and perhaps I'll stay awhile and test the waters. The truth be told, I love writing... and I hate writing. The pen (or in this case keyboard) is to me a mark of permanence. You can't (or at least shouldn't) go back and erase things you write down, they either are or were, but you cannot say they never have been. That's delusional. Words make my heart soar, and there have been times they've caused me to lose my breath. With words I've been to places I've never really traveled to, I've met people I'll never really know. And at the same time I've written things down in that painful book we call a journal that I will forever regret. But I'm not erasing those words, nope... I won't do it. So often I want to sit down and write: a story, an entry into my scattered journal, a poem, a song I made up and want to remember for later, and then it happens- I internally panic. What if it's terrible. What if it all changes next week. What if it was an emotional high or perhaps an emotional low, and I wish to God I could take it back the very next morning. One of my favorite writers said, "to love is to be vulnerable..." well I agree, and I would substitute at this time with, "to write is to be vulnerable." But I have to get over that, I have to choose to write much like I have to choose to love. And so my blog begins. Simply...a blog about life, because what else is there? And quite honestly, I happen to think life even in it's most brutal twists and turns, can be quite beautiful. At least that's what I've found...

 and I plan to share only what I've found.