~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

Someday

 So, I wanted to tell you somethings that have been on my mind and sometimes the only way to share is through a story, so here is a super short story. It's completely fictional, kind of just flooded right out of me at the last moment...

Little girl doing creating

Babies can paint too

Somehow it became finger painting

{S O M E D A Y}

"So you like art?" the woman with the shining eyes asks. 

"Yes," answers little girl. I don't just like art. I breathe art. Ever spiraling curve. Every harsh brush stroke. Every soft line. Art is piece of me, not just a hobby. 

"I'll show you some of my work," the woman offers. "Would you like that?" 

Little girl nods. 

Into another room the woman leads her, a room full of art. Shapes. Colors. Unspoken words... all collided into each painting. 

Little girl is speechless. Awkward. I'll never be this good.

"This is what I do," the woman says smiling. "I hoped it would inspire you." 

Little girl is wordless. This is what I want to be. She's amazing. My art is so bad next to this, but maybe someday...

"Your mom said you brought some work to show me," mentions the woman. 

Little girl pauses. I can't show her mine. It's so bad next to this. "It's in my backpack," she whispers instead, and rushes out of the room to get it. 

Little girl brings back a drawing of a flower. Crooked. Light. Plain. It was once beautiful to me, but she'll never catch that beauty. She couldn't.

The woman takes it. Looks it over without a word. Little girl waits, hardly breaths, just waits. 

"That's very nice," The women tells her at last. "Someday you'll become famous." 

Its not good enough now... but maybe someday. Little girl smiles. "Thank you." Stiff. Too short... but what else can I say?

To the women it all feels stale. Did she really inspire the little girl? Doubt. Or just intimidated her? 

Weeks slide by and the woman gets busy and famous and stops talking to the little girl. Stops seeing the hidden artist inside her. 

But the little girls doesn't stop dreaming. 

 s o  m e d a y

She whispers to herself. 

The weeks form months and the months form years and nothing changes. The woman forgets the little girl, but the little girl never forgets that one word 

s o m e d a y 

One stormy March day the woman moves on in the world. She leaves, but before she's gone she sees the little girl and she remembers. Did I ever help her? She wonders. Probably not. She goes. 

But little girls still hears the old promise 

s o m e d a y 

she never let it go

Words are wild things. 

Don't underestimate them. 

Sometimes we watch them form people 

and other times they form people 

on their own. 

~storyteller

His

{Broken, Rusty, Empty... but the daughter of the KING}

Sunshine In All Those Clouds

According to my family, I've been grumpy this week... I like to blame it on the weather. All week the sky has been cotton coated by clouds and the world has be sunless...scopeless. 

I've worked on math. 

Taken walks. 

Baked. 

Drawn. 

And on one particular morning my creative mind was killing me so I wrote the beginning of a novel that I never intend to finish. It started out like this, 

"The world, a septic tank, breaking people down and sending them on unending journeys..."

 So yep. That was... fun.

And in this rainy week, questions have been spiraling through my head, questions that so many humans have tried to solve before. 

No answer.

We say the bible is the answer. But there are things that the bible doesn't specifically answer. So we continue to look for answers. In the end of the day, though, faith is all we're left with. 

Frustrating faltering faith. 

The scripture has one answer...the only answer that we are required to give on judgement day. That's all we must have, and the bible gives it to us so many times.  

Isn't that sort of comforting?

Sometimes the world looks bleak. The future so unknown. The older I get the darker the world around me gets. Insides it leaves me confused, scared, and sad, so sad. Everywhere there are marks of this sadness. 

Disgusting sin. 

Black Hate. 

Seething Pain. 

Sometimes I just want to give up. I don't want to live here surrounded by so much darkness and so little light...but once a long long time ago this world was beautiful. God saw it and said that it was good. And sometime, whether later or soon, this place will be made beautiful again, and God will see it and say that it is good. 

So even when the world feels like a septic tank tearing us apart, (gotta love my anologies) 

don't give up. 

This world is a dark place, but not hopeless. Even in a little kid's hug or the sight of a fawn playing in the valley, there is beauty, beauty behind all the clouds.

I promise.

<3 storyteller

~Fairytale~

So we're barefoot Indians at my house. Hot. Wild. Almost free... free once the school is finished. We're chasing stories and sharing them, me and my sisters. Swapping books. Waiting for the pool to open. Loving the summer that has hardly begun. I've been finding my photography style and working on my novel. Summer here I come!

