Wasting time.

Ironically, just at a time when I should be buckling down and working hard on something else in particular, I feel the desire to write - to write about wasting time.

I have a terrible habit of finding a million and one other things to do when I should be doing something more pressing and important.

It's not even that I don't want to do it.

I desperately do.

I just don't.

I think it must be fear. Fear that leads to avoidance. Avoidance. I hate it. I want to clean my life out of frustrating, redundant, ignominious avoidance. I see no purpose or substance in the act of avoidance. No benefit issues forth from it. So why do I allow it's grip to distract and detract from my life. From my purpose.

I just read three notes together in my journal. Unrelated to each other, possibly. But all food for thought to my distracted mind.

1) Focus. On your life goals. On your life purpose.

2) Do not be afraid of purity. When did purity become undesirable anyway?!

3) Do not waste one second.

Yes, life flies by, and this I have been learning a lot of late.

So really - we all need focus, to know ourselves, our values, our goals, our reasons - and to understand the value of time and the tragic impact of wasted seconds.

I don't want to realise in ten years time that I wasted my 20's in avoidance and distraction.

I want focus, purpose, passion.

And having said that...

I'm off to get on with it!!!!

When life seems slow and hopeless...

I have discovered a dream. Well, when I say discovered, I don't really mean that. I mean I have finally given something room to breathe. The seed of a dream that has always been inside of me - squashed, ignored, sometimes forgotten, but always present. It is breathing now. Alive. But at what cost? An impossible dream is dangerous. It has the life within it to bring reck and ruin if unfulfilled. And mine is an impossible dream.

To give life to such a thing opens one up.

To the beauty and perfect happiness of attainment.

To the crushing and deadening blow of failure.

So now I allow the dream to become my dream. What will become of me?

Was my dream better left a seed?

I want so desperately to draw from C.S. Lewis' words on love in my circumstance...

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

I need to be vulnerable. To allow my dream to love me or to despise me. For life without the dream is a half life. A life untrue to my human heart, and so lived in longing - for a life which has become distant and out of reach. I don't want to never try. To watch the shadows of a dream which could have been drift away and out of grasp, leaving me drowning in regret...

Let the pain come. Or the joy. I will dream and live and feel and grow.

I would not have it otherwise.

One of those moments...

I just had one of those movie moments.

You know, the ones you wish life could be made up of?

Rooting through some old cards and papers, you come across a card from Someone. And in that card is written a memory, a beautiful memory, and a declaration. And all the while, an overwhelmingly emotive song is swallowing your little room in sound, and you smile to yourself, and are overwhelmed at the beauty of love, and for that moment you are truly thankful for where you have been, for what you have experienced, and for who you have found. And although sometimes it aches so much deep inside, and you wish you could go back to those before times, you are still grateful to have had them. And that those before people have become forever people. And to have found such a moment in your present that gives you hope that more wonderful things are soon coming.

I smiled to myself, stored the treasure in my treasure box, and the song wound to a close. I stood up, went to my computer, and I wrote this. And now, here I am. Finished. But barely begun.

25

1. I love old black and white movies more than any other kind. Timeless classic quality that never fades.

2. 80% of my text messages over the course of a single day come from one individual.

3. I want to ride a camel quite a lot, and own a 16 hands white stallion. In fact if I had to be any animal I would definitely be a wild horse.

4. when it is raining hard, the best thing is being totally drenched, then returning home to become cosy and warm

5. I wish I could play the piano like a dedicated pro. And i would quite like a baby grand.

6. I study French sporadically, but not enough to become good at it :(

7. I have a lot of thoughts which I would like to make into a book one day. Although I don't really know how that would materialize, as my attention span can be lacking.

8. i like to learn about a persons heart.

9. I am scared of being wasteful with life.

10. I think sometimes I dream the future, but non exact things, such as a particular gathering of particular people in a particular place; mysterious inklings of actually having experienced it before

11. On average it takes me under 5 minutes to fall asleep each night. Once every 6 months or so I wont be able to sleep, and it makes me stressed.

