shouts of joy

She said, "I was too afraid to change." And he answered, " We are afraid to change because we think that, after so much effort and sacrifice, we know our present world. We see that the mountains always stay in the same place. We see that fully grown trees, when transplanted usually die. So we say: "We want to be like the mountains and the trees. Solid and respectable." Even though, during the night, we wake up thinking: "I wish I was like the birds, who can visit Damascus and Baghdad and come back whenever they want to." Or: "I wish I was like the wind, for no one knows where it comes from nor where it goes, and it can change direction without ever having to explain why." It's nice to have dreams that we will have plenty of time in the future to do our traveling, and that, one day, we will travel. It cheers us up because we know that we are capable of doing more than we do. Dreaming carries no risks. The dangerous thing is trying...

When I was offered the canvas I grabbed the brushes without hesitation. I had a few colors stashed in the drawers that I pulled out too. To begin you start with white. Right?  I guessed. Just to be sure it's pure, because if it's not who knows what might leak out, stain, or bleed through. It's always exciting to begin on a new canvas, although this one wasn't new, it still had all the potential and all my attention. So it was covered in white, the first thing I knew how to do. You said, Make something light and graceful like slipping into a crowd unnoticed, charming like a wild rose in a field of weeds, with a challenging perspective to elude a passerby from it's reality,  as comfortable as your favorite sweatshirt, yet a mysteriously vast  darkness that keeps calling you deeper.  When it comes to the fine painter, it's not about you. It's not about me. It's not about what looks good or feels good either. You're still believing the lies. ...

I am loving teaching girls PE this final semester. Mostly because I always wished I'd had a safe place to experiment with and practice being kind to my body. I wished I had a safe place where I hadn't felt stared at and compared to. I love our girl conversations about femininity and modesty. I wish someone had told me in high school about modesty, how modesty doesn't limit your wardrobe, but gives a girl a beautiful backbone to stand tall instead of lowering herself to the desires of others. I wish we'd sat down in a circle where peers and teachers identified and encouraged our strengths, and told us that we might be tempted to seek our strengths from the love of boys, when we deserve to believe in and trust ourselves. I wished we'd had a place where it was safe to talk about our weaknesses. Where it was cool to be yourself, because after all it is in our weaknesses that the Water of Life runs deep. I wished someone sat me down and told me what heartbreak was like, ...

The year 2014 has contributed much to my education of the "real" world. Life in the "real" world is hard. There are too many decisions to make. Too many plans to finish. And far too much heartbreak. I'm rather disappointed. In fact, I'm so shockingly disappointed, that I'd consider calling it anger. I'm angry about all of these disappointments. It just doesn't seem fair sometimes. The other week my counselor told me I need to let myself feel angry and upset to prevent melt downs. This is practice. My disappointments anger me. I'm disappointed because I thought teaching would be more social and less isolating. I'm disappointed because my best friend and I don't speak anymore. I'm disappointed because I thought I was where God wanted me.  I've learned a lot about disappointments though. I'm reading from a book I received from The One Project last month. In it Pastor Alex Bryan shares a section on The Great Disappoint...