Salt and Rain

When fresh rain meets the salt of the sea. There is nothing like the scent of the collision.

I'm sitting 11 stories high watching the waves from a wicker chair. I can't sleep. It's storming, a mist finds its way to my face every few minutes, leaving dew on my skin. I keep staring at the turbulent whitecaps, waiting for a monstrous wave to consume the beach. I want one to dare to rise up a few feet and crash over the sand. Defiant. But even here in the storm, they're obedient, captive to the boundary of the shoreline. It amazes me, the compliant nature of earth. If only I could match it. I fear I'm a daily natural disaster, pushing the boundaries, the limits. Convinced that the beach is where I belong, crashing into the grains and sweeping away, leaving the land a little less complete. But my God restores the sands, and He always draws me back into the consistency of the tide. For this I am ever thankful. Indebted. The ocean and I. We owe everything.

Merry Christmas

It's a lazy Christmas night.
Nonstop family for hours. Too many presents.
Chaos.
It's theraputic to know that no one reads this. Just the tumbling of my thoughts into a white rectangle. I haven't written in awhile. I suppose the point of blogging is to allow others into you're life, to follow you're minds wanderings and whatever else one posts. Since I have lacked an audience, a blog has not been necessary.
But tonight a part of me wants to scream my heart to the world. It wants to be known. It's dying to be heard in a world that spins too fast and hears too many voices. It is breaking for several reasons, rejoicing for even more. The questions come more than the answers, the thoughts more than words. Sometimes I'm suffocating in my own unattainable ideas. I'm suffocating in all that I want to be, all I want to sing and achieve and do. The ground I want to walk is vast, the love I want to fall into place is unrealistic. I'm a victim of my own imagination.
I've been writing stories in my head lately. Driving down the streets of the city in the rain, and each destination has a carefully concocted and beautifully played out plot. Usually having to do with a boy (this confession makes me squimish, I've never been one to obsess with the male sex) and some artistically derived encounter that includes symbolism, acute camera angles, and perfectly lengthy lashes. Sensibility said goodbye. And I am suffocating in my own stories.

Oh Dohie

I haven't written on this guy in a very long time. My entire state of mind has been altered since my last post, thanks to our gracious Father.
I was driving home today and suddenly had a rare desire to take my grandmother, Dohie, out to dinner. I ended up eating mac n cheese and toasted hamburger buns at her house, but it was such a blessing. She's the stereotypical crazy old woman who talks all the time and has a house full of pictures. But she remembers every detail and can tell stories like nobody's buisness. I asked her how her and Daddy Pi (my grandpa who died of lung cancer a few years ago) had met and fallen in love and it was such a classic story. She was a little school teacher in Augusta, AR and his family fell in love with her. His momma kept writing and telling him, the big city man in Philly, that the sweetest girl was down in AR and he needed to come visit his momma and meet this girl of his dreams. Dohie ended up in D.C. as a secretary a few years later, and one day he came in and asked for her since he was so tired of his mother bugging him. She wasn't there, so he gave her apartment a ring. He was supposed to be taking this blond bombshell to a party, but stood her up because he stayed at Dohie's apartment til 2 in the morning just talking! He tried to kiss her at the door and she refused. ha! I was shocked, but her response was, "Oh, those Marine boys. They're fast". They went on only three dates and decided to get married. "I knew I was in love. From the moment I saw him, he was so handsome and as sweet as could be." Daddy Pi always wore big expensive hats because they shaved his head in the Marines and it never grew back. Dohie says he was extremely self conscious about it, but he "had such a lovely round head." I smiled. Sipped my sweet tea. We went through her jewelry and she gave me the most beautiful antique rings. "Hannah Grace, I was feeling down tonight. God sent you over here to cheer me up."
My eyes were misty as she reminised about a distant past. I could see her, with full bright red lips and a contagious floating laugh. I could see her smile before the wrinkles and sags. She was beautiful, real. And her heart has written and stowed away images and words that keep it beating some days. God has placed in her mind memories that keep her young, alive, and ever aware of His goodness throughout her life. What a blessing the memory is. What a blessing grandparents are.

Back to Reality, Oh... there goes gravity.