12. I love Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and wish I were a dancer. Although sometimes I think I over idealise life.

13. I just finished reading Blue Like Jazz and I love the challenges it brought into my life, especially about selflessness.

14. One of the things I enjoy most is the culture difference between the British and the American. Oh how dearly I love it. I adore living in community. And cultures. And European History. And world History. Really I would like to see the world and learn about it and immerse myself in its lifestyles and people. And this point is really many joined together.

15. I take my tea any way you wish to serve it

16. I have realised that life is actually pretty short and only done once on this earth.

17. To me the ocean is one of the most terrifying and most incredible things on the planet

18. Today I wore my slippers to the corner shop and accidentally stomped in a puddle in the dark.

19. Every time I visit the Theatre I feel it call me home

20. I am very sad that distance is of such a nature that it prevents me from being at some dear ones weddings. If I had 2 wishes I would wish for unlimited free airfare and to speak every language ever spoken and then some.

21. My hot water bottle is called Sebastian

22. I recently started drinking coffee, which has expanded my starbucks order choice significantly, if not somewhat irritatingly.

23. One day perhaps I will get involved more with music and singing, I don't know how though really.

24. I want to live a kind of an adventure. But I scare myself sometimes with my restlessness and fear of being tied down.

24.5 (cheat) I miss San Francisco and its essence with so much of my heart. There are people I wish I could always be close to, and places I long for in the core of my being. Life can be tragic-beautiful.

25. I want to be better than I am. Always.

What are they worth to you?

This is something I read. It made me cry.

Children as young as 6 are cutting themselves. The average self-harmer is aged 11, and 1 in 10 adolescents are thought to have cut themselves deliberately at least once. A typical 16-year-old girl says that most days she cuts into her arms until they bleed, explaining that 'the pain proves you're human...'

Suddenly I find myself in a giant hall. Surrounding me are thousands of young people, battered, bruised and broken. Then a voice says: "What am I bid?"
A Young girl stands out before the crowd of leering, sneering men. "What am I bid for this piece of flesh?"
The men start to cheer and shout figures: "Ten...Twenty...Fifty...One Hundred."
What can I do, God?
I start to bid. I have to save her. The cost becomes huge and I begin to waiver. Can I afford this? What price will I pay?
The dream stops. I'm alone again. But the faces are real enough: Sarah being sold into prostitution; Mike with a revolver in his mouth; Kat covered in cuts and bruises; John falling into crime; Laura alone and desperate; Steve, heroin needle bulging into his vein.
"What am I bid?" The voice shatters the silence. The auction is on again. The bidding has begun. It continues day and night until the end. Most of the bidders desire only use and abuse. Satan drives them on.
And so I find myself in the auction. Will I watch or will I bid? The price of a single life is huge. The currency is prayer. The cost is massive but the prize is glorious. A life for a life.
"What am I bid?"

I have seen it. I have wept for them.

But, surely these people deserve more than just our tears...

City of Crushed Vision

A city with the power to deflate dreams. A terrifying thought. Each day spent dwindles into monotony. Passion lost amid the fatal mundane. Quenching the very hope and life to which we should so frantically cling. Our grip loosens, teased away by alluring forces we cannot recognise. Blind to the face of resignation, we follow him freely. Led into acceptance of a lesser existence. Racing heartbeats slow to the steady doomfilled march. Eyes cast down. Hearts contained. And we do not realise it, but vision has been tamed. Dreams with potential to change the world, reduced to the ordinary. The attainable. The realistic. How did it come to this? How can we have been so unseeing. So fast asleep in our own minds not to have noticed the subtle departure of meaning and purpose from this life.

Let me remind you.

