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ssa-sugar-tits · 4 years

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But I Love Her

Request: private message // @sleep-deprived-athlete

could you do an emily prentiss x reader where the reader is dereks niece and he’s super protective even though the readers like former military or something. maybe he’s not sold on the idea of prentiss dating his niece?

Pairing: Emily Prentiss x Fem!Reader

Content warnings: angst, kissing, swearing, arguing, yelling

TW: mentions of gunfire in the military

a/n: fanfiction is for everyone which is why we're saying reader's adopted to avoid giving specific appearances or ethnicities :)

"So then I was thinking of getting the-- Y/N? Are you listening to me?" Penelope snaps her polished fingers in front of your face, taking your focus back to her story. You blink your eyes quickly, shifting back to the real world.

"Yeah you were getting the..." you trail off and sigh. She's right, you hadn't been listening. Daydreaming in anticipation instead. "Sorry Pen, I'm just excited to see the team."

"Right, you're excited to see the team." Her red lips smirk at you, taunting you. Penelope's the only one who knows your secret. Surprising, right? But she keeps it.

"I am!" you exclaim and you're telling the truth. Sort of. You haven't seen your uncle, Derek Morgan, since your discharge from the army and you've missed him. You've been extremely close since you were a child. But you've also missed your girlfriend who he doesn't exactly know about. Emily Prentiss. From the day you met, her raven curls and bright smile enchanted you.

"Y/N, this is SSA Emily Prentiss." Your uncle introduced you.

"Just Emily, please." Her laugh rang like honey through your ears, her hair bounced on her shoulders. The handshake lingered, you swore it did.

She'd joined the team a few months after your last visit and oh, how you liked the new addition.

The spike in your heart rate could get you high when you see the team enter the room. Hotch starts to walk towards his office but he spots you and stays with the team to greet you. There she is. Emily. She's wearing a black top, the color of her pulled back hair. Her lips are painted a rosy pink, matching her flushed cheeks.

"Y/N, I didn't know you were coming to visit," Derek pulls you into a firm hug, squeezing you tightly.

"Well it was a surprise, smartass." You laugh. JJ yanks you into another hug and gives you a friendly kiss on the cheek.

"JJ! You look great. How's Henry?"

"Thank you! He's great, he loves the gifts you sent him."

"I'm glad to hear that," you smile, still longing to go to Emily.

"Aaron, David," you smile and give them each a hug too, asking about Joy and Jack also. You know Spencer doesn't exactly do hugs so you exchange a kind wave and he tells you eagerly about a new book he's reading. Then you arrive to Emily. If you had your way, you'd lunge at her open lips and dance around her tongue with yours. You'd make sure she knew just how much you've missed her. But all you do is give her a quick hug and tell her it's great to see her. The look you share, it sparkles. It aches. Just like it did the first time you she left you.

"I'll be back soon Y/N, I promise." Emily coaxed.

"That's not what I'm afraid of and you know it Em!" you cried. "This job is dangerous, what if-- what if you don't come back?"

"I always come back darling."

"Oh!" Penelope rips you away from your thoughts once again. "Y/N brought lemon squares, I left them in the fridge." Her heels clack against the floor as she scurries over to retrieve them.

"You brought dessert? Sounds like a great way to welcome us back," Derek beams. "There are plates in the break room, Prentiss, show her where." A grin almost stretches across your face when you glance at her.

"Yeah no problem." She responds and you walk in silence, your breaths speaking for you. Yours is light, sweet. Telling her how you've missed her. Hers is ragged, exhausted. Saying she's needed to see you. In the empty room, you turn to her and Emily wastes no time. The lips you've desperately dreamed of every night, engulf yours and mash against you. Hands are in your hair, screaming for you to come closer to her. Your hot breath wets her smeared lips as you pull back for air.

"I want to tell him." You say, wide-eyed. "I'm a grown woman and so are you, my uncle doesn't control our decisions. You're everything to me Emily. I don't want to hide anymore. He'd be happy for us, I'm sure."

The look on her face, the eyes you've spent so long getting to know so intimately tell you she doesn't want to. She isn't ready.

"I don't know Y/N. I work with him, I can't..." She trails off. Her sad brown eyes meet yours. "Morgan is my friend and you know how protective he is."

"Of course I know that Emily! I can handle myself. You aren't the only one who's been shot at in the field." That last sentence makes her wince. Her voice quivers.

"I just don't know how he'd feel about this. About us." Us. The word gives you butterflies. Us.

It wasn't long until you asked Emily on a date. She took you to a carnival, she was so excited. The gleam in her eyes and shine of her laughter pulled you deeper and deeper into your facination with her. Cotton candy scents and pink treats. Flowing hair in the wind on the Ferris Wheel. Powdered sugar on those soft lips. Adorable huffs when she lost a carnival game. The taste of chocolate syrup and strawberries on her when she kissed you for the first time. Each time is like the first time. Every kiss, every touch.

"Okay, we won't tell him." You assure quietly. Your voice falls almost to a whisper. "But you know we'll have to eventually, don't you?"

She doesn't answer, instead flickering her eyes with shame. You tilt her chin to lift her head and gaze into her.

"It's okay love. Not until you're ready." You plant another light kiss on her lips and you grip her hair as she runs you against the wall.

"Emily," you moan. The way your tongue fits perfectly with hers entrances you. So focused on each other that you don't hear what the others are saying.

"How long does it take to grab some plates?" Derek mutters, half-jokingly. It's confirmed in JJ's mind, what she's suspected about you and Emily, when Penelope stammers to your rescue.

"Maybe there aren't any up there, I can go check on them!"

Derek's eyebrows furrow. If there's anyone he knows like the back of his hand, it's Penelope Garcia.

"Babygirl, do you know something I don't?" He questions, suspiciously.

Uh oh.

"I love you! Why would I lie to you?" She exclaims, earning mental facepalms from the rest of the team. Profiling 101. Don't answer a question with an avoiding question. If everyone didn't know before, they definitely do now. Derek doesn't continue the conversation, marching up to where you and Emily are. Penelope debates following but instead buries her head in her hands before hastily sending you a text.

Your phone buzzes but you ignore it, too concentrated on re-learning every crevice of your girlfriend's mouth. Every--

"What the hell is going on?!"

Shit. You rip apart and turn to see your uncle standing there. Shit.

"Morgan, we can explain," Emily starts. You've never seen her vulnerable around any of her team members. She's unbelievably frightened, you're the one thing she can't lose.

"Explain what Prentiss? That you betrayed my trust? That you're putting my niece in danger? I've worked with you for years and called you a friend, how could you take advantage of her like this?"

Emily opens her mouth to speak again and you cut her off.

"Take advantage? Emily hasn't done anything remotely similar to taking advantage of me. I'm sorry that we lied to you, but I'm an adult! My decisions are just that-- mine. Not yours." Maybe you should have stopped. His face is angry, hurt even. He's only acting for your own good but it's not his choice to make. He leaves the room and you frantically look at Emily, who stares agape trying to figure out what to do. Tears well up in your eyes and you chase after him but he's nowhere to be found.

"W-Where's my uncle?"

"He left, sweetie. I'm so sorry, I should have stopped him," Penelope says sympathetically.

"It isn't your fault Penny, I..." you sigh and take Emily's hand, making a beeline for the glass doors. He's getting into his car and you yell.

"Uncle Derek! Please don't go. At least listen to what I have to say." You watch as he looks down to how you grasp each other, afraid of letting the other go. He closes the car door and stares up at you, allowing you to continue.

"I know you have your doubts. About your job, about Emily and how it can put me in danger. But I love her and I want all of her. Not just the good, not just her beautiful laugh illuminated by the carousel lights a-and the sweet sugar covered kisses," your words are breathy and you run your hands through your hair. You aren't only talking to him. "I want the cold nights, telling her to stay safe on a case. I want the relief of knowing she's alive. I want the fights, the fears, the risk. Because there's no doubt in my mind that it's worth it as long as I get to be with Emily. I'll go to the moon and back for her, I'll do anything to have her with me. I know why you aren't sold on this, on... on us. But I promise, I know what I'm doing. She's the one I'm meant to be with."

At the end of your speech, Emily's tears are welling up with wet drops of love.

"I love you too." She whispers, and it feels surreal to you.

The first 'I love you' wasn't in a grand romantic gesture or in each other's arms. It was outside the Quantico building in Virginia. It was today. During the first test of your love and your strength. Your first real comittment to one another.

You turn back to your uncle, searching for any twinge of approval. You don't need it, that's what you tell yourself, but you can't live with yourself if you destroy Emily and Derek's friendship.

"You take good care of my niece, Prentiss." He finally says, extending a hand as a sign of friendship, a sign that this momentary battle is willing to come to an end for the sake of your happiness.

"I will, Morgan." She promises.

And Emily meant that promise, with every last ounce of her being.

#criminal minds #emily prentiss #criminal minds self insert #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x y/n #criminal minds angst #criminal minds fluff #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction #emily prentiss x you #emily prentiss x y/n #emily prentiss x reader #emily prentiss fanfiction #emily prentiss fluff #emily prentiss fanfic #emily prentiss angst #bau x reader #emily prentoss angst

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jamesdazell · 4 years

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My Own Private Life

Through social media we have come to connect with people from far off places that we may have more in connection with than those locally at hand. Ever being able to bring people together who share the same interests. And from one spot on Earth to start businesses and instigate movements.

People like to follow another person's journey on social media. We make our personal journey public and we all become tourists and voyeurs of one another. We become journalists of our own lives. Whatever we do our life must inevitably end in publication. We becomes brands, creating markets of our life. Never boring, never unhappy, never angry, and everything must be praised, everything momentarily interesting as it is passive. It must compell us to pause, like, and sscroll through. We must appear so suitable for social media that we must do what we can to avoid low ilkes and unfollowings. So much that every moment of personal vulnerability must be praised for making it a public thought, which we feel is momentarily off-brand, and risk-taking honesty.

Instagram is a kind of parade of vanity. It's a new kind of e-commerce, as we become billboards advertising a life. Our life now being perpetually a means for the service of public relations. Life's feeling of unevenness, needing consolation and esteem, gained from the validation of others liking and subscribing to their life's publication. We become actors of our own lives, we become politicians on campaign, advertising selling moments as a new kind of materialism, where everything seems on the surface of public appearance, and the subjectivity of personal feelings. Faced with life, in the consideration of our existence, our choices amount to nothing but what we can post next. Like a tradesman who's existence is directed to what they can sell at the market. As such it is befitting for those seeking redemption of character, those who cherish masks, the inauthentic, the superficial, the profit seeking, the immature, the materialistic, the bored, the insecure, and the industrious. It is the mechanics of the same spirit of that exists in the spirit of our economic capitalism. We must throw new products into the market, advertise, grow our market, and accumulate the currency of likes, and when we are special and elected we are honoured with verification. Yet life is elsewhere.

So much of life is removed from what can be posted that I find it too hard to be authentic. I look at my profile and I relate to nothing. Can one or any number of photographs reveal me? Should I be trying to when someone can know me better after spending an hour with me? It has become weird to say in this era, that the experience and activity is simply my life and the people who I share it with. That is enough satisfy me. I don't need to share my life so publically. The activity of my private life is my life. Whatever photos I take mean something to me immeasurable, and I do not gain value by putting them up for public estimation of their value by how many people like them. It demeans everything immediately for me. When I share my work, I want the experience to be “like-it-or-not” and have nothing of “like-counters.” What cognitive dissonance the pressures are brought upon younger people of how a life “ought to be” what we “ought to be doing” worse still “what life might gain likes and followers” such concerns within our existence is a debasement of life itself. Life is not concerned, nor enriched by this.

Social media is less than life, so less that it glamorises things which are unremarkable in life, and manages to do so because the experience of life is stripped from its impression of life. It discards the atmosphere that surrounds us in experiences, it removes the character of life that pervades experiences, the inevitable and typical characteristics of life, shaved off in favour of a decorative-life, all the tremors of life consoled by beautiful images. Instagram is fundamentally Romantic, as Twitter is Existential. Two dispositions defined by their underlying pessimism, anxiety, and despair at the world, which must be continously indulged and consoled.

I like a very personal relationship to my life, and I tihnk writing is all about indulging in that. I think great writing is felt as if its so personal you don't really intend to show it to anybody, and until its done you can't even talk about it. Really deeply feeling that you're in that place you're in personally and can't be brought out of it, that life just comes as it is. You can't manipulate it with photographs and console for it with likes. The richness of experiencing life isn't the hedonistic emancipation but getting past the anxiety and despair at existence by indulging into the very things constitutes life. The existentialist sees it very clearly but dislikes it because they don't have the capacity for it. Social media serves this condition by consoling and escaping this perception never allowing one to indulge in it she accepts of it into the complete character of life. Therefore it denies a higher gratitude. The motivations of life are debased compared to life without it. The motivations become merely economical. Every event of life becoming a moment for public promotion. But some things in life are supposed to be private and some things are meant to be temporary and transitory like breath into the air.

The grief in my life comes from the internet, and other media. Things that are frustrating online are not frustrating in person. My actual personal experience in lfie is far better. Strangers treat me better in real life than online, and my presence in real space has more influence in person than online. Our feelings are related to our physical space not the space we artificially appear online. The perspectives we share are a debasement of perspective from the real world. But social media is an existentialism. It is an overly personal view of reality, distorted and manipulated. It offers us an alternative to life, not something more but something less than life. The Internet is a shallow and immature version of a real experience.

I don't post often on social media because I like to cherish my own private moment. Not to sell it. To admit that what happened to me only happened to me. To retain an exclusivity of my life, to own my life, not anonymity for lack of its public exposure. To feel that sense of existence, the rawness of it being just me and my life. Life is messy, sometimes boring, sometimes scary things confront us, and no matter how well we plan, we stare into uncertainty. Whilst each day we haved lived not the same, but through each grown older. Everything that might cause people dread, anxiety, suffering, crisis, is the rawness of life coming into recognition, and it's important to stand in life and recall what it feels like to be alive, the coexisting sweet and sour, danger and joy, and not console for it with pretty posts, or avert it with substances. The task in life is to scale up to that rawness, which is the plurality of life;s circumstances, responsibilities, typical and inevitable events, the social constitution, everything that makes up life. I have choices to make, responsibilities to accept or discard, my health, my dependencies, my past choices and future to consider. I am not what I look like, and life is more than what I look out to. My social presence is being with others, not posting selfies. The experience of activity defines the event, not the photo opportunity of proof that I was there in it. To be where I am without feeling a need to connect it to a public broadcast but to enjoy it for my own pleasure of experiencing it. To feel dread, worry, concern, peace, joy, anxiety, with myself. To accept life for what it is in its fullness and not reduce it to a cropped impression. On social media existence has no context, there is no feeling of life to its pictures, it is an abstracted identity, discontinuous from the atmosphere and forces of life that make up a moment. It rather consoles for life, than amounts to it, by isolating a moment in life from a particular angle. Whenever I post anything on Instagram or Twitter, there's suddenly an emptiness to it. Sharing it with everyone and no one, therefore it doesn’t contribute to nor develop friendship directly, and raises a conversation no one entered, but is the performance of an indirect relationship with no intimacy. Its richness was in that I valued it, and I deprived it of that by putting it up for public auction.

Twitter presents a realm of anxiety. It is an absurdity to consider a moment of life through the spirit of another's opinion as though their thought ought to be your own. I think it’s a debasement to attack one's own perspective by means of bombarding one's mind perpetually with the views of others. We work out a perspective not always because it is true but because it is empowering. There is also a need to be wrong, to think however we will, for a time. The world must carry our own definition as we proceed through it. Our perspective must befit our character, objectives, and our own personal development. It is unnatural to try to refine it into an homogeneous direction. An active thought is a direction of thought not à finality of thought. The only final thought is one we no longer think. Our thoughts are like leaves on a tree that appear and fall away. We only have the wisdom we are strong enough to accept. To live in another’s opinon is as if to depart from yourself and live another life. Own the consequence of your own opinion. No opinion is final but is a door to a door to a door. For a time you needed to see the world like this and then this and now this, resting at no convictions. We are all developing a maturity at our own pace, and cannot swashbuckle our thoughts to attain it. Your own opinion delivers you onwards and is obstructed by the public hostility of another's personal conviction, each demanding another see the world through their own thoughts. I like being alone and I like being with people, but I'm not much for this weird artificial life. I'm a writer but without interest in becoming a journalist of my own life, nor posting photos as a tourist of my days, nor consoling for my personal existence by turning in to a public magazine. The rawness of life is missing from our culture and without it there cannot be good writers, as that is their territory. Nor the richness of life that artists assist us with living in affirmation of such a rawness. Until we enjoy the boundless plurality of life's forces at play when we are present in life and come once again into recognition of the rawness of our mortal existence.

We've created a culture of billboards, parable bumper sticker wisdom, game show success, that's mixes all too much with the great unwashed, narrated by the journalists we've become of our own lives. Hopefully this shallow, immature, information lead, on demand, game show success culture, will be overtaken by a culture that wants real experiences, the exclusivity of living in the moment, appreciates the effort to get to maturity and make real intimate bonds with people, and wants to contribute to a field and its history rather than become famous by turning their life into lifestyle advert.

2020.

#social media #facebook #twitter #instagram #youtube #socialmedia #google #googlesearch #seo #anxiety #freedom #despair #corruption #anxious #romantic #romanticism

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riversnthedesert-blog · 4 years

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Some Real Talk on Hollywood and the Deep Things in Life

Well, I was originally going to slide this in as a Facebook post, but I had this sudden idea to just make it a blog post. The first of many, let’s hope! There have been so many times where I have started to comment/make a post, etc., and then I began writing a novel. But, it’s called Face “book,” so you think it’d be ok, right? Listen, I have thoughts. Don’t you? One thought here, another there, and then my mind be like, “OH! Forgot about that...and YEAH! That, too!”…and a lot of the time it’s easier to just write and get my thoughts out that way rather than speaking it. It’s a relief, man! Write ya mind. It would suffice to say there’s a lot that goes on up there. Better log it quick because as soon as I have something important...here cometh something else. Ah, feelings, the mind, expressions, inner things, brain files....

So, now that you, reader, have become acquainted with my thought processes, because you desperately needed to know...let’s get to the content.

