To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. 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. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. – C.S. LEWIS
Author: Jocelyn Soriano
See her books like "Questions to God", "Mend My Broken Heart", "To Love an Invisible God", "Defending My Catholic Faith", "Of Waves and Butterflies: Poems on Grief" and more - click here.
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(You may freely quote excerpts from this website as long as due credit is given to author Jocelyn Soriano and the website itakeoffthemask.com)
Categories
Second chance to live
I would like to share a wonderful site by Craig J. Phillips at http://www.secondchancetolive.wordpress.com/Craig shares:
Per my traumatic brain injury, at the age of 10, I was in a motor vehicle accident. Upon impact — the Cadillac hitting our VW Beetle — I was thrown forward from where I sat, behind my father who was driving. On my way forward, I snapped my left femur on my Dad’s bucket seat and then hit the windshield. When my head hit the windshield, I sustained an open skull fracture. The injury to my brain resulted in my remaining in a coma for 3 weeks. Upon waking from what I thought was a bad dream, I found my left leg elevated and in traction. Slowly, it became apparent that I was not merely in a bad dream. Although I am unable to remember much from that time in my life, one memory stands out. The right side of my forehead — where the fracture occurred — was depressed inward like a shallow bowl. I later learned that my right frontal lobe had been damaged, that I had sustained a severe brain contusion, and that my brain stem had been impacted.In 1967 neurological rehabilitation was not available. As a result, I was virtually on my own. I had to re-teach myself how to walk, talk, read, write and speak in complete sentences. Although my injuries were life threatening and I was not expected to succeed beyond high school, I went on to obtain both my undergraduate and graduate degrees. I have learned that daunting pessimism and negativity is pointless. My hope is that through visiting my site, those individuals who may have lost hope will see a new light. This light will in turn guide them to a renewed hope, an array of possibilities, and a new zest for living.
More power to you Craig and God bless you in your journey!
Categories
Parting with my beloved cup
Today is the day I have decided to part with my beloved cup of coffee. I almost couldn’t believe it myself! 🙁 Coffee has served me well in the past, kept me cozy in rainy days, given me a boost in my thinking and helped me in moments I desired inspiration so I can write. Sad to say, even the most beautiful things must come to an end at times to give way to more beautiful things.
- I am looking forward to days where I won’t need to depend on it anymore just so I could think well.
- I am looking forward to early mornings I can rise early and easily, revitalized and without a bit of drowsiness that would require me to drink cup after cup of java from day to day.
- I am looking forward to deep slumber and vivid dreams when caffeine would no longer interfere me in my sleep.
- I am looking forward to gaining balance and wholeness, of more stable moods and less outbursts of temper.
- I am looking forward to more calcium being absorbed by my body.
- I am looking forward to less heart palpitations and more deep breaths.
- I am looking forward to more body fluids and lesser allergy attacks.
- I am looking forward to less bodily temperature inconveniences as coffee makes my body hotter in an already tropical country I’m living in.
Thank you coffee for everything! Wish me luck as I find a better way 🙂
Who are you? Who do you want to be? Where are you going?
Lord, from you comes indeed the words of life. I write not out of my own knowledge. I write not out of my own whims. Everything I write I jot down only in behalf of you. For it is you O Lord who speaks unto me your wisdom and it is you O Lord who reveals unto me the truth. How I desire to share the things you taught me. How I pray to make known your beauty and your saving grace. Yet wretched instrument that I am, how often do I fail to reflect the Light that has come upon me. How my words fall short of the eloquence of your thoughts. I am weighed down by the darkness that still looms within me. By fears that shake the strokes of my pen. How then shall others understand? How then shall lives be touched and changed?
It is no wonder people laugh at my works and make a joke of my labors. They find all the wrong things about it and discourage me all the time for my useless pursuit. Some were courteous enough to stay silent, but I know that they read them not as well. They turn a few pages and soon fall soundly asleep. They pretend to have read it yet says not anything they learned from it. They think I’m crazy trying to do what I do. They think I waste my time with toils from which I profit not.
Yet do I waste my time indeed? And what is the profit I should seek? Is it not to be content in your Holy Presence? Is it not to learn each day from you? Is it not the healing of my own wounds as you give me words that soothe the pain of my own heart? For the gift you have given me is thy gift to me indeed. Even before its fragrance blesses others, your perfume anoints me and gives me joy I can never exchange for any profit that this world knows of. You have blessed me indeed. You have been patient with my blunders. You have given me your smile as I pushed on.
O Dear Father, let me not give up now. Help me as I hone your gifts night and day. Renew my strength as I tread the path that is both lonesome and rought, as I face struggles that are truly great and long. And if I should offer my own blood with which to write down every word, let me offer it willingly and joyfully as you have offered your own. Let me weep not for my own pain. Let me not complain for my own cross. For it is through suffering that others may be relieved, through my own wounds that others may be healed. And it is through this cross that hopes will be rekindled, bringing forth the good news of a brand new day. Amen.