Something Beautiful

I'm afraid sometimes that I will lose the power to create.

Every individual needs to be an artist. It's in our blood. Our ancestors created things: useful things, beautiful things, inspirational things. They created to stay alive. We are no longer asked to create. We are asked to regurgitate. There is no room for beauty, unless we use beauty to enhance our career, in which case people slap a label onto you (photographer, journalist, model...) and grade your work on a rubric scale.

You pour your soul into the world and people tell you the contrast isn't good enough, but go ahead and try again to recapture that moment that can never happen again. Or that instant your heart felt raw enough to remold.

I've stopped writing for others. I enjoy sharing my soul with those who will not criticise me. It's nothing more than evolution. But I've stopped seeking approval, writing in iambic pentameter, or drawing with anything other than crayola colored pencils. Because that's all it takes to create something beautiful.

And that's all I need to get me through the day.

Shhh...

You're not a little girl anymore. You can't make a mistake and crawl back into mommy's lap to make both of you stop crying. Now if you try to hold her and make her stop, you'll twist a knife into her heart. Figuratively. And be tempted to twist one into your own. Literally.

You promised yourself that things would get better.

Take it back 14 years. You told yourself it was your fault, you were just a bad kid. They made up stories about family friends telling strangers you were bad. You knew you were bad. You waited to grow up and be good. Then you moved here. Your heart broke from leaving everything you knew behind. You were bad because you spoke no english. You learned english, but that didn't make you good. Kids were cruel. You were different. You were bad. You tried to do better in school, because that's what everyone did. But it was too late. Now being

smart made you bad. You had to be special. You tried to be special, but in highschool, everyone wanted to be the same. Ironically, this meant being unique. You were so bad that your own father stopped talking to you. You dated jerks to have someone to sit with at lunch. Your friends did drugs. drank. left you behind. were selfish. But you were the bad one. Your boyfriends cheated on you. Broke you. Made you forget to trust. Made you disgusting. Pushed you. Your parents did not listen. Because you were bad. Not even worth fixing.

But good people came and started fixing you, started loving you. Good friends. Good guys to date. Good teachers to be rolemodels and mentors. A perfect little brother to teach you the joy of family. You learned that God was about love, not about sin. You became good. But she hasn't changed. And they still see you as a bad person. But you have to remember you were NEVER bad. You were broken, but you are allowed to be, and people will love you. "I don't think you get it," they say, "we love you BECAUSE you're broken."

Broken is not bad. Broken is human.

You will never be good in her eyes. It's a cold reality. But you don't have to be, because you are loved. The people who see you as bad cannot deal with their own emptiness and hurt.

"We are too different to understand each other." Yes. I think people cannot be bad. You think everyone is bad. I will never speak another bad word to you. Never anything you can judge. Silence is golden and I will only share my light with those who see it. I wish I could share it with you, because I want permission to love you, but loving you will kill me. So I'm sorry I'll always be bad in your eyes, but I can't just grow out of it. So I'll just be quiet and selfish. You can live in your bad world.

I'm too busy being broken and perfectly good.

Meetings

"Here is a gift I will give you both.

There-is-a-rose-the-most-beautiful-rose-you-can-ever-imagine-

FEEL IT!

See it grow inside your mind

Breathe its beauty

See it, see, see, see, FEEL!

shhhhh...

It's gone.

Now only you will know its beauty and only

it

will know fully the beauty inside of

you."

"Read the Scriptures. Every time that they mention water, they mention truth. Jesus walked on water, He walked on truth. And maybe you don't want to hear the truth, but there it is, like water, pouring down on you! You gave me truth and now I'm giving it back to you."

Death is a saint. You must learn to fear the things more frightening than death...

"From your new friend."

The skeleton took my hand. I withdrew, afraid. The cold hand was there, and the broken smile of the skull spoke without words. "You can hide from Me," she seemed to say, "But you can never know truth without knowing me."

So much water in blood.

I took her hand. Truth poured upon me like a waterfall, threatening to crush my bones. But I told my mouth not to scream and my heart to stop beating---

---I waited for God. He came. He came back, took me in His arms, like the Prodigal Son, He kissed my scars and read me Issaiah 40:31 and 1 Corinthians 13. He loved me and forgave the blackness I can never forget. In the three heartbeats that my heart missed, I relearned to breathe. Something bloomed in my heart, errupted from a bud, as He whispered encouragement I had forgotten into my soul---

I woke up and dreamt of love. It is a living feeling. He brings us home with love.

Coming Home

We sat at a round table, eating dinner when he came in. I noticed him, but you paid no attention. For a second, I thought perhaps he was still alive.

There was no plate set out for him.

You sat down across the table and I sat, looking at you, then back at him. He sat at my right side. His hands were folded and he watched me eat.

You asked: "what do you keep looking at?" and made useless conversation.

I lowered my eyes and tried to ignore the ghost. My eyes burned with frustration and the food tasted like rubber. The conversation built, just like a pile of rubbish, upon my heavy soul until it drowned in the blood surrounding my heart.

