Balance

    Her slender fingers framed around my wrist as she pressed the pen onto my skin, the ink bleeding on steadily and intentionally. Slowly, surely, she cursived her way across my wrist, tracking on my body in demure, ebony thought.
    “Don’t look,” she murmured through her smile, her lips quietly parting as she concentrated hard. And though it was a simple act of tattooing, it spoke of so much more.
    The scene, two friends on a bed, one wracked emotionally by life while the other leaned over her arm, imparting peace the way she knew best. The calm of her presence, her sincerity, her intentionality. Sometimes it is enough to simply be with someone. And sometimes words need not be spoken. There is a feeling that passes between you both. You are not alone.
    As the rain drops slid slowly down the window, I did my best to stop those that threatened to push out of my eyes, concentrating instead on the feel of the inky wetness left by her slow and deliberate tracing.
    “Balance.” My eyes flicked from focusing on the window and back onto my wrist. “That’s what you need in your life right now.” And there it was, solid and sable and stark against white skin. Firm. A gentle reminder that the sadness and frustration I felt was part of human existence. Inevitable. Measured on the scale of being alive, balanced against the joy that coursed daily through the veins underneath her tattoo and broke out in smiles upon my face.
    Comme ci, Comme ça, like this, like that.
    Such is life. A balance of sobs and smiles, kisses hello and goodbye, passions, pushing, perseverance. When we agree to life’s pleasures we also agree to its pains. And yet, the presence of such pains make the pleasures so much sweeter. A tightrope performance that calls for equilibrium in every aspect of every part of existence.

On Writers

If you drowned in your tea-cup, what would the world say?
Would it cry at your irreverence and gasp in great dismay?
Or would it simply smile, not even bat an eye
As you went swirling downward in a steaming vat of chai

If you set sail in your bathtub and shoved it out to sea
Do you think the world would nod and show dear sympathy?
Or rather would it laugh and whisper without reason
That the bathtub's the wrong color and completely out of season.

If you dangled your feet from a rocky mountain top
Would someone worry for your safety, call out for you to stop?
Or would they pass by uncaring, they see such every day
And all you'd want was to impress them in just some simple way

If your kiss could heal the mute, your lips a curing fire
Do you think they'd capture you, rent your mouth for hire?
Because the world is a jaded place, it looks quite dim from here
The glass is dirty, the cat is old, the plate's been broken, dear

The people are all scratching at the door of innovation
And not one comes to rescue them, though they beg every nation
Keep on pleading, keep on asking, someone's sure to hear
For the silence is approaching, the shadows draw quite near

All they need now is someone to tear away the veil
The cloth that hides the truth and promises goodness will prevail
That's why God made writers, sent them out among man-kind
To uncover all the sweetness that lies hidden 'neath the grime

And as they scrape away the mire with their sharpened pen
They do not create the truth, merely reveal what lies within
So thank God that we have them, or else you simply might
Have been swallowed by the shadows upon this very night

Waterfall

  Your life is flowing perfectly down stream, a crystal clear example of tranquility, serendipities skipping through the water, joy pounding over the rocks.
  It's all good and beautiful and just the way you wanted it.
  The sun is setting. It dresses your stream in golden hues, and the gurgling water bubbling over the rocks is a siren call to forget your worries and come and play in the cleansing stream that washes lovingly over your body.
  You inhale a deep breath and take the plunge, shedding your clothes and exposing yourself to the last few rays of the sun that kiss your goose-pimply arm. You're vulnerable, but it's alright. Because you trust the stream that's swirling over you, carrying you and your life and your future along with it.
  Eyes closed, you submerge yourself completely in the water, blowing bubbles through your nose.  
  You're laughing, humming, dreaming to yourself. All is right.
  Pounding.
  Your eyes snap open.
  Pounding.
  What?
  Pounding as loud as thunder fills your brain and shakes your body to its very core.
  You're rushed, swirling, tossed over the rocks, bubbles surround, your eyes are torn open and held there, what's going on because you don't know, and you just want it to stop so you can catch your breath, you just want it to go back to what it was before, and you're numb because your body won't respond, and it's all a bad dream and.
  Then it's over. You've been swept through the waterfall and down its arms into its heart.
  And now you lie on the rocks, stunned. Breath knocked out of you, all sense of direction gone, looking for reason and sense and who on earth thought it would be a good idea to place a freaking waterfall in the middle of your happy little stream.
  But the hard part. The part you have to accept. Is that you know who put the waterfall there. It was Him. And as much as you don't want to admit it, you know why.
  It's because so often we start to depend on ourselves when life gets easy. Because so often we can forget that we need Him. Because so often it all goes wrong just when it's all going right.
  Isn't it sad that it takes a waterfall to interrupt us and send us rushing back to Him?

This is the way the world ends.

There's a whimpering cry for help

Ignored 

A feeble undistinguishable yelp 

Unheard 

And you know the silence will devour her 

If you don't give a damn. 

The shadows are growling for flesh

Dissatisfied 

The darkness is yearning for blood -- fresh 

Decried

And all that you say is wrong because to her

The world has turned its back. 

Her eyes rove your face with hopelessness 

Despair

And comforting brings only distress

Unfair

The blood pounding in her head makes no sense

Because it carries only empty thoughts. 

How to drag her from the hole

Crushed

When the emotions rip out her soul

Unjust

You would wrench out the sting if you could

But the poison's bled too deep.

And it ends the way it began

Whimpering

Because a gun has a high demand

Shivering

She knows death will be even colder then

Her fears that never cease.

