Every Life is Beautiful

Note: The following post is a compilation of three different writings written at three different times. The first is my testimony. The second part was written right after I heard Gianna Jessen's story. The final writing was composed after I saw the movie October Baby. All the writing are related in that they helped me process my journey of healing after surviving six car accidents. The phrase "Every Life is Beautiful" is a theme for the movie.


~I~

Never Leave Nor Forsake

She cringes at the sound of sirens
And at this alarming sound
Her heart
Forgets
To
Beat.

Her heart remembers memories
Shattered glass
Panicked screams
Colors fading to black
Spinning on a carousel
As if it were a mere dream

She lets in the shock
And lets out a sob
Death did not steal her again
It has yet to rob.

She has fallen into the winter cold,
The type of cold that shivers through your soul.
I want to tell the little girl that she was brave
And that she has nothing to fear
That the storm will dim
And the nightmares will be over.
It just might...
Take a few years.

Abba, I'm sorry I didn't see Your light
When all I could see was the dark.
You said You would always protect me.
And I believed You,
But I just
... I just fell apart.

Yet you put me back together.
I feel Your grace in the sounds
Of the wind rustling through the trees
I know there is peace in the storm when
You say,
You will never leave nor forsake me.

~II~

I forgave the one that did not want me.

I recently heard the testimony
Of a woman who survived an saline abortion.
A person who lives to tell the story.
A sister in Christ.

She was supposed to be born dead,
Yet at 7 and a half months,
She was born alive.
The woman who performed the abortion
Signed her birth certificate.

She met her biological mother eventually.
She forgave her.
Forgave the one that did not want her.

There are just some people that you meet
That the word beautiful
Just effortlessly
Comes to your mind when you see them.

Now, I'm not talking about physical beauty,
But, rather,
A beauty that comes deep from within the soul.

I do not know this woman,
But one thing that I know is
She is beautiful.

The way she talks,
The joy that radiates from her eyes,
Her passion for others.
She exudes forgiveness.
Bitterness did not succeed in taking hold of her.
...By the Grace of God.

I want that joy.
I want that hope.
I want that healing.
I want that peace.

Lately, God has been teaching me
That I deserve to live.
This may not makes sense on the surface,
But having survived six car accidents,
I know the belief.
The belief that I should have died.
The belief that resurfaces
Everytime a friend,
An aquaintance
Passes away.

Gianna Jessen was supposed to live
To speak of the miracle that took place in her life.
To have God speak through her and
Spiritually and literally save lives.

So must I live with passion
With joy that is unmistakable.
For life is brief,
A blink of an eye,
Yet I still live.

I shouldn't have died
Because God is not done with me yet.
My time has not come,
But when it does,
I will embrace my Saviour.
My arms are open wide.

"His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot."
-Jeremiah 20:9

~III~

To come to the point where you realize
That everything is related.
You've been stuck for so long
That you never saw that
The key was right in front of you.

Let it go.

Life flashes before your eyes
And it
Keeps on flashing.
The trauma of life being almost taken from you.
And in a way,
You feel like it has been taken from you.

Let it go.

We live the trauma
As though it were the present
Instead of the past.
We fight for truth,
A day when life made more sense.

Let it go.

There is healing in knowing that every life is beautiful.
There is healing in letting go.

God can use anything.
Even a story based on a story
To let you know that you are not alone.
You deserve to give yourself the opportunity
To give it up to Him.

Let it go.

You Deserve

To live.

I've realized that I haven't really been living.
At least,
Not in the way I should be.
My life has been a bit like skipping cd,
Unable to move past a certain lyric,
A certain melody.

Life keeps moving,
But my mind remains on pause.
I'd press the play button
But I'd rather not think about
All of the lost time.

If they told me beforehand
That this process known as healing
Would take as much as it has,
I probably would rather have
Lived in ignorance.

They say that ignorance is bliss,
But perhaps it was the very thing
That kept me from starting this journey,
This journey of moving on.

But God knows how to shed light
On even the darkest of places.
And show me something that is bigger
And that is what His grace is.

His grace gave me life.
I don't need to be stuck.
I don't need to think that
My surviving six car accidents
Was just sheer luck.

I'm a survivor of six car accidents
and consequently a struggler of PTSD.
But I am still a person.
I'm a broken person
That God chose to give life.

There is still blessing in periods of darkness
And there is comfort in knowing that He calms all of my fears.
Even the times when He seems most distant
Can be the times in which
He is most near.

Life is a beautiful thing.
I must choose to live
For it is a gift.

He is making me new.

On Rest and Healing

Sometimes I feel like the player that has been taken out of the game.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing,
But rather,
It is a humbling kind of thing.

Some of us are in the front line of battle
Fighting all for His glory.
Others of us are in a season of waiting,
A time of preparation.

A friend once came to me frustrated.
She wanted to be out doing things for God.
She wanted Him to send her now.
She was tired of hearing Him say, "Wait."

I smiled as I had been in that position before.
I told her to cherish the season of waiting.
Trust that He is preparing her for something greater.
Knee deep in a spiritual battle,
I also admitted that I sometimes wished
That I too were still in the season of waiting.
...But I realized that He had called me to the frontline
For such a time as this.

After going through a period of waiting and preparation
To an intense spiritual battle for a couple years,
I find myself in a new season.
A season of healing,
A season of rest.

