A Part of Something Bigger.

He was very young when it all began to happen. To a point whatever completely moronic things we do when we’re children has no real bearing on us as adults. Things just happen, and we don’t know any better. And it is these mistakes and our parents correcting or pointing out these mistakes that shapes our futures. However, most corrections and life lessons he unfortunately had to correct himself. A perfect, prestigious education was never really asked of him, family was never a huge priority, and friends were pretty much vapid and shallow. A situation, early on, was created in which anyone would easily be broken and fall. And yet, regardless of the fact that much of the things many people reflect fondly upon were robbed of him, and while it was never asked, much less expected, of him he consistently strove for excellence.

His story is one that is quite different yet just as sad if not sadder than my own. It is a story of struggle, of being lost, of losing, and of terrible experiences many would not be able to withstand. And he tells it all without shedding a tear. Perhaps it is a part of the defense mechanism he was forced to create within himself in order to survive. Or maybe it’s just because he is stronger than most. Either way, against all odds, he achieved every single thing he set out to do. He works hard, and while other aspects of life may come somewhat easy to him, with everything else, it is a fight. Everyday of his life has been a battle. And while there have been some losses, where the pleasures of the world take precedence over what’s really important, there have been an overwhelming amount of victories.

He tells me he’s unhappy. That he’s never really been happy. And for some reason continues to relay to me every instance of pain that he has ever experienced. Though I feel unworthy to hear of such things so close to one’s heart, I listen. I feel it is what he needs most of me. I wonder though, why while he has so much pride, it is as if he thinks so much is lacking of him. I remind him of his accomplishments, of all the amazing things he has done, of reasons that he should feel better. He dismisses each reason. Possibly due to some type of incredible virtuosity and humility. Or, of something else entirely.

It is understandable that he should feel bombarded with negativity and pain and hardship. It is also understandable that he acts the way he acts, and thinks the way he thinks. Yet I wish that he could see what others see. I wish others creation of litanies attributing to his greatness didn’t issue a great amount of awkwardness or irritation within him. I know he deserves every amount of praise he receives, for he works for every drop of it. I believe he knows he deserves it as well, for he knows better than anyone what he has done to get to where he is.

However, there is one aspect, or person rather, in his life that has the capability of making him happy or sad. He once said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. And though he has said he had been in love multiple times, and had his heart broken multiple times, which were contributions to the makings of his brokenness, I think that maybe his happiness was always wrapped up in one person. She must mean everything to him, I always think. Because, while he can talk about her irrationality, and go on perpetual diatribes of her mistakes in life, it’s so easy to see in his eyes just how much he completely loves her.

His story is not ended, he has much to tell, and I think it will always be this way. He has been broken in so many ways I think perhaps he has come to believe that he is irreparable. I do not think this is true. I believe he has been, will be, and is hurt. But that does not at all define him. He has the capability of achieving greatness, the stuff of legends as some may say. He says that it’s too idealistic to think that everything will be okay, and that he’ll someday be happy. But maybe sometimes, its okay to be a little idealistic. He has a strength that many can only pray to someday have, myself included. I hope he knows that. I hope that when he achieves greatness, he won’t forget me. And I know that his story will have a happy ending. And after he reads it, maybe he’ll even smile.

love.

Life can be hilarious at times. And at others it can be quite sad. And if your life is full of ridiculous contrasts and oxy morons, life can be hilariously sad.

Imagine the saddest moment you ever lived through, the most desperate moment, the most intense moment, the most angry you’ve ever been, the most frustrated, the most embarrassed, the most scared, the most agitated, hungry, tired, and irritated. And then imagine that every single day of your life, this is the feeling that you wake up with. It definitely makes for an incredibly sorrowful existence. So if this is every single day of your life, if you’re forced to get out of bed feeling like this, and encounter the world feeling like this, it can be imagined that life would be incredibly difficult. Moreover, due to the immense difficulty of that which is your life, it can be imagined that you would look for things to make it more bearable. Food, gardening, art, movies, dance, music, books, sex, weed, alcohol, cocaine. Whatever gets you through the day. But many things that offset the desperate sorrow of life, easily lead to self-destruction. Hence, the importance of love.

We will all inevitably encounter much negativity in our lives. Many times, we will let it affect us, because it is so much easier to hear the good rather than the bad. Negativity and meanness is so much easier to feed into. Thus again, the importance of love. We need to love each other. And we need to let people know it. People need to be thanked and praised for their good works. And people need to feel that people care about them. That way, everyone can have much more fun together, and we will all have more hilarious days, rather than sad.

Smile.

Bob Marley had this vision, much like a virologist. He thought that you could cure racism and hate by injecting love and music. …He said, the people that are trying to make this world a darker place aren’t taking a day off today. So neither am I. …Light up the darkness.

I almost left a secret in a book today. It was written on a post it that I had in my bag reminding me of the most terrifying appointment I never kept. But I didn’t leave that secret. I did something else. I wrote “Love” in the book. I don’t really know what compelled me to do so. Especially since so many people would see it as a form of vandalism. I wrote it anyway. I think it’s because it’s what everyone needs. Well, and wants.

The truth of it is that I never had to keep that terrifying appointment. Things just sort of took care of themselves. I felt so relieved and so ashamed at the same time. That’s when I decided to go away. I went to a place where no one knew me. Where I had no past and no real future to speak of. I just had the present. A lot of people would say that the present is a gift. But I think that’s only sometimes true. But at this moment, this very second in time, all I can think of is hope. Giving hope through love. And I know it sounds really hippie, but I mostly think that it’s really true. We become the very best versions of ourselves with a little love.

So I vandalized a book. I broke a rule in the hope of making someone’s day a little better, but maybe even, saving a life. You don’t have to be a doctor to save people on a daily basis. You can just be kind.