It ends with a bang

It ends with a whimper

It ends with a friend fled from me. 

Delivery

  There's no easy way to do this, no road that is straight and narrow, no path that lends itself to a weary traveler's feet. Instead, the route she must take is covered with sharp stones of doubt, stinging nettles of pride, thistles made of frustration and glass shards of sharp impatience that pierce her tender and unsuspecting feet.
  Yet she treads on, because she knows that at the end of it, this will all be worth it.
  At least, she hopes.
  It's uphill, this part. There's no grass to cushion the trek, and the bottom of her feet are bleeding now, because sometimes emotions and words and fears cause just as much pain as actual wounds. As she stoops down to staunch the blood, she almost drops her package, causing her to gasp and clutch frantically at the object wrapped brightly in shiny paper, contrasting almost garishly with the stark empty background that surrounds her.
  It is all she can do not to let out a sob. But she knows that her cry will be greeted simply by solitude and silence, some of her most enduring partners in this seemingly unending journey.
  When she started out, it didn't seem so horribly hopeless. Others had made the climb. They had reached the top, delivered their gifts. Did their feet bleed? Did fears plague their every step? Did they cry out in despair?
  She drops to the ground, knees crumpling in the dust as clouds of dirt envelop her tired body and welcome her to the burial ground of defeat where so many others have abandoned their journey, stealing silently back to the foot of the mountain, carrying their gifts, shame piggy-backing on their broken down shoulders.
  Hands. Strong, firm, gentle. Hands that pick her up, set her right, relieve her of her package, heal her wounds, replenish her soul. Hands that open the package meant for them. The package the Ordinary Princess had wrapped so carefully and thoughtfully. Hands that willingly receive her gift.
  The gift of her life and her control and her stubbornness and her will to be perfect. She was giving it all to Him. Wrapped in the shiny package meant for her Lord and her Savior and her King. It wasn't much. Not nearly enough to pay Him back for what He gave her. But it was what she had.
  And so she sat on that mountain, and she surrendered into the hands of the King her thoughts and her problems and her trepidations. Because it was what she had to give. It was all of her. And it belonged entirely, thoroughly, undeniably to Him.
 

Holocaust Shadows

She showed a film in class today.
About the Holocaust.
Dark shadows marched across the screen, some degenerate Germans, some doomed Jews.
All caught in the desperation and dejection and despondency that ate Germany alive, spitting out the bones of the outcasts and ostracized. They were the left-overs.
The unloved.
The hurt and the broken.
They didn't deserve to live.
And it made me wonder about my own humanity and the sin that we so easily fall head over heels in desperate love with.
It made me wonder if, given the chance, I'd do the same.
If I'd join the crowds that hungrily ate the lies and believed the poison fed to them. That they were better. That they were deserving. That they were all that mattered.
And that the others weren't.
I think that's what scares me so much about the Holocaust.
Anytime it's mentioned, it's not the disregarded pile of bodies that have been flung into a heap, all but bones, eye-sockets hollow holes of despair. It's not the horrendous gassings that filled the lungs of little ones as they coughed up their life and naivete and traded in their youth for death. It's not the ripping apart of families, the severing of heart strings, the snapping of father and daughter, sister and brother bonds.
I mean, that cuts. It cuts deep.
But what pierces throughly, all the way to the very central core of my every being is the fact that such sin and darkness lies in all of us. Lurks in the moldy and rotten corners of every humans' heart. It does not take an especially wicked person. For we're all especially wicked.
And it hurts too much to think too hard about human depravity.
About my depravity.
About whether I'd do the same.

Make a name for yourself, dear.

  It's just a name. So why does it seem so taboo. No, not "taboo." That's not the right word.
  Notable. Unique. Special.
  But it's not really. Practically. Inspected from the outside looking in, it's just a name. A sort of ordinary one at that. And plenty of other people say that name day after day, turn it inside out, wear it around like a warm wool sweater, break it in like a pair of old gardening boots caked with the mud and roots and smell of the last spring day. It's used and well-known and garden variety.
  To me, though, it's special. It rarely slips out of my mouth. Because if it does, it might break the spell. The delicately pink-as-a-blushing-bride bubble that shimmers around and makes it exceptional.
  What's in a name? A person's identity lies hidden behind just a few small letters. Everything, every memory, every adjective that describes that one human being. Their crooked smile or the way they lean forward when they have something to say or how they hold their pencil, drumming it absent-mindedly against the desk.
  So why is his so special? Just a few simple letters but don't talk about, don't say them, don't let your mouth form those consonants because the spell might be broken, the magic might be lost, the eggshell flimsy and fragile connection of his name to my heart might be severed.
  Like a pair of scissors sharp as the tongue cutting through the silver string that links my heart to my soul to my head to my feelings for him. Silly feelings that make little sense. Feelings that I've denied and resented and denied again. But they're there. As plain as his name printed, letters stamped out and marched forward military-strict by a pen, inky boots leaving behind his name, black and formal and serious and beautiful on crisp white paper.
  It's just a name.
  Just a name.
  His name.

Blood-letting Emotions

  You're numb. Blood drowning in quiet and apathetic ennui as it goes pumping through your veins, bringing with it a dull thump thumping of your heart. I am. I am. I am.

  You're here. But you're the only one who sees you. Others push you aside with their glances, misunderstanding. Or, even worse, not knowing that you're devastated. Not knowing that their careless words, dropped so heedlessly to the ground, were picked up by you and examined, turned over carefully and placed so close to your heart. 

