"LET ME SEE YOUR FACE
LET ME HEAR YOUR VOICE;
FOR YOUR VOICE IS SWEET,
AND YOUR FACE IS LOVELY"
Song of Songs

Emily

A loss of something ever felt I-
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was-of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect

A Mourner walked among the children
I notwithstanding went about
As one bemoaning a Dominion
Itself the only Prince cast out-

Elder, Today, a session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is-
I find myself still softly searching
For my Delinquent Palaces-

And a Suspicion, like a Finger
Touches my Forehead now and then
That I am looking oppositely
For the site of the Kingdom of Heaven-

Emily Dickinson

what's in a name?

After years of thinking that my name meant "contented one" and wrestling with all the issues that that implies (mostly because I am NOT contented), I found out about 15 minutes ago that my name actually means "weary, or grieved". I don't believe that the meaning of your name holds power over you or that you are doomed to follow what it dictates about your life, but i do think that names are important and can say a lot about who you are. This particular instance blew my mind because I have always found weariness something that I am much more comfortable with than I am with prolonged periods of joy. Part of this is due to the fact that when I am happy, I feel less able to empathize with the sorrows of my friends and those around me. I would rather feel weary and with them than be happy and not able to fully enter into the suffering with them. So yes, weariness and grief are a huge part of what I view as beautiful in my life. Its not like I particularly enjoy suffering any more than anyone else its just that I feel most connected to people when I am experiencing sorrow with them, than when I experience joy with them. And as a result, most of my beautiful memories have some anguish wrapped up in them. So what does this mean for me? A Leah? Well, I hope to truly find hope, truth, beauty, and joy in dark places. Dark places in my own life, and dark places in other's. I hope to some day be able to see the darkness rebuked and Light to fully dwell in this weary, weary world with its miserable, grieving people. And so when I see the poems and words I have written, I see weariness, but i also see a rejection that this is how it is supposed to be. I WILL see darkness rebuked, I will see weariness and grief removed, wiped from eyes, and I will see JOY reign in our hearts and lives again. Maybe someday my name will mean something else. In revelation it speaks about a name that God has specially chosen for each of us, so secret that noone but himself knows it. Someday I will hear him call my hame and I will know without a shadow of a doubt that weariness and grief will be just the faintest bit of who I was, and no longer who I am.

broken windup toy

Windup toy

I’m a broken windup toy
That sings no more;
Any voice I had now crushed
Beneath the voices calling more and more
And more around me.
I feel sorrow and anguish
Confusion and loss,
And an apathy that shocks even me with its disparity.
I seek, I seek and every door is shut
And every gate barred;
And one by one they close with a silence so deadening
It shrieks in my songless heart.