Wilderness Part 1

For brother's graduation trip, we wheeled our big car full of bags and kids down to West Virginia. I brought along a 500 page book and disappeared into it from start to finish. I've said it before and I'll say it again, reading makes me happy. Literally, it lightens my mood and makes me smile. 

Here I have the first part of a series of pictures. 

I'll let them tell there own story. 

 

 

 • cowboy town •

 • country store •

• step •

• front yard •

• vacation tradition •

• run •

• love of reading •

I got it from my parents)

• wild •

<3 storyteller

{777 challenge}

 

 • reach •

•write•

• find •

Sliver from my novel After Ever After:

At home, Mom is humming, which means she’s in a good mood. “Hey, Aria, cookies on the counter,” Mom says. “How was school?” she asks like she always does. Not that she really cares, just out of habit. That’s my mom. Every move she makes follows habit. The world she lives in is just built off the world she has always known.

   
 “I’m going to be a librarian,” I tell her. 

   
“Sounds good,” she answers absently. Same answer she gives to so many things, and I wonder if she ever means it. Do words really sound good like music notes?

   
The cookie makes me feel a little better. Cookies are yummy, especially these ones that Dad brings home on Fridays fresh from the bakery at the store. 

   
 I don’t feel like doing homework, but I have to get it done some time or other. I start by pulling out my Literature textbook, but my mind won’t stay on my work. 

   
“Want some help?” Mom offers, like I’m still in elementary school. I don’t mind though. 

   
 “I can’t pay attention,” I groan, as if she could make my mind focus. I turn to her, “Mom, what’s the point of life?” It’s something Bobby asked that keeps nagging in the back of my mind. 

   
“Turning Bobby on us?” she teases. “The point of life is to be happy.” 

   
“So we were just made to be happy?” I’m not trying to be like Bobby, but I hear a similarity in my tone that scares me. 

   
“I guess so,” Mom shrugs her shoulders. “And to get to Ever After.” 

 
  “Ok,” I smile at the floor and try to sound like Mom has answered all my questions, but she hasn’t. She’s only made more questions. 

   
 “Aria,” Mom looks straight in my eyes in a way that means her full attention is on me, and for a sliver of time, she’s snapped out of the cycle of habits.“Sometimes we don’t need answers. We just need to make it to the end.” 

   
So we are just surviving and trying to be happy. My heart feels empty, like a glass with no water. A glass with no meaning. A glass that has no reason to exist, and is just there. There to be happy. 