  You're gone. You've flown from this situation, your wounded soul rushing out the door, scurrying quickly, leaving behind a hurried -- "Good riddance." Your body is still here though, so you adjust the counterfeit smile on your face but there's no smile behind your eyes. Because the soul is long gone, and there's nothing to shine out of your eye-holes anymore. 

  You're happy. Because you have to be. Because that's your reputation. Because if you're not, people might start to question why, and you don't have the time or the energy to explain because it just hurts to answer. And it's just all such a tangled mess -- like christmas lights that wrap around themselves in storage and are impossible to unravel. Although your heart is slightly more fragilely frail then christmas lights. 

  You're cutting through. The knife on your skin, slicing. Figuratively. 

  You're blood-letting. But not truly, for you don't release crimson drops of life. You release emotions. What trickles down your arm is jealously and humiliation and despair and regret and pain and the memories that you thought you had let go of but still hide out in your wishes and desires. 

  You're letting it all go. What sweet release. The emotions flow from your veins. 

  You're free. 

Hello, 19

  It's time.
  She creeps down to the cellar, her bare feet pitter pattering on the worn wood. The dust scurries away as she sweeps into the room, her eyes searching, her heart pulled like a puppet on a string. She knows what and why and how. Now she must squelch the "when?" with a knowing glance, and now she must do what she alone can do and what she knows needs to be done.
  It's there, on the third shelf, hiding behind some christmas ornaments and home videos and a broken lampshade; and she can sense it.
  As she stretches up, her small hands catching the box and bringing it back down close to her heart, she sighs a whole-hearted sigh. She carefully clutches the cardboard box for all she's worth, for it holds the memories of a year.
  Her year.
  Her 18th year, to be precisely exact.
  In it lie the good: the books that wrenched out her soul and replaced it, adjusting her view of life. The stolen kisses that signaled goodnight and goodbye and I miss you and want you. The family and friends, old and new, who encouraged her and stuck by her and who she couldn't live without. Running out her heart, writing out her wishes, graduations, and celebrations, salutations of those she adored.
  In it lie the bad: the nights where she didn't know what would happen and she painted her pillow with mascara and tears. The harsh words of critics and, even worse, the knife-stabbing comments of so-called friends. The days where she felt swallowed up and spit out, and the days where she just couldn't go on. The battles of frustration, the depressed dreary days, and the goodbyes of dear, dear friends.
  She revisits and remembers and regrets but a few.
  For each made her stronger, made her heart a little bigger, made her smile a little brighter. Made her even more of herself.
  A smile slowly dances up the sides of her mouth and breaks out into a full grin as she covers up the box and replaces it on the shelf. For it's time to begin an even better year.
  Hello, 19.

 

Pink

  Sometimes you see the world in color. And I don't mean that you look at a red sweater and notice how very crimson it is, touched with ruby and kissed shyly by scarlet. I mean that you step outside and the world just is a color. It's in your mood, in the clouds, in the barely glimpsed smiles of those who walk past you.
  Yesterday, my world was pink. Pink like the last remnants of a setting sun, tinged with a hint of orange that brushed it with bashful fingers before retreating slowly back into the sky. Pink like the cotton candy you give to children that floats onto their fingers, fuzzes up their mouth, sticky sweet and altogether nothing but sugary air. Pink like the feeling you get when your heart knows everything is right and you're where you're supposed to be and you feel invincible and infinite and nothing can stop you because you're gonna give it your all because you have nothing to lose.
  That kind of pink.
  And when it's that kind of pink, your soul does a little hop and skip and jump and tumble. It rolls in the grass and hugs itself and promises to never let go. Your cheeks are rosy with the promises of the future and your toes tingle, filled with the compliments of friends.
  But that kind of pink holds just a tiny tinge of doubt too. For, as much as you try to persuade your head, you know that the world can never be that perfect and that somewhere there lurks a rumbling navy of grief or a gruesome blood-red anger.
  For right now though, the world is pink. And I'm alright with that.

A Harmonization of Doubts, Despair, and Deceit

The confusion, the despair, the struggle, the unrest.
Thoughts in your head that wrestle and tear up your insides with their violence, beating bloody fist into your brain walls, thumping out a tattoo that echos hauntingly through your soul, graffitiing your thoughts with green spray-paint jealousy.
And then there's the guilt that spreads like a sickness through your head, overwhelming everything with darkness, swallowing up the light with one large and unsatisfied gulp. Because you shouldn't be like this. Jesus is enough.
If that's true.
Because right now, honestly, it doesn't feel like it.
You're in a valley. And the valley is so lonely alone.
"God is with me," the Ordinary Princess wants to believe. She weeps, curling up like a lost child, wrapping herself in her own courage.
"Jesus is sufficient," she offers the world in a shaky voice, built half on crumbling hope and past joy and forgotten love and decrepit doubt. The other half doesn't exist anymore. It's been shattered into pieces by uncertainties that pound it daily to dust.
She's so tired. So very tired of it all.
"Now I lay me down to rest," she whispers through parched lips, dry with longing for a more fulfilling world.
The darkness swoops in and swiftly consumes.

