There Is Hope :)

Hey kids. S'been a while. :3

About a year and a half ago, I saw Bradley Hathaway at Purple Door 09. Thought he was brilliant, forgot about him. Until about a week ago.

You see, I was feeling kinda lonely and sad and helpless, and I reached out to my friends to cheer me up (they never fail to do so, either lol <3 ). My friend Cindy posted The Hug Poem by Mr. Hathaway on my Facebook wall, and it sorta kinda turned my insides out. In the best way possible. Go listen to it. Right now. It's AMAZING. Oh goodness, I digress. lol :b

Anyways. I listened to that for a week straight, and tonight I decided to listen to more of his works. Best decision ever? I think so. x) I stumbled upon one particular piece that ripped my heart apart..."There Is Hope."

My heart kicked itself into overdrive once the piano started dancing its way out of my speakers and violins started groaning their melencholy cry...and as the words poured fourth into my listening ears, I felt them tug on my heart. It beat faster and faster until...those first tears slipped from my eyes and I realized that...I need some saving. We all dig ourselves deeper and deeper into these repeatative ruts and we just can't seem to find a way out; sometimes we don't want a way out. It's at the bottom of our pit of dispair that we realize that we've royally messed things up, and that we CAN'T do this by ourselves. But you know what?

WE DON'T HAVE TO.

We don't have to take on the burden of fixing our broken hearts single-handedly. We don't have to worry about finding a way to make up for all the times we screwed up big time. We don't have to let our past linger and claw at and plauge our minds anymore. And we don't have to do this by ourselves. Why?

CAUSE IT'S ALREADY BEEN DONE.

It's already been taken care of, kids! WE'RE taken care of! We've already been washed and been made an entirely new person...all because a man, not just any man, THE man, decided that He loved us. He loved us enough to endure the beatings and the floggings and the ridicule and the excruciating pain so that WE have a shot of spending forever with Him. And you know what? We need that kind of love. Cause our world today sure isn't supplying it.

Let me ask you something. When was the last time you felt the kind of self-inflicted distress that only comes when you know that you've let yourself slip...? It eats away at your SOUL, it takes over your LIFE, and it destroys your HEART. It's man-made. It's wordly. It's hell, isn't it? We need someone to get us out of there. We HAVE someone to get us out of there. And you know what?

HE'D DO IT ALL AGAIN.

Cause He loves you. Did you hear me?? HE LOVES YOU. You; the one with the broken soul. You; the one who screws up on a daily basis. You; the one who time and time again denies His name and makes a mockery of it. You; the one He died for.

That's love, folks. That's real love.
And just keep Holding On. Cause There Is Hope. <3


There Is Hope by Bradley Hathaway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbwr-aqtT5g

"There is a heart of such distress that I carry in this chest please reach out and caress in your pillowesque manner.

Front and center right here and right now I'm throwing in the towel I've committed too many fowls I've flown south.

My sprits turning sour I can't go through another hour, me my precious pretty pink petite flower that blooms in the night and leave me in the dark by your moonlight no more fight. I never fought anywhere so I thawed and now I'm here on these knees distraught.

Crying out to you pretty please, pretty please take this disease turning these insides brown my smile turns to frown and my breathe smells like death.

Because I am dead to light and a light is something I don't know that you would have me feel but this is for real and I need you right now, I need you right now.

So seal the deal with your stamp of regeneration and grow me up into a new creation taken from a tree and plucked from a vine, if it's my time to shine then shine your light on me so that everyone hurting can see that there is hope, hope in the seemingly endless valley full of rotten fruit left behind from previous troops that are now in your mountains drinking directly from your fountains, save me a spot I will be there sooner than not, I'm picking up the pace and slowly starting to trot."