Tears fill my eyes, but I won’t cry. I turn to my school work and try to take refuge in it, but nothing works. I think of my friends. They’re all just empty glasses. I am one of them. Empty.

~~~

My lovely friend and fellow blogger, Isabell tagged me for this challenge. I've never done a challenge, but this one looked kind of fun. 

{rules}

~ share 7 lines (I totally went over 7) from the 7th page of one of your manuscripts

~ tag 7 bloggers

I tag:

Ester

Rachel

Gabrielle

Lydia

Abie

Embers

Caroline

L O S T ~ L O V E

||  l o v e  ||

Where is love these days? 

We call it a click...attraction,

 being cool with eachother. 

Isn't there more than that?

 Isn't love bending down to wash another's feet? 

Isn't love stopping to see the unodicable? 

Isn't love another word for sacrifice?

 Or is that just my misinterpretation? 

All I know is 

if love is just finding someone who clicks, who's cool, 

or who's cute, 

than I don't want it. 

I want the love that means something...something more than being popular. 

I want to be exepted for my crazy self. 

I want respect and compassion.

 I want sweetness to be strength,

 not weakness.

 Is that even allowed?

 I want to be loved unconditionally...not because someone mistook me for being cute.

 I don't want love that is adorable... 

I want a love that is strong.

 Does that even exist anymore? 

I used to think it did, but sometime I look around and can't find it.

I'm an old soul...I apologize for that...but I am, 

and I cringe inside whenever I see that word,

l o v e 

thrown around like garbage. 

If love is what they say it is, than it is garbage...but there must be more. 

God once said He was love. 

 If the creator of the universe is love,

 this thing has got to be pretty special. 

Where is that love? 

That love that brought the creator to give up His own son for me, for you.

You'd think we'd find some of that kind of love reflected in His people, 

but sometimes...

sometimes I don't, 

and it makes me sad. 

I guess that's what sin does. 

It twists love into something stupid, and I hate that. 

<3 storyteller

• today •

//sky//

• furs •

• cone •

• green sky •

• alone •

• fly dragon, fly •

• glimpse • 

• empty seat •

• sun •

• down •

We're piled in the car that's not suppose to fit all of us. Before we've started. "Uh oh! What?" Mom goes, eyes on her phone. "Andy says he is getting his molers pulled."

Grandpa smiles and gets the distant look in his eye, "Back when I was in the army I got my back molers pulled."

"What?" Shock fills Mom's eyes. 

"Yep, they said there wasn't any point of having molers," Grandpa continues. "They just tugged them right out."

"Don, are you sure those weren't your wisdom teeth?" demands Grandma suspiciously. 

"Oh wisdom teeth!!!??? Oh no, these were my back molers," drolls Grandpa with the look back in his eyes.

"There he goes again," Grandma sighs. 

We have a very strange family. I love that, and this week I've been able to spend a little more time with my lovely people. 

<3 storyteller

Overalls

Photography with my sister...

Kaleidoscope of Color

(just a creative name for a few mismatch photo collided into one post)

uppp

photography in bed

Lately...

 I've just had that fairly content feeling you get after you've done some wonderful things and have some wonderful things ahead of you: 

That feeling when you realize you aren't perfect, 

but you're unique and special and dazzling 

in your own way 

since that's the way God made you and He's in control 

and because of that everything won't be perfect 

but at least you know everything's going to be 

OK. 

That feeling. 

<3 storyteller

{Heads up: I won't be posting next week because I'll be away at camp. Consider yourself warned}

~Another Ending~

If you're here at my blog looking for answers, I'm going to break something to you. 

I don't have them. 

All I've got are 

-thoughts-

- Questions-

-Words-

-Stories-

Last week started hard. The first two babies I ever babysat said 

g o o d b y e 

to me. 

They aren't really babies any more. Little people with 

big minds,

 big hearts, 

and big souls.

"I don't want to leave you behind Miss Maddie. I'll come back, I promise," little girl tells me. 

I babysit a lot of kids now, 

but these ones... 

they've left a soft spot in my heart.

 

"Are you going to miss them?" little sister asks me one night in bed. 

It all floods out then.

 I open up.

"Yeah, I'll miss them.

 I won't just miss their smiles or their laughter, 

I'll miss the way they made me feel special. 

They always saw in me something that no one else did. 

On those  L o N e L y  days when I felt like my world was 

b

r 

e 

a

k

i

n

g,

 little boy came and told me 

he loved me 

in that childish way that pieced my world back together. 

Sure, 

they're just little kids, 

but sometimes little kids see things we don't. 

I don't know why they liked me. 

Maybe it was because of the adventure we had when I rescued his toy out of the toilet. 

Maybe it was because of the surprises I brought in my purse. 

Or maybe...

 it was because of the stories I told them. I don't know why, 

but they did. 

So yeah, I'll miss them." 

I turn to my emotional little sister and jokingly ask, "You aren't crying, are you?" 

There is a sniffle. 

Then, two pitiful choked words.

 "I am."

 Silence. 

"Maddie, that is so sad. You may never see them again." 

"But now they know how to tell stories. They can take that with them," I remind her. 

Maybe I'm comforting her, 

or maybe I'm comforting myself. 

"Can I sleep in your bed?" whimpers little sister. 

"No," I return, "But you can come snuggle for a while." 

We snuggle for a while 

and we cry for a while 

and we try to understand. 

Sooooo...

 all that to say -> I don't have answers. 

I don't know why they left.

 All I know is that God put them in my life for a season 

and 

took them out. 

I'm so happy to be able to say I could be part of their story, 

and I'm so happy that they were part of mine. 

<3 storyteller