The Bride Did Not Wear White

  The bride did not wear white. As she stood silently, numbly, waiting outside the church doors, you could tell that her gown had once been as pure as newly fallen snow. But not now. Now it was torn and tattered and frayed and faded, scratched away at the edges by corners that grabbed pieces of it as it floated on by, muddied by the grimy puddles that jealously clung to its lacy hem.
  She didn't know what she was going to tell everyone. Surely they would question her, wonder why her dress was so filthy, her face tear-stained, her soul cloaked with sin, guilt, doubt, despair. She had greasy smudges that contaminated her past, this Ordinary Princess. And they didn't know that. They would expect her to be innocent. They would expect her to be beautiful. They would expect her to wear white.
  Un-pure, a cast-aside, ostracized from society. These thoughts sat heavy on her shoulders, causing her to slump under the gargantuan weight. A solitary tear slipped through, trickled, beaded sparkling on her cheek.
  Then the trumpets blared. She heard the crowd rise. It was her entrance. It was her time. It was her.
  And her dress wasn't even white.
  The doors were flung open, the crowd gasped a short intake of oxygen, the Ordinary Princess continued marching bravely down the aisle. She kept her eyes on her intended. Her prince was all that mattered. It was the longest walk she'd ever taken.
  At the alter, she looked into her prince's eyes, and they brimmed with happiness and love.
  "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "My dress... me."
  "What do you mean?" He answered, a truly puzzled look dancing on his brow. "You're the most beautiful creature on earth."
  She looked down, and caught her breath with her stomach. For her tattered dress had disappeared. In its place, she was dressed in honesty, laced with kindness, ornamented in love. Her sandals embellished with virtue, her veil a token of purity and peace.
  "How..." She started, but never finished. Her question was answered in His eyes. The eyes of her Savior, the eyes of her King, the eyes of her first true love.

When The World Is Right

  When everything makes sense. The buttery warm feeling at the bottom of your soul that courses through your body, alighting on your fingers, warming up your cheeks with that inward candle-lit shine.
  It's fall again, and everything around is slowly dying. The foliage takes one last sleepy glance at the world before retiring into their wispy corpses in preparation for winter and snow and ice and death. But the funny thing is, you've never felt so alive.
  When you can communicate with giggles and laughter and smiles. And the conversations are light, bouncing about the room like apple-red balloons that are filled with the imagination and beliefs of children.
  The leaves roll out the orange-as-an-autumn-fire carpet for you, and it's not plush or extravagant or carpeted with the rich. And yet its crunch is somehow just as satisfying.
  When God is so prevalent in your life that all you can do is praise Him. For you know that He alone gives you the perfect peace that wraps you up, lays you down gently, kisses you to sleep.
  The blue drifts lazily above you. If you stretched out your little hand far enough, you're convinced you could pull down one of those fleecy clouds, lace it around your fingers, knit it together to form a blanket of autumn sky.
  And when you were tired of it all, gather the memories together in a bundle in your arms and store them in a glass mason jar in the cellar. When winter comes, you could creep down the steps, lift it from the shelf, unscrew the lid, inhale the spicy scents of autumn life, of happiness, of fall leaves, of all that is right.

Of Corpses and Butterflies and Entomologists

  Like they took out your insides and gutted you clean, pulled out all the intricate and delicately beautiful machinery that made you tick, made you like pumpkin lattes and dislike pumpkin pie. Threw it all on the floor. Displayed: your raw guts, bloody emotions, your entire thought process stretched out and pinned down like butterflies on an entomologist's stark pallid board.
  That's how it feels.
  Ripped clean, then stuffed up quick, a shoddy taxidermist job. A synthetic smile pasted on with cheap glue, slowing flaking off to reveal the frustrated frown encased by chasms of deep and troubled wrinkles.
  It doesn't make sense.
  But then again, I suppose that anything in life rarely does. You hate yourself for letting your mind wonder down that vast enigma, and for dwelling on it.
  Because when it's bad, it's very bad.
  But when it's good? Oh, when it's good you feel as if you can unleash a fire hydrant and dance in the warmed-by-the-summer-sun water. You can fly, arms outstretched in a wingspan that encompasses everyone you love. You are no longer pinned to the board. Instead, you are a butterfly slowly crawling out of your lethargic winter sweater, itching to have adventures, struck by the beauty and majesty and wonder and azure hue of the sky. For when it's good, it's oh so very good.
  A buzz. A withdraw.
  A fluttering free butterfly. An empty corpse pinned to a board.
 

Games In Your Head

Playing games in your head
Like hide-in-go-seek
Where you tell yourself lies
Then resolutely search them out
Hidden in musty corners or
Lurking behind slightly cracked doors
You tackle them and try to make the truth
Yours.

Or like tag
Where you chase down the dreams
Beat them into obedience
Bloody-pulp submission
Make them yours even if
They're not meant to be
Because you've always wanted them
So freakin' bad.

Simon says: someone tells you something
And you make yourself do it
Not because you want to
But because
If you're truly, deeply, cut-to-the-heart-of-it honest
You care too much about what they think
About you to not
Obey.

Playing games like a child
Concrete running and shadow chasing and
Sticky grape-jelly fingers and stubby-crayon sharing.
Except you've grown up and the games now
Aren't playground friendly.
They're harsh and they're brutal and they're
True.
Truer than you yourself would sometimes like to admit.

Mannequin Lies

  Mannequins fascinate me. They always seem to be so put together. Their jacket drapes dandily, their shoes are nicely polished. They're tucked in, stand-up-straight, neat and oh, so fashionable. But what's this? Their head is missing.
Lopped clean off.
And if one only glanced at them, didn't really take the time to look closely, sort of viewed in your peripheral as you went by, you wouldn't really notice how much they're missing. You wouldn't really see that their head is gone.
I treat others like mannequins sometimes. Spick and span, clean and polished, love Jesus, fight evil, stand up for good, nothing's wrong, they've got a smile on their face and I don't want to take the trouble or have the time to dig deeper and see if that smile is real.
But a lot of the times, it isn't.
A lot of the times, when people look the most put together -- that's when they're the least.
But I treat them like mannequins. And don't even bother to look. To see if they're weary of life. If their smile is simply plastered on, flaking gently off like paint chips on an old house. If their heart is heavy. If their head's simply missing, stolen away by doubt and fear and anger and hurt and love.
If only we took the time to notice the mannequins, to linger just a little longer near the store front, to look deep into a friend's eyes, to uncover their mannequin lies.
 