You guys pray for Hollywood. There are some really creepy things going on behind the scenes….and creepy is an understatement, as I’d do well to keep it kosher in my description. Many things would shock you. But if one isn’t awake so to speak…or one isn’t open to hear in full, there’s confusion. If I could compare it to a puzzle: it’s like there’s all these pieces to a big puzzle. And until someone is ready to sit down and actually put it together, it’s just all these random pieces everywhere...and it’s messy and annoying. You must be willing to sit, observe the pieces, and study them because by themselves they don’t fit anywhere. And since you don’t know what to do with it, it just sits there, and never gets connected; the bigger picture never gets seen. This all might seem confusing, because you haven’t yet sat down to solve the puzzle. Let’s me just say...I don’t have 100% of the puzzle solved, but there are certain things that have been brought to light. But if we go back to the puzzle analogy, if you put together enough pieces of a particular part of the puzzle,you may not see all the details, but you see enough to maybe see, “Oh this is puzzle has a cat in it.” In the case for Hollywood, you might get to a place where you’ll say, “Oh, this puzzle has a rat.” It may seem like I am just finding something to poke at or what have you, but listen:

The Bible says, “be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)” and in Ephesians 5:8-13, it says, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible--and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”

The Bible in different places talk about knowing wisdom (of God), being discerning, and having knowledge. Jesus said in Matthew 10:16, “Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves, therefore be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.”

With that in mind, it’s important to note that we shouldn’t be unaware of the devil’s schemes. We should know our enemy’s tactics in order to guard against it. So when we see the deception, the lies, the fake news, the idolatry, the game of distraction, and materialism and fame, the plan of the enemy to sway hearts deceitfully and subtly for his kingdom, we are prepared and not caught off guard.

[Later, hopefully, I will try to discuss this more in depth at as it relates to the Antichrist agenda that is at work in the world by globalist leaders.]

Getting to the point here:

Pray for your favorite celebrities. God has an army, but so does the devil. God wants to recruit, but so does the the devil. One is Light, one masquerades as light, but is actually darkness. One is good, one appears good. One is true, one is the counterfeit.

Please hear me. The world’s biggest influencers are definitely a target of Satan because they have the platform to be able to change an entire culture. How does this happen? MUSIC, ART…things that grip the HEART. Things that speak to the deepest places in people, the places of pain, emptiness, woes of many kinds. Why is this such a soft spot for the human race? Why are most songs about love and pain? I mean, why is music the language that everyone understands? We’re about to get into that.

[Disclaimer: I don’t know everything, and I don’t claim to. But with evidence from the Bible (God’s word), and when hings that were once just an idea or only talked about begin blatantly flaunting themselves in plain sight, you tend to not just tuck it away hoping that what you saw wasn’t real. With that being said, here we go.]

It’s not hard to find the answer if you really wanna know (read Matthew 7:7). Our inmost being cries out for LOVE. But, hey man, why does love in this world seem to suck a lot of the time? Could it be that we’re going about it all wrong? Could it be that we’re hitting something, but haven’t quite dug it all up to actually see what it is? Love is real, ok. Love is DEEP and beautiful and poetic and all those things, but love is meant to be JOYFUL, though. Does this world see much real, raw, joyful love? Romanticism? Yes. Infatuation? You bet. Any idea how to sustain a marriage? Look at the divorce rate. What is that all about, my friends? Does anyone know what love is anymore? There are SONGS about this. People want to know, though. Their souls try out to know...WHAT THE HECK IS THIS LOVE THING THAT TAKES ME OVER AND THEN LEAVES ME BROKEN AND WASHED UP ON THE SHORE TO SHRIVEL UP AND DIE?Okay, we’re getting somewhere, but in order to go any further, we must admit: Something is wrong, perverted, amiss, broken, disturbed, frustrated...yet, we gotta have it in order to LIVE. This is crazy revelation, right? Fasten your seat belts, people, and as Samuel L. Jackson said in Jurassic Park, “Hold on to your butts!”

So we have just come to the point of realization that someone is doing something wrong. Right? *heh*

First step. Admitting something is wrong.

But chin up fam, there’s no shame. Because the world’s just trying to do the best they can with what they’ve got. It’s like survival mode. And you know animals when they try to find their food to survive...they kill, they go crazy to get their essentials. Dog eat dog world, am I right? The CARNAL mind. Did you know humans have carnal minds, too? Yeah, it’s a thing. The carnal mind deals with the flesh (aka: how we compensate without God. Doing life without Him...either on purpose or ignorantly. Survival mode, because if I don’t fend for myself, I’m at risk of dying. Fear mode. The twisted mentality that my desire (the heart) has to be met before I am fully satisfied.

And the Bible says, “Those who are in [operating out of] the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:8)

K. Well, wait a minute, that sounds rather harsh.

Hold on, though because I’m going to explain and bring more clarity.

What is the opposite of the flesh? You might argue, “So if the flesh is all we know...what the heck, man! Like, I have desires, don’t you? I gotta give up my happiness and all that brings me joy?”

No bruh, not exactly. See, if someone is living in the flesh, they are living in an illusion. The illusion that if they “meet their desires themselves [based on their limited power and understanding as a human being of what it is they want/need]. Living based on the flesh will keep someone in a hopeless cycle of temporary fulfillment which will lead, eventually, to a state of deprivation, disappointment, and (un)fulfillment because they are depriving themselves of the SOURCE of their life.

What’s the source, you ask? Who made you and knows what you truly desire and need; what’s at core of your heart. Who knows how it operates? Who saw your unformed body? (Please friends, I’m begging you to read Psalm 139)

Does God just want take away our desires to rob us of delight and a fun, abundant life, just because? Does He want to see us thrive?

Men, women, young and old, children of all ages. I’d like to introduce you to my Father in Heaven who is a God of GOODNESS. He is Spirit. And the nature of his Spirit are aaalll of these

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

God is good. Anything not good is contrary to His nature.

Sin = not good. What is sin? Woah! Another post, for another time.

I have suffieciently dove into the deep end. There are rabbits hopping everywhere because my mind has gone down so many trails to explain this all to you. There’s more.

*Self notes: post to be made on flesh desires and God desires.

[Or read Romans 8]

Wrapping up our discussion with some further thoughts:

If the world doesn’t know the power and love of Jesus, they’re just trying to figure it out and compensate. We did something important earlier. We recognized we have been going about love all wrong. God wants to show us how to do it right, but He won’t force us. Instead, He lovingly leads, allows His children to live out the love they have received through Him. “We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19-21)” HA! Let me say it again. Love is not to be forced. Not saying that there isn’t sacrifice involved in love because there is, but when it’s properly received and you do it the right way, it looks like Jesus on the Cross.

Gotta go to the Book with this. 1 Corinthians 13. Love.

*All kinds of things are stirring up in me because I know some are going to say to themselves, “well dats the Bible, that ain’t no solid truth. How can you say that’s truth, made made it!” I will explain to all my atheists friends out there one day, but not now because I literally will start writing a novel right here and now. Help, me, Lord. And like a faithful friend, He will.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (That’s 1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

So if that’s all the characteristics of love, we can say that those are the characteristics of God, too, because 1 John 4:8 says, “God is love.”

If we are imperfect people, we love imperfectly. But wait just a second here because in 1 John 4, if we read the whole thing, it says

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

So if one isn’t a believer in Jesus, like hasn’t received Him as Lord and Savior, then it would be true also to say that they don’t know Love if they don’t know God.

When someone doesn’t know God, because we were made in His image and His likeness (Genesis 1:27, Gen. 9:6), we still have attributes and qualities of God. The Bible also says, “eternity was placed in the human heart, (Ecclesiastes 3:11), people can be without God but still be operating out of the qualities and attributes they were made with. I’m sure God did that intentionally to help us find our way back to “truth north” in the event that we should become lost. What I am saying friends is that people who reject Jesus at this point, choose Atheism, paganism, Gnosticism, and other forms of religion, they still have that eternity void that needs to be filled. And some further discussion on the void of eternity:

Think of eternity as an umbrella…and under the umbrella, there’s

LOVE

MEANING

PURPOSE

TRUTH

If all of these are within the concept of eternity, then all of us have the bent within us to go after them. It’s in us to find these things…because we are trying to get back to our “true north.”

But wait! Because if “true north” is God. How do we know which avenue to God is the right one?

“Oh, boy. You’ve done it now, Lex.”

[to be continued...]

#jesus #hollywood #satanic agenda #truth #darkness #light #awakening #bible #scripture #love #wisdom #peace #world peace #heaven

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mylittlepeeper · 5 years

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Gus and his dog Taz

Gus convinced his father and me to bring Taz into our home in the winter of 2008. Gus had met Taz at his friend Matt’s mother’s doggy daycare. Gus loved animals and had started to go with Matt after school and on the weekends sometimes when Matt went to his mom’s shop. She groomed dogs and also took care of them in a little storefront in Oceanside New York. Taz was one of six puppies who had been shipped in to the shop around holiday time, I guess to be sold as Christmas presents.

Taz had taken a liking to Gus. And Gus had fallen for Taz. Gus told me that whenever he came into the shop Taz would bark and run to him so he knew Taz really knew who he was and liked him. He convinced his father first to allow him to have Taz. I never understood how that had happened. We had always been “cat” people, and our landlord definitely did not want pets.

My concern about getting a dog, and I said this to Gus and his father and Oskar, was that a dog cared much more about having its family around than a cat did and you couldn’t just leave it alone all day. I said it was not fair to the animal so that there needed to be someone who was around most of the time. Because his father could be around for some of the hours in the day time while the rest of us were at school, he agreed to do that and also to walk Taz. I was impressed by this offer.

And so Taz came into our family in February 2009. He was terrified of the world and shook like a leaf when we brought him home. It turned out that he had sensory deprivation (according to our vet)—likely from his puppyhood days at what we learned was a puppy mill in Missouri. After a while he got used to the world, and going outside, and he became even more attached to Gus. And Gus loved him.

When Oskar, Gus and I moved into our new apartment, we had a little more space for Taz to move around in. Now we had a very small but fenced in backyard. It was a nice place for us to hang out in and for Gus to teach Taz about sticks and playing fetch. Gus showed me videos he had made of himself tossing sticks for Taz who had learned to “fetch” them.

Taz began to really take care of Gus in our second year in that new place. That was Gus‘s senior year of high school. By the end of October of that year (2013), Gus had decided he could no longer stomach entering Long Beach high school. He could not go in that building. He was literally throwing up in the mornings and simply could no longer enter Long Beach High School. So Gus stayed home.

He was able to complete his high school requirements by meeting two of his teachers at the public library after school and by emailing them his assignments. Because of that, he pretty much stayed home all day. And when he was home all day, his human friends were at school. His brother was at college in Pennsylvania, and I was at work myself.

Gus was therefore alone at home for most of the day, and the only friend he had during the school day was Taz. It was Taz who kept Gus company and gave him unconditional love and attention during what must’ve been one of the most difficult years of Gus’s life. Many of Gus’s friends “fell away” as their parents told them they were not to come over to our house. Gus was shunned by people who had once liked him. He had a solid and significant core of friends who stuck by him, but he felt the shame and sorrow of rejection in so many ways.

Taz did not leave Gus‘s side. He loved Gus, and Gus loved him. They slept together, snuggled together, chilled together, and hung out in the back “yard” together.

It is easy to see how much Taz meant to Gus and how much Gus enjoyed his company by looking at the multitude of photographs and short little videos that Gus took of Taz. When I opened up Gus‘s laptop (which had backed up his phone at some point), I saw hundreds of little videos and photographs of Taz.

Gus simply adored Taz. He observed him, noticing his quirks, interests, and preferences. Taz, in turn, loved hanging out with Gus. Even though Taz had, and still has, a reputation for being a very barky little dog and even chasing and nipping at some of Gus’s visitors and friends, he loved hanging out with Gus and his friends. There was often pizza, with crusts to beg for, and leftover Burger King French fries to scrounge.

Gus made a little video of Taz while he explained how Taz always begs for dinner at the same time every day—4:00 pm. But, Gus explained, daylight savings time had just begun, so now it was 3:00 pm when Taz began to beg. Gus called Taz “a genius” for that.

I will always remember one morning when I was taking Taz for his morning walk. Just as Taz and I had begun our walk, a dog who lived across the street, and who also loved Taz, got out of her back yard and ran into the street to see him. She was struck by a car and at that moment I screamed. Amazingly, she was not hurt. After the car pulled over, she ran back into her yard. A couple of neighbors ran out and I brought Taz across the street while I knocked on the door to make sure that this dog was OK and to let her owners know what it happened.

My knees were weak but I finished walking Taz and then came back into the house. Usually Gus was asleep at this time. This morning I walked in to find him standing in his boxers and T-shirt in the doorway with a terrified expression on his face. He had heard me scream apparently and he had thought that it was Taz who had been hit. When we walked in the door he fell down on his knees and wept. He wept with relief, letting his fears flow out. The thought of losing Taz had clearly terrified Gus. He loved that dog more than life itself.

The day after Gus had dyed his hair bright pink for his first public performance with Schemaposse in Tucson, Feb. 2016, he sent me a short seven second video of himself lying on my bed next to Taz—who was on his back with his paws drawn up—clearly in “tummy rub” position. It came at the end of the school day, and it made me chuckle to see it. It was a signal to me that he was happy, enjoying chilling at the house with his pink hair, and his little dog.

Taz is in several of Gus’s videos. Gus put him in his Instagram post when the Awful Things video was released. You can see it on Gus’s Instagram page, dated August, 2017.

Every time Gus came home from California or wherever he was traveling from, as soon as we pulled into the driveway, he would unbuckle his seatbelt and run out of the car to get in the house as fast as he could to see his dog. I always ran after him because I wanted to see the moment Taz first set eyes on Gus. It was such a wonderful moment when that happened--each time. Taz would jump and wiggle with joy, and Gus nearly did the same. They really were soulmates.

In the last post Gus made about Taz, when I had sent Gus a photo of a very long-haired Taz (who was about to go to the groomer—one week before we went up to Cambridge to see him perform there on October 27, 2017), he said simply: “This is my dog Taz. He is a legend.”

Taz was an integral part of Gus’s life, someone who made him know he was loved—unconditionally.

#gustav ahr #lil peep #crybaby #gbc #goth boi clique #hellboy #archives

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rheaitis · 5 years

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DVD commentary for matrvat?

The thing to know going into this story is that @parlegee is the absolute greatest for giving me open-ended prompts because I feel lost when there’s no prompt and sometimes constrained if it’s too specific, and there’s zero chance i’d have come up with this story in either case. Now, onwards.

---

Who is an opinionated teenager who can’t really allow adults their weaknesses? Krishna is!

“I thought he was a great king,” Krishna says disconsolately one morning as the sun drenches golden every wall of Rohini’s favourite room in Vasudev’s palace. The garden outside is fragrant with a dozen bushes of champaka flowers reaching for the light, and resounding with the laughing voices of Vrishni children and youths.

On such a day in Gokul, in Vrindavan, Krishna would be dancing through fields at the head of the pack, creating mischief and music in equal part. He used to come home along moonlit paths and worry Yashoda, whose heart was more tender than Rohini’s hard-shelled own.

In the ordered gardens of Mathura he skulks into the council-chambers of kings and nobles who have survived Kamsa’s scourge, and sulks in Rohini’s chambers.

If Krishna was even 10% less sunny than he is, he’d be in screaming fits the whole time. Rohini doesn’t really know it yet, but she’s aware of the general shape of it.

Rohini, who has missed Mathura’s high towers for longer than he has been alive, understands his longing only too well. Among the laughing children in the garden are the sons and daughters of women she befriended as a young bride, children who have never known her, who regard her sons with awed suspicion.

“King Ugrasena,” she asks now, careful to keep weariness from her voice. “He was, years ago when we were young and he was in his prime. But he had a grown son who kept him imprisoned, and deprived him of the joys of consorting with his grandchildren.”

He’s aware of the more visible wounds on the others, but he’s still. He’s sixteen; he’s a kid; and he hasn’t really learnt to accept that a lot of people just are weak.

“I meant my pitamaha King Shurasena,” Krishna says, and urgently adds, “I would not trivialise my matamaha’s suffering, or that of my parents, nor their resilience.”

I’m very proud of this association, ngl.

“No,” Rohini assures him. “I misspoke. You have been kind to them as to a day-old calf.”

That is praise he understands, and Krishna’s face blooms with joy. Her wild, wicked youngest. Her poor boy, whom they have transplanted into such strange soil.

“Will you say of pitamaha too, that he has suffered much, and is an aged man to whom I ought be kinder?”

He says it as though he knows the answer already, and comes quietly to sit at Rohini’s feet when she beckons him. If it is all so unfamiliar now to her, the floors of white stone, the fittings of brass, the plenitude of silver and gold, how much stranger must it be to him?

This is all canonical, btw, and I totally did a quick skim of Harivamsham for this fic, which may have been a bad idea, but anyway.

“We heard his praises, when I was a child,” she begins. “That he had been a great warrior in his youth, and was favoured by the gods. And it is true that he has had his own sorrows, with his queen dead from grief for your father, and with his eldest daughter sent to fill the nursery of a friend. Then too, without his son at home he gave your aunts in marriage to kingdoms that have not prized them as they ought be, and it is a great burden to any parent to know their children unhappy without hope of rescue or redressal.”

“However?” Krishna puts in, and grins wide and wicked. If she hadn’t known him since Yashoda brought him to her house to play with Balabhadra, she would think him sincere.

This is still going to take a very different strength.

Well, he has been battling monsters since he was a suckling babe.

“When I was a handful of months older than your brother is now, and there was first talk of me wedding your father, my uncle spoke to me of the household I was to enter. Your pitamaha is an amiable man, you’ve seen this already. He is chief among the Vrishni, who are not the most peaceful of the Yadavas. You are too clever, surely, to not know how a man of sweet temper might become chief of such rowdy princes?”

“He was the man all could agree upon,” Krishna says on a sigh, and she rewards him with a hand smoothing over his hair. He wears it still in a mass of curls barely restrained by a fillet, but it is of bronze silk now, and not the undyed ribbons he had used to steal from unwary girls. Good, he's learning; to take aught from a Vrishni girl unawares rarely bodes well.

The Vrishni and larger Yadava politics are fascinating, and also this is bb!Krishna’s first lesson in politics and manipulation.

“He was given to pleasing men and creating compromises that nobody else could. It is a necessary skill, and your father had it also. Perchance he still does.”

“Do you doubt it?”

IDK about Rohini’s mother, but mine firmly believes everyone has a quota in everything. Also I wanted to introduce her longing for her own parents early on, both for the parallel to Krishna’s longing for his childhood and also to balance out the payoff at the end of the story.

“My mother used to say when I had climbed too high in a tree or gorged myself on mangoes in summer heat, that we have a share in the world’s joys and might spend it too soon and find ourselves in sorrow’s shadow.” It is strange now to think of herself as a child, when her mother’s hair has turned grey, silver, white with age and yearning in distant Bahlika without Rohini around to care for her, when she had been given in marriage to Shurasena’s son because the Vrishni let their wives travel often and her mother could not bear to part from her for long. In the first five years of her marriage she had visited often, rarely in the seven unhappy years that followed, and never in the seventeen that have since lapsed.

