and she keeps singing...

i have a current new love at the moment, its this wonderful little paperback called , "letters to my son." i do realize this particular book is addressed as advice to a young man, but it has these little gems that i can't get enough of. i really just wish that if i would've had a father growing up, these are things that i would have liked him to say to me...

"To be a real traveler you must be willing to give yourself over to you must believe totally in the lives of the people and the places where you find yourself, even if it causes you to lose faith in the life you left behind. you need to share with them, participate with them. sit at their tables, go to their streets. struggle with their language. tell them stories of your life and hear the stories of theirs. watch how they love each other, how they fight each other. see what they value and what they fear. feel the spaces they keep in their lives. become part of the fabric of their everyday lives and you will get a sense of what it means to live in their world. give yourself over to them-embrace them rather than judge them- and you will find that the beauty i their lives and their world will become part of yours. when you move on, you will have grown.
...Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance, and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun. Care for those around you. Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices in life no more easily made.
And give. Give in any way you can, of whatever you possess. To give is to love. To withhold is to wither. Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared, and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.”

i feel like such a selfish person these days. i am so demanding, and i always want more. and when i get what i want, i realize that i never wanted it in the first place. i feel like the lord is telling me over and over again, what are you doing for me? i feel so small and yet he used the ordinary to do extraordinary things. it was so easy being in a place where you had nothing but your heart to give. i had no desire for anything else but to love him and his children. today i want to protect my heart, i want to run away from anything that could potentially break me and hide. by doing that, i am not allowing the lord to fill me when i am broken...and those are the times i grow the most. i am in no way living the life he has called me to live, and yet i am going to try.

and seriously....read this book. it will inspire you!!