Heart Stamp

  "Why do you write?" they asked her. She didn't know. No, she did. But how could she explain it?
   She wrote because there was an itch in her heart that pounded on the inside, shook up her soul, scratched like an animal outside on a moonlit night trying to get into the garbage.
  She wrote because her words looked important, all spilled out into the paper, the night-black ink permanently residing on its new pristine background. Proud. Regal. Like how she wanted to be if she had the confidence and courage and strength. And it would stay there. It would last. She wouldn't. But her words might.
  She wrote because writing made her eternal. Because if people took her words to heart, I mean, if they were that important, and if they crept to the back of people's heads and snuggled up there all quiet-as-a-sleepy-child-like, and people wanted to remember them, they would. They might not remember her. But they would remember her words. And that, to the Ordinary Princess, was what really mattered.
  She wrote because when she wrote it was more than just writing. Mere words, printed out, crumpled up in harsh hands, tossed carelessly aside and trampled by heartless shoes. Her writing was a stamp. A branding on the heart. Because when someone reads her writing, that someone might just take those words to heart. And then, guess what? They're branded. A stamp on the heart. And those words mean something. Now. And forevermore.
  She writes because she has to.
  She writes because.
  She writes.

Train

  The interesting thing about trains. You never know exactly where they've been or where they're going. Kind of like people. Each is dirtied by the grime of life, the graffiti of its youth. It squeaks and grumbles and groans but still makes its lonesome way out to wherever it's going. Out there. Somewhere. In the darkness, in the stillness, it interrupts and protests that it still lives. It still works and battles and exists.
  I want to hop a train someday.
  When I can't take life any longer. When all I want is be free of responsibilities and people and work and anxiety and lonesomeness and hunger and tired and captive.
  When I want to be free.
  Trains fascinate me. I always want to know their story. Just like I want to know people's stories. But people are harder to understand than trains. Unfortunate. Sometimes I wish people could be as instruction-book-manual easy to understand as machines are.
  Take me far away, trains. I want to see. To be free. To wonder, experience, open my eyes to the spotted starry desert sky, or take in the foggy-as-the-morning-dawn air that drifts down from the mountains and greets me. To see those who I love, and to meet new loved ones. To rattle on the floor of the cargo train, hearing each little sigh and complaint and lying with my cheek to the side of the train wall as it bump bump bumps along the rickety, dependable track.
  To know that I am going somewhere. That I still work and still battle and still exist. Just like the train.

Death Song

  When I die.
  Morbid.
  But face it. Bound to happen.
  So. When I die.
  I want to be buried in the clothes of my youth. Because in my head, I will never be old. Like Peter Pan I will look in the mirror and still be a child. I will embrace my immaturity, my vivaciousness, my youth and longing for life. I will not let age take over my soul. Though it may overtake my face.
  For I want my face to be wrinkled and old. But still beautiful. Graceful. I will accept and embrace all of the experiences that have added age to my countenance. Each laugh line a story. Each wrinkle a tale. My face a novel, filled with chapters. My face a book of my life; a mask in the play on the stage that all men appear upon.
  I want to be able to say, with my last breath, that I had no regrets. I lived life to the fullest. I made mistakes, but I learned from them. I let them teach me, not tell me Who I was to become. I made promises. I made love. I cried from heart-break. I laughed from relief. And I enjoyed every minute. Every minute was mine.
  At the end. The very last gasp-for-sweet-air end. I want it to be said that I loved. I loved to my fullest being. And I gave my all, for Christ, for others, for those I couldn't do without, and for those that I could.
  I want my death to be a song. A melody carried over by those who loved me. A chant, a hymn, a drum solo, a lonely flute, a ukulele, a drumming of the fingers. All of the songs symbolizing those who loved me, and those I loved. And the song will raise up in the air, and drift away on the clouds, and the notes will lazily scatter. They will be forgotten. I will be forgotten. But just for that instant, I want to be remembered, and for people to say of me, "She gave everything she had."

Bare Your Soul

  The quest to find ourself is a journey every person makes. 

  Sometimes, the journey ends quickly -- the person does not wish to continue. They have found what they wanted and are content. Leave it alone, their stubborn mouths cry. They are too scared of what lies behind their soul. Too scared to investigate and dust off those corners of musty-attic heart. The place where no one goes, not even them. 

  And some people keep going. They carefully peel off the paper-thin wrappings that protect their fragile heart, uncover, dig out their soul and examine it. Scrutinize it meticulously, like a medical student uses tweezers to scrutinize a cadaver. Sometimes they are satisfied with what lies beneath. 

  But sometimes they are not. They keep searching. Their soul is too dirty, too small, too bare. They are not content. 

  Why are they not content? Because, on the way to find themselves, they've forgotten something. Something important. 

  They are not content because they have been relying on other people's opinions. Offering their soul to those they respect, admire, wish to please... only to have their fragile-christmas-ornament soul dashed to the ground in contempt, the pieces flying everywhere, scattered over the cobblestones, as they try to gather them back, stick them together, staunch the flow of disappointment that leaks down in salt-water trails on their face. 