“You’ve said it to us often enough,” Krishna points out, and when Rohini looks down she finds that he has turned his head under her hand and is fixing her with a stern eye. “Do you think it is the same for a skill?”

... not that Krishna is ever going to hit hard limits on his own capacity for anything, be it love or war or politics but the rest of us aren’t a shard/iteration of the God who Keeps.

“They tell me skill in war increases with every battle. I know little of war, and even your father never won Devaki with his own prowess. But a singer can sing herself hoarse, and a callous herder milk a cow dry. Your father kept himself alive while helpless, and kept your mother alive while she posed a great threat to your uncle, and he kept them together when solitude would have driven them wild.”

“You think him brave!”

And again, [wonder woman baby.gif] Krishna is going to become someone who understands bravery beyond the physical wonderfully well, and his Mom’s here to guide his first steps down that path.

He is so young, Krishna, for all his valour and all his wit. So young, even though it seems most days that he knows all the things there are to know, that they are alive only by his grace. But he is sixteen, scarcely, and she is near fifty years of age. He has hardly seen anything of the world.

“I think him clever,” Rohini says. “Valiant, too, but not in the way of warriors who gain great renown in battle. He crossed the Yamuna in full flood for you, dearest, and then returned to Kamsa’s prison where he saw every day for sixteen years the spot where six of his sons had had the life smeared from them.”

This is Krishna & Yudhishtira’s one great similarity, in my head: the wish for more brothers to hide behind. They deal with it differently, but it’s there for both.

“I might have had brothers,” he says, and flashes her an apologetic smile. “I know I have one, but even that knowledge is new to me. I never thought I could love him more dearly than I did all my life, but in this I am happy to be proven wrong. But I might have had more.”

All these lives gone to suit a fearful man’s cruel paranoia.

“Kirttimat would have been twenty-five,” Rohini says, more to herself than him. “We would have been hunting out a bride for him. Then Sushena and Udayin and Bhadrasena, what strength they would have lent us in council, perhaps in war if they more closely resembled your matamaha than your father. Rijudasa and Bhadradeha would have still been in the care of their preceptor, and Balarama preparing to take Rijudasa’s place. And then you, youngest and most indulged.”

... let’s not think about the knives in Yashoda’s heart right now.

“Aren’t I so still?” Krishna laughs, and she thinks that this would not fool anyone who knows it well, that it would knife through Yashoda’s tender heart were she to hear it.

Vrishnis gossip. It’s what they do.

“You are the jewel of Mathura, best-beloved of an entire city,” she assures him. If there are rumours, they will be quieted soon. Of course there are rumours. Rohini has not lived in the city in years, but she knows still too well how the bees buzz in their hives, how gossip sings through the streets on the fleet wings of the mynah.

“You might have had more sons as well,” Krishna says, as though he likes the thought of being rendered insignificant by a horde of elder siblings, of being safely the infant of the family instead of the lauded hero who has battled demons and killed grown men.

Look, I never said I was a nice person.

“I would have liked a daughter,” she tells him, trading truth for truth. In Vraj she had looked at lissome young Radha and thought, if only Vasudeva had given me a child the year we were first wed. She had delighted in Radha’s friendship with Krishna, her amused tolerance of the boy following her around and sharing her chores: rare forbearance from a woman fifteen years his senior but oh, understandable.

He got away with so so much. In the song listing out Krishna’s hundred and eight names it says, “Ayaan Ghosh dubbed him Rage Douser.” Ayaan Ghosh is Radha’s husband and Krishna’s uncle, and knows about their affair, fwiw.

How could anyone resist Krishna’s laughter and his tricks and his charm? Yashoda and Nanda had never disciplined him; Rohini herself, who could rain recriminations upon stolid Balarama while the sun ran from morning to noon, faltered before she could devise a punishment for Krishna.

“You might still,” Krishna offers. “I should like a sister.”

Older people falling in love again is My Fave. Look, I read R/S fic at a formative age.

“If the gods will it,” she says repressively, as much to ward off her own blushes as his impudence. She has missed love, and Vasudeva’s arms around her are still the best home she has had, even though they are grey, even though imprisonment has sapped his vitality.

Ohohoho, just you wait, Rohini, he’s going to find every use possible for it and then some.

“You missed him, all these years,” Krishna says, because he has always been far too perceptive. When he was a child he had mostly used the knowledge to ferret out butter and ghee that had been stored out of sight; what uses he will find for it in a squabbling nest of nobles hardly bears thinking of.

“I’ve known Vasudeva since I was a girl climbing into womanhood and he was a boy proud of his first beard who could persuade a roaring council-hall into acquiescence. We were wed for years before Sini won him your mother’s hand,” she tells him. “Of course I did. But I had Balabhadra, and I had a share in you, and I had my duty before me.”

“Duty,” Krishna says, desolate again, and younger in his silk and gold than she’s ever seen him in torn cotton and mud. “And now I must do mine, when so many have given their lives for mine.”

“So many have had their lives won by you,” Rohini corrects, and stoops to press a kiss into his curls.

Dearest and loveliest of boys.

He smiles up at her as she straightens, but it is still a wan little thing and melts her heart as none of his sulking ever has.

“Come,” she says, “you have months yet till you must go to your preceptor. It does you no good to intrude on your elders' councils.”

“What would you bid me do instead? I can hardly herd cattle in this fine city, and there seem no demons about for me to defeat.” He looks so quietly unhappy, her heroic son, her child who has lost the mother who raised him and cannot yet love the woman who bore him.

“You might have had more brothers if the gods had not wished them away,” she says instead of offering platitudes he would only despise, “and it is your right to mourn them. But you have cousins you might grow to love, who will be your allies as all of you grow to take your part in grihasthashram.”

He hones right in on his eventual favourites, but alas, there’s obstacles incoming.

“I thought they were in exile,” Krishna says, but now at last something is sparking to life behind his eyes. “My aunt Pritha and her children, I thought they were wandering in forests with King Pandu.”

Of course he thinks first of the ones deprived of their rightful homes, the ones who might be discomfited by palaces as he is himself.

“You have other aunts,” Rohini says in lieu of laughter. “Your pitamahi Bhojya had many children, and though King Shurasena was generous in giving them to such of his friends and cousins who—childless—were fated to roast in the hell, Puta, yet he kept his eldest son your father, and he kept his daughters Shrutadeva and Shrutashrava.”

“Their marriages are unhappy, you said.”

“And yet not childless,” Rohini says carefully. “Your aunt Shrutashrava has borne Prince Damaghosha of Chedi an heir, and I must visit if your mother cannot. We may travel without too large an escort of guards.”

“You would have me come with you?”

I just want to share the fact that family trees which start tracing lineages from the Sun and Moon still don’t show what family Rohini comes from and I had to read the Harivamsam to find out. I resent this fact.

“Only if you wish it as well. Then, too, Bahlika does not lie so very far from Chedi, and... Krishna, as you are in part my son, so too can I offer you a share in another matamaha and matamahi. My parents are old, and shall soon proceed into sannyasashram, but they are hale and they have always been happy. King Ugrasena is a great man, but...”

“Mother,” Krishna says, snatching up her hands and covering them with quick, fervent kisses. “You give me the sweetest gifts.”

#dvd commentary

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btsanonwriting · 5 years

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BTS Scenario 1 - Your first argument

hJin

You and Jin had been dating for a while. He was the type of boyfriend who could bring a smile to your face no matter what mood you were in. You could be chilling out reading a book, watching netflix of playing a game not speaking but be totally comfortable in each others company. It was like any other day Jin had called you during a break in practise. You hadn’t saw him for a couple of days with his schedule being hectic working on a new comeback. You had planned to meet later on at the dorms. He had his own place but felt much more comfortable in the other guys presence not liking how quiet it was when he was alone. Not that he’d tell the others that their loudness was a comfort to him.

You walked into the boys dorm heading straight for Jins room knowing he’d be there. You opened his door to see him lay on his bed fully clothed trying his best to stay awake. “Ah baby, you’re late.” Jin grumbles while rubbing his eyes doing his best to stay awake. You smile innocently at him before crawling on his bed and giving him a loose hug around his waist. “I missed you.” You say as you give him a light peck. He smiles pulling you in closer. “It would be a lot easier to see me if you stopped working.” He says groggily into your neck as he places light kisses just under your ear. You push him away as soon as the words utter out of his mouth. For weeks he had been pestering you to quit your work so it would make things easier to see each other when his schedule saw fit. “I don’t ask you to quit your job do I?” You raise your voice not meaning too but the anger over takes you from the lack of respect he has for your job. You knew his heart was in the right place but you still couldn’t stop yourself from feeling so angry. “Baby you know it’s different. You don’t need to work I can afford to look after you. Money isn’t an issue.” He states taking hold of your hand and trying to pull you back down onto the bed next to him. He moves to sit on the edge of the bed as you pull your hand away but letting your fingertips linger on his conflicted. You knew he was right but what did he expect you to do give up your whole life for him? For his job? “It’s not about money Seokjin” You only ever used his full name when angry and he knew this. “Is it such a crime to want to spend time with you when I can? Clearly you don’t feel the same!” He raises his voice this time clearly frustrated that you couldn’t see where he was coming from. “I’m too tired to deal with this tonight.” He sighs lying back down onto his bed. You looked at him biting your bottom lip, he looked exhausted. You sighed lying down next to him and kissing him gently on the cheek. “Maybe we should just go to bed, I don’t like arguing with you.”

Yoongi

You and Yoongi had been friends before you both admitted your feelings towards each other. You would both constantly bicker about small things. If you were wearing a colour he didn’t like (which you’d do just to see the displeasure on his face) if he played a song loudly on his phone (which you were sure he started to do just to annoy you as well.) but you had never properly argued. Yoongi was someone you felt completely comfortable around he knew everything about you. From the small insinnificant things like your favourite colour, your favourite animal, your favourite movie and favourite place to go eat. To the things you try to keep hidden like the high pitch squeel you make when you’re excited about something like a small child waking up on christmas morning seeing the presents under the tree. To how you lick your lips a lot when you’re nervous. He knew every small detail about you and you knew every small detail about him. That is how you found yourselves having your first argument. Not only first argument but first BIG argument. “I hate when you do this.” He sighed when you looked away from him when he told you he was leaving in a matter of days. He’d left before, he had too it was his job after all. “Hate when I do what? Get sad that you’re leaving? Oh I’m sorry Yoongi would you like me to jump for joy at the fact my boyfriend will be gone for almost 3 month! Let’s not mention the fact you’ve knew for weeks and only decide to tell me now when you’re due to leave in four days!” You didn’t mean to scream at him but you were upset you could feel the tears streaming down your face as each word left your mouth the realty sinking in. Yes of course you were always sad when he left but you were also so happy and proud to see him go out and do what he loves to do. It was always bittersweet but he had never made you feel so down for being sad before. It’s not like you said anything you tried your best to put on a smile when he told you. “I didn’t tell you knowing you’d react like this!” He almost growled not wanting to raise his voice as you had. People always thought of Yoongi as hard but the reality was he was the most sensitive and seeing you upset effected him in ways he couldn’t describe. His heart was breaking watching you sob quietly into your hands as you tried your best to pull yourself together. “I know this is tough I miss you every second I’m gone.” He was on his knees in front of you pulling you into him so your head rested on his shoulder as he silently rubbed your back hoping to calm you down. Which you did, you always calmed in his touch.

Namjoon

Namjoon was your person. The person you went to about anything and everything. If you were sad he was the person you went to knowing he’d make you feel better, if you were sick he was the person holding your hair, rubbing your back and making sure you drank plenty of water. If you were stressed he was the one to calm you down and make you feel at ease, and if you were happy he was always the reason. You had your fair share of angry moments where one of you would snap at each other but they were quickly resolved so you had never properly argued. Not until that day. Namjoon was on tour, you found it hard to keep up with where he was as it changed constantly. Him and the guys worked so hard. All you knew was that he was somewhere in America. You had been trying to get in contact with him for almost what felt like days but in realty had only been one full 24hours. You knew he was busy but not once in your full relationship had he went without checking in on you or a simple “Goodnight sweetheart” message he would send you always. Maybe you were being selfish wanting his attention when you knew he was working and needing his rest but you couldn’t help feel your anger boil when you were scrolling twitter notcing he had posted pictures of him and Taehyung out sightseeing. He could post on twitter but not reply to a message or call you to let you know how he is, to see how you are. You decided to give it one last try and call him again. Just as you thought the call was about to ring out again you heard a familiar voice on the other end. “Baby it’s late.” You heard him mutter in his groggy sleep deprived voice which you had to admit you had always found very attractive. “It’s been a whole day Namjoon, and we haven’t had a proper conversation in over a week. I miss you.” You tried to your best not to sound snappy but you knew he’d know how you felt. He knew you better than anyone. “I know baby. I’ve been working hard.” He said less sleepily you knew he had probably gotten up so he didn’t fall back asleep. It wouldn’t have been the first time he had fell asleep while on the phone to you. “I matter too.” You knew you were being selfish but you found it hard to be without him for so long. “You’re acting as if I don’t know this. I’ve been touring, playing a show near enough every night you know how tiring that is.” He snaps back at you. You knew you were pushing his buttons but he was pushing yours. There was nothing you hated more than being ignored and you knew he had seen the messaged and missed calls. “Then maybe you should start acting like I matter Namjoon!” You had raised your voice by this point letting your anger overtake you and not holding back anymore. “I should start showing you that you matter? Y/N are you being serious right now? This has been the first time we haven’t spoke every day since we got together. I need to focus on myself sometimes too. Maybe you should stop being so selfish. I need sleep. I will call you in the morning. I love you.” He hung up. You knew you deserved it but it did nothing to calm your mood.

Hoseok

You and Hoseok had been in a relationship for what felt like forever. Everyone who knew you both knew that you were meant to be. You were always the more serious one in the relationship. Not that Hoseok wasn’t serious he was just always trying to be the person that made everyone smile. Majority of the time it was your favourite thing about him. He could just walk into a room and make everyone feel at ease and bring happiness to the people around him. But not that day. That day you just wanted to feel special. You wanted to be the only person he made smile. You were sat in at practice like you had done many times. There was always so many people around. You sat yourself down on the floor in the far corner of the dance studio. You had brought a book to read for when you got tired of watching them practice. Not that you ever got tired of watching Hoseok dance. It was how you both had met when you decided to wanted to take up dancing. Not that you would say you were any good but it was something you enjoyed. You watched on as Jimin, Jungkook and Hoseok worked on a dance together. It was something you had saw many times but every time they really blew you away. Hoseok looked over at you and gave you a big grin. He loved having you watch on it made him feel a sense of pride and pushed him to work harder. Hours seemed to pass and everyone was getting tired and grouchy. Hoseok didn’t stop he kept pushing on and pushing everyone else to continue. You watched as he’d joke around with the crew doing his best to make them smile. They took a break but he didn’t make his way over to you instead he decided to stay put and do his best to try raise everyones spirits as he broke out into song and dance in the most over the top way he could. He didn’t fail at putting a smile on everyones face Namjoon even tried joining in only resulting in more laughter. You found yourself chewing on the inside of your cheek. You found the scene in front of you just as hilarious as everyone else in the room but you were tired, you were sore from sitting on the hard floor of the studio for hours, your head was starting to hurt with the bright lights and you were annoyed that Hoseok hadn’t once tried to come over to speak to you like he’d always do. You may have well been at home. He looked over at you expecting to see you smiling back at him joining in on the fun instead he was met with cold eyes and a look that would normally have him running. You had never argued but he knew when he was pushing you to the edge as all you’d ever have to do was give him a look that he seen on your face in that moment. He swallowed roughly and made his way over to you in hope of raising your mood and bringing the smile back onto your face. “I’m not a second though Hoseok so just don’t bother.” You say sternly as you pull yourself to your feet dusting off your skinny jeans as you stand. “You’re never a second thought.” He tries pulling you into a hug but you shake off his attempt. “Babe don’t be like that. Everyone is getting tired we’ve been at this for hours now.” He tries to reason with you, to show you how silly you’re being but you’re stubborn and he knows this. You look up at him before sighing. “I’m going to head home.I will see you in a few hours.” You give him a peck on the cheek avoiding his sweaty hair before walking away. Later he returns from practice with a bouquet of your favouite flowers. He walks into the room to find you had set out his favourite meal along with a big pile of his favourite movies to watch. You knew you shouldn’t have been angry at him for just being the person you fell madly in love with.

So yeah this is my first BTS Scenario/Reaction. Sorry if it is awful it’s my first time writing in well years. I will start working on the Maknae line I just realised how long this actually is and it took more time than I thought it would. Please send me your requests and feedback!

#bts #bts writing #bts scenarios #bts reactions #bts imagines #bts fanfic #bts fanfction #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #j hope #bts suga #bts rm #bts jin

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sofreakinmanyfandoms · 6 years

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November 14 - We’re Gonna Go Flirt with Superheroes

Some important notes:

1. Thank you to my amazing friend Dean for letting me use their delightful self as a character in this fic. You may all be jealous that I actually know this person.

2. Because Dean does not have the cleanest of language, this fic has significantly more swearing than anything else I've posted here. I still only put half as much language as normally spews from their mouth. Love you, babe.

3. I've never actually been to a hipster bar and it's been years since I've been to Portland. Please forgive me for any obvious errors.

4. I normally shy away from describing the reader too much, but honestly? I needed this. I needed to explore a bit what it's like being straight but looking gay, because while it's nothing compared to what the LGBT+ community goes through, it's something I get a lot of grief for from my conservative Christian extended family. I needed a fic where the main girl has short hair, okay? Okay.

Thanks for letting me vent myself in this fic.

Word count: 2416

Warnings: Language, mentions of cheating, if you’re homophobic you’ll hate this one so go suck an egg

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X short haired!hipster!Reader

“Ah, Portland,” Sam said with a sigh, looking around at the bar that was definitely owned by someone very hipster. “Remind me again why we’re here?”

“It was the closest city with the material Stark needs to fix the jet,” Steve reminded him. “He’ll have it ready by morning and we’ll be on our way back to the compound.”

“Friends,” Thor declared cheerily, throwing his arms around their shoulders, “despite our transport’s destruction, we have won a great victory this day! Let us celebrate, even if your Midgardian drinks are weaker than mother’s milk.”

Bucky followed behind them, feeling out of place as he took in the décor. The floor and ceiling were concrete, but the walls had been coated in what looked like disassembled pallets with wooden booths build out of the walls. The free-standing tables were giant spools and he was pretty sure no two chairs in the whole building matched. Whoever had been in charge of decorating had even taken the chalkboard menu trope to the extreme, making the whole wall behind the bar a blackboard instead of just hanging one up. Everything was decked out in old – sorry, “recycled” – netting and buoys, presumably ones that had seen actual use based on their condition. Also, Bucky had never seen so much flannel in his life.