You live for something. For something far greater than yourself. You have been redeemed from death by love. By a love which conquors death and renders the powerful powerless. The love which onced caused your feeble heart to dream and become alive. You have the vision within you to change the world. Radical passion with the strength to endure all the hardships of this life, and conquor.

I know something of struggle. Of the utter devastation life can bring. Insufferable pain. To watch a teenage girl unable to lead a normal life. To feel the effects of a family broken in two. To wonder why you can't remember what it feels like to be really happy. To reach the depths of emotion never even conceived of and catch no glimpse of the end of the tunnel. I am tired of being strong. I am strong. But I am tired of being it always.

But this I know. The hope we have is not in this life. Build your hopes here and watch them crumble into nothingness, dusty remnants of good times turned to bad.
But there is hope in Jesus. In the love more real than anything ever known on this earth, yet more ethereal than the highest thought the human mind can convieve of. His love is saving. His love is strong enough for me. Strong enough for you. And strong enough for all the troubles of this world. The more my heart aches, the more I cling to the joy I find in Jesus. Happiness is temporary. But joy endures. And love and joy together, will save this word. If only you and I step out to bring it.

Wake up. Shake off the dust, heaped high upon your shoulders. Do not let the place you find yourself in limit the scope of your dreams. Look beyond the horizon, to the distant unknown. This time and this place are but moments. You have an eternity to live for. Begin today.

Loose ends

These are a few blogs I had begun and never followed through with. But they want publishing. I don't know why. They just serve no purpose as they were. Stagnant. It's as if they were still inside my head. And in there its getting way too cluttered.
So I apologise. This won't flow well. None of the following will be connected to one another. It will be random. Some of it may not make sense. It has to be done.


Dear Jesus...
Please, let me be a part of your story.
I don't want my own.


"If music be the food of love, play on..."
The food of love? Perhaps in part. But maybe more accurately, music is the food of the heart. It strikes me in the centre of my being. It flows inside of me and becomes a part of who I am and how I feel. Music affects and heightens every hint of emotion within the heart.


I didn't feel like this when I didn't know you.
Why is nothing ever easy?


"We humans have many weaknesses. We feel too much. We die. But we do have the chance of love."
I feel far too much for my own good I think.


You leave an imprint
"Like the color that stays in your eyes after you've caught a glimpse of the sun"
I miss you.

The Dream and Reality. Should we strive for one or realise the other?

I am tired of being strong. I am tired of being strong. I am strong. But I am tired of being it always. I want to be weak. I want to lean. But I can't.
I am impatient. I am reluctant; not ready to make a decision. But I am still impatient.

Isn't it funny how friendships grow from nothing, to everything, in a matter of moments, long or short, many or few.

"All will turn to silver glass. A light on the water. All shall pass."

This is me right now.

I was writing a message to a dear dear friend. This came out.

"Aren't emotions weird. And feelings. And the way different memories make you feel. And the way different places make you feel. And the way hints in your heart of times before make you feel...so wonderful, yet so so very tragic. I feel like my heart is full and overflowing of times I miss and crave.You ever feel like your heart is resting in your throat, so that every breath feels tender and deep and real? And your heart heaves and the memory is so perfect, but you can't get it back. And your heart breaks over and over again, each time the sensation kicks in. But you are still where you are in the present moment. And it makes you want to cry. But you don't, because really you are thankful there were times in your life that were so wonderful for you to even feel this way about. But sometimes...you do.


Ha. That all just came out. I am trying to find what I feel... I may copy this into a blog. What can I say...you bring it out of me.

I LOVE you. That much I know. And I miss you.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

Thank you Audrey Elizabeth Smith. For helping me put into words the sensation I entertain so often, without ever knowing exactly what it is.

Right now ...

...someone, somewhere else, is smiling, moving, weeping...


I can't believe there is a "this very moment" anywhere but in this very moment.

You know?








.

Alone.

