Words......

My words are slowly returning. I haven't been able to write or talk.....well, let me rephrase that.....I have been able to talk (LOL)......but the words of my heart haven't been able to come out for some reason. It's almost like they've been locked away in a prison.....and the prison has been my heart. My head knows they're there....but somehow, some way, to get them out seems to require some sort of password or something.....because when I want them to come out of my heart and out of my mouth.....the words are gone. It's the most bizarre thing I've ever encountered. I'm sure there's a lesson in all this......I am certain God's teaching me something. What that is, I'm not quite sure yet. But I have faith....

I started reading, "Strong Women, Soft Hearts" by Paula Rinehart again. I loved it the first time I read and studied it......and I'm loving it again, and this time it seems that different things are shouting out at me. It's really neat. Some of the things that are really hitting me (I'm only in chapter 1 right now)....are these things:

-that my journey is not unique......as unique and quirky as I think I am.

-that I am so "afraid that I'm going to die"....that I am not living.

-that I am sleepwalking through my days....out of touch, disconnected and half-alive.

-on the inside, I can die long before there are any visible signs on the outside.

-I must have my heart intact in order to make the journey of life well.

-"if we have been burned at some point, seared by the pain of life, we tend to close off the chambers of our souls until our hearts are frozen in place, hard and impenetrable."

-I've somehow lost the amazement of a butterfly's wings.

-"It is a bit of a mystery how we lose the early glow we have when the wonder of the gospel first captures us. How we slowly drift from the domain of the heart to a focus on efficiency and performance--as though this whole thing was mostly about doing and duty. The passion is replaced with just showing up."

-my life is riddled with risk: my greater capacity for relationship opens up a larger possibility for experiencing pain.

-I aim to please.....we tend to pick up on others' expectations and shape ourselves to fit a preordained mold. We aim to please.

-I long to "do what I was born for".

-that my days are slipping away: quote from Herb Gardner......"you have to own your days, every one of them, or else the years go by and none of them belong to you."

-"we come to live lives smaller than the ones we long for."

-"we settle for jobs that won't stretch us.....we go through the motions in our spiritual lives, but our hearts are not in it."

-"when I limit myself to the small rooms of life, I find myself mired in the small stuff of life."

-"living the smaller version of what I'm meant to live is, essentially, a response to pain."

-"we can, unfortunately, build a momument to our woundedness. We can shape an identity around the things we've suffered. But somwhere in this, our hearts become frozen in place and the real life God has given becomes hidden, even to us."

-"I've become a stranger to my own heart."

**sigh**

This is a good book.......

More to come later......