Fight The Tide

When I love someone, I love them with everything. I will sacrifice everything for them, I will fight for them. When I decide to love someone, to befriend someone, to date someone, it's through thick and thin with me. There's no turning back unless they cut it off themselves, and even then I'll fight for them. Like the song "Alone", by Sanctus Real says, "You are not alone. I will fight the tide to be with you."

Sometimes, it's hard to love people so fiercely. It's hard to be fierce when someone else isn't. It's like giving

all of yourself to someone, for them to give only a little of themselves to you. I don't usually think about this because I have come to terms with my fierceness, and have realized that most would call it extreme. It would be awfully unloving to expect someone to love me the same way. But it's always beautiful when it happens. So I've laid down my expectations and decided to simply love.

Today, while sitting in church, my thoughts roared like a storm tossed ocean. I longed to seek the Lord, but I just couldn't calm my raging mind.  As  I sat there, the Lord spoke to me, "I will fight the tide to be with you." And I knew in that moment that he would fight for me more than I would ever fight for Him, He would love me more than I've ever loved Him, and maybe one day I might even consider

Him a little extreme, but maybe that's the beauty of loving so fiercely.

                                                                                                           * Painting by Kris Lewis

New Delhi

I'll never forget kites flying above rooftops on a dry, Indian evening. I could hear the murmur of families sitting on their roofs as I stared off my own balcony. The smell of curry and rotten fruit tingling my nostrils, I lived a moment that I could live again, and again for eternity.

Maybe it was the thrill of traveling, the good friends around me, or the hope of a full stomach that made

this memory replay itself like a video on my heart years to come. Or maybe it was a small truth that had crept into my soul that evening. It was the moment that life, after going and going, had grown still, and soft, and quiet; and it reassured me that I could live again, that I could love again, that I could change. It was the dry air of a promise for a second chance, hovering in a rainbow of a thousand kites.