Saying our value depends on what we look like on the outside is like saying our genetic code is our only currency. That’s a depressing world, I say.

This is the gospel:
We are free of who we have been and who we will be.

Seen in Jesus Christ we are instead
everything we could be,
beautifully finished,
already but, not yet…
fully redeemed from this mess.

Live like love is
poured out,
overflowing,
drowning us one by one.
Because it is.

deep and dark passageways,

through inner cavities, 

and man made holes.

lead us to places…

never seen,

never meant —

to be seen.

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The road makes that sound
That spurs on the silence.
So vast and so clear
Into a black ocean of night.

I see nothing ahead but
Lights reflected so fleeting,
Too fast a reminder,
Yes, nothing will last.
A mile post descending
Always past, always past!

Driving, pursuing,
A journey in mind…
Present and future blurring the lines,
Of travelers time.
Becoming a stretching, a lost state of mind.

Peace it could follow,
Or tears running blind…
The same silence still pounding,
Now all in a kind of pointless reply.

There’s nowhere we’re going.
No home in the sky.
It’s lonely but after
You’ll stop asking why.

Why hope for an answer?
Of life’s ups and downs…
The roads promise is empty,
It cannot be found.

what does it mean to feel like an adult? all grown up, taking on the world, all on your own?

who knows. because i’ll always be surprised by the things that make me feel grown up and the things that remind me that i’m not. reminders that my peers have a husband and three children…and i still feel incapable of healthy relationships. but i’m the mature one…right? maybe being too smart for my own good, being wired as the girl who planned her life from age 12, doesn’t make me grown up.

traveling to big cities with lots of traffic, to big hotels with lots of pretentious, well pretentiousness…all on my own in my big girl pants…is that what makes me adult? or is it how i love? how i respond to life? is it experience? is it wisdom? is it success?

i think, well at least i believe, it’s how i take on growth. do i truly embrace it? do i want it in my life? do i want the hardships, the painful events, those truly difficult times that only they themselves can illicit growth? when they come, do i fight through my bad habits, my old coping mechanisms, my past that tells me to give up, that tells me i can’t, to…choose the present, to grow?

now why would i do that? that’s fucking hard.

i feel like my entire life has been simple. it’s one incredible struggle for me to be what i believe in. past all my emotions, fears, desires, hungers, to ignore all of that and follow my core, my belief, that i want more, that i was made for more. past religion, past ideals, past hopes and dreams, i truly want growth. because what else is there? decay? death? whether i’m breathing or my heart’s beating is no matter…i’m still living or dying…living is a choice. choosing growth. everything else? death.

so maybe i’ve already been making the decision to kill myself, day by day, choosing the easy way out. coping through binges and anger and temper tantrums no less. fantasizing about actually killing myself is just another day dream cop out.

no matter the appearances, that’s simply not grown up.

and there it is! the ironic and simply epiphany of the phrase grown up. but something’s wrong. obvious or not, there is no final stage of growth to grown that makes us adult. although the dictionary defines “adult” as someone who is fully grown, therein lies the problem. albeit physically, fully grown, we are by no means emotionally, mentally, even spiritually “done.” (don’t even get me started on the way we can still impact our bodies physically as we age.) no. it is simply the act of growing, the desire to be better, to be less for ourselves, and more for others, that truly makes us, adult.

heck, i’ll still be the odd one in the room that says, i can’t wait to be old. because truly living brings growth…and growing brings me one step closer. then i imagine myself, at fifty and who i’d like to be. as much as i hope to be the eccentric old lady with long and graying hair… i still imagine a girl, with beauty in her wrinkles, reflecting her wisdom, her mistakes, her sacrifices. but more than that I hope that there are people around her, that love her, admire her, and have grown, because of her. that’s who I want to be. a mother. a wife. a friend. someone who took life and all the shit it brings us, and said, nah. i’ll be better, because that’s all the reason i need. 

knowing ourselves is art.

itself an expression 

of what we choose.

never fully true,

but eluding to

something unseen.

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1. invisible by skylar grey

2. hallelujah by joseph arthur

3. sprout and the bean by joanna newsom

4. useless desires by patty griffin

5. spanish sahara by foals

6. the river by sarah masen

7. viva la vida by coldplay

8. wedding dress by derek webb

9. times by tenth avenue north

10. my side of the story by hodges

11. forgiveness by patty griffin

12. laredo by milk carton kids

“mary magdalene in the cave” by Jules Joseph Lefebvre

the shame she felt when confronted with unconditional love…

now she doesn’t have to look anywhere else.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs

pale moon shades 

across, reaching through

an in between, hiding view.

where darkness seeps permanence,

now a dweller’s game won.

in silence, never sought.

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“you must know the prison in which you are living, how it has been created….examining it without any self-defense”

“suffering can only awaken the mind to great intensity…when mind and heart are no longer escaping…if you observe carefully you will see that so long as there is an escape you are not solving, you are not coming face to face with conflict and therefore your suffering is merely the accumulating of ignorance.”

“in the present is eternity, and to understand that, the mind must be free of the burden of the past; and to free the mind of the past, there must be an intense questioning of the present, not the considering of how the “i” will continue in the future.”

“as long as you are not vulnerable to truth, there is no ecstasy, there is no immortality.” 

krishnamurti