beauty in brokenness.

Tonight, I participated in "An Evening with To Write Love on Her Arms" at Burlap & Bean, my favorite local coffee shop. If you don't know about TWLOHA yet, you should check them out. What an incredible organization. They exist to encourage people out of darkness and into light, out of fear and into hope. To start conversations about self-hate and cutting and depression and suicide and shame and brokenness and to tell people that this isn't all there is - that rescue is possible for them.

I don't have enough time to write about all that's on my mind before I crash tonight, but here is what I was left with/reminded of tonight, to be expanded upon later:

• We only have one life to live. What do we really want it to look like? It should be about building relationships and loving people... We were meant for community.
  
  
• There is beauty in brokenness. We tell our stories to bring healing to the hurts in other people's lives. If you never share your brokenness you may be preventing others from seeing that they are not alone, and that there is hope for victory.

[To be continued...]

"Then the time came when the risk it took
to remain tight in a bud was more painful
than the risk it took to bloom."
- Anais Nin

I wonder when that will be true for me.

Historic.

We made history tonight, people! Regardless of my personal views about the downfalls of the political system, I will say that I am proud from a civil rights point of view that our country has come this far. Change is possible...