He settled into a booth with Sam as Steve and Thor went to get their drinks. The other man was looking around, a determined expression on his face.

“Here’s where we get to the hard part,” Sam whispered to him. “Now we’ve gotta figure out which women are gay and which are just fashionable.

Bucky furrowed his eyebrows at his friend. “I don’t understand.”

Sam leaned back and nodded to the bar. “Well, normally you see a woman in skinny jeans, a plaid flannel, and a beanie? She’s a lesbian. But we’re in Portland, where that’s everyone’s style, so it gets harder. Like the chick on the end of the bar? Pixie cut, slouchy beanie, band tee that’s probably for some local group her friend is in under her open flannel, black jeans that look painted on, and totally ignoring the prime male specimens currently ordering our drinks in favor of her cell phone? Definitely gay. But that chick over there,” he subtly pointed to a nearly identically-dressed girl, shorter and with longer hair, who had definitely noticed Steve and Thor’s presence, “is either straight or bi. I can work with either of those.”

Snorting at his friend’s explanation, Bucky flashed a quick look back at the woman at the end of the bar. Sam was probably right. Too bad; she was beautiful, and he wouldn’t have minded getting to know her better.

----------

You sighed at your phone and shifted on your seat at the end of the bar. Your friend was late again; they were always late. According to the text chain you were receiving nearly non-stop, they were also probably already drunk, not that that was surprising anymore.

“Come on, Dean,” you muttered under your breath. “I need you here before he shows up.”

Five minutes later, your friend stumbled through the door, giggling madly at, well, you didn’t want to know what. They stumbled their way over to you and collapsed onto a stool.

“Why are we here?” Dean immediately began complaining. “I stick out like a sore thumb. I’m more goth than hipster, you know that.”

“We’re here because I nanny for the owner part-time so the drinks are free,” you pointed out, rolling your eyes. “You know fully well that any place becomes your scene when you don’t have to pay for alcohol.”

“True,” Dean replied with another giggle. “I didn’t have to pay at the last place either, because I’m fucking hot. Three guys and two girls bought me drinks.”

“Aaand, that’s it, you’re cut off for the night,” you sighed, asking the bartender for a coffee for your definitely drunk friend. “You did kill your makeup tonight, though. It looks great.”

“Damn right it does,” they slurred. “Hey, how come you didn’t tell me? I’d have gotten here a hell of a lot sooner if you’d told me there were Avengers in the building.”

You followed your friend’s line of sight to where there were in fact four members of the Avengers seated in a booth.

“Oh… I didn’t notice them.”

Dean scoffed and gave you that knowing look that you really hated. “You got lost in your phone again, didn’t you? Just in case he showed up.” The blush on your face was enough of an answer. “Damn it, woman, he’s a fucking asshole who never deserved you and I’d have killed him already if you weren’t so fucking concerned with whether or not things are legal.” They downed the rest of their coffee with a grimace and pushed themselves off the bar, grabbing for your hand. “Come on. We’re gonna go flirt with superheroes.”

Your eyes widened in horror. “Oh no. I am not going to talk to the Avengers with you while you’re drunk.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed as they looked at you. “Then you have to promise me you’ll sing karaoke tonight. You haven’t done it since that bastard criticized your voice, and I miss hearing it. You’re fucking good, and you let that fucking moron rob us all of your beautiful songbird-ness.”

“I hope you realize how drunk you sound.”

“Do we have a deal or not? Because if I’m going to give up a shot at fucking Thor, it had better be for a good reason.”

You sighed. Your friend was always stubborn like this. “Fine, we have a deal.”

“Awesome! I get to pick your song.”

“Aw, hell, no…”

----------

Your ex showed up right before karaoke started as he always did.

“Look at the smug asshole,” Dean muttered into the drink they’d somehow managed to get despite your best efforts. They put on a comically feminine voice and mimicked, “I must sing every chance I get, for my voice is God’s gift to mankind and to deprive people of the joy of listening to it would be blasphemy of the highest fucking order!”

“Dean,” you sighed, “please behave. You’ve already gotten me to agree to singing again. You don’t need to start a scene with him, too.”

“I should cut off his fucking dick for cheating on you.”

Because you knew Dean, you were concerned they meant it. “Don’t. He did me a favor, helping me realize he wasn’t worth it. Now, did you sign me up for karaoke already, or do I need to do it?”

The grin they flashed you was even more concerning when paired with how much they’d had to drink. “I signed us both up. After you sing your mystery song – yes, you’ll have enough of an intro to figure out what it is and come in on time, they put the lyrics up anyway, you’ll be fine – I’ll blow your performance out of the water with a spectacular rendition of ‘Bang, Bang.’ Your ex won’t know what hit him.”

“I’m sure he won’t,” you said dryly, only to be horrified when your name was called first as karaoke started.

Dean laughed at the glare you threw them. “Go blow them all away with your magical voice, darling!”

“Y/N,” the bar’s owner said into his mic when you stepped up on stage. “It’s been far too long, m’lady! Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in a few months, it’s the lovely Y/N singing ‘Shake It Off’!”

“Really, Dean?” you asked, picking up your mic. “All the songs in the world to choose from and that’s the one you picked for me?” The regulars laughed at your teasing as Dean raised their beer in salute. Almost before you had a moment to collect yourself, the music was off and you could feel your ex studying you from his seat near the back with his new woman draped across him. You shut him out of your mind and focus and launched yourself into the song, determined to have fun even if you weren’t really drunk enough to do a Taylor Swift song for karaoke.

----------

Bucky hadn’t been paying attention to much other than his beer until the karaoke started. Their booth was set up at the perfect spot for watching the stage, and he chided himself for the way his heart jumped when you stepped on stage.

“Really, Dean?” you joked, shooting a look at your friend who did not look like – he? She? Bucky couldn’t tell which – would be interested in hanging out in a bar like this. Then you took a deep breath and wow, your whole demeanor changed as you started singing. It was like the song took over you and you had an entirely different energy about you.

“I go on too many dates, but I can’t make ‘em stay,” you sang, and Bucky watched you work the stage, using the mic stand to your theatrical advantage even as you held the mic in your hand. He’d say you were hamming it up for the crowd, but there was something about your performance that said maybe some of the words were hitting a little too close to home for you to be too flippant with them.

“My ex man brought his new girlfriend,” and he didn’t miss the way your eyes flickered to a couple in the back. “And to the fella over there with the hella good hair, why don’t you come on over baby? We can shake, shake, shake.”

He almost choked on his beer, because he could swear that during that last line you had looked over and winked at him in a very “I’m not a lesbian and I want to climb you like a tree” type way. Bucky’s eyes quickly flickered to Sam to see if the other man caught it, but if he had, he wasn’t giving any indication of it.

It had to have been the performance, right? You were just working the audience. When the song ended, he made sure to applaud, and soon your friend (Dean, the announcer called them) was on stage singing like they were, well, as hammered as they looked.

----------

“Come ooooonnnn,” Dean whined, tugging on your sleeve. “Y/N, they’re in town and they’re in this bar and Thor’s so hot I’m surprised I don’t have a sunburn yet. I can’t talk to them alone. Come flirt with me.”

Your friend wasn’t going to give up anytime soon, so you slammed back the rest of your drink and stood.

“Fine,” you said, “but if you look like you’re going to puke on an Avenger at any point I’m dragging you home.”

“Yay!” they cheered, immediately pulling you over to their table and sliding into the booth next to Thor. “Hello, gentlemen of the Avengers. My name is Dean, I’m genderfluid and pansexual and would gladly climb any of you. This is Y/N and she’s a straight prude but if you give her enough alcohol you might be able to get a nice make-out session with her.”

You groaned and rubbed your face with your hand. “Sorry for my friend here. They passed merely being drunk an hour before karaoke started.”

“Pleasure to meet you both,” Captain America (YOU WERE TALKING TO CAPTAIN AMERICA?!?) said. “I’m Steve, and this is Bucky, Sam, and Thor.”

“Hi, Thor.” Dean batted their eyelashes and you choked back a snerk.

Bucky pushed at Sam and the two slid a little further back in the booth, making space for you to sit next to the soldier. He motioned to the seat and you slid next to him hesitantly.

“Sorry for interrupting your evening,” you apologized quietly, although Dean had long since tuned you out in favor of attempting to seduce the god of thunder. “Dean gets an idea their head and I’m basically stuck along for the ride.”

“It’s no problem,” Sam said smoothly. “I do have one question, though. Are you really straight?”

You couldn’t help but laugh, and Bucky thought that might be the nicest sound he’d ever heard. “Yes, I’m really straight. Most people are surprised, but my sense of style wasn’t enough to keep jerks from hitting on me so I got a haircut and fell in love with the style. It’s let me fly under the radar a lot more frequently, which is nice.”

“I can’t imagine how,” Bucky said, a blush creeping up his cheeks. “You’re beautiful.”

Before you could thank him, a voice to your left made you freeze.

“Y/N.”

Dean’s attention was snapped away from Thor and they stared down your ex. “Listen, asshole –”

“Dean.” You held up a finger to stop your friend before they made too much of a scene before entirely turning to your ex. “What do you want, Daniel?”

“It’s free karaoke time,” he crooned, ignoring how unwanted he obviously was. “I thought maybe we could do a duet together, for old time’s sake?”

You affixed him with a glare that would whither a plant. “Why on earth would I want to be reminded of our time together?”

That seemed to shake his confidence a bit. “I’m just being friendly,” he snapped.

“You don’t know how to just be friendly. We’re over, Daniel, so get over it already. If you really wanted me, you wouldn’t have cheated.”

“I believe you heard the lady,” Thor cut in before Daniel could reply. “She wishes for you to leave her alone, and I suggest you abide by her wishes.

For the first time he seemed to notice who you were sitting with, and he sulked off back to his date.

“Well,” Sam broke the silence that had fallen over the table, “I’m guessing that relationship being over is a good thing?”

You nodded. “Thank you,” you told Thor. “I appreciate the support.”

“Anytime, m’lady.”

----------

“Do you want to talk about it?” Bucky asked you softly a few minutes later when you had yet to join the table’s renewed conversation.

You shook your head. “He was a jerk who cheated on me so I got out. It was a long time ago.”

“How could anyone throw away someone like you?”

The earnest way he said it made you blush.

“His loss,” you whispered shyly.

Bucky only paused a moment before asking, “Could I make his loss my gain?”

“I’d like that,” you said with a smile. “I’d like that very much.”

#30 days of avengers one shots #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #Winter Soldier #reader #reader insert #portland #portland oregon #hipster #bar #karaoke #taylor swift #language #fic #fanfic #fanfiction #masterlist #i still suck at tagging

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concertcrack · 3 years

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Mary Jennings & Ali Aslam LIVE at Rockwood Music Hall

Mary Jennings doesn’t shy away from her emotions. She is absolutely vulnerable in her music and equally so when she performs live. She performed in New York City (where she used to live and appear frequently) for the first time in 6 years at the Rockwood Music Hall on July 23rd, where she packed in a crowd of devoted fans who came to hear her share her most impassioned album yet, “Matriarch.” She shared the stage with the talented Ali Aslam, with whom she collaborated on “Hard” and befriended during quarantine through a Zoom open mic she has hosted every Monday since the spring of 2020.

The venue was packed in, people from wall to wall. The wait staff couldn’t even move around. Mary proved to be a popular artist, and no wonder. Her music is honest and her performance is collaborative. It felt like talking to an old friend. I knew her somehow. She was friendly and humorous which made her stage presence all the more inviting. What was most unique was that she made music right in front of us. Like Ed Sheeran does live, she employed a loop pedal that allowed her to be her own band. We watched her creative process; it was like we were all let in on a secret.

She sang six songs from her new album “Matriarch” and didn’t hold anything back. You could feel the passion and rawness in her music which was infectious to the audience. Everybody cried at least once during her performance. She was inspired a lot by COVID and its effects on society and herself. She writes the best music when she feels the most pain and anguish and COVID really brought that out.

It was a privilege to see her perform. When she returns to New York City, I would like to see her again. She has this presence that makes you feel safe and welcome even though you may not know her or her music. She is warm and kind and a beautiful woman all around. We hope she returns soon and will be listening to “Matriarch” on repeat until then.

How did it feel to perform live again? How was this time different, if at all?

To say it felt like magic would be an understatement. I feel so lucky that we’ve had access to livestreaming during this isolation but nothing compares to the energy of performing in person. There was a sea of both old and new faces but everyone felt like family that night. I don’t know that I have ever cried that much on and off stage. It was just awesome. In so many ways it was “just like old times” because Rockwood has become a second home to me over the years, but this felt different because of the longing. I have missed all of these people so much. I have missed playing live shows. I think we all just missed so much over the last year and at least that night we got a lot of it back.

Which song of Ali's was your favorite in this show?

OH my gosh I can’t choose! All of them because they became my soundtrack for the entirety of 2020! To hear them live elevated everything. If I had to choose though, it would be “Hold Me Close.” Not only is it one of my favorites, but Rachel Epp and I got to sing backup vocals with him on this. We have sung backup from our homes (on mute of course) through the Zoom open mic for ages so to get to actually sing with him was pure joy. How I made it through without sobbing is still beyond me.

I understand you have "known" each other a long time and collaborated with an open mic via Zoom all through the pandemic but you had never met until this very special show. (if you BOTH want to collectively answer this that would be GREAT!)

Correct! We had never met in person but had become friends, support systems and advocates for not only each other’s music but for each other in general. Eliza (my 5-year-old-daughter) also feels like she knows Ali from listening to his music, seeing him on the open mic, and just hearing us talk about him around the house. I think without the distractions of life, crowded bars, work, etc, all of us on the Zoom open mics were all able to connect on such a very deep level of friendship that we wouldn’t trade for anything. We became a family without ever meeting in person. The bond that we all built during 2020 created friendships that will last the rest of our lives. Many of the Richmond, VA open mic crew, including one of my besties, Rachel Epp (she was also a bridesmaid in my wedding), drove up to NYC to be there that night. We had a huge showing from all over from that open mic there that night singing back to both me and Ali during our sets. It was incredibly special.

Do you have a song that you always do live? If so, what is it and why

I have been writing and playing music for 20+ years now so it has changed over time haha. I feel like there is always one song off of every album that is the song you always come back to because of it’s relatability, connectivity, and live translation. I think for this album it will be “Hard” or “This Ride.” Both sum up the past year and a half. However, I am still rocking “Home” off of my last album “Metamorphosis” because even with a theme of a zombie apocalypse it still feels SUPER relatable these days.

What goes into preparing this set list? Are there any factors that impacted this one as it was such a special show?

I want to keep the audience engaged from start to finish and have them feel the highs and lows of each song right along with me. Similar to the albums I put out, I want each set list to tell a story and keep a listener captivated from the first song to the last. I don’t want them to think “Oh this is the song where I should go to the bathroom.” I want you to hold it until the end! But in all seriousness, I don’t ever put together a set list with “filler.” I would rather play less time and have all of the songs be super important to the set than just play for the sake of playing. This set was super important to me because not only was it promoting a new album and sharing songs that most people in the room had never heard live before, but it was also welcoming so many (including myself) back into the live music scene after a dumpster fire of a year and half. I wanted everyone to feel in it with me so I put the songs that I felt everyone could connect with the most.

Live music is making a comeback to New York City. After a tumultuous year and a half, we can finally enjoy music in its truest form. On Friday July 23, Ali Aslam made his triumphant return at the Rockwood Music Hall. He shared the stage with Mary Jennings, whom he virtually met in quarantine and physically met that day, in a shared album release performance.

The place was packed, a you-wouldn’t-even-know-we-were-in-a-pandemic packed. But it was beautiful. People came to see the artists they love, and because the audience was so deprived, it was like a reunion. We may not have known everyone there, but it felt like we did. It was joyous, engaging, and empowering.

Ali followed Mary’s set as a 5 piece band. In contrast to Mary’s performance, Ali got you dancing. You could physically feel his music through the floors and his energy. He performed some of the songs to his album The Last American, which is a compilation of songs about his examination of being a Pakistani-American Mulsim and American culture. He sings about the idea that we are responsible for the world and society that we create. You could tell this album means a lot to him from his performance. He sang every lyric and played every note with a purpose. He felt the music with the audience and danced the night away. He was having fun, which, ultimately, is what live music is about.

If you ever get a chance to see him live, do it. His presence is that of an old friend. He’s open about his music and a free spirit on stage, like he was meant to be there. You can listen to The Last American anywhere you get music.

Questions for Ali:

How did it feel to perform live again? How was this time different, if at all?

Joy is the overwhelming emotion. This was a show that we had delayed for months but also one that I had been thinking about for years. The moment you start working on a record you start thinking about the release show, and we poured a lot of precious heart and energy into “The Last American.” It felt really special to perform these songs at long last and do them justice, and also to play the show I’ve been building in my head after so long. There’s this feeling that live music is this sacred thing that we had almost lost, I think everyone can feel it. So the excitement and joy of being able to do that again and have that communal experience with the band and with the audience is that much more special.

Which song of Mary's was your favorite in this show?

I have to say “Hard.” Mary’s songs are so essential for me. They are emotional touchstones. And like so many of her songs, the power of it is in it’s honesty. You can’t run from it. That’s one where I got sing on her record so to see it live and hear so many of those voices that were once isolated and distant across the internet now in the same place at once was really powerful

How did you survive a global catastrophe? My answer when things get hard is always music. I write songs to try and make sense of the grief I feel in the world, but I couldn’t make sense of this one. I was spiraling, like so many of us, putting on a brave face to tell everyone “I am ok.” But on the other end of a zoom call I heard a voice that maybe COULD make sense of it. I got to hear so many of the songs on Mary’s ‘matriarch’ in their earliest forms. Those songs have carried me. This show, and meeting at last is like symbol for me, we’ve made it this far, and we can keep going. But more importantly I’m just so happy to finally meet my friend. “There’s not a word yet, for old friends who’ve just met.”

Do you have a song that you always do live? If so, what is it and why

I do try to have some variety in the set list depending on the occasion, but “Wise Man and the Fool” seems to always find its way on there. It’s kind of a template for what all of my songs are about; this disconnect between who we are and who our communities want us to be. Playing it withthe band it just has so much energy that it’s a reliable movement. It’s an integral part of my story, and I enjoy telling it.

What goes into preparing this set list? Are there any factors that impacted this one as it was such a special show?

I am always trying to build an experience, and have specific moments of tension and release. In this digital era, a live show might the only time someone listens to your music and only your music for and hour, so I want that experience to be more than the sum of its part. For this show, the biggest moment was probably “hold me close.” It was a song written during the darkest days of the pandemic, right when I met Mary online. And now to have her and Rachel Epp standing behind me singing through this moment with me… I can’t describe how magical and moving that was for me…but we built our setlist for that moment and that song so that when we finally played that song together, I think everyone could feel some of that magic.

