Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could. -Louise Erdich, The Painted Drum, January 10th, 2006
There is enough wisdom in that quote to make a 10 year old grow a foo man choo!
Tasted as many as you could...wow, so profound.
I've been blessed to taste some really sweet fruit over the years. There has been some fruit that I have reached for with everything within me and yet never grasped it...yet. Some have looked good to the eyes but have soured in the gut. Some have dropped with a gut wrenching thud and left me dizzy with sadness at the loss. I have been gorged and I have suffered deep hunger, its all been a wild ride.
Sometimes I simply find myself overcome with emotion at the intensity in which I have lived life. Tears are given to remind us that we are still alive and I know that I have a lot being kept in a bottle on the other side of eternity.
Some my ask where those tears go when they fall but I know...they are the sea of glass before the throne.
Suffering turned into beauty.
Pain turned to praise.
2 comments:
That is a great post my brother. I have finally risked and found love. I'm as happy as I've ever been. Thank you for being who you are my friend.
Neue
Sea of glass made of tears, what a great thought.
When in church Sunday, inside our bulletin, there was an update on a young woman going to Calcutta for three years to do ministry with abused children. There was a comment that stuck out in the brief I'll pass on.
"Libby's heart for at-risk children will be stretched, broken and renewed as she uses her skills to bring hope."
I think it may take less faith to begin a ministry than it does to believe it is in God's hands and he is responsible for the outcome.
Don't you think?
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