Stories

teach us how to love

and swallow sadness,

find light in darkness,

 turn away from despair.

Crafting and grafting us

into a plot much bigger,

much smaller

than our own.

They remake us

like their protagonists,

from coward to courageous.

Each story that passes

through our hands,

through our minds,

is a gift

wrapped up inside words.

 "Hello, old friend

and here we are,

you and me

on the last page."

Where they end

our hearts break or smile,

crying from tragedy or delight.

But then, our next page.

While their story ends,

our journey is only mid-way,

another chapter,

a new gift.

Top:  Nurse, Young Man, Kiss-a-gram

Below:  Old Man, Journalist, Hero

"We are all stories in the end..."
- The Doctor

"The end of a matter is better than it's beginning."

- Ecclesiastes 7.8

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?"

- GK Chesterton

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."
- Samwise Gamgee

  

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”  

- Madeleine L'Engle

"You were my new dream."

- Flynn Rider

"There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die...that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living."

- The Count

[HitRECord]

"Though truth is heavier than fiction,

Gravity lifts as the projectionist rolls tape.
And it makes us brave again"

- Sleeping at Last

2013: Opportunities

At the beginning of 2013,  the Lord spoke to me about how this year meant "opportunity."  And He was so right!

"Opportunity," however, is not all a rosy.  It involves a lot of variables.  There are risks to be taken.  There are often multiple opportunities vying for priority, and adulthood means having to pick a card and hope you picked right.  Opportunity is about risk with the chance of reward.

But when looking up "opportunity" in the dictionary, the word I found over and over was "favorable."  Opportunity is "a favorable, appropriate, or advantageous combination of circumstances; a chance or prospect."  Like a mountain concealed by clouds, I believe favor is still there, guiding me.  Even in silence.  Even in pain.  

This year I've learned that opportunity can come in all shapes and sizes.  In 2013, it looked like...

...going red.
...going short.
...less money in my savings account than I'd like.
...filling up journals and blog drafts faster than I could possibly process experiences.
...#refusetobeacog, etc. Generally raging against the machine, in search of something deeper.
...being moved to tears by a simple song lyric.
...belting out said song lyrics in a park with tens of thousands of others, led by Mumford & Co.
...sitting on the kitchen floor sobbing my guts out because of narrative and because, no matter how made up it is, it's true.
...having wonderful adventures with visiting friends.
...just doing "it."
...riotous run-ins with bus admirers.
...accepting titles I had always been afraid of [see, "writer"].
...writing in rounds.writing for release.
...opening up to someone, but him them pursuing someone else.
...fireworks.
...meeting artists I'd been inspired by.
...cubicle parties and embracing dress-up more than ever before!
...facing people I've been afraid of fears.
...a lot of Baggins vs. Took inner wrestling.
...having my own bathroom for the first time in my life.
...walking through vineyards, through the streets of Nob Hill, and through countless bookshops.
...finding myself in one of those bookshops with news that blindsided me, rendering me unable to even buy a book - all of them hurt somehow.
...picnics by the lake with good friends.
...moving out with my best friend.
...bearing friends' dreams and burdens and hopes and joys. 
...waiting on the Lord
...new revelations on stewardship - body, soul, and spirit.
...road trips for record books. 
...a lot of Doctor Who.  all. the. feels!
...flexing the forgiveness muscle.
...flexing the humility-and-asking-forgiveness muscle.
...challenging myself to go beyond what I thought myself capable of.
...a lot of "self-induced" late nights.
...inconveniences.  "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered..."
...meeting lots of new fantastic(al) characters.
...learning that the Lord is the only one I can implicitly and whole-heartedly trust.

 
It's been one blaze of a year - peaks and valleys and everything in between.  But, as Sheldon Vanauken said, "If there were a choice – and he suspected there was – a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now, chose the heights and the depths."  

Here are to all the opportunities you & I have had this year, and here's to all the ones coming in 2014!

i've been pondering this lately...

Watch the end scene from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. It's so beautiful.

"I will not say, 'Do not cry.' For not all tears are an evil."

This scene is so moving. I can touch that pain...