Find Mary Jennings online:

https://www.maryjennings.com/

https://www.facebook.com/maryjenningsmusic?ref=notif&notif_t=fbpage_admin

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ecotone99 · 4 years

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[RF] The angel smiles through the sky hole and I can see the blinding light and worried fire he has cast on my sick body

This might be just a hair too long to be a short story... but it is intentionally so. Forgive the grammars.

When I heard the news, I was just getting myself out of a disastrous job interview, and when I said “disastrous”, I meant it couldn’t have gone any worse than it already had. The interviewer asked me why I applied to become a computer technician when all I had studied in my academic life was nothing but literature, and all the achievement I ever had so unfortunately achieved was a mere few papers being published by some obscure websites. I told him I would do my best, and he essentially kicked me out. Just when I was gasping for air, standing at the front gate of the skyscraper, holding the wall trying my best not to discharge yesterday’s breakfast in the public, the phone came in. A relatively close friend of mine told me in solemn voices the news.

I felt compelled, so I called a cab, and headed straight to the hospital.

She wasn’t my friend. No, at least I wouldn’t say so. She was an acquaintance of mine that was beyond doubts, yet I wouldn’t call her my friend. She lied there in the snow-white bedsheet, as the transparent liquid slowly dripped into her vein. Her eyes were less lively the last time I saw her, and her chapped lips, slender torsos, incessant coughing, bitter smiles where her lips’ curvature would be kept at a minimum, bloodshot orbs, sable and withered hairs which made a sharp contrast with the snow white sheet, and the almost uncannily pallid skin colors, all evidenced and reaffirmed the shocking news.

I walked into her room. Clean and tidy, with the huge window beside her bed, and the warm yet somewhat sombre sunlight shone in. The flowers sitting on the windowsill: a few bunch carnations bathed in grey light glittering with colors in a minimalist china vase, emitting a soothing smell that inundated the room with serenity. She got the room all by herself. As my step walked through the door, she turned her head away from the window and looked this way with excitement and joy, but then saw my face, and the exultation immediately died down, replaced by a strange sense of contentment and acceptance.

“Oh. You.”

“Can I come in?”

“Of course you can.” She gesticulated the chair next to her bed. I didn’t prepare anything beforehand since I got straight from my interview, so instead of putting down any of my possessions first as any other normal person would do because I possessed nothing, I just sat down in that chair.

“Who told you this?”

“Evan.”

“Oh, should’ve known. Always so blissful.”

“You don’t want me to know, I presume.”

She looked at me, with a smile, less bitter than before when she was staring out the window.

“I am sorry…” I muttered, uncontrollably.

“What for, you are here, aren’t you?”

“Yeah… I am here.”

A short awkward silence. I stared at the tiles on the ground, she stared at me.

The nurse came in and asked her if she wanted anything to eat, and that she had to eat something.

“You haven’t eaten anything yet, have you?” She asked, addressing me. The nurse was bewildered yet didn’t voice a thing.

“No…” Starvation and sleep deprivation had followed me for months, and I truly couldn’t muster the strength to be all polite and coy about it at this point.

“Bring in something.” She told the nurse.

The meal came in a platter: A bowl of cabbage and pork soup, made from, obviously, cabbages, some smoked pork belly, and a few carrots and onions. Along with the soup were two pieces of hard but still good and fresh bread. The nurse put the platter in front of her, then immediately after the nurse had left, she put the platter into my hands.

“Eat.” She said. “You looked even more slender than I expected.”

I couldn’t reject her, not now, not this. I took a sip of the soup, only luke warm, and bland as anything. Of course they would be niggardly about the salt since it was supposed to be fed to the patient, but I still wasn't ready for the tastelessness that was water with some leaves in it. I found one piece of the smoked pork belly, and I swallowed it without even chewing, so I still didn’t taste a thing. Luckily the bread, though tough as rocks and tasted rougher than beach sands, soaked in the soup could still produce some satiating result.

“Thanks for coming.” She said while staring at me sipping the soup.

“You are not eating?”

“No… couldn’t. I feel sick from even drinking.”

Her eyes stared right at me, or at the spoons that I kept pushing into my mouth, I couldn’t tell which, and I was more than perturbed by it.

“Would you mind staying with me for a while?” Her voice sounded like a shaking silver bell.

“Sure.” I answer half-mindedly.

“I meant just be here with me.”

I looked out the window. The city was beneath us, and the clouded firmament was above. The sunlight slowly had dimmed away, and the shadows slowly but surely overtook the bright spot in between the skyscrapers and streets. The flower sitting there no longer had that sheen, but still looked colorful enough for me to call it eyeable.

“Yea… I could stay here for a while.” I turned back to her, still staring at me.

“Good, I am glad.”

“Who else will come to visit?”

“I don’t know.” The slight disappointment underneath her breath was noticeable, especially for me. Through years, I had grown a sensitive sense for tones of dismay and discontent. She thought she was hiding it pretty well, I could see. “How is your day?” And sure enough, a smile climbed back on her face.

“Could be better…” I answered.

“Is there anything interesting happening?”

It felt weird. Usually I would be one driving the conversation along, since I was the more talkative one comparatively, and she would always be the one that listened and responded. Her asking the questions now was uncomfortable, and suddenly I felt the vocabularies in my brain had dried out, and I got nothing to say.

“I am not… well, lately.” I simply answered.

“How is that?”

“Well, you know the usual… not able to get a job, stuck in my house all the time, having no one around… you know, the usual suspects.”

“No one around?”

“Well... It's not like I got a companion or anything, isn’t it? I wish I could get a dog or a cat, but I couldn’t even properly feed myself, what, am I supposed to drag another soul to my level of abject misery?” I said, half-jokingly with self-mockery.

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“Exactly… I don’t really have a place to go. I mean, who would agree to just sit here with you if the man was not a complete dawdler.”

“No one.”

“You said it, not me.” I sunk into my chair cause my spine just didn’t possess enough strength for me to sit up properly, “Staring at the document, typing all my way into oblivion…”

“Are your sleep at least okay now?”

“No…” I muttered, “Worse… I can’t type in the morning. I got nothing when the sunlight crept through my window. It is only in the deepest night, words and inspiration would come knocking my door… I haven’t had a good sleep in so goddamn long time…”

“I could call the nurse to bring in a bed for you, if you want.”

She wanted me to spend the night here. Her words were purposeful, how she answered, how she asked. She wanted me to rant, she wanted me to vent, so I would stay in this place, where the ceiling and the floor and the wall and the bed were all white, and always so filled to the brim with sedating air, almost anaesthetic in some way. I realized all these, but I couldn’t really do anything about it. I wanted to walk out of the room and go straight down to the first floor and just sprint out of this building, yet there was no incentive for me to do so. I had nothing else to do, no where else to go to, no one else to care for. I had no incentive for staying here either, but no incentive for inaction was not in and of itself an incentive for action..

“No… I am fine… excuse me.”

I walked out for restroom, and on my way back, I saw three figures heading this way. The hospital’s hallways were all dim, almost unlit, and since I really had no reason to avoid walking into three strangers, we jostled. It was then I realized who they were.

Evan, the one told me about her situation. The mutual acquaintance between me and her. Fat and slick all dressed up and everything. Following him, a man and a woman, whom I only knew were colleagues of hers, Josh and Lisa. Evan asked me how I got here so fast, and expressed his surprise for me coming immediately after his call. I scorn him, but not really, for telling me about the thing since clearly, she wanted this to be secretive. He just laughed it off, which I laughed with him because it was quite laughable if we were being totally honest. We walked into the room together.

I stood in the corner, watching them conversed. Evan brought in a lot of flowers, presumably from her colleagues, all wishing her to get well soon; Josh brought her some letters, from her distant relatives or friends; Lisa gave her a huge hug and brought her some gifts, maybe there were tears in her eyes as well; they chatted, laughed. I turned to the window, fixated to the sky. The sunlight was no more, and the overcast sky was cloaking this land. Clouds thicker than quilts, lingering around the top of skyscrapers. The city functioned as always, as clouds were dripping down from the sky.

“Ey.” A voice called. I turned, and there she was again, alone. “They are gone.”

“That fast?”

“Not fast. You stood there for twenty-something minutes.”

“Is that it?”

“What were you thinking just now?”

“Nothing.”

“It is not nothing.”

“Why is it not?”

“You stood there voiceless and just looked out the window for twenty minutes. There must be something on your mind.”

She was usually right, but not this time. There was truly nothing on my mind. Maybe I would benefit from some good sleep, and maybe then I might have the strength to think. Not now.

“I was wondering… I mean, I saw something strange out.” I made it up, not wanting to just shut her down for being wrong.

“What is that?”

“There was a patch of the sky that was clear, like it was a cloudless sunny day, but every other part of the sky was overcast and gloomy.”

“Is that so?” She smiled. She could have easily verified my statement by just looking out the window herself, yet she did not do that.

“Yea, like it is weird. Like the hole on the ozone layer you know. Just a patch of clear sky. I mean, weird right? Imagine, you know, a spaceship, or some divinity… coming down the city from that hole…” I gesticulated while talking, trying to paint a picture for her in thin air. She smiled at me, as if she could actually see the picture I was drawing with my gangly fingers, “You know, how the lights, the warm, golden sunlight beams down, so it would make the sharp contrast against the grey sky that surrounds it, and uh, uh, yeah the spaceship, following an metallic howling, an alarm ear-piercingly stentorian, slowly descends down from the high, and pushes the black clouds away….”

My phone rang. I picked it up in utter frustration, “Who is it?”

The voice on the other end was familiar. The guy asked me if I want to come along with them, to visit her. I said I was already there.

“Ron and Andrew are coming,” I said, hanging up the phone.

“Oh!” She was visibly more excited, “I haven’t seen them in a while. Have you?”

“Ron, a few months back.”

“Are you guys still in contact?”

“No, not really.”

“Who are you still in contact with?”

I wished I could come up with a name, but I couldn’t so I made one up, “Stan.”

“Really? You guys weren’t that close back then.”

Maybe the lie was too obvious. I gave up on justifying it to her, so I just sat down on that little chair next to her bed again. “Yeah, we weren’t.”

Growling stomach. A sense of faintness climber up my neck. I felt giddy.

“You want some more to eat?” She asked, compassionately.

“Yeah…”

She called in the nurse again asking for more food. I could see the annoyances on the nurse’s face, as she already had realized the food would be fed to a rando instead of their patient, but she still complied. Soon, another platter was sent in, the same old bowl of cabbage soup, except this time there was no bread.

As I was ravishing the soup, the door was knocked, two men came in.

“Raymond. How in the bloody of all hell could you get here so fast?” Ron cried when he saw me. A friend of mine who had offered me job opportunities before, which I inevitably all screwed up, next to him stood his friend, the slender young man Andrew.

I stood up, still holding the bowl of soup in my hand, walked to Ron. “What? You have a problem with it?”

“Yes, huge. We should have come together.”

“Well if so a car crash would kill us all instead of just one of us then.” I jeered. He had got himself into a car crash a few years back and it had become a laughingstock of his.

“Haha, very funny.” He scoffed, then whispered under his breath, “And uh, would you keep you distasteful joke down for a minute for cryin’ out loud. We are in a hospital and she is right next to us right now!”

“Well, she didn’t get herself here from a car crash.”

“Alright, how much of an ass you have to be?”

“I don’t have to be one.”

“Why do you hate me?”

“No, I don’t. We haven’t spoken in months, what is wrong with some witticism.” I laughed, patting his shoulder. “Besides, look at our surroundings. It needs something to lighten it up.”

“Right, blab your mouth you inveterate fool.” He looked to the other two in the room, and I followed his gaze. Andrew was sitting on the side of her bed chatting with her, both sometimes chuckled at jokes they made. Though under the laughter and cheers, Andrew’s desolation pertaining to her situation was more than apparent as he was doing a terrible job of covering it. She too had this slight melancholy swimming in the background of her words. They were talking about their past with bittersweet nostalgia, their future with cheerful humor, their friends and people they know with childish mockery, yet they never had touched the present, where they were and how they were right now.

“Is it raining outside?” I asked Ron, who was still standing next to me at the door.

“Sprinkling. Raining no. But it seems a storm is coming.” He answered, still had his gazes fixed on the two conversing.

I looked out the window, saw the small raindrops crashed on the window. The sky had gone from grey to an almost black shade of colorlessness, looking more like six or seven in the afternoon even though it was only two. Then I realized the window near the vase of flowers was still open, so I walked in and closed it shut. The flower looked dull without the sunlight, and we haven’t turned the room’s light on yet.

“Raymond. Raymond!”

“What?” I came back from my daze. Ron was there, Andrew was at the door already.

“Are we leaving?” Andrew asked Ron softly, most likely cause of exhaustion.

“We are leaving,” Ron called to me.

I simply waved my hand. The two left.

“I had a good time.” She said to me.

“I could see it.” I turned on the light and sat back down that little chair next to her.

“Had you?”

“Why would I have a great time?”

“I don’t know. You don’t find the two fun?”

“I wouldn’t consider two men to be fun unless they are entertaining.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “How I missed the old days.”

“I don’t.” I replied, knowing she would then ask me my opinion.

“Why?” She then paused for a moment. “Do you still have dreams?”

“Yes.” Plenty a night.

“Still the same thing.”

“Mostly. Like I was still living in the past.” I looked out the window, the rain was picking up, as more and more droplets came onto the window, and the wind was making the frame clanged like the maniac screaming in the middle of the city square holding up a sign about the incoming of the end of the world. “I just sat there, waiting for someone to pick me up.”

“Well, you dreamt of that someone often?”

“I don’t know who would be picking me up, so I don’t know how that works but yes. Quite often.” I shrugged, “Talking about dreams with someone might be the most boring and selfish things one could have done, so it’s not like you will get anything out of this.”

“I don’t know who said that. I love talking about dreams. It is an interesting way to know someone. You want to hear about my dreams?”

“No. Not particularly.”

“I dreamt of love all the time, ever since I got here. Family, friend, him.”

“Him?” I regretted asking and probing her immediately.

“Yeah, how his strong arms would cling onto me.” She giggled. “His eyes are always so enchanting, so engrossing. I sometimes looked into them like there were millions of stars behind the two cosmic orbs. His chapped lips, and how passionately he pressed his tongue…”

“Oh, terrific.” I cried, “I am gonna be a third wheel even in a hospital room.”

“Thought you are used to it already.” She jeered.

“Yes. Cause I love being a third wheel, shining through the love of companionship with my singular source of bright light.” I walked to the window, looking out. The rain was dense and serried now, and visible undulation could be seen in the sky, made by the collective efforts of raindrops and the united current of winds, looking like the waves in the ocean, except they were between buildings and above the streets.

“That sentence sounded so strange.” She tittered. “You should really find one of your own.”

"Does stuck in the past counted as my true love?"

“Pretentious.”

“I thought so as well.” I sat back down on the chair, “Which is why I don’t have anyone with me.”

The door was almost kicked loose, the guy standing there was all suited and tied, nicely combed and shaved, almost taller than the door frame, with a face of panic. She looked to him in shock, and slowly as the realization came in, her teary eyes and choking voice could no longer be held back.

I had to walk away from the chair just so they wouldn’t crush me in between as he ran to her and embraced her with full strength. How on earth could she, a sickly patient, take such heavy impact was beyond my reasoning, and how they could so passionately touch their lips together when a complete stranger was standing in the corner of the room was also befuddling, to say the least. He kept muttering how he was sorry he was late and such and judging by his half-drenched blazer, and the suitcase that was thrown away as he ran to her, he was just getting off work.

I looked out the window, and the rain howled, so did the wind. It was a storm. Those monolithic buildings shivered underneath the dark sky and if I looked closely I could see the pedestrians all scattered and ran in panic like ants on a burning hot frying pan.

“You are Raymond? Right?” The man talked to me.

“Yes.” I nodded my head. “John, I knew you.”

“Thank you so much for coming.” He shook my hand firmly and decidedly, as his sharp and angular facial features made an expression of appreciation and thankfulness, “She had talked about you before. Thank you so much for taking care of her.”

I had done nothing for her, so I didn’t really want to accept his compliments. Besides, underneath his overwhelming gratitude, I could sense a very tame but stinging hostility, as if he was signaling me to get out the room and leave them alone, leave her alone. I didn’t say a thing back to him.

He went back and whispered to her words that I did not hear nor could I understand if I did. Then they embraced and kissed again. Then she whispered something back to him, and, unexpectedly, he frowned, and threw me a quick gaze. He kissed her on the forehead, stood back up, and looked at me.

“It was good to meet you.”

This time, the hostility was not even disguised.

He left.

“Where is he going?” I asked, not really caring for an answer.

“Still got work to do. He is edging on a promotion.” She said, clearly a lot more rejoiced and lively than any other time of the day I was here.

“Well, then the day is late…”

“Would you sit along with me?” She gesticulated the chair once more, which John did not sit on, nor did anyone else that had been to this room, as if the chair was reserved solely for me.

As I sat down on the chair, the rain outside bellowed in terror, a pale blue stripe tore the black sky in two halves in an instant, then an explosive sound shook the room and the people in it. The storm had come, bringing dooming fear, and the tall buildings shuddered in dread, and lives and innocences ran back to safety, and the city shrieked. Thunders ululated on top of us like they were mere inches aloft our ceiling. She wanted me here, and I could feel my life being drained away by her admittedly prepossessing yet tiresome smile. She wanted me whole. Sat here with all my flesh bone and soul, accompany her to the next stop. When she got there, I would be left behind, alone once again, waiting to be picked up. Fury burnt within my rib cage as I realized this terrible truth, and the periodically exploding thunders only exacerbated my choler. I looked at her, and she smiled at me. I wanted to leave, to jump out the window and embrace the storm.

“Would you just, be here with me?” She asked again, softly.

Acerbated. I wanted to choke her.

“Would you just, bring me a cup of water?” She then asked with a fainting voice, almost lower than a whisper. The sound of raindrops almost prevented me from hearing her request.

I looked around, there was no water in the room.

“Out there… in the hallway…”

I walked out of the room. The hallways were even dimmer as somehow they didn’t turn the lights out when the sky had gone dark hours ago. No one could be seen, and besides the hard crash of raindrops and the roaring thunder no sound could be heard, not even my own footstep. I walked to the water machine, got a cup of hot water, and slowly lolloped my way back to her room.

She drank the water, slowly slid into her bed. “Raymond… do you dream?”

“Yeah.” I answered, immediately surprised by the amount of rage I had slipped through my lips. I didn’t intend the word to sound like an insult.

“What do you dream of…”

“Light. Someone came and picked me up from the ground. Someone found me as I stuck in the past, unable to move on.” I made all that up. Those were not my dreams. I was never picked up.

