desisuesblog

[desisuesblog]

There is no dictionary for grieving. No word for the crushing weight of absence, no word for the instant of disbelief in the morning just after you wake, or for the fatigue beyond exhaustion that hollows out the bones. In Macbeth, Shakespeare writes, “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break,” My grief was unspeakable. I lacked the vocabulary.

When well-meaning people asked how I was doing, I lied. “Fine,” I’d say. It was too hard to explain otherwise.

Though no one would know but me, a walk through my house is a gallery of my losses, but also of what remains, the imprint of love these people left on me, a palimpsest. These secret gestures bring me comfort.

These symbols are how I give my sorrow words.

[desisuesblog]

"Snow was falling,

so much like stars

filling the dark trees

that one could easily imagine

its reason for being was nothing more

than prettiness."

Mary Oliver

[desisuesblog]

“I wish that every day was Saturday and every month was October." — Charmaine J. Forde

[desisuesblog]

I miss you, mom.

[desisuesblog]

"Oh come desire of nations bind

In one the hearts of all mankind

Bid thou our sad divisions cease

And be thyself our king of peace"

[desisuesblog]

"Listen more than you speak. Educate yourself more than you attempt to educate others. Push back against your defense mechanisms and question why you always need to play devil’s advocate to the cries of injustice from someone who’s been on the receiving end of oppression...

Take a posture of humility; die to yourself; lose your life. Jesus assures us that when we do, we’ll find it again in Him, we’ll have no reason to fear, and our children may finally get to be the ones to raise their children in a world where Dr. King’s dream becomes a reality. Selah." - Brian Moll

[desisuesblog]

September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.

Rowland E. Robinson

[desisuesblog]

Right after her funeral I felt the way you feel when it suddenly starts raining hard, and you look around and find no place to take shelter.

Elena Ferrante

[desisuesblog]

“I drifted into a summer-nap under the hot shade of July, serenaded by a cicada lullaby, to drowsy-warm dreams of distant thunder.”

- Terri Guillemets

[desisuesblog]

“Choosing to have joy

is not naively thinking

everything

will be easy.

It is courageously

believing

that there is

still hope,

even when

things get hard.”

― Morgan Harper Nichols

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[desisuesblog]

October’s Double

by Stewart Stafford

“Light a fire in flinty February,

As the evening time comes down,

Welcome all the family home

With shopping bought from town.

Hear the logs crackle and roll,

And the sparks pop and hiss,

A storm roars down the chimney,

To deliver its tempestuous kiss.

Drowsiness in the living room,

As the expiring embers fade,

Up we go to those clean sheets,

And beds so neatly made.”

[desisuesblog]

“How beautiful, how buoyant, and glad is morning!” ― L.E. Landon

[desisuesblog]

“You do not write your life with words… You write it with actions.

What you think is not important.

It is only important what you do.”

-Patrick Ness

[desisuesblog]

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?�� Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." —Marianne Williamson

[desisuesblog]

“Look, I want to love this world as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get to be alive and know it.”

– Mary Oliver