  It's so easy to forget that other's opinions do not form you. They do not create who you are or what you will become. So stop trying to find yourself in others. 

  Instead, lose yourself in Jesus. 

  Because He's the only one that will take your broken soul and find value in it. He'll set the shattered soul ornament on his mantle-piece and proudly display it. Find comfort in Him. For in Him, you will discover who you truly are, who you were meant to be, and who He is to you. 

  He is your master, your love, your father, your king. 

  And I am simply His Ordinary Princess. My soul is freed from the bondage of other's opinions, whispers, rumors, stares, and snickers. I find myself in Him. 

   That is enough, but it is more than I could ever wish for. 

Book Marked

  I told him I wouldn't forget. There's many a memory lost upon the stormy waves of thoughts and emotions that swirl relentlessly around in my head. But he wouldn't be among those counted missing.
  I told him I would book-mark him. Set a page aside for him in the novel that's constantly being written in my mind. And even if we go our separate ways, life takes a turn, things don't work, we never speak again...I'll still have him book-marked. And even if it gets carried away on the wind, I'll still whisper "Thanks for the memories."
  Because he's one of the few that understands.
  So many see the surface: the nicely polished marble, slightly cracked, a few imperfections, but I mean no one's perfect. And they're content with that view. The outside will do just fine, thank you, nothing else to it and even if there is we can't be taking the time to find out.
  There's so much more. The Ordinary Princess wants to scream it at them. Beg them. Shove it in their content and lethargic faces.
  But at the same time...
  She lets them find it out for themselves. That's her test.
  That's how she knows they're important, worth it, a fellow soul working towards a similar goal. That's who she gives slivers of her heart to. That's how she knows they deserve to be book-marked.
  If they dig deeper. Find the little heart made of gold hidden a few feet within the marble. That's when she chips a piece off her tiny, still-beating, golden heart...
  And gives it away.

On Conquering Dragons

Conquering a dragon in your life is not easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth conquering, over-coming, vanquishing. The question you have to ask yourself is: is it worth it?
Because dragons can lie there undisturbed for ages. Silent sins that invade your life, deadly and solemn. They lie there.
And you think to yourself that it doesn't really matter. The beast isn't hurting anyone. The sin, this dragon, this creature of darkness.
But in all honesty, it's hurting everyone.
It hurts you. It silently weakens your defenses. You grow jovial, fat, weak. A knight accustomed to the creeping, sleeping beast.
It hurts others. It poisons your relationships, your thoughts and your will. Its venom runs deep into your veins.
It hurts God. The silent sin that you think no one else sees. The dragon haunting the corner.
So much easier to let it lie.
But life's not easy.
So conquer it.
But it hurts sometimes. It bites and kicks and scrapes and growls. It does not let you forget its ever lingering presence.
"God give me strength!" cries the Ordinary Princess. Because she wants to cast out the dragon.
But it's so very hard.

The Unflinching Offering of a Child

  Silence bit through sullenly, oppressively. The air was thick with the buzzing of unspoken thoughts, questions, someone's lost "good-morning."
  It was too early to be singing. Or was it? Is it ever too early to worship God?
  The crowd didn't answer the question. They accepted it as fact. So when someone begged for songs to praise Christ with, eyes darted, mouths curled into crooked corners, everyone waited for someone else with a bigger and braver heart to begin.
  Courage is sometimes a difficult thing to find in a room full of strangers. It doesn't often make its presence felt. The funny thing about children -- they pick up courage as easily as black sweaters pick up white cat hair. Children snatch courage from hidden places: bravery is innate, fearfulness frowned upon.
  The begging of a song. The touches of the somnolent summer sun. The long and laborious waiting.    
  And then... the unflinching offering of a child.
  A voice conquered the silence. A melody, tune, composition of notes poured forth, leaking onto the singer's brown-like-coffee hands. The girl, for it was indeed a child, plucked the song from the air -- timidly at first, then with surety, raised it up in her hands, holding it towards heaven, volunteering her offering, no matter how small.
  And we were awe-struck. The brown-sugar-sticky hands of a child holding the glassy and glistening pieces of a melody. She had dared to do what we were all too apathetic and afraid to do. She had given God all she had, tipping out her heart so that the contents over-flowed, leaped, splashed into her hands, dripped over the sides, were handed to her neighbors to satiate their thirst then presented to God as a sacrifice.

Cloudy Cauldron Thoughts

  She tried to sort her thoughts out. Honestly, she did! The Ordinary Princess stared into the cauldron that swirled and whirled and gurgled as it spit out ideas and emotions. Happy thoughts were a pinkish color of smoke and went into one pile. Sad ones, a dismal green-as-a-hurricane-promised-sky went into the other. Angry ones were squashed quickly beneath her foot. Who has any use for those?
  But as the thoughts rode out of the cauldron, hugging piggy-back-tight onto the steam that crept languidly around the room, she wasn't sure if she could sort out these new ones arising. There was more than just one emotion hidden deep in their cloudy hearts.They promised her so much...
  The Ordinary Princess sighed deeply, breathing puffs of smokey ideas across the room. They disappeared as quickly as they had come, creeping, slinking, skulking away to hide in corners and nurse their hurt feelings of rejection.
  And the ideas swirled and whirled and gurgled again, reminding the Ordinary Princess of what could have been, what might have been, what could still be if only she'd let it be; but she wouldn't let it be, she couldn't let it be....
  Could she?
 

