xo-caro

[xo-caro]

[xo-caro]

[xo-caro]

[xo-caro]

Sometimes

I wish I could rip my heart out and throw it far away from my brain.

[xo-caro]

Do you ever get scared to be brave?

Is it hard to keep having faith? God, please tear down the trust issues wall I built.

[xo-caro]

Venezia

[xo-caro]

I never stop praying for you

I just don’t want to enable you

Have you ever considered how I felt?

You made the presumption I did not hurt

Did you hold me once when I cried out for you on my knees?

Did you see me insides twist up when you fell of the earth from me suddenly too many times?

Were you too afraid to gaze inside to see the hurt in my soul?

Do you know I still love you?

I will not hide and I will not be ashamed

I will not stop hoping for your life

I will not stop believing

Because I have seen who you are

Maybe just from a vision I was shown

Right now it hurts me but I know the truth

Thank you Jesus for what you are going to do

Thank you Jesus that You overcome

You restore

You heal

You sanctify

Thank You that I am dead and I have been raised to life again

I look forward to You doing it again before my eyes so many times

[xo-caro]

I miss you my love

[xo-caro]

[xo-caro]

your demon

You’re close to lifeless

When blood still flows through your body

And your body is still warmer than mine

But you are so far away

Under a sludge of lies

You’re struggling to keep afloat

Hands flailing trying to paddle

Grabbing onto rafts that only sink

Something keeps you from the light

You surround yourself with darkness

But what is covered by sludge screams to see

You cannot handle the source of light so you find it’s reflection

The demon sleeps and is dormant until you turn off the lights again

You surround yourself with darkness again and your demon comes alive

He screams from inside of you and I hear a voice that is not you but I recognize

I get chills and forget to be light

He makes you do and say things my heart knows is a lie

He makes you feel pain- you are imploding inside

Your demon, I saw him in my dreams

[xo-caro]

[xo-caro]

[xo-caro]

that ugly feeling

I hate my feelings sometimes. I hate getting aggravated and bothered like I do sometimes. When I get ugly feelings I try and fight them. I wage war with myself and it becomes obvious in the natural around me. When I start a battle with myself, I exhale what was in my head and breathe it on others around me. Even if I get upset at what someone says or does to me, I inhale and exhale negativity back. Sometimes people are oblivious even to upsetting me and do not mean to, but they sure are breathed upon by what begins to go on inside of me. It starts with denial- when I want so badly and try on my own strength to suppress it. Instead of accepting it and giving it to God right there- God, let me not act on my feelings, God, let me not exhale a breath of death onto others, God, take this offense off me and not allow my pride to overcome me. I want to breathe your life onto others lives and I want you to take my feelings, take my offense, because I admit it, its there, Im not denying it. Im not suppressing it. I am going to be real about it. I cannot handle it on my own, not on my strength. Let what others do not make me love them any less. I love them the same. Let me look past the offense right in that moment. Let me look past the facade of how difficult it may be to drop this into your hands. It is a lie- an illusion- that hinders me- it is unbelief that when I give it to you, I can respond differently. You can handle it, but I cannot. It flashes into my memory how you instantly forgave me and loved me no less every time I missed the mark-every time I hurt you or another person. Fill me with something only you can- your grace and mercy- that I may project onto others. I am forever changed. You changed my whole vision. I am not blind anymore. I saw the truth one day when I could no longer bear to live the lie I based my life upon-all foundations of sinking sand. Even though I saw things I did not want to see (sometimes the truth hurts) you raised my soul from death. You set fire to my heart to burn for others. You gave me true joy and it still remains after all this time - even in this moment. Even in  my mourning, I still see a light, and with supernatural strength not of my own, I still dare to keep hoping and believing and going. I still dare to keep loving.

[xo-caro]

Thank you to the friend who gave up on me

Dear friend,

For along time I was angry at you and I was hurt. You were all fake- even talked about each other and I was tired. What I did to you, you had done the same thing to me a year before, so I called you a hypocrite and just rolled my eyes. After a few months I heard that you missed me, and I had missed you deep down inside. We had so many awesome memories and had been friends for so long it felt like it was impossible that one day we would no longer speak.

Today I am not angry, I am not sad, and I pray for you, that you would get out of your sadness, that you would know God. I want you to be happy so bad and found what I did.

And right now I am thanking you for ending it. I know inside you saw I wanted out-out of the lies, out of the suffering and depression. And you did what i could not do. Losing all my friends was the best thing that's ever happened to me-not be cause I resent them, not because I feel like I am any better than them. But because secretly, when I hit the bottom and had nothing, I had to make a choice: to stop or continue. See I went catholic school all my life, and I never believed in God. I really did not. But at that moment of darkness, something happened inside of me. I found something I never knew I even had. Because of the mess my life was, a big room filled with things, when they were all cleared out of my room, I found You God and You had been there the whole time. Beneath the lies I stored, the resentment I harbored, the need to be the best, the false idols I worshipped, You were under it the whole time and that's why i was lost. You even led me to an abundance of new friends. You brough life to relationships that were completely dead-you restored the unfixable. I want to spend my life in obedience to You because I want others to FEEL real joy.

My dear friend, I learned to forgive you.

