My dearest twenty-one year old girl,
This letter may come as a hurtful surprise to you, but please, keep reading. I know that right now you don’t understand boundaries between a man and a woman. You’re not even sure yet why, when and how they exist. And right now you’re…
(via choikathy)
As a young girl, I believed that if I could tiptoe around my house without making a sound, I would turn into a nymph. But it was always at the staircase that my plan would be ruined. At one spot or another, the sound of creaking wood would give me away.
Today, I climbed up the concrete stairwell of my workplace to the droning sound of nothingness. And for a second, I swear I could see those silent footfalls gliding in and out of existence.
In the tumult and turmoil of the world, may we rest at the feet of our God and hear Him.
I have an obsession with hands.
They come in so many different textures and colors, with each small crease telling its own, unique story. The faint outline around a fourth finger drawing a tale of love; the deeply embedded furrow on leathery skin speaking volumes of endurance and struggle.
But by far, I have never encountered a pair of hands more beautiful than that of my grandmother’s. Her slowly sagging peach skin whispers the passage of time from when flesh was once taut on bone. And when she reaches out and grasps my hands into her even smaller ones, I feel the calluses rubbing against my palm, reminding me of the countless hours she spends each day serving me in love.
And so it’s with a grateful heart that I eat the small portions of food she sends me. With tears in my eyes I accept the crumpled bills she’s saved up for months to give me for allowance. But it’s with fascination and complete awe that I watch as she holds one hand in the other, knuckles white from her tight grip, for hours on end on her hands and knees. In the corner of her room in the quiet hours of dawn, my heart stirs as I watch a woman fall impossibly deeper in love with her Maker.
So it’s with this vision, God, this utter conviction that I lift these hands up to you. Would you use them to build your kingdom. I can only ask that each wrinkle that forms and scar that appears be yet another testimony to your great works in my life. Let something more than words speak the story of unending grace. Would these unnaturally small, child-sized hands reach towards you and never let go.
Fragments are all I have to give to you
Jagged memories of a tainted soul
But you anoint my head with oil
And make beauty from my ashes
Broken I may come
But in You I am made whole.
When I was younger, I remember how I had the biggest crush on this one boy. For now, let’s call him Esteban.
Oh, how ferociously my small heart would beat at the sight of him. It was as if I had consumed a hundred little gummy worms and somehow during digestion, they had come alive by magic. They tickled my tummy, the tingling echoing its way up my chest, to my heart, and exploding in a splash of red on my cheeks.
But what I remember most about my young, one-sided love rendezvous was this: no matter how far he was from me in the classroom, no matter what I was supposed to be doing at the time, my eyes would always find their way to an all-too-familiar figure named Esteban. My sight was constantly fixed on him; and despite how dirty he looked in that Digimon shirt of his, despite his lack of sanitation as he played amidst snails and beetles with his gang of equally unsanitary friends, my heart never failed to skip a beat.
Now that I’m older, I’ve met a new man that’s perfect in every which way, one that wears more than some ratty old shirt based on a worn-out Japanese cartoon. This man is not only clean, but washes me pure and makes me holy. He adorns a garment sewn with threads of pure beauty and shines the light of His incomparable glory. But most of all, He looks at me and loves me first.
Jesus, fix my eyes upon your face; let my gaze be true and unyielding. Take my heart, all of it, and may it never stop beating for you.
