Lost and Found

Shanine. 20. keep swimming. dive deep. enjoy the wonders underneath the calmest sea.

[i-wrotethisforme]

“It meant nothing” does not make things better. Because if you cheated on me with someone you genuinely thought was your soulmate, which made you realize I wasn’t, then I can’t truly be that mad at you for pursuing that assuming I genuinely care about your life happiness, which I do. But if you cheated on me with a random girl you met at a bar, who you had no intention of seeing again and who you’d never want a future with and didn’t even find attractive, that’s just a clear cut case of me not being enough for you.

[vodkakilledtheteen]

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen, the day after you find out he slept with someone else. 1. You’re going to wake up with last nights makeup still on your face and you’re going to want to stay all day in bed. 2. Your body is going to feel weak because your heart is going to feel like it’s gone. 3. You’re going to get out of bed when you really need to use the bathroom. Then you’re going to stare at your reflection in the bathroom mirror. Then your reflection is going to make you rationalize with his decision. 4. At 5 pm you’re going to realize that you haven’t fed yourself all day. You’ll walk over to the kitchen and grab the blueberries in the fridge, and you’ll remember that he was the one who got those blueberries a week ago. You’re going to stare at the blueberries, and wonder if he got those because blueberries are blue and black, and maybe he was trying to warn you that he was going to hurt you. 5. People are going to write to you and call you but you’ll ignore all of the text messages and calls. 6. You’re going to realize that you still haven’t fed yourself because when you tried to, you realized you didn’t have an appetite. 7. Your room is going to be dark and you’re going to be in bed scrolling through his Instagram or Facebook. You’re going to look through his followers and look at the people who’ve liked his pictures. You want to find a clue, and when you do you’re going to think about how stupid you were and you’re going to wonder why you didn’t do this before. 8. You’re going to get up from the bed and collect all of the things he gave you. You’re going to grab a laundry basket and put everything in there, and tomorrow you’ll go donate it to your nearest thrift store. 9. You’ll go back to bed and block him on all of your social media accounts. 10. You’ll think everything is going to be okay, but the next morning you wake up and you realize that you miss him. You unblock him. You remove everything you were going to donate from the laundry basket. You put everything back where it was. You walk to the kitchen and open the fridge and you eat those blueberries he left and they bruise your lips and soul even more.”

— Alexa Evangelista, the book i’ll never finish writing

[jspark3000]

It can be easy to romanticize a passion or a social cause or a marriage or raising kids with tons of posed pictures and flowery words – but all such things are gritty, raw, rough, and painstakingly sculpted from our fully invested hearts.  There is a lot of standing around and sweating through our shirts and seasons of self-doubt and all the frustrated parts that no one else can see.  We fall in love with highlights but these were formed in the valley.  Please don’t be seduced by soundbites and filtered photos and bowtie daydreams.  Real joy actually hurts, but that’s why it’s real.  It was carved from the best of us.

– J.S.

[lavender-melancholy]

[worshipgifs]

[jspark3000]

— J.S. Park

[the-moon-loves-the-sea]

When your living space is a mess, don’t ever look around and think you should have managed better. Don’t look at the chaos as all the things you should have done. Look around and think, “Look how exhausted I’ve been. I have been saving my energy to save myself and that is right.” And then ask yourself what is one thing you could do that would make you feel more at home in your space–one thing you can manage right now. If that’s fluffing up your pillows, if that’s putting the cups back in the kitchen, if that’s writing a list of fruit you haven’t had in a while and going out to buy it, if it’s picking up your laundry from the floor and putting it on the chair, if it’s wiping the dust off your crystals–that’s enough. Do what would help you now. It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to be a mess. It’s enough to do what would help and leave the rest.

[amargedom]

“Never miss an opportunity to show your love, especially to those close to you, because we are always at our most cautious with them for fear of being hurt.”

—

[heryearnings]

““Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.””

— (via goodreadss)

[flowergeorgia]

brown eyes are stunning too - they are a secret until the sunlight falls onto them and then they turn into gold

[jspark3000]

How do you bring people to God without telling them that they are going to hell? Or "shoving my religion down their throat?" And how do you deal with people that tried Jesus and still don't believe? I have issues with the way my church discuss these topics so I was wondering if you could bring some clarity. Thank you so much for your help!

Hey dear friend, I speak all this with absolute grace and love for you, and I’d like to go one further.

Hell is not a motivation for faith—but neither is heaven. If a punishment or a prize are the motivations for someone’s journey, then my assumption is that person hasn’t thought very far about why they’re on this journey at all. I’m reminded of that quote from True Detective: “If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother, that person is a piece of s__.”