“That is nice… I envy your sleep… I wish I could see… the most beautiful… every time I hit the hay…”

She fell asleep. Her features softened finally, and only then did I notice the burdensomeness that hung on her nose, her lips, her brows and her eyes had gone away.

I was woken up by the bellowing storm and a light knock on the door. I didn’t really fall asleep, more of a state of mindless unconsciousness that had no dream and no reward of restfulness afterward, and would be woken up as easily as making up lies. The light was turned off, and the room would be pure black if not by the city lights outside and that small lamp on her bedstand. Someone was standing at the door. A man of our ages, wearing a black jacket, shoddy grey canvas pants, holding a dripping wet black umbrella. Unshaven, sable and messy hairs. and a pair of desolated eyes.

“Who are you?” I asked, having never seen the man before.

“Came to visit her.” His voice was lower than drones. He walked to her bedside, looked down at her sleeping posture. “Looks like a bad time to come.”

“No shit, detective, it's ten in the evening. How the heck does the hospital even allow you in?”

“You are still here, isn’t it? I presume you are not related to hers.”

Speechless, I stood up from the chair, “Well what do you want?”

“I want a talk with her, that is all.” The man said.

The thunder cracked once more. It was clear the umbrella didn’t really do that much for the guy as he was basically soaking wet from top to bottom.

“About what?”

“The past.”

Lots of people came for the past. I figured.

“Well, I will come next time.”

“There might be no next time,” I told him. “I think you should know by now, and if you don’t, I think you need to know.”

“Then I guess it’s too bad.” He smiled, almost sarcastically, as if he found it to be ironic. “Tell her I came when she woke up, would you… nevermind.”

“What?”

“I am sure you would be leaving before she woke up.”

He left, leaving a trail of water on the ground, glistening in the darkness. I felt sick, and the cabbage soup was making a comeback in my throat. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I walked out the room, sprinted down the stairs. The front gate of the hospital was enormous, bigger than anything I had laid eyes upon, and its vastness stung even though I was simply looking at it. My legs shook, and I could feel the organs inside my rib cage were having a battle, or an orgy, couldn’t really tell. Outside the gate was the city in the night, and the storm was dying down as well. I slowly moved my feet towards it, towards the opening, towards the outside. Notes of scrambling piano rang in my skull, and somehow I was seeing angels flying down from the sky to pick me up. I walked out the gate, and fresh but solid city air inflated my lungs, and they were tasteless. I would go back home and change all my clothes which reeked of sickness and death brought by hospital, then I would head to the bar in my barely functioning car, then I would be slosh legless with spirits, then I would smoke, then I would be shitfaced high and pass out in the street. Exuberance was overwhelming when my mind and my body both realized that I had walked out the hospital. Being alone had never felt so liberating.

I forgot what she looked like when I was outside.

。。。

The warm sunlight shone through the window. The carnations on the windowsill were shining with colors. The city sat there, calmly, in horrendous serenity. People’s lives continued on the street.

I came back to the room, expecting her almost chide-like greeting. Yet even I knew. The bedsheet was clean, and the room was brightly lit, and even though the flowers looked exactly the same as that day, they were put there anew. The smell of disinfectant overcame the smell of the flowers.

Inspired by A Silver Mt. Zion.

submitted by /u/Mercury-Summer [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2RHyB7e

#Blogger #Story

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unfinishedovercomer · 4 years

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In honor of World Suicide Prevention Day, I’d like to share my story of how I’ve been delivered and rescued through my struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts. I hope someone out there benefits from this and realizes they’re not alone and hope is available to everyone.

I was born in December 1989 with Spina Bifida, a birth defect that left me unable to walk, among other things. I had to have surgery about once every year until I was fifteen years old. When I was in the sixth grade, I started experiencing incontinence—losing control of my bladder—and this condition worsened as I grew into adulthood. I learned different ways to cope with it, until my early twenties.

Somewhere along the line, I also developed anxiety and depression. In all honesty, they have been my constant companions for as long as I can remember. I have tried many different medications to treat them, but instead of helping, they only made things worse for me. Anxiety, depression, and incontinence proved to be a dangerous combination.

My breaking point came on March 16, 2014, when I leaked in my mother’s car after my sister’s birthday party. Feeling like a failure, I started to believe that everyone I loved would be better off without me. I felt like I couldn’t handle it anymore, and I didn’t plan to.

I quickly entered the house, marching into my bedroom. I was done. This was it. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my very best friend, because I didn’t want him or anyone else to try to talk me out of my escape. As I was looking around my bedroom for something that would accomplish my plan, a very distinct voice came into my head. I heard the voice say, “Go to bed—now!” It was only ‪6:00 p.m.‬, but I obeyed.

The next morning, I was awakened ‪at 6:00 a.m.‬ to the sound of my alarm, and then it hit me. I couldn’t believe that I was capable of even trying to take my own life. I knew I had to tell someone. My best friend picked me up that evening, and I told him everything that had happened. I eventually started telling more and more people, including my family. The support I received was startling. If I had just reached out sooner, I might never have gotten to that point. I realized I was loved, not only by God, but by the people He has placed into my life. What was most startling, though, was the voice that had commanded me so clearly on that dark night. As I looked back, I knew beyond any doubt that the voice I had heard belonged to the love of my life, Jesus Christ.

Through my trials, I have come to discover that God is real, and He is good, and He is enough. He was the only One who knew what I was going through that night in my room, and He cared enough to save me. God has brought me into deeper intimacy with Him through every trial that has come since that night. I am not the person I used to be.

I came to know Jesus on May 28th, 2006, at the age of sixteen, after one day in study hall, a lifelong friend shared the Gospel with me and told me that Jesus died for my sins. I know this is going to sound crazy, but after I received Him, I started hearing Jesus in my head. I know I heard that same voice on the night I was planning to end my life.

I have since been called by the Lord to minister to others facing the same darkness. I am called to show Christ’s love and compassion to those who feel that they have no purpose in this world, and I am so excited about that calling.

I still struggle with suicidal thoughts. It’s a nagging thought in the back of my head. If something happens to me, I know where I’m going. But God’s grace has never failed to carry me. I’m stronger because of my struggle, because it drives me into the arms of the Lord. Just because I am now a child of God does not mean my struggle is over; it just means I can turn to Him for strength and comfort.

I tell my story because I want anyone who is considering suicide to know that they are not alone. I want to help them to reach out, because if they don’t, they may never realize that God put them here because the world needs them. I want them to know that God is real. He loves us all, and He shed His own blood for us. He gave His life so that we could live. Since March 16th, 2014, He has saved my life more times than I could possibly count. He is my reason for living every single day. That is why I share Him with a dying world.

Speaking of which, in the midst of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual struggles, the Lord fulfilled His call on my life for ministry in several amazing ways, both online and in my own home and community. As my ministry calling was finally becoming a reality, depression began to catch up with me. Turning to food and alcohol instead of turning to the Lord for peace, I gained a significant amount of weight. Yet this served to show me, more clearly than ever before, my desperate need of the grace and mercy that Jesus alone can offer, as in the spring of 2018, I suffered a broken knee while under the influence of alcohol that caused me to be hospitalized for 2 days and off work for 33. That summer, I received an indwelling catheter to try to help with my urinary issues, but instead it wreaked havoc on my body, which in turn wreaked havoc on my mind. That fall, I got a new wheelchair that was not the right fit for me, which presented a new set of challenges over the 8 months it took to fix it.

In the spring of 2019, I got a bone infection through a sore on my foot which led to 2 hospitalizations. That fall I was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea and given a CPAP to help, but the challenges of adjusting to the machine led to sleep deprivation, which deepened my depression.

My self-care continues to be an issue. I still struggle to keep my home and body clean, part of which actually led to the loss of my first job in 2016.

I’ve caught myself whispering “I wish I was dead” countless times. But now I know that’s not really true because when I was in the hospital in the spring of 2019, thinking I was dying, I realized I wasn’t really ready. And if that wasn’t enough, God showed me that many of the great men of faith in Scripture - Jeremiah, Moses, Jonah, Elijah - all struggled with the same thoughts, and that this struggle does not equal a lack of faith.

Living for Jesus has taken on a new, literal meaning for me. When I feel like I have nothing else to live for and no strength left, He continues to remind me that He gives me strength to face anything. He has shown me that nothing surprises Him. He has taught me that these trials are meant to purify my faith and to build endurance, which He promises will lead to strengthened character and hope. He said that no weapon formed against me will succeed, and that my vindication comes from Him alone, and that my hope will never be cut off. His authority brings me comfort. His victory over the world in the midst of my troubles brings me peace. He is the strength of my heart when my mind and body fail. His grace truly is enough, because His promises preserve my life, and His goodness and mercy continue to chase me down every day.

I can’t say my faith has never been shaken; that would be a lie. When I take my eyes off the Lord and His promises, I sink right back into deadly despair. The enemy has taken advantage of my struggles to whisper lies about God and His Truth, and I’ve fallen for them more times than I can count, getting in fights with God and almost reaching the point of turning my back on Him. Yet the Lord never ceases to pursue me, and He keeps me in His perfect peace as I fix my mind on Him, and He has promised that He will finish the good work He started in me.

When my feelings of despair grow too strong, I am tempted to feel worthless. A secret battle with addiction to pornography warped my sexuality and often led me to lose sight of my identity as a holy and pure child of God. The one thing that combats the lies greater than anything else is the truth of the worth that the Lord has placed on me by shedding His priceless blood on the cross for me. The blood of God in human form is the most precious substance in all creation, and that’s the price He paid for me, and for all of us, and He has promised overwhelming victory in Christ, even when I feel defeated.

When I mess up, which I do daily, I struggle to forgive myself, but God is faithful and just to forgive my sins, because of what Jesus did on the cross - therefore I must forgive myself, no matter how far I fall.

The Lord has promised to keep me strong to the end so that I will be blameless on the day that He returns. He says that His disciples are the light of the world, and that the light can never be extinguished by the darkness. Even when my body is failing, God tells me that I am wonderfully made, and that there is wonderful joy ahead.

I can’t take any credit for the strength that I’ve found through faith in Christ. I yearn for stronger faith every day. I still struggle to believe the truth of God over the lies of Satan and my own mind. I still struggle to turn to the God of all comfort instead of things that will never ultimately satisfy, even though I am now both clean and sober. I am more grateful for the grace and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ than ever before, because He is enough. He showed me that I don’t need alcohol or porn or any created thing to deal with depression. All I need is Jesus, and He has proven through all these years that He will never leave me. He is my joy, my living hope, and the love of my life. He has filled every void in my life in an indescribably powerful way. I am also in therapy through my church to help me deal with all these challenges and more, and I thank God for that as well. My prayer is that others who are struggling find lasting hope in Jesus Christ. He is SO faithful!

I am in absolute awe of the way the Lord chose to grow my faith through trials. In May of 2020, at age 30, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, I underwent bladder surgery and had a stoma placed in my belly. This was the hardest decision I’d had to make so far in my life, and the timing felt awful to say the least. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t struggle, but the Lord directed my steps the whole way. I wouldn’t be allowed visitors for the majority of my initial hospital stay... so the Lord sent me a whole new support system in the hospital. Don’t ever tell me He doesn’t work through people. He does. The recovery, which was only supposed to take 6-8 weeks, went on for over four months. I not only underwent physical surgery; the Lord performed a major spiritual surgery in my heart. It was incredibly difficult. I was scared. I was broken. I felt far from God. But Jesus never failed to meet me where I was, even in my fear, and He proved Himself ever faithful over and over again. He showed me that in baptizing me with this fire, He is with me, fulfilling His promise to make me holy in every way by burning and blasting away my pride and impurities and sin, and transforming me into His image, in which I was created, and that He will only allow this fire to burn as long as necessary to accomplish His purpose. He has promised to conquer my sins! He has shown me that no matter what heartbreak I face, He is close, keeping track of each of my tears. He is pruning me to bear more fruit, with the promise that the discipline He provides will produce a harvest of righteousness for those who are trained by it. He taught me that He only does what is good, that He is for me and not against me, and that He will not allow me to be destroyed. Jesus has revealed Himself to me as the Word of God made flesh. He has shown me the deceitfulness of sin, and the war that it has been waging against my soul. He has revealed to me that sinful pleasures are temporary and can never fully satisfy me; only the pleasures that are found in Him can provide fullness of eternal joy. He’s shown me that His love is holy, pure, and without hypocrisy, and does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. He has revealed Himself to me as the God of truth, who alone has the right to define that which He has designed. He’s taught me that no one who believes in Him will be put to shame, and therefore any shame I feel is false and not from Him. In this wrestling with Him for the blessings He has promised, He is wrestling with me for my repentance, drawing me into a deeper, more authentic relationship with Him than ever before.

I could never have imagined the road that God would lay out for me to experience abundant life with Him. Beyond my physical health, I am so grateful for the spiritual healing the Lord has worked in me. I am so excited to see what God has in store for me in the future.

#WorldSuicidePreventionDay #endthestigma #youarenotalone

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fandomaestheticxo · 7 years

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I’ve been thinking a lot about asexuality and trying to learn more about it because I’m 99% sure that’s what I am. When I first started looking into it, I brought the info to my mom and the only thing she had to say about it was “there was nothing wrong with me”, so talking to her about it feels pretty pointless. And I don’t think my dad knows how to grasp that concept or if he even knows what I’m talking about. After I had written everything down and sort of got a mild understanding what who I was, I showed it to them and I guess sort of came out to them? They were just like “ok..” but then continued to do the same thing they’ve always done, which is try to set me up with people and constantly nag on me about why I wasn’t putting myself out there to find a boyfriend.

My dad even got after me for not talking to this guy who worked at a Sprout’s because he said that he seemed really nice and I should talk to him and I’m never going to meet anybody if I just walk around with my arms folded. I’m not actively trying to find anyone to date, I’m comfortable walking around with my arms folded because it makes me look unapproachable and maybe that’s how I want to come across...

I guess I should start from the beginning and say that I’ve never been a sexual person. I’ve had moments with friends where I’d talk about wanting to ‘tap that’ or saying a guy looked really hot, but I don’t think I ever seriously thought about sleeping with them. Mainly because I was in jr. high and that seems to be a little young to think about fucking people.

I’ve always had a hard time being comfortable calling private body parts by their name because it just felt wrong to me. Even today, at 28, I still have a hard time saying vagina or penis (it was also hard to write it out, but look at me now!) so I resort to calling it something else. I grew up as a Christian and I thought that was part of why I was against sex because you were supposed to save yourself until marriage, and maybe for a while that’s what I really meant, but over time I sort of felt like I was afraid of being intimate with a person. I’d see someone, mainly a celebrity type person because I was too shy and not attractive enough to think that I’d be desirable to anyone I’d ever meet in real life, where I thought I’d want to have sex with them because it was safe because it would never happen.

But two years ago I lost my virginity to this asshole of a guy who knew I hadn’t ever had sex before, because I told him like two or three times but he still wasn’t gentle, and it felt pushed on me, like I didn’t have too much of say because as he was asking me if it was ok, he was taking my clothes off and groping, and being the person I am, I froze and said yes when I wanted to say no. It was a horrible experience. It hurt, I didn’t have fun, it wasn’t pleasurable to me. I was lying there thinking about how I wanted it to be over. He was also the kind of guy who says that sex is an important part in making a relationship last. But even before I met him, I felt like I could live my whole life never having sex and I’m be 100% okay with that, so I wasn’t buying that bullshit for a second. But I’m also a person who needs people to like me because I feel like I’m deprived of that, and this was the first guy who ever seemed to like me back.... even though most of our “relationship” was based off being drunk, so you’d like anyone when you’re constantly intoxicated. And I think that’s why I froze and didn’t say no because I was afraid he’d get mad and tell me to go home or that would be the last time he’d want to do anything with me. Which wouldn’t have been a loss, I would have gotten over it rather quickly.

When all of that was over and I was back home in a different state, I started looking at guys a lot differently. I absolutely hated the way they talked about woman and how everything is sexual with them. I became repulsed by them and wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. I felt like no matter what, there was going to be some kind of hidden agenda where they’re going to say all these sweet things because they’re stuff people want to hear, but in the back of their mind, all they’re thinking about is getting into your pants and I didn’t want to ever put myself in that kind of situation.

I told one of my friends about being asexual and I said that if I could find a person who felt the same as I did about sex, then I’d be perfectly happy. I don’t know if I could ever date a person who expected sex in their relationship. Maybe it’d be different if they didn’t put pressure on it and was patient with me until I was at a point where I felt like I really wanted to share that with them, whether I got joy out of it or not.... I’d WANT to do it because I cared about them and I felt comfortable to go through with it. But it just seems easier to find people who are the same as you because I feel like you’d always have that insecurity in the back of your head that they’d leave you because you weren’t giving them what they want. You were fulfilling their needs and they’d go looking for people who could.

I haven’t told my best friends about being asexual because I don’t think they’d understand it. I don’t think I’m going to bring it up to my parents again because I know they won’t understand it and I don’t think it would change anything, with how they talk to me about finding someone. They still make sex jokes in front of me, despite my constant yelling out in discomfort, but yeah. I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out where I stand on this spectrum of asexuality. I think I’m an aesthetic asexual? I admire people’s beauty a lot more than I find them “hot”. I think people are attractive, but I don’t have sexual thoughts about them. I always feel like I’m disrespecting people if I have dirty thoughts about them or I see the way people talk dirty about them. They’re not meat, they’re people and it’s awkward and uncomfortable to have complete strangers talk about wanting to do bad things to them. I find it weird.

But if you’re still reading, my idea about writing this was hopefully to get a better idea of what kind of asexual I am? I know I’m the only one who can figure that out, but I feel like I need an asexual life coach or something to help guide me through this process. I do feel like I have a better grasp of it, but there’s still so much I need to learn.

#asexual #coming out story?#would this be considered a blurb?#I don't know #asexuality #ace #ace community #leave your opinions and/or thoughts?