Depressing choice of heading? Sorry. Isn't it strange, I only ever seem to blog about the solemn times. At least that is what it feels like recently. But I have come to know hard times, in recent weeks. And sometimes I forget quite how hard hard times can be. I take love for granted. I take the people in my life for granted. I am so alone. And I realise that in a place where there is no love and no depth, the only thing to cling to is Jesus. Unconditional. That is the nature of His love for me. But not passive unconditional. Sacrifice as a result of real and passionate love. Trancendent. Not in keeping with the ways of this world. It may become clear through the chain of blogs published to this date, I hold love in somewhat high esteem. To me it is the centre of everything. And one day, if you find yourself in a place entirely devoid of love, you may find it hard. How can people survive without love? I know no other purpose to life, be it in the giving, or the recieving of love, no greater power on this earth.


Love.


But where is it? I can't see it anywhere around me. Why? What is wrong with this world? I have no answers. Though I seek them desperately. This place drains me. I feel I can never learn to live here. But I will. I will struggle through daily. And learn. With God. And I will try with all my might to do so with love. If its the last thing I do, I will love, no matter the cost.

I am struggling

with what to write. I cannot seem to find the words at this present moment. But something must be written. My insides need to speak. So I choose another's words. Hartley Coleridge has lent me some. I think they are fitting. They do not voice the struggle, only the perfect state of the heart. The very place we all wish to reach. The place which so often seems so far removed from our grasp.


Is love a fancy, or a feeling? No.
It is immortal as immaculate Truth,
'Tis not a blossom shed as soon as youth,
Drops from the stem of life--for it will grow,
In barren regions, where no waters flow,
Nor rays of promise cheats the pensive gloom.
A darkling fire, faint hovering o'er a tomb,
That but itself and darkness nought doth show,
It is my love's being yet it cannot die,
Nor will it change, though all be changed beside;
Though fairest beauty be no longer fair,
Though vows be false, and faith itself deny,
Though sharp enjoyment be a suicide,
And hope a spectre in a ruin bare.


It does not speak of the journey. It seeks only to express the character of love when observed in singular stillness. Aside from all else, from the workings and influence of this world; how it stands in perfection. Untainted and unmoved; unchanging.

It is expressed here, better than I could have achieved by my own means. Yet there is still so much to say on the matter of the journey. Perhaps that is best left unspoken of for now. From a human heart, perfect love in motion may often lose its perfection. And cease to exist. Or else the world intervenes.

Pay no mind to my thoughts. That is all they are. Stemming from the moment. Poetry, of little or no sense whatsoever, and perhaps even less truth. I don't know. Words will come and I will write. Pay no mind, for they may mean very little.

I suppose so.

It is time for me to blog again I guess.
I guess so.
So why am I so reluctant to take the plunge and put my thoughts to print?
Maybe I don't know what I am thinking anymore.
Maybe, contrary to what I thought, it is not yet time for me to blog again.
I guess not.

Desires

I want to go everywhere.
I want to see everything.
I want to gaze upon the unseen places of this world and linger on distant foreign shores.
I want to learn to see true beauty with untainted eyes.
I want to be touched by the rain and moved by the sun.
I want to love limitlessly.
I want to live.

Allow me to be random.

I have been sitting here with a big cup of tea and a pensive mind.
Pursuing deep and heavy trains of thought.
Damien Rice doesn't help.
The cows on my mug are in love.

I think goodbye, in a context of finality, is the saddest word I have ever heard.
I think we as humans are stronger than we give ourselves credit for.
We keep on surviving, through everything, though it feels like the end.

Damien says:

"Do you come together ever with him?
Is he dark enough, enough to see your light?
Do you brush your teeth before you kiss?
Do you miss my smell?
Is he bold enough to take you on?
Do you feel like you belong?
Does he drive you wild?
Or just mildly free.
What about me?

I know I make you cry.
I know sometimes you want to die.
But do you really feel alive without me?
If so be free.
If not leave him for me before one of us has accidental babies.
For we are in love."