If my goal is to “bring people to God,” that actually won’t work either, because we shouldn’t be trying to make it work. I don’t mean to assume your motives, but evangelism isn’t a score-card where we win people by attendance. No one is a project or a charity case. Christians might not think we do this, but it happens in all kinds of unseen ways: we attract people until they’re baptized, and then the pastor stops talking to them. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. God can only naturally flow out of who we are and how we interact with others. God flows from my art, my expression, my patience, my generosity, and what I do with my free time. It’s not primarily a conscious goal to say, “See, this is God!” It was C.S. Lewis who said we can’t try to make good art, but that we make art and it might turn out good. It’s the same way with expressing God to others: it happens or it doesn’t. 

I’m not sure there’s a way to “deal with” people who “tried Jesus and still don’t believe.” That was their choice. There’s no magical formula for this. My guess is that they don’t have ears to hear right now, or that they didn’t get the whole picture, and we each can only be faithful to an accurate picture of who God is (again, without forcing it or keeping score). And what if they did hear everything and still don’t believe? Would even more information suddenly wake them up? No. Only God can do that. I believe God can, and does. I must be faithful in how God is working through me, just as I believe God is faithful in how He is working through them.

People have their personal objections to God and Christianity, and they should be taken seriously. No lecture or lesson is going to break through that, and if it did, then it only takes another lecture or lesson to “un-persuade” someone out of their so-called faith. 

I don’t mean to sound abrasive and I’m sorry that this comes off rather abrupt. I think it’s been way too indoctrinated in us to make “Christian evangelism” into some kind of program, so that we use really strange language to talk about “dealing with people” or “bringing them to God.” These paradigms are hurtful and presume Western methods of transferring information, rather than a holistic, natural, relational interaction between the uniqueness of real, living people. Yes, I do tell people very plainly about Jesus, and at the same time, there are all the things I’m not saying which are just as important, if not more, and simply being available and asking questions and letting others know that I’m ready to talk, any time, and more crucially, ready to listen. 

— J.S.

[jspark3000]

Let’s talk about loneliness.

I’m not a therapist or doctor, but as a hospital chaplain, I’ve seen the terrible and awful effects of loneliness on mental health. The problem is that it’s tough to admit, almost embarrassing to say, “I’m hurting from loneliness.”

Loneliness is a double-bind in that in order to find comfort, it requires reaching out to people or for people to be near. But some of us have been alone so long, it’s unthinkable that we can connect with another human without risking rejection—which fuels more loneliness.

The unhelpful reply I hear to “I’m lonely” is “Why don’t you just make friends?” But that’s like saying, “Why don’t you just get rich?” or “Why can’t you just go to the gym?” We’re already in deficit, a lap behind, because we fear connection in proportion to how alone we feel.

It’s difficult to make friends and keep them. It’s hard to have real friendships that are not just functional transactions. Even when someone is surrounded by crowds or well connected, they may be the loneliest people on earth, because all their “friends” are transactional.

I don’t know the answer to loneliness. But I know what the answer is not: We can’t just snap out of it. We can’t just cure it with a party, a bar, a church, a dating app. It requires intentional investment and yes, the risk of rejection. The opposite of loneliness is courage.

Friends, this week may be lonely. This season can be brutal. They can remind you of all that’s missing. As trite as it sounds: You may feel lonely, but you are not alone. May you find the courage to reach out, to enter the possibilities of love in all its heaven and heartache.

— J.S.

[desjcobb]

[1980vibes]

[nakedly]

“What’s the worst thing I’ve stolen? Probably little pieces of other people’s lives. Where I’ve either wasted their time or hurt them in some way. That’s the worst thing you can steal, the time of other people. You just can’t get that back.”

— Chester Bennington  (via perrfectly)

[fear-not-beloved]

“Be broken and given in the small, the moments so small no one may applaud at all. Pour out your life in laundry rooms and over toilets and tubs, and pour out life on the back streets, in the back of the room, back behind the big lights. Pour out your life in small moments - because it’s only these moments that add up to the monumental. The only way to live a truly remarkable life is not to get everyone to notice you, but to leave noticeable marks of His love everywhere you go. Love so large that it has to live in the holiness of very small moments of sacrifice. Love demands you lie down and die in small moments, the moments not scripted for screens, but written into the inner hem of a heart that can change how someone breathes.”

— Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way

[juansendizon]

“Sometimes you lose trust in yourself, and you find it in the small bits of promises you make to yourself each day. It could be as simple as going for a morning walk with your dog if you’re not comfortable yet with morning runs. It could be as easy as reading a book for half an hour instead of a whole afternoon. It could be as gentle as hanging out with a single friend who cares for your mental health rather than forcing yourself to socialize at a party. Taking things on a timid pace may seem like you’re not doing much, and that’s okay. If making peacefully achievable goals is what it takes to regain your self-trust without finding yourself in much worry then let it be a kind of reminder to yourself—that there’s still strength to be found in taking things lightly. Soon that strength will be your power to move mountains.”

— juansen dizon, Self-Trust

[beasclassifiedsurvivalguide]