Vindicated

I believe in the power of words. I believe they change people’s lives for the better, and too often the worse. Hello, goodbye, I love you, you have cancer, how was your day? But sometimes words just aren’t enough. For example, words aren’t enough to explain how much I love my dad. Which is obvious by the tear that betrays me when I talk about how much his life means to me.

My parents use to joke that my first word wasn’t spoken until I was in middle school. Words were too special for me to share. My knowledge of words, of their significance was inadequate to express how I felt. I am not the kind of person that does a lot of things by just getting by. I choose a few things and put my all into them. If I can’t do the act complete justice then I see no point in acting.

So why write a blog?

Well, as much as I’d like to think my words matter I honestly doubt those who don’t hear them will ever miss them. Knowing that my life is but a vapor, here one moment and gone the next, was a lesson I learned early in life. Like I said, though, I believe in the power of words and how they translate from one life to another.

I’ve been reading C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity in which he says the greatest sin is pride. Agreed. But the greatest sin can also be the opposite of pride, insecurity. It is quite easy to point out pride and insecurity, especially on our campus. Pride wears “Save Colonel Reb” stickers and insecurity wears XL T’s and cardigans to hide the hungry bones. Pride tells you to have the last word in an argument and insecurity tells you your self worth is bound in this human yelling at you like a dog.

I wrote these words down two months ago and once again saved them for a rainy day. Well, the weather outside has been cold, windy, and rain of the kind that beckons reading and writing. So I had no choice.

I read these words today by Dr. John Barger and just wanted to share!

Women are capable of and sometimes commit magnificent acts that manifest incredibly power and awaken in us men a profound awe, if not fear and trembling. Yet, when they love, they love quietly; they speak, as it were, in whispers, and we have to listen carefully, attentively, to hear their words of love and to know them...We cannot successfully demand the love of a woman or the love of God. We have to wait. And just as a woman’s heart is melted when she encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it, so God’s heart is melted and he is most tender and gracious to us when he encounters in us weakness accompanied by our humble admission of it.

I believe in the power of a quiet and gentle spirit manifested through words of choice, not chance. Choose to not let pride prevent you from embracing silence and insecurity to keep you from your great, magnificent act.

In case you haven’t notice, most of these blogs are reminders to myself. In the great words of Dashboard Confessional “I am flawed but I am cleaning up so well I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself.” Yes, I thought I was a rock star listening to them in high school. No, I wasn’t as cool as I thought I was.

- A