My tea is gone.
Don't get me wrong, I have so much joy right now, in my Jesus. I am at peace. And I feel hope and love from all around me, from Him. I am excited and content and in Love with my saviour. There is a smile on my heart.

But thinking about depth of the human heart intruiges me. Exploring it like I am captures me. And draws me steadily in. Objective, yet so very subjective.
The more I know of it, the deeper I fall. The greater I feel.
The meaning of tears. The meaning of tears and a smile.

I want to know more. I will keep looking.

Oh, tie me to the end of a kite...

...so I can go on, I can go on with my life.

Do you ever wish you could just go. Just run. On and on towards the unknown. Coming free from ties that bind, and flinging all doubt and struggles to the wind. To know that moment of release. To see the world as it was meant to be seen, in all its beauty. To journey to the unseen limits of the world and gaze limitlessly on what awaits you there.

I do

One day, maybe I shall.
For now I will wait.
For the one who will show me the way.
Who will turn to me and smile.
Who will take my hand.
Who will whisper love.
And shall lead me out.

Then us three will brave life together.
Thank you Lord for your promises.

x

(One day I shall blogg about day to day activities. Not yet though.)

This great city...

Last night I was wandering London by moonlight.
If you have never done it, I would strongly recommend you try it some time.

There is a side to this great city that reveals itself ater sunset.

I started in Covent Garden, through the cobbled, winding streets.

Out into the dignified open of Trafalgar square.

Down the Great avenue to Buckingham Palace.

Past the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

All by nightfall, the moon and old fashioned streetlamps guiding the way.

A chill in the air. The same wonderful chill that London keeps always.

Standing on the bridge, I had London at my feet. All around me were the sights that so many generations have seen and adored. This city is so beautiful. So majestic. So regal. So full of life and tranquillity. I feel I can see, feel the soul of this city, as strange as this seems.

And I am in love with it. There is so much history and depth. So many lives have been and gone here, so many stories that will never be known. How many people have stood where I was standing? A thousand years ago, did a girl gaze upon her city in love, and ponder the same things that are within my heart today?

There are many ways in which this city reminds me of our Father. So wise. Incredibly beautiful. Mysteriously undiscovered depths. Trancending complete knowledge and understanding. Ever strong and constant.

This is my home, and I have never realised the full priviledge of calling it so. I will always return to her. Wherever the Lord takes me, whatever is next, I know London will always be here for me.

That brings me wonder.

Making Jesus my home.

I noticed tonight that the world has been turning. With each circle, a day is spent and disappears into the darkness of the past. Time continues as it always has done, since the beginning. Steady as the sunset, persistent as the the dawn . With each new day it makes a mark with it's sublte hand. Moulding, moving, changing until all is different. The world is changing. All around us. Things familiar slip away, are overtaken by the strange unknown. It is the most we can do to hang on. Grip. Gripping with frantic hands to the way things were. To the past we hold so dearly in our hearts. But all will be taken. Our trembling hands left empty. What is constant in this world? What can we keep from falling away with inevitable change? When we love the world too much, too greedily, bitterness will overcome. Loss will rule us.

What then should we love limitlessly? Where should our treasure be? What will never change and never cause our hearts to stumble into grief?

The One who set all time in its turning.
The constant.
The immortal.
The God of all creation.

He who is the Alpha and Omega,
whose love has stood the test of time.

Whose life has stood the test of death.

He is unchanging.
And he will hold us through change.
If all our hope is in Him.

I will hold fast to the Lord. Turn my eyes to His throne. Where the lion lies down with the lamb. Where Majesty and Meekness inhabit the same. There I will find my rest. There I will put my everything.

In this world of movement, change, desperation, when all we know eventually turns to night, while those around me fumble in the dark for where they belong, there shall I sit, safe in the arms of my saviour. Jesus. And be content.

I have my home forever.