Silver Shattered Joy

  Everywhere she went, she bled joy. It leaked out of her pores and dropped on the ground and shimmered silver-sparkles. Diamonds and silver pennies. Sometimes people stepped on it. Broke it. Dirtied it with their muddy feet and apathetic, sluggish eyes.
  Like parade confetti, swept to the gutter, torn by windy kisses, scattered by children's hands.
  The funny thing is, deep near the inside corner of her heart, she didn't mind. She just kept leaving little pieces of joy everywhere she went.
  "Someday they'll appreciate it," she'd sigh. One of those break-your-heart kind of sighs. And then she'd smile.
  Because sometimes someone somewhere would pick up a piece of her joy. They'd bend down, all curious like, eyes squinted, mouth pinch-pursed. Grab at it. Snatch it up.
  And realize what it was. They'd clutch at it, because joy is so hard to find in this weary wandering world. But look closely and you'll see the silver shattered pieces of the Ordinary Princess's heart.

"We are the king and queen of the world."

Fireworks. S'mores.
Shared grins, sticky fingers.
Long nights spent talking
and laughing and doing nothing.
But doing everything.
"We are the king and queen of the world," I say.
And he agrees.
And for that moment, when time is wrapped around my little finger
Nothing can interrupt.
And it is just us.
But it doesn't really matter, because
I don't have to let the world in.
Not yet.
And it is just us.
Summer nights and stars and water and fire and friends and
Us.  

Dirty Saints

  Jesus isn't that hard to find, you see. And when you find Him, He's loving, and caring, and kind.

  So why do people doubt His existence? Why do they scoff and scorn and mock Christianity?

  You know, I've been convicted.

  I don't think it's His fault. All the time.

  I think it's mostly our fault. Christians with planks in their eyes who swing swords of harsh words and bitter remarks. 

  Oh dear Lord, how easy it is to rebuke! How much harder it is to give mercy and compassion. Our fingers point with judgement, but we are called to be saints, are we not? Yet how often do you see a saint with dirty hands and dirty heart, filthied by the caked mud of sin? 

  Let me not be the cause of a stumbling brother. Let him see Christ when he looks at me. Let him not see sinful, ordinary, black-hearted-from-sin me. Because in the end, when people look at us, we're transparent. 

  They say the eyes are stain-glass windows to the soul. 

  When people look in your windows, does the light of Christ shine out, blinding them with His goodness, His love, His kindness, His compassion? Or are your eyes filled with planks of wood as you hastily rebuke your brother to remove the splinter from his own?

  Though it may be easy to focus on others wrong doing, I find it convicting to focus on your own. You're not perfect. And Christ in His love and mercy knew that. So what makes you, saint, any different from the sinner? 

  You've both been muddied by sin. Christ has simply stopped to wipe off your dirt before moving on to the next filthy sinner. 

  You did nothing. 

  Stop pretending you did. 

A Challenge

Look, love.
It's time we came to a conclusion: Life's not perfect. I'm not perfect. You're not perfect.
Yes?
But here's the deal. This is how it'll work. Let me fill you in.
I want someone by my side when I laugh so hard that milk spurts out my nose and burns and tickles and I'm embarrassed but I can't stop laughing because I think it's hilarious too. I want someone by my side when my eyes leak salt-water, pushing down tears and watering my cheeks. I want someone by my side who will give me a knowing look, and stop me from doing or saying something when my rational-filter is broken. I want someone who will tickle me, grab me by my waist to surprise me, rub my back when the day is hard and the hours are long. Who will dream with me, and inspire me, and love me.
Are you that person?
I just don't know anymore. Many have pretended to be my knight in shining armor, but there seems to be a shortage of metal about, and they've ended up just tin-foil-fakers. Make-believe tin soldiers who aren't fit to rescue the Ordinary Princess.
Are you up for the challenge, love?

The Future is Certain

Raise your glass with me. Let's toast to the summer nights where you hold yourself, wrapped in soft woolen blankets, spread out on the itchy green grass, staring up at the blue clouds and the white stars and the expansive heavens. You can see the Little Dipper, and Orion, and the North Star.
And you think you can see God's face.
You hold yourself because your soul is in danger of fluttering away. If you don't catch it, and snap it back into place, it just might float into the starry-sky-eyed black universe never to be seen again.
But you do catch it. You snuggle it back into yourself and you smile because you know just who you are and where you're going and what you want to do.
But for a moment, for a split-second, longest-of-moments, hold-your-breath-and-shiver moment, you were scared. Because you didn't know what was going to happen.
But it's gone now. You're you. Everything's all right.
And the future is certain.
Right?

Quite Quotatious

  She collected quotes and stuffed them in her pockets; like bread crumbs they leaked out of the holes in her clothing, overflowing onto the feet of her neighbors.
  They asked her why.
  She didn't really know but she made up a lie and told them that they gave her confidence. That was false. The real reason she liked them is because they were silver-shiny, reflecting her face like mirrors, showing her herself and her insecurities and the tiny little fears that itched away at her heart like a brand new scab. The quotes ripped off that scab. They didn't even use a band aid. They just showed her for who she really was.
  And it was comforting, really. To imagine that others had thought and done and been the same. She would know if people understood who she really was that way. If she quoted something important to her and they smiled in that teacher-to-a-child way, she didn't trust them with her secrets. Not her deepest darkest black-as-a-blind-bat secrets. But if they got a spark in their right eye, and nodded, then she knew.  

