...In and Out the Window.

I haven't blogged in forever... I'm too busy living life, I suppose. It's sad when life becomes too busy to do the thing you love the most.

My Grandaddy Vought (mom's dad) passed away on Christmas Eve. I can't even begin to say what an amazing person he was, but this may give you a small idea. I came home from work today to find Go In and Out the Window: An Illustrated Songbook for Young People on my desk. It was opened to a blank page, on which had been written:

May 28, 1989

Given to Erika on her fourth birthday with the hope that it might provide her some of the same joy and amusement that these songs provided him from the time he was a small boy, right down to the present day.

With deepest love and affection,
Grandaddy Vought

We love you and miss you so much already...

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.