There's a part of me that wants to tell God,
"Come on. Send me back in the game.
I want to fight for You."
But He tells me,"Rest, my child.
Let these wounds heal."

I recently asked one of former professors
How I can begin to heal from being exposed to so much spiritual warfare?
Get close to His light.
Soak up His Word.
Let it speak healing into my life.

So here I rest
Waiting for His love to heal the wounded pieces.
Satan my have tried his best to destroy me,
But here I still stand.
Here I am safe
In the arms of my Saviour.

In battle, the god of this world may be strong,
But our God is stronger.
Yes, He is greater.

And I can't wait to go back into battle
To serve my King.

Something that Inspired Me

"If I could give everyone only one piece of advice it would be the following, 'Greet each day by sliding out of bed and hitting your knees. Tell God how much you love Him and thank Him for everything you can think of. Then give Him your day, energy, passion, desire, and needs. Talk to Him throughout your day. Turn off the radio while you drive and picture Him sitting beside you. Tell Him what is on your mind and ask Him advice. Then wait for the answer. He is faithful to always respond...we often simply assume He will not. Finally, treat each day with the desire to make your Heavenly Father smile. I like to close my eyes and picture my actions bringing a smile to His face.'"

--Dr. Jill Jones, Associate Professor of Graduate Education at Liberty University

If I could become half the woman that she was in Christ, I would be happy. This quote that they used after she passed away last year still impacts me greatly.

And I hope it inspires you as well.

Have Mercy on Me

The thing that I love about being a writer and a musician:

Connection.
We may live separate lives,
But in a way we are all connected.
We, all broken people that have wandered astray,
Each have our own stories.
Stories of joy, hope, love, grace, redemption, and light
Along with stories of pain, struggle, sorrow, loss, and darkness.

A couple weeks ago I found myself in Lynchburg, Virginia.
I planned to be there for school, but God always has a bigger message
A bigger plan for the times that I have visited Liberty University.

It was as though God knew that I would need space and time
Away from my normal environments to heal and be encouraged.
As always, God knew the right people to put in my path
For the two weeks that I was there this June.

It was there that, alone in my hotel room,
I first listened to JJ Heller's song,
"Have Mercy on Me."
I wept
...scratch that.
I sobbed as I listened to it over and over again.

A connection.
Someone that understands.

I had read the interview she had about this song prior to listening to it.
Someone had suggested that I listen to the song
Because it was about how the artist struggles with panic attacks.
Something that I have been struggling with greatly
For the past six months.

An artist that I have never met
Took the very same words and questions that I had wrestled with in my heart
And turned it into a beautiful song.
Suddenly, I realized
That I am not alone.
And that this struggle
...will bring me closer to Him.

This is why I am a writer.
This is why I am a musician.
To show others that they are not alone
And that there is a God that loves them
So much.
A God that is with them through every story of joy
and every story filled with sorrow.

Not Anymore

We dance through ashes
We sing through tears
We paint though our trials
We act though our fears

The times when we don't know
Which way is up
And we don't know if we have
Enough to fill this cup.

We continue walking
When we'd rather
Be on our knees.
We continue smiling
When we'd rather
Find a place to weep

The times we say yes
When our heart screams
We can't.
The times we give in
Just one more time
Just
One
More
Time.

We hold our breath
Until our lungs bleed
Until our heart shatters
This wasn't
How hope was meant to be.

I'm a dreamer
That has forgotten how to dream.
I'm a fighter
That let my fears paralyze me.

Jesus, take this cup from me.

Take these pieces
Scattered on the floor
I can't put them back together.
Not on my own
...Not anymore.

So let me dance through these ashes
And give me a voice through the tears
Paint a colorful story through these trials
And help me be me
And fight through these fears.

Father, take this weight from me
That chains me to the floor.
Set me free from this prison.
Give me grace to fly.
I'm not doing this alone.
...Not anymore.

Transitioning

There was another suicide in the village of Hooper Bay today.

I heard it from one of my students from ACC because she was a fellow high school classmate of the girl who commited suicide.
The girl who committed suicide has a baby that hasn't even turned one.

It makes me really sad.

I was telling a friend about the suicide issue in Alaska today.
He responded that he never even knew that stuff like this was happening there.
Most people don't know.
I was thinking today that more people in the lower 48 need to be aware though.

I do know.
And
I think this is the hardest part in transitioning back to Illinois.

The other day I went to an eighteen to twentysomethings group close to the Chicago area.
The first thing that I noticed was the nice cars.
Then the plasma tvs.
Then the people there with their nice clothes.

It was a bit of a shock coming from a rural Alaskan culture.
I used to want to be like that when I walked into settings like that:
Have the fancy cars
The nice clothes.

Not this time.

People in Alaska used to call me urban,
But I can say that there is one area in which I have changed:
I'm not as materialistic.

I'd rather just go into a place and be who I am
Than pursue the newest trends.
Don't get me wrong,
The worship service was definately what I needed.

But I just couldn't get Alaska off my mind.

As I looked at all of the nice/pretty things there,
I couldn't help but imagine how else the money could be spent.
How much more people could be sent to places that are in great need of His light.

I think at the core of it all,
I just need to get used to being back in Illinois.
God can use me here just as much as He can use me in Alaska.