Anonymous

Herein Lies a Man; Heart and Mind Laid Bare. The aim is that it be increasingly so. The hope is that one day I might not care what you think.

[here-inlies]

I let you in to see it all, and you said my pain was beautiful; So I cried because I wanted to be beautiful

[here-inlies]

Life at its best is toil and frustration; at its worst: pain and misery. But show me a man who is truly happy and I'll show you one who loves and is loved.

[here-inlies]

[drugsisthenewalcohol-blog]

[here-inlies]

Such pains beseech the lowly man, held fast beneath His hand; What glories teach the trials, revealed at length to be His plan.

[here-inlies]

When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. 

[living-fitness]

[here-inlies]

Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again...this process trains us in habits of the soul...it cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God.

C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity

[here-inlies]

Mirrors

It was an degenerative disease of the mind. 

The surfaces of every object and every person were becoming increasingly reflective, slowly enough that he never noticed the change.

The contours, shadows, layers of the world faded, becoming indistinguishable.

His own visage has become his only reality. 

He imagines happiness as a smile in his reflection; it seems attainable yet the more he reaches for it the more distant the memory of true joyful expression becomes.

He does not question what has always been.

[here-inlies]

We hear you

And we lie awake at night knowing that you cry yourself to sleep. Feeling selfish at our own sorrow because it is based in your affliction, not ours. 

And we know that you hurt constantly, and we know that you don’t want to talk about it. 

And we see through your smiles, knowing they are contrived, meant not to show happiness but to mask your pain and true emotion.

And we understand you need more from us, and we can even imagine what more may look like. We imagine our persistence and the depth of our caring will someday soon win your trust. Maybe then you will tell us how you feel; maybe then you will take off the mask and discover that it is you who we love, not who you feel you owe it to us to be, not the form of yourself you present because you think it will be easier for us to understand.

And we lie awake at night, crying ourselves to sleep, not wanting to talk about it. Why should we be upset, when the world is only against you? What right have we to sadness, to sorrow, since we have not experienced true darkness? So we swallow our tears, we pray, we turn to anything we can to find a means to get through to you.

And we fail.

We hear you, we see your pain. We cannot save you alone. We reach to grasp your hand to pull you from the quick sand only to find you will not reach back. And so we stand in agony watching you slowly sink, leaning perilously further hoping you will take our hand. 

If I leap in for you, will you hold me? Will you believe me?

And we are together.

And we die.

[here-inlies]

Keep your heart with all vigilance,                 For from it flow the springs of life

- Proverbs 4:23

“If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

- CS Lewis, The Four Loves

[wordsnquotes]

She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.

Azar Nafisi (via wordsnquotes)

[henretta84]

We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.

Ernest Hemingway (via henretta84)

[letmeaffectyourbreathing]

[teto-ghibli]

[here-inlies]

what would we see, if we took our heart in our hands?

[littletruthful1]

[here-inlies]

courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point. A chastity, or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.

CS Lewis