"Do you not SEE him?" I interrupted you. You looked at the dead man and he looked back at you. You sighed.

"I do," you said. I threw my arms around his neck and held him. He felt so alive. "I missed you." And his voice, alive:

"I missed you, too."

The three of us sat at the couch, talking the night away. In the morning, he would be gone.

Then the alarm clock rang and the ghost slipped from my arms. I reset my alarm and pushed my mind back asleep, but a new dream came

and the ghost had burned himself into my mind.

A Natural Condition?

Forgive me for complaining.

Today, my soul is starved.

And I would ask forgiveness from my spirit,

Which begs my heart to feel

One real emotion.

It asks my hands to write

Something both delicate

And pure,

Not understanding just how worthless

Such expression is.

And yet I must comply

With my enfuriated heart,

Which beats more like a wardrum

Than an organ

And chides me for forgetting what it's for.

My fingers itch to hold a pen

Not for a proper use; for freedom's sake!

My lips burn with a need for sound,

Which might escape as melody, not words.

My eyes ache with the boring day-to-day

And dry up with the dust of passing hours,

Not having seen the beauty

Of inspiring light.

Forgive me for complaining,

But compacency

Is nauseating.

Maybe it's just today.

A Tiny Truth

When I asked for the reason...

as to why life led me astray

as to why things didn't turn out as expected

as to why my dreams failed...

I could never figure out out.

Until.

Life led me to the right place.

Things didn't turn out as expected.

And I found out that the things I always dreamed of...

... are right here, having waited for me all along.

(I guess I was never really lost)

1. If you were granted one wish, what would it be?

To have complete faith and optimism in the world. Whatever is going to happen should happen, but it would be nice to be able to want God's plan and to trust in it fully.

Changed

When we first moved into this apartment, I was in fifth grade. Our neighbors brought over spaghetti and for the first time, I felt the warmth of community. My room faced the hills and the sunshine. In the summer, the sun pierced my window with so much force that it was impossible to see anything- the white walls reflected the light. If I left the door open and looked in from the hallway, I could see the sunlight spilling from the frame.

This was home. My parents allowed me to pierce the walls with tacks so that I could put pictures up. In all of the other apartments, I'd have to use tape- "we're moving soon and we don't want to have to fix the walls," they'd say. This place has felt my presence. The carpet is worn from our furniture, and the window has been replaced as a result of my anger. This isn't the first time that I've had to leave home, and this is definitely the shortest distance that I have ever gone. I have a second home now anyway, on campus, where I live with 52 amazing UCI students, but that doesn't stop me from being nostalgic tonight. My heart is heavy with memories, and the floor is packed with boxes.

Here's to moving on. Again.

Blessed

As a Christian, I have nevertheless always been reluctant to give myself over to the grace of God, or to accept any surrender of power. He, after all, has to look over the whole world. How can I trust Him to notice me among all of the troubles that He must help others through? Besides, I was reminded of the one time that I depended upon Him. I was a third-year in highschool and the guy I had been dating for over a year- a Christian- had turned to drugs and alcohol, and was using them in excess in order to deal with his depression. He was attempting to fill a void with substance, not with God, and I prayed constantly for God to heal him. I gave up all power and lived through blind faith that he was going to be okay. I would close my eyes and pray for this storm to go away. But every time I'd open my eyes again, I would be nauseated by the horror of what I saw. With each month, he got sicker. He ran away from home and rehab. He cheated on me- with a girl he met at church, and with some of my closest friends. He pushed me physically and I was completely at loss of what to do. My relationship with my parents, who hated him, was severed. My confidence was shot. I had this poisonous person ruling over my life- and my relationship with God.

Let's take a break from my story to consider how many young women are trapped in the same cycle of prayer and dependence on the Lord for blind salvation. I'm sure anyone can relate- maybe not the the same extreme, but we have all been pressured to act and we have all wanted to save those that we had strong feelings for. Through the whole thing, I prayed for God to act. And through the whole year, I was angry because He didn't. That boy sent me a message on facebook last January. "Life still sucks." He had been to rehab again, and it didn't help. Again.

So where was God in this storm? He was with me. He didn't work as I had expected Him to. He didn't cleanse my ex-boyfriend from the pain that he was dealing with, nor did He make it too much easier on any of us. But then, when my friends were dealing with addictions or sexual abuse or bad relationships or even the death of loved ones due to substance abuse, I could be a light for them in helping them overcome the pain, since I could relate and I have since been healed by allowing God into my heart. Even my friends who aren't Christian have benefited from the calmness that a Christian heart can bring into a situation.

God didn't help the boy, because he never allowed Him to enter into his heart. His soul was too consumed by drugs, and they leave no room for thought or personal growth. While I have matured, he has remained the same- living only for the next thrill. The experience has been painful for me, but it is a way for me to see that now, I am blessed. God watches over His daughters like a Father who believes that we can be trusted to make the right choice- and although I made so many wrong ones, once I finally gave up control of the situation, left my ex, and committed myself to healing through God, my life became beautiful. Mine is just one of many stories, and the process of healing hasn't been easy, but it has been steady and guided by the Lord.