Nostalgia

Francine Rivers, I Am Not

To break up the insane amount of work I'm doing at home, Mandy and I sat out on the balcony tonight. Blue Moon in hand, she read aloud a story I wrote when I was 15. It was supposed to be a Civil War love story that paralleled the story of Joseph. (I thought this was better reading than from the notebook marked, "Starfleet Academy Cadet Luz") Tears of deep laughter descended upon reading my excellent penmanship and brilliant constructed sentences like,

"And why do you want to go [with me into town]?" "To protect you from prospecting women looking for a handsome war hero."

"It's bumpier than sliding your hide on a cobblestone street!"

A tiny bell clinked as they entered. Mixed smells greeted them. Peppermint, spices, butterscotch, rum, and feed filled their nostrils.

Needless to say, I am quite confident that my calling is not to be a historical fiction novelist.
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Portland Memories

I came across a collage I did during camp a few years ago from our day trip to Portland. I'm perpetually smitten with the northwest. Coffee. Mountains. Rain. Powell's Books. It has it all.

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Fearless

Since I was young, I've kept a journal fairly regularly. I love looking back, remembering, seeing where I've been, how I've changed, and so on. Especially on a yearly basis. For example, last year, I was cutting boxes (something I am terribly grateful not to be doing again!). After reading stories on the balcony, I flipped through my journal from last year and came across some thoughts about someone I was interested in at the time. I don't think he ever knew. A line jumped out from my sobering processing of my heart and emotions, evidencing the Holy Spirit guarding my heart by bringing to mind what was True. "The powers of speculation push only faster into the depths of unrequited love...and threaten to destroy what little communion is there." I look back on that time with a slight sense of pain. It's taken months to move past a habit of allowing weak hope to be built on intuition, then crashing with fierce disappointment. The Lord has brought me to a place where I seek to love fearlessly and truthfully, not timidly, based on my own speculations. And with faith, knowing that I am called foremost to love my community genuinely. Someday I will be unexpectedly surprised by someone seen or yet to be known.

And on that note, I leave you with one of my favorite poems

Perfect love banishes fear (1 John 4:18, NEB)

The risk of love
is that of being unreturned.

For if I love too deep,
too hard, too long
and you love little
or you love
me not at all
then is my treasure given,
gone,
flown away lonely.

But if you give me back
passion for passion,
return my burning,
add your own
dark fire to flame my heart
then is love perfect
hot, round, augmented,
whole, endless, infinite,
and it is fear
that flies.

(--Polishing the Petoskey Stone: Selected Poems , Luci Shaw)