 

You're Not Alone

Okay, so. I've decided that i might as well blog about songs that are amazingly inspirational to me and how they relate to my blog topic, because that's basically what my previous blogs have been about. :b Today's winner; You're Not Alone by Saosin. <3

Even though I just discovered this song today, apparently it's been around for quite some time (how it got past me, I'll NEVER know...), and it's unbelievably amazing. I sat on my bed for a solid hour and bawled my eyes out, just listening to it. I wish I had heard this song about a year and a half ago; maybe then I wouldn't be dealing with all this regret that's crowded in my heart or these ugly scars on my wrist. I can't even begin to describe the emotions that flooded through me when I first heard this song. It was like someone whispered to me everything my soul was wanting to hear for the past year and a half...oh goodness, here come the waterworks (sorry)... Wow. I can't remember the last time I cried this much! :b I hate crying, it makes me feel so dumb...but that's just it. I shouldn't be afraid to cry. That's what got me where I was before. Well, THAT and the imbalance of my serotonin levels...

This past weekend, I was at a Bible study at my good friend's house. We watched To Save a Life (I had watched it before), and paused the movie every once in a while to discuss our thoughts about what was going on in the movie. When it came to the part where one of the main characters, Jake, was telling his youth minister his regrets about not being a better friend to Roger, a 17 year old who killed himself in school, we paused the movie and shared our thoughts. I felt a STRONG tug on my  heart to say something, but I shoved it back down, not wanting everyone there to think I was stupid. Almost everyone's general feeling on the topic was that there is no reason that you should ever feel so depressed that you would want to kill yourself; suicide was a sin and was unacceptable, and that things are never really that bad if you have God. I could feel the tears of anger welling up inside of me, but I said nothing. I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. Their lack of knowledge about depression shocked and upset me to the point where I had to excuse myself and broke down in the bathroom. I sat there on that bathroom floor thinking, "I guess I'm going to hell because I wanted to kill myself all those times. I guess I'm going to hell because I was trapped in my own body and wanted to so desperately escape. I guess I'm going to hell because I couldn't just automatically balance my serotonin levels in my brain and "just cheer up." I guess I'm going to hell because I felt that the only way to feel something was to carve up my wrist. I can't go back out there and face everybody knowing that that's how they feel. I just can't!" So I sat on that bathroom floor and sobbed.

Later, when I got home, I didn't know if I was strong enough to make it through the night without "relieving" my pain. I was literally two seconds away from getting up and finding something to do it with, when my friend, the same one whose house I had just come from, messaged me wanting to make sure I was okay. We skyped for a long, long time, just making each other laugh. She saved me from myself that night. God works in mysterious ways, kids.

My depression has been ever so slightly creeping up on me lately, much to my dismay, and I've been trying to ignore it. Didn't quite turn out so well the LAST time I did that. The morning after the Bible study, my mother and I had a long talk about what happened, and she reaffirmed that I WASN'T crazy, and I WASN'T a bad person for thinking and feeling all those things a year and a half ago. I have an AMAZING relationship with God, and I STILL have depression. Even though having that relationship is a solid thing to fall back on, depression a physical thing, not a spiritual thing. I can't just "be happy" any more than a cancer patient can just "stop being sick." I was seriously starting to doubt whether or not I was getting through to people that depression is a disease, not a personality trait. I was ready to give up.

But then today, out of the blue, another one of my good friends sent me the video for You're Not Alone by Saosin, just to let me know that they were thinking about me. And here we are. I've realized that God's obviously trying to get my attention, especially after listening to the lyrics, so I'm thinking that I should just Hold On, because He's not done with me just yet! :] <3

Everyone, seriously...listen to these powerful words;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj0PtMZaWss

That's just like him
To wander off in the evergreen park
Slowly searching
For any sign of the ones he used to love
He says hes got nothing left to live for
(He says hes got nothing left)
And this time I think you'll know

You're not alone
There is more to this I know
You can make it out
You will live to tell

She's just like him
Spoiled rotten, confused by the lies shes been fed
Shes searching for no one (but herself)
Her eyes turn to green and she seems to be happy that she is here
And this time I think you'll know
You're not alone
There is more to this I know
You can make it out
You will live to tell

You're not alone
There is more to this i know
You can make it out

(there is more to this)

We're not alone
There is more to this i know
you can make it out
you will live to tell

(so tell me)

You're not alone
There is more to this i know
You can make it out
You will live to tell

You're not alone
You're not, your not alone