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balarsen22 · 7 years

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Therapy 5/2

We started off talking about the weekend, and how roller derby went. I had just found out that the rankings went from 207 to 130 because of how well we did, so I was pretty happy about that. I talked about how I was really feeling the pressure, that if I didn't play well Hurt would replace me and I’d be benched. I was trying to force myself to have fun. She asked about my mood over the weekend, and when I said ups and downs she asked if there were actually any ups (because usually I say that and then take it back and say more like flat and downs). There were one or two ups, but I did have a couple of bad downs too. I admitted that I didn't make the calorie goal on Saturday night, and told her about the after party. She asked more about who was there who knows how much I struggle with that situation (megan, emily, and maybe shannon?), but I ended up leaving because I couldn't stop shaking and people from the team noticed. She got stuck for a little bit about me taking that much Xanax. She said that this week we’d let that I didn't hit my calories that night slide because I was completely stoned and overdosing on xanax. I commented that its no where near the dose I would need to overdose- I’ve calculated it, so I know. Apparently she was just joking about the overdose part... She asked more about how much I use xanax, which I try not to. I’ve had to use it more lately though. She told me I can't be taking that much, a She asked more about what goes through my head when I’m panicking, and I struggled to find the words to explain it. Eventually I came up with that if there was a thought bubble over my head, it would just be filled with exclamation points. I just really struggle with crowded and loud situations. She seemed to have a lightbulb go on in her brain, and asked me about if there was any tastes, or textures, or smells that set me off while she grabbed her laptop. It’s so hard for me to come up with a list of that stuff off the top of my head, but the smell of alcohol and the smell of cardboard set me off too, and being touched by people I don't know or if I’m not ready for it. Then she asked me a bunch of questions from whatever survey she had to confirm her idea, of which I ended up answering true to most of them. It included statements like “I am very sensitive to caffeine” and “other people’s mood affects me” and “I am easily startled” and “when I compete or am observed while performing a task I become so nervous that I do much worse than I would otherwise,” and a whole bunch of other statements I never really thought would be related. And then she told me I am a highly sensitive person. She seemed really excited to have figured it out. She explained that its when a person has hypersensitivity to external stimuli, a greater depth of cognitive processing, and high emotional reactivity. That there’s no treatment for it, but being aware of it can help. She disclosed that she has it as well- she struggles with textures, and bright lights, loud music or the windows down in the car, and similar things like that. As she talked, it all seemed to click for me. How much I have always struggled with noises especially, but also how I can get overwhelmed, and how other people’s mood affects me. She said it often gets overlooked as someone just being an introvert, as its rare that an extrovert has the trait (but she's one of the rarities). I started thinking back to TK, and how much everything affected me there- the dining hall, the fans, the fact that I was constantly surrounded by people who were upset or struggling. She said that it gets worse when we don't get enough sleep, so it makes sense that it gets worse when I’m sleep deprived. The sensitivity to caffeine being linked surprised me, but it fits. It also explains why I don't do well at bars or parties, and why the xanax didn't help. It can get mistaken for anxiety a lot of the time, or turn into anxiety, but its a different type of trigger. She asked why I even went to the bar in the first place, and I explained that I didn't want to miss out on things. I was frustrated with myself and wanted to make myself do it, and it was a team thing and I would've been the only one that didn't go. I had to at least try. She said she understood, but its probably best for me to avoid those situations. She was so pleased with herself to have figured it out.

She changed the subject back to mood, and said that it was the beginning of May and we had said we were going to re-evaluate what I was going to do this summer at the beginning of May. She asked me to consider where I was and how I’m doing now. I’m still not doing great, but I’m not as bad as I was. She asked me to look at what was different- am I not going as low, is it longer in between, etc. I think I’m still going that low, but I’m not staying at the deepest part for as long as I had been. There’s also more time between the really low points. I also can't tell if thats because I’ve been numb a lot lately though. She asked what I was going to do, and I brought up that today was the one year anniversary of when I was admitted to TK, and that I have been thinking about residential a lot lately. I’ve concluded that I’m either going to get better or I’m not, but I’m not willing to drop everything again for something I don't believe can help. The only thing that would get me to go back would be if I end up in the hospital. She said that I almost did and I didn't go, but I argued that I would've gone if she had told me I had to instead of staying with Megan. I mean, I was in the flipping car on the way to the hospital when she called me back. She assumed that was what I meant, but I was more thinking that if I ended up in the hospital after a failed suicide attempt I would go (I didn't tell her that though). She asked me what I would do if I was hospitalized at the end of summer. As much as I don’t want to, I would take a medical leave and the year off of school, if it came down to it. She seemed satisfied with my answers, and agreed to keep working with EMDR and neurofeedback and to see how I do.

We changed subjects to eating disorder day. She said that she was going to assume that weighing was going to be 0 again, and I argued that I haven’t weighed in a month now and I should be able to. She said that she didn't want my eating disorder freaking out on me right before finals, so she was going to make the decision this week and keep it at 0, but we could revisit the idea next week. She asked me what I go up to, and I said how I’m not exercising as much this week because of taper before the half marathon on sunday, and that my hip and knee and shoulder are still super sore from this weekend, so I shouldn't have to really go up much. She argued that I’m still doing the same amount of exercise, but just squeezing it into one day, and that I need to eat to prep for the half marathon. Which I know I do, but not that much the entire week when I’m being lazy and resting. I commented on that it was so much food and that I feel like I’m just constantly eating all the time, and I’m eating when I’m not hungry, and she told me that if I ate foods with higher calorie content that I wouldn't have to eat so often. Doesn't she realize that those foods aren't safe? She joked that she imagines me eating like 3 apples a day and just constantly eating fruit. I also said that its painful a lot of the time- she asked if I meant emotionally, but I meant physically. My GI is all messed up. She commented that after years of restricting and abusing laxatives and diet pills, its bound to be a little messed up and it will take my body some time to rebound and get back to normal, but that she is sorry I’m in pain. She brought the conversation back to my goal number for the week, and when I couldn't decide she told me to just say the number on the count of 3. She really wanted me to do 1800, but I decided on 1750. She called me a brat (while smiling about it though), but wrote it down.

She asked me if I had re-tested Jake’s kidneys yet, which I havent, but I told her about how worried I had been when she stopped eating last night to go outside. Thankfully she was just full- apparently Megan (roommate) had left a bag on the ground for awhile when I was gone to surgery lab that had a loaf of bread in it, and Jake ate the loaf of bread. She failed to mention it to me until I asked if she had thought Jake seemed normal earlier. I was pretty pissed. Jessica talked about how her lab eats everything too. I learned a lot about her again today- she’s definitely been telling me more about herself lately than she used to. Its nice. We ran out of time, and I brought up that I was surprised she didn't ask me about the therapy homework- I had been stressing and worried about talking about it, and seriously considered cancelling knowing that we would be discussing it. I said she was going to have to end up reading it anyways, because she wasn't going to get me to say it out loud. She joked that now she really wanted to bring it up now that she knows how uncomfortable it makes me, and that she definitely would've made me read it. I retorted that she would've gotten the abbreviated version and not the actual journal entry. She asked if we should do it thursday or just next week, and I said that I’m all for putting it off another week. I left, but realized later that it will probably tie in to what we’re doing in EMDR on thursday, so it will probably come up then. joy.

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southwarkcofe · 4 years

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Hands, Hope and Oxygen

Jacqueline Dean, Reader in the United Benefice of Christ Church Brockham Green & St Bartholomew’s Leigh and a Hospital Chaplain writes…

He reached for my hand and I took it. Despite my goggles and mask across my face, I smiled with my eyes. As he closed his own eyes then, for him my mask and goggles and gown disappeared; my voice became the voice of those he wished to be there from times past, and times present. I held his hand as he pressed it to his cheek, his eyes still closed, and held it there a long time. In that moment, my blue gloved hand became the hand of all those he loved and remembered, who could not be physically present with him at the last. When it came, that last letting go of breath, it was as if Christ had become his oxygen, and a moment of almost sacred stillness.

OXYGEN & HOPE

I am part of the hospital chaplaincy team at East Surrey Hospital run by Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (SASH), where, as a Lay Chaplain I have ministered for the past four years to both patients, staff and their families. Sometimes, we are there to hold the space, and sometimes simply to dissolve into the background……

Chaplaincy is a very distinct Ministry; by its nature we are called to walk with people of faith, different faiths, some faith, and no faith at all. It is a ministry of presence, where we are called to meet people as they are and, in their need - being alongside people who are often in stress, in difficult and challenging situations and asking the question, “how can I help you?” In a way, to bring the hands, the voice and face of Christ into our stricken communities, even when sometimes one is constrained from speaking His name.

It is a ministry to be a presence of hope, whatever the situation or outcome may be. It is a ministry of holding and of letting go; of conversation and silence; of memories of the past and what may lie ahead. Most significantly, a ministry of being in the moment for those around and in need. Sometimes connections drill down deep and are built over a long period of time. Sometimes they are transitory in nature and powerfully intense.

The arrival of the coronavirus and the response to it in the hospital setting has been a challenge for us in hospital chaplaincy with circumstances that we would have found unimaginable only a few weeks before.

The Trust provided support for the chaplaincy team to ensure that we would be comfortable with seeing patients with Covid-19. For us, spiritual care could still be offered, even from behind masks, goggles or visors, and cold blue rubber gloves. To avoid the use of books or paper, I needed to learn more scripture and liturgy off by heart than usual. The 23rd 121, 139 Psalms, the Nunc Dimittis, the Prayer to the Ephesian’s, the Lord’s Prayer became my refrain.

In line with Government advice visitor restrictions were put in place at the hospital, which meant that friends and relatives could not always see their loved ones. This was heart wrenching for us, that in some cases patients could not be reassured by their physical presence, and their loved ones could not be reassured by being with them.

In cases, where possible, the hospital let immediate family members in to visit their loved one at the end of their life. They had to follow guidelines and wear PPE, yet even so, these moments together, where they could touch, hold, see and say goodbye were very precious. After leaving the ward sometimes the only support I could offer was to let them cry, and yes, sometimes to cry with them.

Many of our elderly patients were confused and fearful….. Protective equipment turned familiar faces into strange ones, so trying to create, a safe and comforting place was a challenge. We became practised at smiling with eyes only, while trying to make raised voices to the hard of hearing seem gentle and reassuring.

I trained to be a singer and I never thought this would become part of my hospital ministry, but in these last weeks I found myself singing with and to patients hymns, modern worship songs, monastic chants, popular songs from the thirties and forties- even singing ‘smile, though your heart is breaking’ with the nursing staff on one of the wards late one night. On one occasion I was singing Amazing Grace to one patient in a ward when two of the other patients joined in and as our voices softly filled the air, so it seemed the still peaceful presence of The Holy Spirit filled the ward…

I have so many memories from the last intense weeks. Holding the phone to a patient’s ear, while their loved one said goodbye, or so their Minister could pray with them. Quietly reading Compline to a priest who was reaching the end of his life. Offering prayers, as life support ended or just sitting quietly holding a patient’s hand.

Then there were the times, when those little personal treats mean so much.

I recall one elderly patient, who not only missed her family, but also missed eating, of all things, a KitKat bar. When I spoke with staff, to bring a few in, she took a gleeful delight in according them the status of elicit contraband and hiding them from the ward staff, even though they had given permission for her to have them! Such small pleasures as these, usually taken for granted, assumed a joyful and surprising significance; witnessing these simple joys for some, gladdened the heart as we walked the valley of shadows with others…

Along with my colleagues I have given out rosaries, holding crosses, Bibles, Qur’ans, knitted hearts and prayer cards, anything that would bring comfort and healing to those in need of it. Sometimes such little things, given to patients and also to their families, could bridge distances in unexpected ways; though held in separate hands, apart in different places, they became tokens of love and assurance between them and symbolically brought people together. The children in a family whose grandad was at the end of his life, and who could not visit, had been given little knitted hearts as tokens of comfort. After he died, I have since been told they have become very treasured possessions, kept beneath their pillows at night, a connection with the person that had meant so much to them.

Hearts that were apart are reunited

COVID-19 is such a cruel disease. It deprives us of contact and touch with those we love, limiting how we say good-bye at funerals, leaving us standing in the loneliness of our loss. Our team have been contacting families whose loved one sadly died at the hospital from coronavirus and other illnesses to offer pastoral care and support, inviting them, when we are able to gather again, to a ‘Time to Remember Service’. Their stories are often heart breaking. One bereaved husband, sitting in self isolation at home, grieving the loss of his beloved wife, from whom he had never been apart for 55 years, simply said “I just want someone to hold me.”

As I spoke with nursing staff it was evident that they were facing situations they had never experienced. Nursing teams drafted in from different areas of the hospital, found themselves learning to adapt to the different needs and circumstances in the face of this pandemic. The dedication of the medical staff continued to shine through despite this unpreceded situation. As a chaplaincy team we do a lot of work in the background and are called not just to be alongside patients and families but also to care for and support staff. Walking the wards in the evening, and called upon to be that listening ear, I heard the staff’s stories. Some who have families who are far away in other countries. Some staff moved out of their family homes into hotels, so they could protect their families, patients. One paramedic recently confided to me that he had not been able to hold his children for two months. I saw staff anxious, often emotionally and physically exhausted, but still resiliently continuing to put their own fears, concerns, and comfort to one side, to care for others.

In fact, it was humbling to continually witness the tenderness and care that medical staff gave to patients. One of my most privileged moments was at the height of the crisis, in a ward where tragically many had died that day. I was sitting and praying at one bedside, and hearing the voice of a nurse speaking softly, sitting with another patient nearby… “Don’t worry ... you are safe… Keep drinking in the oxygen. Do not be afraid.” Then there was tragic loss of much-loved colleagues and friends among the staff. The Chapel become a haven for remembrance with condolence books to write in, candles to light, little knitted mementoes, and other tokens to place on the altar or to take away. It became a space to seek peace, and a safe place for tears to be shed.

Yet, amid all this, there were also moments of grace…where the chaplaincy team sensed the ever-present movement of the Spirit across the hospital. Receiving requests for prayer from matrons and nurses at shift handovers, setting up a spirituality resource table where we found that the free bibles, Quran’s, rosaries, prayer cards constantly needed replenishing throughout the day. And there were moments of joy, giving thanks in prayer with one of our cleaners, for the birth of a grandchild - remembering the gift of life, in the midst of mortality.

Putting on PPE in ICU

As my niece, who is an anaesthetist working in Intensive care in a London Hospital said, sometimes all we can offer is OXYGEN AND HOPE. Her words confirmed to me that chaplaincy is fundamentally about going into the heart of the community to be and bring the oxygen of hope.

As I walk the wards of the hospital, I pray my Christian presence is of some comfort to those around, a hopeful presence, even in the darkest of times. The words from a familiar hymn runs through my mind… ‘I will hold the Christ light for you in the night time of your fear I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear. I will weep when you are weeping; when you laugh, I’ll laugh with you; I will share your joy and sorrow, till we see this journey through’.

From a personal perspective, I feel incredibly grateful for the rainbow of love and hope this ministry offers. I give daily thanks to God that he has enabled me to have the opportunity to share in this work, alongside such dedicated and caring chaplaincy colleagues.

My prayer life has become a precious solace as I processed the grief and rawness of emotions. Familiar verses of scripture have taken on a greater significance, and I find that I live more deeply connected to them …” Nothing can separate us from the love of God…” “How wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” …. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. …… “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace”.

These, and others, have resonated throughout my daily experience – to encourage, embrace, comfort, uplift and strengthen for the tasks that will lie ahead. Challenging though the last weeks have been, it has also been a time of immense and intense privilege. It continues to stretch, widen, and deepen my understanding of the nature of service.

Children's pictures lining the wall of Emergency Department

Thus, when leading prayer for the medical staff just before a shift handover in the Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Department, I have used words from a familiar prayer - adapted so that it is inclusive for all, in the hospital’s multi faith setting.

God has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which He looks Compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good, Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, Yours are the eyes,

You are His body.

God has no body now, but yours.

May God bless our compassionate service today/tonight may He keep us and our love ones safe and hold us all in the palm of His hands.

Amen

Adapted from words attributed to Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)

Jacqueline Dean came to East Surrey Hospital on placement as part of a post Graduate Certificate in Chaplaincy and stayed on as a Voluntary Chaplain where pre prior to the pandemic she provided spiritual care in the Stroke ward and Acute Medical Unit. She is currently employed by SASH as a Bank and On Call Chaplain and studying for an MA in Chaplaincy.

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729renegades · 5 years

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BEING HEALTHY ON THE INSIDE AND OUT – PART 1

Here at Renegades we are constantly trying to show more and more business owners that there is more to life than the daily grind of self-employment. We are working hard behind the scenes to develop a stepped process that will allow business owners, regardless of where they are on their journey a system that if followed will lead to success in their business and personal lives.

Over the next 2 months I want to share a section of that process and here’s the first part for you.

Health and Wellbeing and being healthy on the inside and the outside is a huge part of being able to meet the demands of entrepreneurship when its coupled with a family or private life.

It doesn’t matter how you look at this.

You can have the best business in the world, plenty of money in the bank but if you don’t have your health and you’re not happy then quite frankly it’s all wasted on you.

Your physical and mental health is priceless and a great friend of mine always quotes, “health is wealth”, and he’s spot on.

Likewise, your general state of wellness and happiness has a huge bearing on your quality of life. You can’t or shouldn’t spend the rest of your life doing a job or running a business that fills your wallet but empties your soul.

What does being healthy on the inside and the outside mean to me?

Feeling good

Feeling motivated

Clarity of thought

Happiness

A spring in the step

A smile on my face

Energetic

Readiness to face all challenges and seize any opportunities

How do I make sure I tick all of those boxes? Let me explain what works for me.

One of the secrets that I know has had great results with me regarding my health and wellbeing has been the instilling and following of good, positive routines which allows me to be healthy on the inside and out.

When my life is good, and I am at my best. I’m in a certain groove and following a good, positive routine.

When life is bad, when I feel overwhelmed or down, when I lack energy and clarity you can guarantee I’m not in that grove and something has slipped, or I’m in a bad daily routine.

Routines make things work and keep people alive!!

Do what works for you – There is no right or wrong

For those who don’t know, I spent nearly 8 years in the Armed Forces in the UK, and this is why the Armed Forces and the Royal Navy in my case run everything by routine. People laugh at me when I say my time in the Forces was like being in prison but without the loss of liberty. That’s because everything, even minutia is run by routine. Obviously, this is so that everyone knows, where everyone should be and what they should be doing and who they should be doing it with at every point during any given day. You know when to eat, when to exercise, when to work, when to play, you know everything, every day. Same as prison, when to sleep, when to wake, when to wash, when to eat, when to exercise, when to get yard time, when to go back in, when to return to your cell and so it goes on. It avoids chaos reigning.

One of my old Charge Chief’s on HMS Gloucester used to spout, “fit in body, fit in mind” all the time and he was renowned for his health and especially his fitness. He had run the Field Gun in the Royal Tournament the maximum allowed 3 times. This is an event where a team of men are responsible for getting a cannon, which weighs in excess of 1.2 tonnes, across a course by taking it apart and putting it back together at the other side of an imaginary ravine and firing it, before doing it all again in reverse to the finish line!

Trust me, it’s as crazy as it sounds.

He sometimes trained 3 times a day and was one of the fittest guys I have ever met.

He had lost the index finger of his left hand, it was an ugly, gnarly stump that was left and I asked him about it. When he was running the gun, he was a wheel man. This meant that he was responsible for taking the huge wheel on the cannon off, carrying it and then putting it back on when required through the race.

The wheel is held in place by a metal split pin which you pull out or shove in dependant on what you are trying to do.