The "Be Yourself Creek"

This wasn't any old creek. Some might say it was just a drainage ditch, a cast aside spot, forgotten by the rest of society.
But the Ordinary Princess saw something different. To her, it was enchanted. It was fairy touched. Trees dipped their long fingers into the water and stirred up new life, whispering to her. The sun made cut-out shadows from the leaves and blinked through sleepily.
This wasn't any old creek. It was the "Be Yourself Creek." There's not a lot of places in the world today that freely offer themselves. But the "Be Yourself Creek" did. It called to the Ordinary Princess, practically begging her.
"Here," it said, "you may be solemn. Here, you may be winsome. Here, you may be happy, or sad, or angry. Here, you may be yourself."
This wasn't any old creek. The water of that creek had healing power, the Ordinary Princess just knew it. And she danced there. On the rocks, by the plants, through the butter yellow flowers. And nothing stopped to listen. Because nothing cared. Even the Ordinary Princess didn't care. She just was.

3 Simple Rules In Life

3 Simple Rules In Life

1) If you do not go after what you want, you'll never have it.

2) If you do not ask, the answer will always be no.

3) If you do not step forward, you will always be in the same place.

  What inspiring words to live by! And how true. No use moping about. Take that free spirit and unbridled enthusiasm for life and launch into strange adventures. You may fail. You may succeed. But, cliche as it may sound, none of that really matters. Experiences matter. People matter. Trying your best. Honoring your maker.
  Courage is hard to come by. I understand. But would you rather miss out on opportunities and sit at home with cold showers every day or die with honor, glory, and the knowledge that you got somewhere in life?
  Because life is too big, too beautiful, too bursting at the seams to do anything but grasp it and hang on for the ride.

A Simple Prayer of Thanksgiving

Dear God,
Thank you for salty almonds that squeak between teeth when chewed.
And for boys, skin browned and warmed by the sun, eyes a cobalt blue.
That feeling when you get out of the water and the air kisses your skin
Thank you for ice cream that dribbles, melts, hugs onto your sticky chin.
For quiet nights of playing paparazzi for the white light night stars
And for dancing nights and singing nights when you know just who you are.
For friends that love you and hug you and know your strengths
And for people who stretch you silly, but help you reach new lengths.
Thanks for boys who aren't afraid to entwine their fingers in your hand
For being spontaneous, navigating off the map, and being quite unplanned.

Thank You.

Serendipities

"Do you believe in serendipities?" She asked, chewing on her thumbnail.
"Yes," he mused as he ran his hands through her hair, his fingers tugging at stubborn tangled curls. "But only once in a long, long while. Otherwise, I mean, if we had them everyday, how would we know they were something special?"
"Like cookies," she said. "Like cookies every day would get to be a bore."
He laughed. "That would be a good simile, except for the fact that they have cookie diets now where all you eat is cookies."
"Like cake then."
"Like cake."

Concrete Angel

Sometimes she lays down on the black-as-a-cat concrete,
Thighs burning from the heat, fingers tingling, elbows tingling
She lays there because she can.
Because life is too short sometimes to question impulses
Because she wonders if anyone has ever made a concrete angel
Like a snow angel, but only on the hot, hot, concrete.
On the black, black concrete
Too-hot-to-touch concrete
Fry-an-egg-on-it concrete
Coal-black, soul-black concrete.

Cocoon

She was a social butterfly.
But sometimes she felt like retiring into her cocoon, retreating into a world where all is quiet.
Because people can be mean to butterflies. People can rip off their wings.
And their wings are what makes them feel beautiful.
The solution is, of course, to stay away from those wing-ripping people.
But sometimes that's not possible.
So the safest thing for her to do is to retreat into her cocoon.
To become quiet, thoughtful, contemplative.
That side of her is rare. She used to hate that side.
Depressed, she wondered if anyone else noticed her quietness.
If anyone else noticed her wings were gone.
She doesn't mind retreating into her cocoon as much now.
She's realized something.
Her cocoon and her wings are both a part of her.
They're what make her unique, different, special.
They make her ... her.
Different sides, perhaps, but both are still uniquely, undoubtedly, part of the butterfly.

Soul Perfume

  She stares at the dark amber perfume and licks her lips. Big lips. Hide-a-kiss-inside kind of lips. You know the kind.
  She stares and she wonders how it would taste, that syrupy perfume that echoes hints of myrrh and honey. And if she drank it, would it make her soul sweeter? Did they make a perfume for the heart?
  That perfume could cover up body odor, heart sin, putrid thoughts.
  Soul perfume. They could package that. It's a real sellable product. All the hollywood "glitz and glamors" would buy it. Because, as a person, it's not enough to look good, smell good, sparkle on the outside.
  You have to be good on the inside too.

Balloon Prayers

  Sometimes I pray, and my prayer turns into a big bright balloon bumping around in sky, weaving between cumulus clouds. My balloon goes headed to heaven, jostling thousands of other balloons on the way.
  Do you think any of the balloons ever pop, get lost, go wondering to that place of desperation where they end up nestled in caves by the sea?
  Do you think God ever rejects the prayers because the balloon is just too ugly, the string too ragged, the knot lop-sided and tied by kindergarten-clumsy fingers.
  Do you think any of the balloons fall, deflate, flatten, get the wind knocked out of them, breath taken away in gasps, become discouraged, leave their carcasses abandoned along the road somewhere where no-one, not even God, knows there they are?

Balloon Prayers Abandoned.

An Introduction

She writes to fill a spot in her soul. She bakes to soothe her creativity and sweet-tooth. She creates because she is an artist, and an artist does not tell lies, she only reveals them to the world.
She is the ordinary princess, and she is scared to venture into the blogging world. It's a world full of intimidating, well-known, creative people. Will the ordinary princess hold her own?
It'll be an adventure.
And it's worth a try.