"I've found almost everything ever written about love to be true. Shakespeare said "Journeys end in lovers meeting." What an extraordinary thought. I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should. I am constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives. It was Shakespeare who also said "love is blind". Now that is something I know to be true. For some quite inexplicably, love fades; for others love is simply lost. But then of course love can also be found, even if just for the night. I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. And how it can actually ache in places you didn't know you had inside you. And it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends... you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new. And you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again. And little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade." -The Holiday
Eat Pray Love
"Dear David,
We haven't had any communication in a while, and it's given me time I needed to think. Remember when you said we should live with each other and be unhappy so we could be happy?
Consider it a testimony to how much I love you that I spent so long pouring myself into that offer, trying to make it work. But a friend took me to the most amazing place the other day its called, The Augustium. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the Barbarians came they trashed it along with everything else. The Great Augustus Rome's first true great emperor. How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, one day would be in ruins. It's one of the quietest and loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over centuries. Feels like a precious wound, Like a heartbreak you won't let go of cause it hurts too good.
We all want things to stay the same David. Settle for living in misery because were afraid of change. Of things crumbling to ruins. then i looked around in this place at the chaos its endured. The way its been adapted, burned, pillaged, and found a way to build itself back up again...and i was reassured. Maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic, It's just the world that is. And the only real trap is getting attached to any of it. ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation. Even in this eternal city. The Augustium showed me that we must always be prepared for endless waves of transformation.
Both of us deserve better than staying together because we're afraid we'll be destroyed if we don't."
We haven't had any communication in a while, and it's given me time I needed to think. Remember when you said we should live with each other and be unhappy so we could be happy?
Consider it a testimony to how much I love you that I spent so long pouring myself into that offer, trying to make it work. But a friend took me to the most amazing place the other day its called, The Augustium. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the Barbarians came they trashed it along with everything else. The Great Augustus Rome's first true great emperor. How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, one day would be in ruins. It's one of the quietest and loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over centuries. Feels like a precious wound, Like a heartbreak you won't let go of cause it hurts too good.
We all want things to stay the same David. Settle for living in misery because were afraid of change. Of things crumbling to ruins. then i looked around in this place at the chaos its endured. The way its been adapted, burned, pillaged, and found a way to build itself back up again...and i was reassured. Maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic, It's just the world that is. And the only real trap is getting attached to any of it. ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation. Even in this eternal city. The Augustium showed me that we must always be prepared for endless waves of transformation.
Both of us deserve better than staying together because we're afraid we'll be destroyed if we don't."
LIKE CRAZY
"I thought I understood it, that I could grasp it. But I didn't, not really. Only the smudgeness of it; the pink-slippered, all-containered, semi-precious eagerness of it. I didn't realize it would sometimes be more than whole, that the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea. Because it's the halves that halve you in half. I didn't know, don't know, about the in-between bits; the gory bits of you, and the gory bits of me."
Honestly, these are a few of my favorite, most depressing, love movies and I think most people can agree that we can all relate to these quotes in some way. Whether we are dealing with heart break, heart ache, loss, brokenness, emptiness, loneliness, confusion, etc. we seek a higher power that is able to lift us up and heal us. It is easy to tell ourselves that we could be crazy, that we have been ruined or broken and feel a sense of hopelessness. We often feel like we are the only one stuck in these dark and emotional states of sadness and worthlessness. I know that "girls are emotional and crazy", "love sucks", and according to Facebook "this doesn't happen to other people", but I promise that every human being comes to a painful and broken experience in their life where they are in need of support and healing. We all seek love and approval and we all need the help and support of each other. We read this poem in one of my classes and it really made me realize the truth of the emotions and experiences that every child of God experiences in mortality. Life is hard and we all come to face our own personal moments of grief and agony and if we look to each other and to our Savior, Jesus Christ, we begin the process of healing. This peaceful and promising healing does take time and a lot of patience but step by step, ones soul is able to slowly be filled with light and hope and we can feel the pure love of Christ illuminate our hearts.
Please Hear What I Am Not Saying
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings--
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!
With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.
Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me
the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.
Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.
I am YOU.
Charles C. Finn
"HE CAN HEAL US"
Those who struggle with sin sometimes lie and rationalize in an attempt to minimize the consequences of their behavior. But somewhere inside themselves, they are aware of what they have done and know they are accountable for it. They know they are in spiritual bondage. Almost everyone I have met struggling with addiction suffers from a terrible sense of shame and a belief that he or she is broken, defective, and beyond the love and grace of God.
But this belief, in my experience, is far from the truth. Usually I find that those who struggle with addictions are warriors with tenacity, courage, and a strong desire to be clean. They win far more battles than they lose as they march toward recovery.
This may be hard for some to comprehend—if people are so strong, why is overcoming addiction so difficult? Addiction is often misunderstood, and some believe that if a person would simply choose to recover or work harder at stopping, he or she would be able to. But the nature of addiction—and all sin, for that matter—is such that we cannot heal ourselves from it. The children of Israel could not heal themselves from the bites of the fiery serpents, and we cannot simply wish or even work addiction away. We must find our hope of healing in Christ.
It takes faith, hope, and time to heal from the patterns of self-deception, isolation, and secrecy that nearly always accompany addiction. We can take counsel from Nephi to “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope” (2 Nephi 31:20) that He can heal—and is healing—us. We need to not give up or decide that because temptations and cravings return, there is no hope in Christ. To those who will not look because they feel no hope, I say that there is hope in Christ. He is the hope of recovery.
The Savior offers you the same healing and hope He offers your loved one. You too can be supported in this trial through the Atonement of Jesus Christ (see Alma 36:3). The Atonement of Jesus Christ is for all of us.
I know that as we “cast about [our] eyes” and “begin to believe in the Son of God,” He will heal us (Alma 33:22). He is the Son of God, and His is the only name and way by which we can return to our Father (see Mosiah 3:17).
Alma ends his sermon on the brass serpent with his testimony that Christ “will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins” (Alma 33:22). I add my own witness that Christ has come and that “[our] burdens may be light, through the joy” and healing of His eternal Atonement (Alma 33:23).
