“You are more than the things that have hurt you.”

Can someone tell the birds she’s gone. They’re still singing for her and it’s breaking what’s left of my heart.

You were an ocean and I never did learn to breathe underwater.

I didn’t believe in forever. But I did believe in you.

What if love just isn’t enough.

I can’t imagine a universe where she is anything other than a masterpiece.

Maybe the universe breaks people in different ways so they fit when they are together.

What a terrifying thing it is to heal.

The embers of us no longer keep me warm. But they still set fire to everything they touch.

Some days, all of it aches with beauty.  Others, it all just aches with you.

To survive is to drag yourself from the water and forget what it is to swallow salt.

Please don’t let me sleep. I’ll only dream of her.

Of course, you don’t know how to love me. I’ve never known how to do that, either.

She lost herself, a little, in that darkness but returned with stars beneath her skin.

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s just that I don’t want to.

I miss you. By which I mean I’m jealous of the soil that gets to hold your bones.

These days my bones are shifting, trembled things. I am more earthquake than anything.

I know when you ache because I’ve been deep inside every part of you.

When you’d hurt, I’d rush to your side. When I’d hurt, you’d hide.

Sometimes forgiveness is off the table. When the hurt is real you can’t forget. But you can walk away. That’s healthy too.

For those who may be hurting over lost love: Don’t cry because it is over, smile because it happened.

Faith in something greater than ourselves enables us to do what we have said we’ll do, to press forward when we are tired or hurt or afraid, to keep going when the challenge seems overwhelming and the course is entirely uncertain.

If you betray yourself, you are no different from the people who hurt you. What’s the difference between those people who hurt you and what you are doing to yourself?

I know deep hurt. But I also know deep hope. Sometimes God’s power is shown as much in preventing things as it is in making them happen. We may never know why. But we can always know and trust the Who.

We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt.