The God I serve is able to save us both. To give us the winning lottery ticket so all our money problems will go away. To mend our broken hearts. To bring us close to those we love. He is able. He is able. He is able.But even if He doesn’t, do not bow to bitterness. Do not fall down onto your broken pieces and let them cut you to ribbons. Even if He doesn’t do all that He is able to do, all that we wish He would do, He is good.
Death was silence, loss, guilt. And anger. But life led that way, anyway. From birth, it was a slow, long march to the grave. Who said that? She couldn’t remember now. But it was true. They were born dying. If they were very lucky, the dying was called aging. They reached toward if as if they were satellites in unstable orbits. And then when they got there, they were just dead. One moment in time separated the living from the ghosts.
Some aching beauty comes with huge loss, although maybe not right away, when it would be helpful. Life is a very powerful force, despite the constant discouragement. So if you are a person with connections to life, a few tendrils eventually break through the sidewalk of loss, and you notice them, maybe space out studying them for a few moments, or maybe they tickle you into movement and response, if only because you have to scratch your nose.
When you meet an extraordinary person, it’s like they get inside you, under your ribs, and shuffle everything inside you around until they find space for greatness to grow. But extraordinary people always get away. And when they leave, they take that little part of you with them. Suddenly you find yourself with a gap in your chest that you don’t know how to live with. Suddenly you’re frightened of being yourself without them.
The last time she had seen him in the flesh, all the vital force of his life stripped away, his sharpened face had confronted her with such a fearful fixed finality of sightless indifference that she had been frozen in mortal terror, engulfed by abysmal despair. After all the years of unfailing support, his huge, inhuman, deaf, blind inaccessibility was horrifying. He had not kept his promise. He had abandoned her, left her to suffer alone.
A few cold words on yonder stone, A corpse as cold as they can be - Vain words, and mouldering dust, alone - Can this be all that's left of thee? O, no! thy spirit lingers still Where'er thy sunny smile was seen: There's less of darkness, less of chill On earth, than if thou hadst not been.Thou breathest in my bosom yet, And dwellest in my beating heart; And, while I cannot quite forget, Thou, darling, canst not quite depart.
I said out loud, "Damn you for saving yourself. How come you left me with nothing but to love you and hate you, and that's gonna kill me, and you know it is."Then I turned round, went back to the cellar room, and picked up the sewing.Don't think she wasn't in every stitch I worked. She was in the wind and the rain and the creaking from the rocker. She sat on the wall with the birds and stared at me. When darkness fell, she fell with it.
You'd have thought that after suffering such a loss nothing else would matter to her but that didn't seem to be how it worked. She was fearful about everything now. It was as if she had finally seen the awful power of fate, it's deviousness, the way it could wipe out in an instant the one thing you had been certain you could rely on, and now she was constantly looking over her shoulder, trying to work out where the next blow might fall.
Zo zal ik vertrekken', zegt Germaine. 'Ik ben het oude hart van een dorp waar niemand komt wonen. Ik zal stoppen met kloppen en het weinige wat ik heb gekend en nog niet is verdwenen, zal verdwijnen. Daar kan ik om wenen en vloeken zo veel als ik wil en dat zal er niets aan veranderen. Maar ik zal gelukkig zijn en weten dat ik heb gedaan wat ik kon', lacht ze met tranen in de ogen. Om zich een houding te geven schuifelt ze naar de wasbak.
We human beings don't realize how great God is. He has given us an extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which see a world of colours and beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us, and two ears to hear the words of love. As I found with my ear, no one knows how much power they have in their each and every organ until they lose one.
We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.
I kept thinking back to all those nights in Connecticut, when I was out the door as soon as dinner was over, yelling my plans behind me as I headed to my car, ready for my real night to begin—my time with my family just something to get through as quickly as possible. And now that I knew that the time we had together was limited, I was holding on to it, trying to stretch it out, all the while wishing I’d appreciated what I’d had earlier.
Nora had been training herself not to think too much about her kids. Not because she wanted to forget them - not at all - but because she wanted to remember them more accurately. For the same reason, she tried not to look too often at old photographs or videos...After a while, these scraps hardened into a kind of official narrative that crowded out thousands of equally valid memories, shunting the losers to some cluttered basement storage area in her brain.
There will always be a part of you that misses her. You'll see something that reminds you of her and want to tell her about it, only to realize she's not there anymore. Then you'll feel her loss all over again. (Ravyn) You're not helping me, Ravyn. (Jack)I know, buddy. But you will eventually make peace with yourself, and that's the most important thing. Eventually, you'll even be able to smile again when you think about her. (Ravyn)
As a species, tragedy dwells within us all. We push it to the back of our thoughts, but it is never so far gone that it cannot return, crashing and writhing into our souls: a rogue wave overturning a boat on a calm day. Tragedy is never more than a breath away. We hide from its certainty and go about our lives as though time can be wasted. Somewhere deep inside ourselves we know that we tell ourselves lies. We know that someday everything we love will be gone.