Reality can often be referred to as a "slap across the face." And perhaps this is true in some manner. But when reality leaves you with two red cheeks and an "s" on the end of slap, a bitter relationship is hard to avoid. The inner struggle of unquenched desire has left many hanging from a rope or hanging out in a bar, but when does the war become worth the pain. Unsure results and restless minds cannot navigate the possibilities with enough speed. There is hardly enough time in a day for the mind to trace and sort want from need with intricate detail and superior catagorizing. How is it that one's emotions can betray them in a matter of seconds when one has reasoned through a circumstance for a number of sleepless nights and several cups of coffee. Emotional response vs. the logical. Temporary feelings vs. reason. Two spheres at war within the human body, and a cease fire seems impossible. When the logical concludes, the emotional responds and affects the conclusion. When the emotional appears to win out in, reasoning strips and changes the initial emotional response. And when one chooses to accept reality, there are suddenly two ways of grasping it. A slap from the emotional, a slap from the logical. And soon to follow; anger, bitterness, frustration, misunderstanding, silence. What to say next? Maybe I always KNEW it wouldn't work, but I felt it could. Is it wrong to hold onto what I feel over what I know? Because that's what he wants. To know. But then comes the emotion. and whack. Now he's turned the other way. And here we go again.

Hannah GRACE is enough.

Your grace is enough. Your mercies are made new every morning. Your unfailing love will uphold me. How often do I read these verses and hear these phrases without truly grasping their meaning? I desire to be enough. I want to be loved, so desperatly, for me- flaws and all. How easily I forget that my Creator knows me and my heart better than even I. He understands my very being in every way, and created me with a unique personality. Yes, I am fallen and daily distort His perfect creation, but, oh ya, He knows that. And, oh ya, He loves me anyway. And He knows that I run around looking for love and looking for grace that can see past the poo and into a heart filled with all sorts of increadible gifts and desires. But do I really expect to look into the eyes of another human and find enough grace to cover a dirty and warped little girl? Is that sort of mercy possible? Doubtful. But I know that every time I look into the eyes of my God, I will find my reflection, and I will find that I am enough. I will be covered with grace, love, and acceptance. No, I can't live in sin and continually expect God to shove my iniquity under a rug, but if I have a heart that truly desires God, I'll find substance and open arms that will carry me through the days I can't walk through on my own. Praise God that His grace is enough. That I'm enough.

Thoughts to Uncle Screwtape 2

"It is obvious that to Him human birth is important chiefly as the qualification for human death, and death soley as the gate to that other kind of life." (Lewis, 157)

This new and intriguing perspective on life presents some interesting questions concerning the reason for human exsistence. The well-known phrase, "living in light of eternity", used frequently among church crowds, is an idea that provokes an outward or "bigger picture" view of life. Common belief is that humans were created to glorify God, love, serve, and draw others to Him while on earth. Screwtape describes human exsistence merely as a means for death which leads to eternity, the end. Perhaps I am interpreting wrong, but "cheifly as the qualification for human death" seems to allude toward the idea that life on earth has little importance to God other than the individual's end. In context with the paragraph, Screwtape is discussing how little time demons have to do their work, for they can decieve only in the few years while man walks on earth. I beleive that Screwtape's reasoning for human exsistence is not complete, and that God's purpose for the birth of mankind extends beyond its death. Although eternity is the ultimate end, life on earth is essential to the process, and essential to acheiving the elements listed above. Bringing glory and honor to God, bringing His children to Him, and learning and experiencing as a human being serving an increadible Creator.

Thoughts to Uncle Screwtape

I thought I might share some thoughts from The Screwtape Letters, which I just finished for an AP summer reading project. The book was increadibly thought provoking, but here's one quote in particular I decided to rant on...
"As a result we are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exsis- making the role of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible." (Lewis, 107)
The harsh reality of society today is that the above passage properly describes the sexual situation of America, and the results affect the lives of millions. Seven million women in the United States have an eating disorder, and 95% of those range from ages 12-25. By age 16, over 80% of girls have attempted to lose weight in some form or fashion. The pressure to look a certain way stems from the female desire to be desirable, accepted, and wanted, but the criterea for a body that will achieve this is unrealistic. Women have been reduced to believe they must fit the mold to be desirable, and everywhere in the media (clothing advertisments, movies, commercials, magazines) the skinny, evenly proportioned, beautiful (an objective adjetive to begin with) female is glorified. But Lewis refers only to the role of the male eye in making these demands so outrageous, when in reality a judgmental look from a women is equally damaging to the self-esteem and the cause of increased self-consciousness. While men can be easily distracted from a woman's flaws by her obvious and more appealing qualities, a woman can skip right to the imperfections with a self-assured gaze that has perfected the criticism of her own sex. Just as men have the God-given responsibility to remain pure in thought and action, women are called do the same. Encouragment and love for one another, as each was created, individual and in Christ's image, we must not succumb to the opinions of the world. I believe we were given eyes to see beauty- colors, pictures and scenes from our lives that arouse emotion, experiences. If we see the beauty in every person; their heart, their colors, their expereinces, not only do we find ourselves less critical of our Creator's work, but less critical of ourselves.