Breathe In Me

“I have walked in darkness for a season. I have walked and drifted from your reach. But something’s changed, I cant explain the reason and I know without a doubt this is where I want to be, so I come with no pretention. Seeking your redemption.

“Take this hand, it’s all I have to offer. Take these hands and lead me home again. Make me equal to the love that you have given me. Everything I am and all I ever hope to be, I lay before you and I implore you, breathe in me. I so desperately need, breathe in me.

“Breath of life, Holy One who made me, change my heart and make my spirit whole. With new life I pray that you will wake me how I need your light to reignite the embers in my soul. I am empty, I am weary. How I plead for you to hear me.

“Take this hand, it’s all I have to offer. Take these hands and lead me home again. Make me equal to the love that you have given me. Everything I am and all I ever hope to be, I lay before you and I implore you, breathe in me. I so desperately need, breathe in me. I so desperately need, breathe in me.”

Hellos and goodbyes

You know when someone says something that sticks in your head and changes you in the smallest of ways?

Over the course of the last couple semesters at school, I’ve gotten to know and become friends with an exchange student from Korea. He’s older than most your average freshman, but he is such a neat person. This last week, it came time for him to leave and go back home. It was a sad occasion, knowing I would probably never see him again in my mortal life. We had all said our goodbyes the night before he was supposed to leave, seeing as how none of us saw him very often because of his intense studying schedule.

About an hour before he was supposed to leave Pocatello for good, I was walking through a part of campus that I rarely went through, and I saw him sitting on one of the couches, reflecting.

“Jake!” I greeted him with a hug and a smile.

“Aww, Ashley!” He responded back with a smile and as much sincerity as is humanly possible. “Happy coincidence that we meet again.”

I was in a hurry to get to my next destination, but those words have wrung in my ears and in my mind ever since. “Happy coincidence that we meet again.”

Take from it what you may, but never take anyone for granted. Lives are so delicately intertwined for a reason. A happy coincidence, indeed. Just one of the many, many blessings that make life so worth it.

Words of wisdom

Today at lunch, I broke my fortune cookie open, expecting to have some enlightening words or wisdom, and this is how it looked…

…No fortune.

Well, quite frankly, I felt gypped! 

And then I thought about it…what kind of fortune was NO fortune?!  …A true one. :) There are always choices to be made, always a way to change the path you’re on. Never give up on what’s not yet written, it only means you have the opportunity to be amazing.  And if you find yourself with an empty cookie…just smile and remember how blessed you are.

Sometimes the angels are right in front of us,

living lives exactly as our own.

My poor little Ebby…played dress up with my bored, little sister! :)

Miracles

When I was a child I held a dying baby bird in my hands. It had fallen from the nest and been injured by a cat then quietly left to die. Sometimes the unfairness of nature makes no sense to a child, and while that scared and injured baby bird was certain for death I could hardly bare to let it die alone. Wrapped in small towels to keep it warm, I held it to my chest hoping that my heart beat would be enough to let it know it was in peaceful company. It’s large eyes blinked at me. It's scared eyes pleaded to me. It’s small lungs struggled with each fainting breath. “Why?” I wondered. “Why to such innocence?”

It knew what was coming. All present knew. It close its eyes and nestled closer to my breast ‘till all was still.

In my small childish hands I held the fragile breath of life. Even the small act of death was a miracle. In the silence that bound the two worlds together, I buried the small soul under a tree. “Birds liked trees,” I thought. A mourning mother and I sat, honoring the small grave—her with a song, so simple, yet full of so much. Me, with questions and wonder.

Years  have passed, but that childish curiosity of such a simple miracle still  wonders and grows.  No matter how many times you witness the slipping away of a life, some explanations continue to stay one step ahead of you.

So if you ever see the small birds around me and you hear the  songs they sing to my soul, and you wonder why. The answer is simple. One day I was a child, and sometimes the unfairness of life allows us to witness miracles.