On his first ever tournament, in front of the Queen they were mid run and he lost the pin, he dropped it in the sand that covers the floor. Without the pin, the wheel would fall off and his team would lose, and it would be on him.

So, he put his finger in the hole and kept going.

The gun and wheel took his finger clean off but that wasn’t the end of it.

He had to carry on to the finish line by taking his own finger in and out of that hole another twice before they crossed the line. That was the type of team player he was. I urge you to google “Royal Navy Field Gun Race” and check out one of the YouTube clips. When you see them flying across with those wheels, picture him carrying his finger as well!!

What his fitness brought him was a boundless energy and a clarity of thought and action that made him a joy to be around and a great leader to boot. In difficult times when sleep was deprived in certain dangerous circumstances, he was the one that would see us through with his energy and actions.

You have to be really conscious and intentional because in my experience, it’s much, much easier to fall into bad routines than it is to follow good ones.

It’s funny how the brain works that way.

I want to put a disclaimer in here before I go on. First, I am not advocating that you follow what I do, I am simply telling you what works for me. If it works for you too, that’s superb. If not, find something that works for you.

Take some time and think about what you were doing when you felt on top form.

When are you at your best?

When you’ve established those answers and you can recall being at the peak of your performance and copy that.

Second, I am no fitness guru either. I am 18 stones, horizontally challenged and under tall for my weight. I should be about 8 foot 6. Putting it in lay man terms, I am a fat bloke that likes to keep relatively active and fit.

I find nothing worse than people harping on about what you should and shouldn’t eat or drink. I was once in a community of entrepreneurs where the leader or self-appointed guru used to ridicule and belittle people for enjoying alcohol, eating meat, or having any sugar in their diet!! My thought was. . . get a life! I didn’t stay long in that group.

Eat what works for you and be happy with your choices. If you eat like a pig and are as fat as a pig be happy with your choices, accept the consequences, don’t moan because you are carrying a few pounds. Likewise, if you eat a diet of lettuce and dust, have the body/fat composition of a beanpole, be happy with your choices, don’t preach at others and complain that you can’t put on weight and muscle. Each to their own and celebrate we are all different.

You won’t get any diet or exercise advice from me, unless you ask for it.

Again, I will outline what works for me.

I am no dietician, I’m not an Olympic athlete or a Personal Trainer.

I love a glass of wine and a take away and occasionally I have athletes’ foot!!, I guess that makes me normal then.

Lastly, I was totally not a morning person and I will talk more on this later.

I was always missing the school bus; I was last up in the ten to eight club my Navy days and I was always last up in the house.

I changed my routine because I knew that it wasn’t serving me, and I wanted to make the change.

Now if you want to stay in bed until 10am and work until 3am every day, that’s cool by me. Likewise, if you are up at 4am and in bed by 9pm, good on you also. Be happy with your choices and to repeat – DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU – THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG.

One of the most sure-fire ways to not be healthy on the inside and the out is to start comparing yourself to others. You should compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to who someone else is today.

When I started looking at myself and making a conscious effort to be healthy on the inside and the outside, I quickly became more self-aware and was able to understand what worked for me.

One of the first things I stopped doing was watching, listening or reading the News. As a household we had breakfast news on from 6.30am, lunch was taken with the 1pm news and then evening meal was around the 6pm news swiftly followed by the 10pm news. Overload on negativity or what!!!

The amount of places I go and see that they have 24 hour news channels on in reception and all around the offices – that’s a big no no for me.

There is a reason why the last 1 minute of the news starts with, “and finally” and is a light hearted story otherwise we would all be leaving feeling pretty low about our lives and the world we live in.

I can promise you, if it’s important and it affects you, the news you need will find you quickly enough.

It’s toxic, do yourself a favour and don’t let it in!

It was then I realised that everything stems around exercise for me. It was that simple.

I noticed that if I did something like hitting the gym, walking, running, biking, swimming, then everything else aligned. I firstly felt better. I had more energy. I looked better, my complexion and skin were good, and I had a healthy glow about me. I was sharper in work and could sustain my concentration for longer periods. I ate better so that I watched what I ate and didn’t want to sabotage my efforts by eating crap. If I did go out for a meal or get a family take away, again I didn’t stress, I had earned it. Family life was better, I had more energy after work to devote to the family. I didn’t drink and because of that I slept better and deeper when I did get to my bed.

What was quickly apparent was the reverse of that when I had sustained periods of inactivity. When I don’t hit the gym, I feel lethargic, I struggle to get up in the morning. I think, who cares, let’s have a fry up or junk food because it’s the way I’m feeling – lazy. As soon as I’m home, I’m crashing on the sofa, watching sport or Netflix and getting stuck into a bottle of red wine and reach for the Diary Milk. That gives me heart burn and it means I don’t sleep well, and the cycle repeats itself. During these times my energy in work is poor, I am unable to concentrate for sustained periods and I generally feel crap. That horrible, “I can’t be bothered” attitude creeps into everything and everywhere. From work to home. Family life would suffer, I was impatient and short with the kids and would be sensitive and bicker with my wife. Does any of this resonate with you??

It’s funny though how sliding into the negative routine was so much easier and far more appealing than the positive routine!

Why is that?

Why are bad habits so easy to form and good one’s so hard?

Inevitably it’s because bad ones are simple and require very little thought or discipline and more than that most of the population are doing them on autopilot which makes it even harder to break years of conditioning and swimming against the tide of humanity.

When you look around you and analyse yourself, think of all your friends and family that follow a negative routine. Most follow it but have no idea or no thoughts of a different routine. There’s a total lack of self-awareness that it can change. Many of those around us are on auto pilot and live the negative routine I have just described.

My sister, Lisa, had issues with mental health and she will be the first to admit that she got into a cycle of negativity.

She spent her evenings watching things like the News and the UK Soaps like Eastenders and Coronation Street that are filled with negativity and depressing subjects. It fed a cycle of downward emotional energy that led to inactivity and poor diet which then surfaced in her mental health.

How did she break that cycle?

Firstly, through self-awareness and working out what wasn’t serving her.

She quickly realised that she had a great life and outside influences were forcing her to believe she had a bad one.

She quit the soaps and the news

She hit the gym

She took a personal trainer and as a worker in the NHS in the UK, she’s hardly on a king’s ransom as a salary!!

She decided to spend money on the right things and not the wrong things

Almost immediately she saw a difference.

Her mindset and mental health shifted.

She had more energy and her old smile came back.

Things that used to affect her or make her down could now be brushed off.

She was in control again.

Last year we ran the Cardiff Half Marathon together and she ran for the UK Charity MIND which is helping people with mental health issues and I was so proud to be there with her.

Next month I’ll continue with this article based on being healthy on the inside and out. I’ll tell you what works for me and about my routine. I’ll talk into some of the advice my father gave me and how I keep motivated with crazy challenges. I talk about that “To Do” list and how it isn’t helping you.

To be continued. . .

from Blog | 729renegades http://bit.ly/2WIP3sS

#Blog | 729renegades

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liluloveslife-blog · 7 years

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This special post was the result of a very touching email I received from a man in Australia. It brought a tear to my eye as I read it and knew that I had to share it with you. He states how he has studied and searched spiritual awakening for twenty years and although his dedication for truth never wavered, yet he was often uncertain and insecure until last week when he read the Missing Link' script and, as he put it, he just woke up. Everything suddenly came clear to him.

The following questions and answers on the subject of the ‘Missing Link' are meant as a further elaboration on a subject that the mind normally refuses to see. If there is the willingness to find out what is true, then the grace of awakening can happen at anytime.

One point I would like to stress is this – never assume you know the truth if doubt and insecurity still lurk in your consciousness. Truth is freeing because it is not ‘something' attained but a clarity like living in a dark dingy room with stifled air when suddenly the door is flung open and fresh air and sunlight stream in. It is like waking up in the morning after a disturbing dream and suddenly realize, 'Oh, it was just a dream!"

The ‘missing link' statement says, 'Your greatest fear is what you yearn for."

This is the whole paradox of the confusing search. It is the reason why relationships are so complex. It is why people get addicted to drugs, alcohol and work. It is the whole drive for sex, weekend fun, and fascination with the unusual and thrilling. It is the reason for self-sabotage, for fear of rejection, for the thirst for power, money and thrills. It is behind all the contradictory behaviour of self-punishment, a deep sad feeling in our gut and our restless spirit. And, this is also why we crave what we can't have, why we pursue a lover who is hard to get, why we become fascinated with the unknown and yet so scared of it.

The average individual reacts unconsciously like a machine never ‘looking' at what is driving it, what is behind the strong urges and fears.

This is a vast subject and requires your diligence and dedication to what is real and lasting. In this newsletter will be included statements made by most people and pertinent questions answered.

Some very common problems occur due to the stubborn unwillingness to look at the truth as it is. For example, young women who suffer from addictive behaviour such as bulimia, relentless search for some elusive soul-mate, eating disorders, and deep unhappiness come from an attitude that says, 'I know what you are saying but I know that if I find someone to love me I will be happy." This self-delusion is so strong, in fact, so overwhelming that my words fall on deaf ears and they will have to ‘learn' the hard way, if at all.

All of life is a relationship with yourself! You are a conscious being and therefore consciousness is your reality. Every relationship with ‘another' is a relationship with yourself. How you feel about things outside of you are how you feel inside you – and how else can it be? Things outside you merely trigger what is already inside you.

Another touching email was from a man in Germany who wrote, 'I never realized before that what I was after, through the things I sought, was the truth of my being." It was thrilling to hear this because that was quite a recognition to make. And, it can only be made by a pure heart that wants only what is true.

The First Key.

This is the first key – to see clearly that everything you crave, want, desire or yearn for is a manifestation of your love of being. Some men have said, 'I crave speed" or 'I am preoccupied with sexy thoughts" or 'All I want is to make lots of money" or 'I just love roaming by myself being free." See clearly, here and now, that whatever turns you on is motivated by its greater but unknown drive. This drive is often hidden through thousands of expressions but it is always the same drive – for connection with being!

In order to understand something that goes beyond ego-mind, there has to be the willingness to look deeper into the source of the yearning. And, I am assuming that you do want to go deeper otherwise you are not reading this now.

Let's assume you say, 'All I want is to feel good, have a good relationships and just be myself." Now listen to those words and see what it is you are really wanting above all.

Why do we feel so good when we are with someone we can relax with and care for? Isn't it obvious that when you are with someone you care for, two things happen – first you relax your ego defences, your preoccupation with past and future, and most importantly, you forget yourself in ‘trying to be this and that.' In other words, you actually ‘disappear.' Did you know that in a moment of joy and laughter there is no ego? Yet, you do not realize that in your seeking of a good time you are searching for the egoless state. Paradoxically, the egoless state, when mentally contemplated, scares us to destruction. All fear of death and ‘being no more' is nothing but the fear of ego-death. Are you beginning to see how what you yearn for is scary to the conditioned mind? Isn't this the reason for sabotaging relationships? Isn't this why we punish ourselves through addictions? -- The average person is torn between the yearning for love and a deep unrelenting terror of it. The reason is simple enough once it is understood – true love is an egoless state!

Let us explore some common questions starting with this familiar, ‘I don't get it!' statement. Someone asked me this morning (third question this week):

'Your explanations make sense but I still don't get it?"

This is a common statement because what the heart yearns for, the conditioned mind denies. So let us explore it from its initial stage. Stop for a moment, right now, and examine who you are.

…You are a human being and we know that as a fact. There is very little we know about our humanness and much less about ‘being.' As a human being you have been ‘given' by life the instincts of survival, adaptation and identification. These three essential tools were meant for one reason only – to recognize the truth of your being. Without those tools there can be no possible recognition of who you truly are.

Our ability to identify is our gift from consciousness. Through the process of identification we get to know that we think, emote and know. For example, you identify with your past experiences, with your thoughts, with your emotions and beliefs. This identification is essential for survival and is called ‘memory.' Through memory we establish an identity (our ability to identify) and believe strongly that this is who we are. We accumulate millions of beliefs, memories and thoughts that become strong emotions. During this process of identification with name and form, we forget who is the one that is ‘identifying.' This memory, although absolutely essential for survival, had become our total identity (through its identification process). So now we find ourselves living in past and future completely missing the present.

We live in the present when we are occupied with things we love such as hobbies, sex, entertainment and fun. But then, even in such moments, we strongly identify with the ‘doer' of such actions and totally forget that it is consciousness doing it all. This identification with the ego as ‘doer' deprives us from this very NOW moment that is timeless and memory-free.

This timeless now (beyond the present activity) is so foreign to us, so unexplored, so unfamiliar that whenever we ‘enter it' first thing in the morning or when alone we experience an emptiness (because this ‘being' is unfamiliar to us – it is literary an unknown quantity). We feel loneliness, we experience a deep abyss in the center of our being. This feeling, which is so frightening to the ego, tries to cover it up with more activity, more search, more yearning for something outside us. We do not realize that what we are yearning for is this very unknown depth known as love. Every time we search for this ‘love' outside of us, we are unconsciously rejecting who we are. This ‘rejection' creates a restless search for something we can't have, but it is never quenched by anything we do, hopelessly hoping for some miracle that will rescue us – more sex, more money, a lover, winning the lotto, reaching enlightenment – all pursued from the idea of personal attainment never even receiving the slightest hint that our real liberation, our salvation, our freedom lies in the freedom from ego.

What is an ego? -- The ego is not a bad thing, it is merely the false belief that you are the past conditioning instead of a here-now being. The here-now is totally unexplored because it is beyond the present activity. For example, let's focus on this ‘now' as being beyond activity. Ask yourself this, 'Do you identify with your thoughts?" Of course you do. Now, the question is, 'are you your thoughts or is it something you are identifying with?" We might have never considered something very simple – we cannot be what we identify with, which is our memory, simply because we are identifying with it. Got it? You cannot be what you identify with because you are the identifier itself. You can say, 'I identify with my thoughts, with my past and my name because they belong to me." But who is this ‘me' that is doing the identifying? This is the crucial question. If you haven't grasped what is being said here, then do not go further or you'll get more confused. I am asking you to become aware of awareness itself (which is this very instant). I am asking you to pay attention to attention itself. It is through the ability to pay attention that we can pay attention to something. This means that you are NOT what you are paying attention to – you are the attention itself without an object. You are this ‘IT.' It is this ‘IT" which is continuously missed (the missing link) and therefore since it is this that does everything through us we yearn for it unconsciously.

We are searching for ourselves without knowing it. However, and this is the key point, whenever we hit upon this headless space we panic because it is so unfamiliar, so deep, so vast, so unknown.

Now here's the point to recognize – All fear (all of it) stems from this unknown quantity within us. It feels like death (ego death), it feels like an abyss.

This is why enlightened masters are rare simply because they were the few who plunged headlong into this abyss and found it to be paradise. All joy, love, peace, total fulfillment is this deep emptiness known as the Kingdom of God within.

'So, are you saying then that whenever I feel great fear or great sadness, it is this very centre that is being experienced?"

Indeed it is! This is why it is imperative to experience directly every fear until you see its emptiness within you, and it is only through this direct experience ALONE that you awaken to the divine already present as you.

“Then, every fear is really a trigger of that voice waiting for us to meet it?"

Through meeting directly every fear until it is played out without getting involved in its illusory story, is the direct road to the highway. Every escape from this fear is just another self-rejection and increased emotional pain. Allow yourself to study all the pain in humanity as well as yourself and it is all emerging from this self-rejection. This is why when someone we love rejects us it feels like death. We can play spiritual games and pretend we know something, but until we meet this fearsome demon and know it to be an angel from paradise, we are playing games.

What are some of the most popular questions people ask?

Women are often concerned about relationships and men. They often wonder why men are so insensitive, do not listen and withdraw without saying why. Men are not so concerned with women but they often wonder why women get so hysterical and why they are so dramatic in the relationships.

Life is dualistic between yin/yang, and, yang energy (male) is more intellectual and left-brained. Women are more emotional and right-brained. One is not worse or better than another. They need each other simply to complete and integrate the yin/yang polarity. Balance is achieved when there is the recognition of one's true nature, other than that is just confusion and more words.

Other popular questions are a concern about negative thinking and behaviour and the need to be in control of our mind. It is this need to be in control that creates the reverse. An unknown law is, The Law of reversed effort. It is only in Giving Away that we can truly have. Thus, if you are willing to let your ego die then there is nothing you couldn't have or be.

Why do we keep missing this link when all teachings tell us about duality as oneness (opposites that compliment)?

Listen to your question and you can hear the answer. We don't hear it because we really don't want to. If this ‘missing link' is allowed to filter into our daily consciousness then we become transformed. How can we suffer fear or loneliness when we begin to see them as our catalyst for growth and greater abundance. So, at this point, just be honest about your escape from the very thing you want most, and if you can confront that with honesty, then that very honesty will shift you automatically.

Why do I find this whole thing so hard to grasp when every teacher I have known has said it is the simplest thing in the world?

It is hard to grasp because it is so simple! For example, you can see everything around you and can touch it, sense it and even understand it – yet what is closer than even that? What is closer to you even more than your own breathing? Isn't it your very consciousness? (After all, you are conscious of your breathing). This consciousness (which just is!) does not belong to you as an ego but to everyone all at once. Therefore, in reality you are everyone! Do you get the point? It is this reality that the personal ego fights to the death and creates blindness to it. The ego cannot love because it can't understand oneness and therefore resorts to love on its own ego terms, which is – needy love, wanting love and possessing love. Now, isn't love a giving?

When I observe my fears I don't see their emptiness, I just get caught. What is it that I am missing?

Fear is the idea (belief) of losing something. Whenever you feel fear, which surfaces without notice, you get caught because there is still the belief you are going to lose something. The question is – how can ‘being' lose anything? The now-consciousness is complete, whole. This is where you have to be honest with your feelings and ask, 'What is it that I believe I am going to lose?"

You say that the centre of emptiness (the now) is beauty but all I see is fear and loneliness?

Everything that you experience is what you are familiar with. Now all I am saying is, be willing to stay with the fear and ‘play it out' until you feel relaxed again. You do not try to see the ‘beauty' – the ego can't see beauty for it can only see itself. However, when you are willing to look deeply by allowing it its little game of loss then the shift happens by itself. There is nothing more beautiful than having the courage to go beyond your mundane dead existence and see what is beyond past, future and beliefs by remaining empty of struggle and effort. When you have the courage to be STILL in the midst of pain and anguish, you have confronted the fear of death itself. There is no greater love than this.

Are you saying that the fear and insecurity I feel is my centre reaching for itself?

What a beautiful way to put it! The way you have phrased your question shows clearly that you understand the dynamic of reality. There is no sin or wrong in the world except a cry for the lost ‘kingdom.' When Buddha reached total awakening he called it Nirvana. Nirvana means the absolute extinction of all that we think is wrong or sinful and see it as ignorance crying out for wholeness.

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