Conflict

Found this beautiful quotation in my research. Love it.

"To be who we are - creators in the image of the Creator - we must be actively engaged in the setting free of every other person to be who she or he is intended: someone different from who we are, someone who will see the world from another perspective, someone who will not agree with us. Anything short of such liberation is suppressive and destructive and ultimately death producing...

Conflict is not just inevitable, as we are prone to say wisely and with a sigh of resignation. Instead it is part of the divine plan, a gift. Disruption is integral to God's order. Conflict sometimes provides us with energy, insight, and new possibility as reluctant by-products; newness cannot come without conflict. It is not a price to be paid and endured, but a condition to be sought and welcomed and nurtured...

To manage conflict then would be to allow it, not to suppress it; to open our doors and windows to its fresh wind. Following this line of thought to its ultimate conclusion, violence and war become not conflict run amuck, conflict out of all bounds, but the final outcome of conflict quelled. They result when we will not allow the other to be different, when we deny our life-giving dependence on the different one with all our might and means." - Caroline Westerhoff

Sigh No More, Mumford and Sons

I thought this was really beautiful and wanted to share:

"Serve God, love me and mend
This is not the end
Lived unbruised, we are friends
And I'm sorry
I'm sorry

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea and one on shore
My heart was never pure
And you know me
You know me

But man is a giddy thing

Love it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be
There is a design, an alignment, a cry
Of my heart to see,
The beauty of love as it was made to be "

To my instinctive, and yet, completely irrational self

So today the garbage truck came early. And that's when things got messy. It goes without saying I was still in my pjs and my hair was as frizzy as could be. Nonetheless, I decided that the garbage and compost needed to go out, and figuring that I wouldn't know anyone on the street walking by, or wouldn't really care, except for this one guy that I have a secret crush on, I figured my odds were good. I hopped out the door with my radiant blue pants on, brown boots with holes in them, and a mighty winter jacket to hide the fact that I was not wearing a bra, and made my way towards the sidewalk.

I looked both ways down the street just to make sure that there was no one there. first side, clear. phew. By this point, i'm almost at the end of the driveway. Unfortunately, when I looked the other way, that one guy that I have a little crush on is walking towards me.

Horrified, I dropped the garbage and compost where I was standing and literally ran back down the driveway and dashed into the house in record time. I then continue my hilarity by looking out the window to see if he noticed. Looks like I'm safe. Of course, those brillant blue pants with the word "CANDY" written across my bum are hard to miss.

Oh sigh. I think it would have been better to run away facing forwards.

Feeling Kind of Lonely

Funny how there can be people all around me, how these people can be the kindest and sweetest people ever - how they can have the biggest smiles and greatest laughs, and yet I can still feel alone.

I think I need a hug and someone who will let me use their shoulder as a towel for my tears. I don't feel like I've had quite the sense of closure I needed after my grandfather's death. It's very easy for me to hide any of my sadness or sorrow behind a mask of cheerfulness, something that I'm pretty darn good at doing. I'm good at hiding sad things with laughter and a smile. But inside, I'm still not healed - or I'm not sure if I really want to deal with it yet.

I sure could use a hug right about now.

On finding yourself

I don't think it's easy to find oneself.

You won't wake up one morning and say, "Wow, I think I know who I am today." Well, you might - nothing's impossible, but I highly doubt it.

Finding yourself is really a realization of your worth as an individual. Of the things that make you who you are, that make your quirkiness, your personality, your looks something to be proud of. Actually, more than that. Finding yourself is the realization that you are complete by yourself. That with or without one individual, you are valuable the way you are.

And I think that it's a process. It's something that, perhaps is lost and found along the road of life's challenge. Some days, we're high on life. Others, we feel more alone than ever before. And yet, all of this is part of the process of realization of what makes us tick and what makes us tock.

And to add even more to this, I think part of finding yourself is finding God, in whom all value is rooted. From his hands, all things were created and without Him, nothing would have been made that is made. And if we realize that God's created us for a purpose in this life, then perhaps we can find that value as an individual.

Wishing Time Would Stop for A Moment

It's crazy how people spend but a moment on Earth. They come, they go, and then life goes on. Time doesn't slow down to let you say goodbye. It doesn't stop to let you mourn. It passes, and all you can hope is that in that moment that expands from birth to death, you were able to love and be loved. That perhaps you held a place in someone's heart.

It's so hard to say goodbye. You never expect that perhaps the last time you see someone could be your last. Yet it's even harder to know that your words and actions are the last someone will hear and see - to say goodbye, a real goodbye, is perhaps the most difficult task in the world.

I wish time would stop for just a moment.

On the Pain of Loss

Right now, I am sitting on a couch, curled up, listening to Bon Iver, and thinking about my grandpa. I've been crying on and off the past few days trying to deal with the fact that at any moment, my parents will call and let me know that the terminal cancer that has spread throughout his body has taken him. Death is the most difficult of things to deal with - it's an ending, and an ending to something beautiful. The short amount of time you get to spend with someone on Earth is over, and you are left with this feeling of emptiness and sadness.

More than that, I think about my family, about my step-grandma, and my extended family and wonder how they're feeling, wishing I could be with them instead of at the other end of the country, away from their hugs and unable to share with their tears. There's something about sharing in a person's sadness and working through difficulties together that gives one some hope that the empty space will be filled - although perhaps not completely.

I guess that's the difficult part about loving people. The more love you pour into them, the more painful it is when they're no longer here.