When I was just a little girl, I promised myself that I was going to change the world. Nothing else seemed to be quite enough for me, because I face it everyday. We have settled for safe and lost ourselves along the way.
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Sunday, June 13, 2010 and so, goodbye My life once began, because you came into my life. But now that you've left, there is no more reason to be here. The words I say, and my actions will never bring you back to me. And so, I bid you all farewell. This is the end. I'll never forget our story. And I'll never forget you. Just so you know, I have always loved you, still do, and always will. One day, there was a boy who had no control over his mouth, his hands and his legs. He lived in an orphanage for his parents did not want a doomed child; everybody called him a doomed child. He could not move and he could not talk. He spent his life looking outside his window; the town and the world. He ate watery porridge everyday for almost sixteen years; the orphanage was too poor to give him anything more than watery porridge. On his sixteenth birthday, he received no present. He sat alone in his wheelchair and cried. Unexpectedly, a young girl came to the orphanage while he was crying. She said she want to visit him. Nobody ever visited him as long as he could remember. The girl knocked the door and stepped into his room. She walked slowly into the boy in the wheelchair and gave him cinnamon bread. “I saw you looking at the window almost every day. You always looked very hungry. Today I have extra money from my parents so I buy for you this small bread.” He wanted to say thank you and told her how happy he was but nothing came out from his mouth. The girl was wonderfully beautiful. Her hair was the color of honey. Her eyes were the color of deep blue ocean. Her skin was the color of pale brown maple leaf in late autumn. For him, she was an angel. Since that day, he tried to find the girl in the crowded street outside the window. Until one day he found out that she was working in a flower shop right in front of the orphanage. He would spend all his day looking at her and prayed. He prayed he could be able to talk to her and tell her that she was angel in his life. Finally, on one of the summer night, when he was praying with all his heart, there was a shooting star right above the town. His wish was granted. He could talk, he could sing, he could walk, he could jump, he could hold the handle of the door and open it. He ran down the stairs of the orphanage. He wanted to meet the girl. After he told the girl that he was no longer doomed. The girl asked him to work with her in the flower shop. They worked together in the flower shop every day. They started to fall in love with each other. However, life is like eating in a big dinner table that full with different food; there is delicious food and there is horrible food, the one that you wish you could never taste. There will never be extra food given so once you eat finish the delicious food you need to eat the horrible one- the bitter and poisonous one. He was going to tell the girl how much he loves her. He had bought two balloons and a bouquet of rose. He had made a lovely poem. But his delicious food was over. In the morning the control over his mouth, legs and hands were no longer his. He could not get up from his bed. The girl was worried. In the evening she came to see the boy in the orphanage. She bought the same cinnamon bread that she had given him the first time she met him. She knocked his door and walked to his bed. “Are you okay? I bought cinnamon bread for you. I hope you get better soon. “ The reaction of the boy was unexpected. He slapped the bread out of her hand and shouted at her. He asked her to get out from his room. She cried. She ran out of the room. It was his hand’s fault, it is not his fault. It was his mouth’s fault, it is not his fault. He had no control over his mouth and his hands. No one could ever understand because normal human see their hands, mouth and heart as one. No one could ever understand him simply because he was different. The girl was still coming to work in the flower shop but happiness was no longer her friend. There was only one thing she was looking for in this world. She wanted to see the boy. She wanted him to apologize for what he had done. She wanted him to be the ‘real’ him- the boy who loved her. She waited; she waited for him to tell her how much he loves her. But it never happened for reason known. He would do anything to show her how much he loves her. He wanted to get up and run to her and hug her but he could not; his legs were not his. He wanted to scream ‘I love you’ but he could not; his mouth was not his. He wanted to write a love letter for her but he could not; his hands were not his. One day the girl was tired of waiting. She walked away and never returned ever again. The boy wanted to scream his pain out but he had no control over his mouth. The boy wanted to take a knife and stop his pain but he had no control over his hands. The boy wanted to jump down from his room and stop his agony but he had no control over his legs. He wanted to do something but nothing he could do. When he was in pain and terrible heartache, his hands started to clap and his legs started to make a jumping motion and his smile started to form a blissful smile. He looked as if he was jumping in joy. One of the orphans saw this and called all the orphans in the orphanage. “He is right! There is a time to be happy. Let’s jump and smile together!” So there was a party in the orphanage, the only party in the history of the orphanage. By: Wammy Bammy Affiliates Layout rearrange Header sealedcards Wiki ♥ Youtube ♥ Purevolume ♥ Absolutepunk ♥ World Wildlife Fund ♥ Towriteloveonherarms ♥ To Write Love On Her Arms Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars." I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her. Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her. She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm. The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms. She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her. I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes. Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show. She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies. On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope. Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired. After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff. She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life. As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope." I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly. We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true. We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home. I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember. Please lend them your support at http://www.twloha.com/. |