You should know,

You taught me how to love people.

It's hard to believe really, the way you made Jesus so real to me. I hardly knew you when we first talked about the beauty of our minds.. but seeing you weep because of it told me everything
and I never really let you go. It was a gradual thing, the way you seeped into my heart. Right down to the core of who I was - you saw all of the ugliness inside of me, and you bore every pain with silent listening. I really believed the things we lived for then, in the most pure way that I think I could.. in the most selfless way that I think I ever could.

you showed me how to forget myself.

you challenged my spirit! My settled, sleeping bones weren't satisfied with the ways of the world, all because of the way you let Jesus live inside of you. The way that He touched people through you.. the sweet nostalgia and the painful attempt to get to know my heart,

you told me that everyone wants to be known.

and you knew me because I let you in.. I let you into the brokenness around me when it wasn't even fair. Maybe I let you too close.. but I saw Jesus so close to me in the most real way. I saw Him so early in the morning that the horizon was still pink, I saw Him in the dead of the afternoon in a familiar coffee shop, I saw Him in the middle of the night in a chocolate chip waffle.. You taught me what fellowship meant. It was the painful growing that got me there. You assured me that it was okay to let my mind wander and skitter away, and you never thought that my thoughts were too 'out there'... so for the first time in my life I didn't feel alone.

And then I let you go.

a little at a time, and I saw it draining by..at first the sting was too much to feel, so I just suppressed it all and became so recluse and eventually I choked it all down. I continued to live day by day, week by week, month by month...I see you sometimes and your eyes are like glass. No more late night words. It always hurt me to see you hurting, but I never felt like I deserved to give you anything.. because I always took more than I gave and some nights I couldn't sleep because of it -but other nights I couldn't sleep because of the joy in my heart. I never knew I could be so happy that I physically could not sleep. Someone once told me that you'll always know those people that make such a strong impact in your life that they aren't made to stay in your life..and I always knew you'd leave. Like that night in the car. Like smoke in the trees.
So I just want to say thank you,
you're heart is so big that it breaks for everyone,
your heart is so big that I couldn't help but be changed by you and what is inside of you
I couldn't help but be changed by the Holy Spirit, so please know that Your prayer that you always pray has been answered in more ways than one:
He uses you, He used you in my life and I will always be thankful.
<3

conversation

i'd rather stay quiet and not let it be said, i'd rather let it be floating around me where it's still beautiful and limitless than let it be stale and familiarized. I can't understand the way it feels sometimes, and I know they can't either. Its too painful and exhausting to try and make everyone understand, it just reinforces loneliness. We sit around in circles and begin to talk, we talk about things we want to talk about and things we don't, we talk about adventures of the heart, we talk about sadness and joy and enthusiastic moments, fears and laughter, and when the layers unravel we share memories that have faded and aren't so significant to the outside, but mean so much at the same time. We remember things that no one else can relate to even if they wanted to, but there is comfort in their willingness to listen anyway, to see our painted images the best that they can and to smile at our stories that are absurd but sometimes beautifully simple.

It's a peaceful energy, its selflessness, its love. It connects us to intricate thoughts that we may never remember again, and how funny it is that something in our lives once meant so much and now struggles to be forgotten. There is something mesmerizing about the state of childhood, and everyone loses themselves in trying to get back to that place. The place when you were a child where you first connected the feeling of sadness with something sad, and your emotional maturity was so outside of yourself that it shocked you, because you were able to put something solid with a feeling. What was it that made your eyes stream with innocence and sadness? Its something beautiful and selfless, what was it that made you cry that wasn't about yourself at all but purely out of love for someone else? It is the fall of man that brings loneliness and confusion, an inability to be fully in fellowship with another, an isolation due to the illusions we create, materialistic walls and masks, taught to be composed and rhythmically in tune with the world, and enslavement to our own fears and society boundaries.

But in the brokenness of those moments isn't it so beautiful that we see God is so good, isn't it God that shows me, the desire of man is to be pure in Love, one in Spirit and community, because we weep for others, because we feel that tug on our hearts in the darkness even as children that are alien to such real concepts?! So we spend the rest of our lives in circles with each other, sometimes at functions or events, around bonfires, at park benches or looking up at the stars, we spend our lives searching the depths of each other with an aching to know one another the way that the God of the Universe knows us, and to see into the windows of our souls what little moments broke us and then made us whole again, how significant they really are...

theres something so real about it all that i almost don't want to make it known, just let it float above our heads like the memories we will soon forget, the emotions we are soon to feel, and the interwoven love that we are soon to pass on..

Astaire the Tree

The flowers on Astaire are not really pink at all, they just appear to be pink as the buds are, but the petals are white as milk, only tinted by their tiny centers. Climbing a tree was the best advice I have ever gotten, it was one of those moments that kind of resonate in your mind and seem to make everything flow together. I was told life looks different from up there, and those little pink buds reminded me of that so clearly. Her trunk is twisted and old, the little flowers seemed to snow on the ground as the branches draped over like a mother holding her baby. She cradled me in the crevice of her heart, tangled limbs above me, the dirt below. The saddest admiration I may ever know was the way she still carried empty homes in her hands and her hair, three or more little nests. They were hollow shells of once nestled sticks and feathers, and she held the nests like crusts of the earth, beautiful and forgotten. Astaire, with her milky eyes and steady heart sings a song so pure and lonely that no one can hear but the pink and the wind. But as I sat and remembered, I drank in the pink air and instantly loved her like an old friend. She is the center that I long to come back to, my sweet and divine origin