I hope what I did helps. I hope people will read it and people will realize how easy it is to make a difference. If there is no other purpose in this world and if there is no other lesson I have learned other than to just love, that is just fine. Because I think it is the rare simplicities of this world that people are able to find something to live for, and if they’re really lucky, something to love.

P.S. That first paragraph is from "I Am Legend."

To Write Love On Her Arms

I wouldn't post other peoples' works unless I thought it was important. I don't even know if people really read this, but I think this is a ridiculously amazing cause. And I'm not one to really get into charities. Please read.

TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS by Jamie Tworkowski

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.

Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.

After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.

She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."

I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.

www.twloha.com

Thank you. LOVE.

Sundays.

And after nearly five years of resisting her mother's pleas, she finally stepped into a Catholic Church. It was 3,000 miles and on a complete opposite coast of the modest mission style she had been basically raised in. And yet, it felt so familiar. For every Catholic Church is mostly structured in the same way, save for differing levels of grandeur.
She sat toward the back of the church for she still fell much apprehension in regards to her decision to partake of a Sunday ritual. Staying close to the doors would make for an easier exit, she thought. She looked around. And as the families made their way to their pews, it all began to feel more and more familiar. Everyone greeted each other with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. And she remembered what it was like to be a part of a community such as this. Adults marveled at how fast children were growing, ever-faithful parishoners commended youth on their continuous participation as alter servers, babies were held, passed, and admired.
And she then began to see why her mother never ceased to plea for her return to the church. There is a certain rhythm to life that such Sunday rituals provide. And though it could be because of the strict tradition of the Catholic Church, it was more or less the community that the church created. And while she had made countless cases with many facts as to why such a community could be detrimental (i.e. unfounded judgment, hypocrisy, and a seeming unwillingness to accept those who are remotely different) there was still so much good. And it was apparent merely by watching people. Yes, the nurturing of a faith in God was the primary reason for participation in the Sunday ritual. Yes, many came simply out of habit. Yes it was highly probable that many didn't have a strong conviction in their Catholic faith. And yes, she still believed that Sunday rituals did not directly (if at all) correlate to being a good person. But the love felt in that two to three hundred capacity building with its crucifixes, statues, and candles adorning all its walls, was un-paralleled. She had felt like such an outsider when first entering. But even just ten minutes into the Sunday ritual. She felt that love, which she hadn't experienced for so many years. It was non-judgmental, it was unlike any other feeling she had experienced.
And so as she looked up to the altar where the priest held his hands out in prayer, and while the congregation bowed their heads, she shook hers, and smiled. For yet again, her (at times seemingly insane) mother had been right again. Simple attendance at this Sunday ritual does make a difference in one's life. And to her surprise, quite a positive one.

Beauty.

She had to believe in God. Her family of course must have had something to do with it, but moreover it was what she had seen that made her believe. While much of it was what caused her immeasurable pain, it was also the beauty in the world that became the source of her conviction. Witnessing a father taking his son out to surf for the first time. Observing a random act of kindness as simple as holding the elevator for a stranger. Having the opportunity to watch a beautiful sunset. And then of course there was the ocean.
Though there have been many people who have studied the ocean she didn’t think it possible to fully comprehend the power of it. The beauty seen and the admiration it deserved, perhaps. But the power of it, never. The way the tide can easily bring in beautiful shells onto the sand, that had previously been hidden in the ocean’s depths for hundreds of years. Or even just the graceful seemingly effortless movement of it. The ocean could swallow you hole whether or not you let it. And the vastness would ensure that you would be lost forever. And while this could be a terrifying thought to many, to her it was quite beautiful, and worthy of much respect.
And so, on her worst days she would pay a visit to, what she believed to be, the closest thing to a deity on earth. She wouldn’t worship it of course, for there is no reason for such foolish actions. She would merely admire the grandeur of it all. On her worst days it would remind her of how small she, and consequently her problems, really were. Insignificance would inevitably come to mind as well. But merely the existence of such a beautiful, grand, and mighty thing as the ocean would remind her of God. For God is powerful, grand, almighty, etcetera. And most definitely, she thought, beautiful. The beauty in the world and in life assured her that her worst days would pass. That something so simple had the potential of issuing her a smile. And that she just might be able to make it one more day.

To be Needed.

A friend of mine challenged me to write something in 15 minutes. This is what I came up with.

It was years ago. She should leave the past in the past and let it all go. He wasn’t worth it, they all said. And she knew it too. She knew that all he did was use her. That when he didn’t need her, they hardly ever spoke. But when another girl would make another mistake, she was the first one he called. And then just like that, he was gone. He had found her, the one who supposedly would make all his dreams come true. The one that she had thought she had always been. And because he so deeply believed that the supposedly perfect girl was the one he had been searching for all his life, he didn’t need her anymore. This one really did seem perfect.
She watched the wedding from the altar. The supposedly perfect girl had chosen her as a bridesmaid. For the supposedly perfect girl was kind enough to include her in the ceremony that would guarantee her never being able to be with the love of her life. It was a beautiful ceremony indeed. And it was with that, that he was lost.
And yet, she could not let him go. She kept hoping (because hope tends to be all that there is left when all else seems to be lost) that the supposedly perfect girl would make some sort of mistake that would bring him back to her. For while she knew that he would never be hers, that he would never love her the way she wanted him to, no, needed him to, all she had ever really wanted was to be needed by him. All she had wanted was a phone call in the long, increasingly lonely nights, that showed he at least cared. But such hoping is lost on men like him. This she knew. For the call never came. And so, though so much time had passed, and though all friends and all better judgment told her how much better it would be to just let him go, still she hoped. Because for her, being needed by him was better than being loved by anyone else.