An encouraging and inspiring read...

Turning wounds in to wisdom

http://www.purposefairy.com/67100/how-i-turned-my-wounds-into-wisdom-and-my-difficulties-into-opportunities/

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” 
― Kahlil Gibran

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.” 
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

If one has the answers to all the questions - that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.

Pope Francis

Me too...

I read this and I cried, and so decided to share it with you.

https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/comments/3cghnd/found_this_on_facebook_today_worthwhile_read_i/

Let me play you a song...

I sit and play the piano. I play until I start to get it right. I'm not nearly where I want to be when it comes to decoding those black lines and dots on paper, but I tell myself that there's always someone worse than me, or someone older who is just beginning.

It is at this point that a hard knot forms in my stomach becuase this is when I would call my grandma and ask her if I could play her a song. I would tell her that it needed a lot of work but she would happily listen anyway. I would set the phone upright on the piano and it would be as though she were sitting right there with me, watching my fingers play on the keys, tapping her foot...my human metronome. 

Just as she was in the photograph of her and 11-year old me squeezed together on the piano bench months after my biological dad had suddenly died. Beauty for ashes. Always. I hadn't seen her in years and there I was in her living room playing Nadia's Theme from The Young and the Restless. It felt like I had found home base.

Just as she was in my living room, two babies crawling through our legs as we played one last song together, her fingers trembling from the years of fighting Parkinson's. She looked at me and said with a shaky smile, "I think that's it for me." And we never played together again.

It's nights like tonight that the achey missing settles in...because no matter how fragmented your song is, you still want to bang it out, and even more than that, you want someone else to share all of the broken pieces with.

When we were poor

On the days when we were poor without yet knowing it, the firemen came and released the water from the fire hydrants. Heavy bursts of water cascaded out into the alley and we jumped in and jumped over them for hours. The crabapple trees that grew along the concrete dropped hard, marble-like fruit and we rolled our feet over them until the skin was broken and bruised.

We never saw the firemen themselves. Or at least our eyes never perceived their presence. They opened up the floodgates like benevolent gods bestowing mercy on their beloved. The kids on the other side of town had well-manicured yards and pools, but we had a wonderland of chaos! Kids everywhere, water spewing out, it was pure joy!

Those summer days were hot. Our hair soaked with sweat from playing outside, from running between houses as though it were our mission. We had so much to accomplish! We were so important!

And all of the pain and confusion we experienced behind closed doors seeped out through our pores. Not in words or fears, but through tireless distraction under the heat of a burning sun. We toiled--gathering non-edible red berries in bowls, playing on pavement, bandaging cuts and scrapes. The stolen childhoods were given back for an afternoon and we opened our hands wide and gave thanks.

That is the way I remember the days when we were poor without knowing it...

"It's lovely to know that the world can't interfere with the inside of your head." 

-Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes

Writing As Healing

The ink from this pen draws out the deadly infection that festers in me. As a poultice is placed on a snake bite to draw the venom out of the blood, the pen grabs and pulls out all of the ugly and spills it out on to the blank page. My canvas.
It is my catharsis, my own form of homeopathy. It is amoxicillin for the soul.
When my heart is heavy, my fingers ache to roll a pen between them. Like a sleep-deprived man craves the quiet of night, or a crying child longs for the hushing and cooing of his mother. Like the charcoal that's administered to a patient who has guzzled a bottle of pills, my heart whispers to me that all I need to be well is to write. Words are the agent that purge my soul of impurities.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” 
― Ernest Hemingway

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” 
― Maya Angelou