~where the stories come alive and the stars shine down on me at night

~magic birdbath that holds the sky in its clasp

~fir trees

~wild flowers

~ wise old willow

~breeze

~photographer's perspective

~trees trying to reach the sky

~lunch on the porch basking in the sun

{ if only}

if only humans could fly

if only stars could be touched

if only babies didn't cry

if only there wasn't something called goodbye

but the worlds only spun once

and words often echo that lie

and we can fly on dream's back

so fly // fly // fly

Just a wish...

~storyteller

My Somphmore Year {history}

Ok. I haven't posted very regularly. I apologize. My life has been loaded with craziness. First we had company. Grandparents. An Aunt. And then out of town friends. All of that was followed by exams. Then graduation. And now? I am done with school...or sort of done. 

I still have Algebra to burden me all summer. 

Math is my raincloud that follows me wherever I go. We, Math and I, are not friends. The only thing acquainted with math that is my friend is... my calculator. And my calculator and I happen to be  wonderful friends!

Leaving my sophomore year behind should be amazing but I am not parting with it easily. I loved my Sophomore year. Yes, I loved it even with Chemistry. I learned a lot from my Chemistry class. 

1. I am not as smart as I thought I was. 

2. There is a wonderful world of numbers and equations out there

3. A world that I will never understand 

Besides Chemistry, this school year was lovely. And now, knowing that it's leaving forever and so are too many of my friends...I am sort of sorry to see it go. Yes, even Chemistry. 

Another sad part about moving on is that so many of my good friends are graduating this year. One of them happens to be my brother. 

Zach and I have experienced this whole education adventure side by side. In other words, next year will be the first time in MY LIFE that Zach won't be around to take my school books and hog the computer or help me study and answer the questions in class.  When's a bigger time to realize your growing up than when you find out your classmate for life is going to college next year. I feeldreadfully old. 

I guess I should say something about my big brother... I could say a lot. Zach and I have always been close. When we were little, we did every single thing together. His friends were mine. Even now, when we study, we end up talking like grown ups and that cool sibling bond is still there even though we are almost complete opposites. I hate the idea of his leaving our family, leaving it to be full of little girls and girl talk and girl stuff. Sometimes I just need a practical brother to even out all the girlishness in my family. Sounds strange coming from a girl, but that's how I feel. 

  Zach reminds me constantly not to be weird. Or maybe reminds isn't the right word, he pleads. He is always my dose of reality after I am lost in another world.

 

To sum it all up:

I 

love

my big

brother. 

So, yep, that has kinda been a picture of my life lately. I've been super emotional and not social enough and I think if I'm not careful this summer I may become a hermit. Ok, one day at home doesn't make you a hermit. I exaggerate to much. Yep, that's another thing Zach always reminds me about. Next year will be...well... different without him. 

~storyteller

Warning / / Reminder / / Plea

water colors are a blast but in my fun I accidentally put the shadow in the wrong spot...ooops

She is sitting on a bench, people all around her.

Tight circles of chattery teens, and she's alone. So she tiptoes up to a group. That's bravery for her, bravery is going up to a circle. She waits for them to open up their world and let her {nervous insecure lost} in, but they don't see her. She is invisible,

 and sometimes invisible is mistaken as worthless. So she retreats, curls back up, recoils into her own world because that is the only place where she is 

s o m e b o d y.  

So, since a fellow blogger asked me to write about clicks and being dis-included, I finally got up enough courage too. I know my example seems a bit dramatic...and it is, but today I'm speaking out against clicks. 

I've been the one in the circle, the one blind to those girls on the bench, but I'm ashamed of that. Please step up and speak to the people on the benches. See those ones who aren't brave enough. Make someone feel special. Don't hurt a human by never taking time to see them! This is as much a reminder to me as it is to you. 

Loneliness can either build a human or break a human. 

I remember when I was about thirteen staring at the mirror and asking,

"What is wrong with me?" 

Through the reflection I saw the tiny tearfilled face of someone broken. I shook with sobs because I didn't understand why I was invisible to everyone and why I felt so alone. 

But loneliness broke me on the outside, and built me up in the inside. God took me from the world and brought me closer to Him. I found a new relationship with Him, a friendship. 

God never forsakes. 

I'm living proof of that. Everyday I wonder how God, the maker of each beautiful detail in this galaxy, could notice me even when no one else could. It's a mystery, but a mystery I cannot even begin to solve. 

So today, I dare each one of you to see and walk up to those people on the benches, and look past the walls that separate you and them. When God created us, He didn't decide who would be cool, and who wouldn't. Each one of us He created specially and wonderfully made. 

Just a reminder.

~storyteller