Two Sides

One of my latest reads (along with a few of my friends) was 19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Overall, I am a fan of this author. She writes on some hard subjects & I absolutely love reading books that make you think, that make you experience real emotion instead of the surface emotion.

19 MInutes is about a boy who, after years of being picked on, walks into his high school & starts shooting. Not long after I started the book I read online that the mother of one of the shooters at Columbine was going to be writing an article in Oprah's magazine talking about her point of view. I kept meaning to get it when I would be out at WalMart or Target and just never did.

I finally picked it up this week and sat down to read the article. Its maybe 4 pages, as opposed to the 455 pages in the book, & I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I ended up being just that has the amount of similarities in the long book & the short article.

You always, always go straight to feeling for the victim & the victim's family. And how can you not?Suffering a tragedy like Columbine... as much as you felt that to your core as every other high school student in America, how much more did it hurt to be there? But how many of us consider the flip side? How many wonder how devastated the family of the shooter feels? Probably not very many. I can't imagine losing someone that way. To love someone so much & not see how much they hurt inside. To wake up one day to find that you have no explanation for the actions of someone you love & on top of that the whole world is looking at you like you did something wrong.

There are two sides to every story.

Books on Ipod

I have been listening to some audiobooks on my ipod recently - I listened to The Shack on my way to North Carolina a few weeks ago. It took almost the whole trip there and back, but I finished it. I have started to listen to Mercy by Jody Picoult - its 17 hours long. Its going to take me a while to get through this one.

I love the idea of listening to a book - I love to read so I discovered this week that while I did the dishes and laundry I could just listen away. The only draw back is that you have to listen to the same voice for however many hours and on top of that, the narrator is using different inflections for different characters. So listening to a male narrator do a female voice or a female do a male voice can be a turn off. Which leads me to wonder if I would be capable of doing a better job. Which leads me to this memory...

The summer before my senior year of college my family and I went on vacation. We went with some family friends. We were going to a quiet little island off the gulf coast of Florida. A week of sun and sand. The catch was we would not be staying in a hotel or condo or house. We were basically going to be camping on this island for a week - as in take your own food, no hot water unless you boiled it and cold showers in a shower stall on the side of a bath house. I know most everyone will be thinking that this is NOT AT ALL what you call a vacation. But I will say that I like to camp. And going to this island sounded like an adventure.

Well.... let me tell you it was not the kind of adventure I would sign up for again. It was hot. There were mosquitos everywhere. We would go through a whole can of bug spray a day. The beach was not a beautiful sandy beach - but more of the broke up shell kind. And it stormed BADLY almost every night.

Maybe its because when you have a bad experience the good parts stand out even more, but one of my favorite memories has come from that trip. I took a few books to read that week and I'm not sure if it was during one of the bad storms or just a moment when no one had anything better to do, but at some point I picked up a book and started to read it out loud to everyone. And for whatever reason, everyone decided to listen. So throughout the week everyone would gather around and listen as I read more and more of the story until I finished. I didn't use different voices for the different characters. I don't even think I changed the tone of my voice depending on the situation. I just read. And people listened.

I have not found a narrator of a book that has reminded me of that moment. The book I read was The Five People You Meet in Heaven and it was a great book. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it yet.

Feels Like Home

I think it would be amazing to be able to travel around the world. I can think of several handfuls of places I would like to go. Often I will see a picture of or hear someone describe a place and find myself wanting to go. Maybe even with just a small bag and a camera to capture incredible moments. I am about to go on a trip to see my sister in North Carolina and one of the things I am looking forward to (other than actually getting to see my sister) is the drive through the mountains. I am praying the leaves have already started to change into brilliant shades of reds, yellows and oranges. I'm not much of a photographer, and I'm hoping to change that soon, but I plan on having a camera ready in case I do get to catch some of those beautiful colors.

But as I am going through my head all the things I need to remember: tickets to a speaker we are going to see, what clothes I need to pack and some things I need to take to my sister so she will have warmer clothes for the coming months, I can't help but feel a little sad. This has been a busy week and I have not gotten to spend that much time with my husband. And now I am leaving for 3 days. I can't help but get that feeling that creeps up after I have been gone for just a little too long: longing for home.

Because while there is a huge world at my fingertips, I know there is a beauty in being home. Especially when most everyone you know and love is there. And while there is a huge part of me that wants to embark on adventures, I believe there is just as big a part that enjoys finding the beauty that is all around me. The things we see everyday and sometimes miss. And finding those things over and over again, for what feels like the first time can feel like home.

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.

....This is not something I wrote but read somewhere. And it absolutely floored me. It was part of a story about saving a girl from all the wrong things and showing her the right ones. I found in reading that story that I wanted the courage to step out into this world and make a difference in it. Not in a huge way where everyone might know who I was, but in a way that would change people one life at a time. I hope that my life is on a journey to becoming a person such as that.