And today my friend, I learned to thank you- for taking one more thing out of my room so I could see the floor. Thanking you for having the courage to do what I could not and get away from it all. I love you always. :)

[xo-caro]

I never really post ever, but this was on my heart for awhile and today just really heated it up-the division, the in groups, the outgroups, oppression, depression, entitlement, hate, blaming, fear, unforgiveness, judging. Today I got in a wreck after just buying my first car on my own that I got last month so you can imagine my disappointment. What happened may have technically not my fault. The wreck, the car, that's not what really phased me. The lady who I wrecked with came up to me screaming and hateful and was very disrespectful and belligerent to me and the officer I called out. Last year I would have been angry and would have tried to argue back, so concerned with being 'in the right'. However, I was quiet, I was concerned if she was hurt, and as much as it killed me I tried to love the person we don't want to love the most in any situation. After all was said and done, I felt convicted. I cried after (I generally never cry) not because of the damage of the cars, not because of the wreck which is an upsetting situation. I cried because I realized how broken this world is. So what if something is your fault? I can very much relate to this because I lived my life way different than this before-always running from 'God', taking the weight of the world on my shoulders, cursed with unforgiving depression which almost led me give up and kill myself on many different occasions because no one understood or I could not put it into words-just sinking. Last summer I had enough-I lost all my friends and I lost everything-I was empty. I didn't understand why all the things society said would make me happy left me DRAINED and LIFELESS. One day last summer someone told me 'God loves you where you are RIGHT NOW' -like" hey Caroline!!! in this moment of you screwing everything up, doing drugs, hurting people, being a fake friend, being selfish, lying, leading people on, being different versions of yourself around different people, striving for the praise of MAN, and idenitfying yourself in men, alcohol,drugs etc--> you are loved." (One of my friends told me this who actually knew and saw all the horrible things I've done throughout my whole life) Next thing I know I'm walking in this nondenominational church, and was blown away by this church- like why is this pastor preaching sound like a motivational speech? And why are these people who are so REAL, so happy, purely genuine and have substance want to be MY friend? I think that also changed my life and my heart. When I was depressed I lived in my own world and now that I look back I realize it. I tried every single medicine- antidepressant, anti anxiety etc and drug/alcohol and doing everything everyone else was doing but I longed for more...but what more could there be? The only reason I'm writing this is because everyone needs to know what we're missing. They need to know that this is not the way- these lies of society- this law of MAN- the longing for the praise of man- this is deception. We are prideful. We are selfish and we judge people and we hate PEOPLE-NOT THE ACTION-we hate people when their sin 'looks worse' than our sin or when their wrong offends us. They are bad and written off. No- they are just as LOVED and VALUABLE as you are. What gave us the authority to be the judge of others? I know I got kind of on a tangent here but we need to wake up. Yeah its easy to hate people when they wrong us and love the person that's difficult to love because you don't know what's going on inside of them-only God knows that just like he knows more about you than you even do. I searched for truth in a a bunch of different 'spiritual crap' that also just turned out to be empty lies.- for goodness sakes I looked up astrology and those magic stones and all of that junk. But this is real. God is real and He loves you and wants you to love one another and he wants a relationship with you aka the part I was missing my whole life(psa and this is coming from someone who went to Catholic school, never had a relationship with God, got nothing out of it, was an atheist for a point in my life, lived a life of darkdepression with no rational explanation for almost 22 yrs of my lifeand tried to fill my cup living the 'fast life' and always turned up empty my whole life up until summer 2k16, im NOO saint, I understand, I've been there but I got tired so fast-I was walking around dead and truthfully the concept of God was my last resort-I thought I may as well call on Him and I literally said "ok God if you're really there, I'm dead inside, I do the things I hate and idk why but I can't stop and I'm in darkness still so if you're actually here for me now would be the time to lmk" and when I actually was open to that and had a little flame of belief that is when someone said something that stirred up whatever was inside the zombie tired body of mine). The day I saw the joy in my suffering(?how could anything good come out of suffering)- being depressed but realizing I was the way I was so I could UNDERSTAND others and MAYBE I can use my suffering and the hell ive been through to help others and see this in a different light-I figured out what my purpose in life was. When I look back out of the darkness I was SAVED FROM(which felt IMPOSSIBLE my whole life), there is no way I would ever go back to the way I was living-I just can't. So I will continue to love those who are the hardest to love. I will continue to be strong on what I know is the truth. I will try to use my love everyday to show people there is hope and help them see all the beauty in themselves that they can't see and are just seeking. I will pray that every one may experience this joy and true happiness in their heart and that the world will begin to change, and I will be patient and persevere. (I really feel like I needed to get this off my heart and share because I see so much brokenness, now that I'm healing I have just been given these eyes that really see). And about that accident, I will probably get writing her a letter just reminding her that she need not carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, highlight the blessing that we were both okay in the wreck, and tell her she is loved because she is one of those people that in the situation was hard to love, but thankfully the old Caroline(who would have yelled back, who cared so much about being in the right and who would have gone and gossiped about how aggravated I was and spread words that kill instead of being life (which I used to have a big problem with bc I admit I've done this a lot in my past)) within me is gone and I was able to see her with my heart. **sidenote- this song really makes sense of my life: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EDAMzpJiXrI

[xo-caro]

[xo-caro]