a storm's-a-brewin.

Leaves are blowing in waves down the sidewalk... undulating like a Chinese dragon. The dust at the construction site is billowing. The front door has just blown open, like an angry ghost has come in to settle some unfinished business here. I can feel all of my nerve endings standing at attention... waiting with some urgency for it all to just break loose. Everything gets so incredibly still inside...

I'm flooded with delicious peace.

If only I'd carry this response with me in all situations.

It was my birthday.

Older than I'd like to be with having only come so far.

But, let's keep in mind that my perceptions are flawed.

Let's also keep in mind that control is an illusion.

I learn so much to find out I know nothing.

You will give all that you have, and sometimes it will seem as though it amounts to nothing. As though every ounce of sacrifice is spat upon and wasted. It will seem as though your heart has been broken, healed and re-broken and wrung of every good thing it can muster... of every courage... and of every facet of a love it isn't capable of, in and of itself. And it will be handed back to you, sentenced to solitude like some ruthless criminal, when in fact, all you did was love... wastefully, extravagantly, with reckless abandonment.

Our greatest fear is being told that the lie is true.

Because it would be better to have never been born.

And then you see that it's all the great liar would want...

for you to stop...

for you to cease to exist...

for you to fall silent...

lay down and die.

but this kind of love... it's got a passion that will chase you to hell and back...

just to show you.

just to let you feel it.

taste it.

see it.

and when everything has fallen... breathed its last breath... and is pronounced dead.

flat-lining.

that kind of love is all about resurrection.

And so, let it come for us, and invade the skies of our hearts like an unstoppable storm.

Leaves are blowing in waves down the sidewalk... undulating like a Chinese dragon. The dust at the construction site is billowing. The front door has just blown open, like a holy ghost has come in to settle some unfinished business here. I can feel all of my nerve endings standing at attention... waiting with some urgency for it all to just break loose. And then everything gets so incredibly still inside...