His sentences trail when he makes an awkward comment.
She isn’t someone you’d want to hang out with.
Yet when a few decks of cards are pulled out and some desks are shoved together for a game of Dutch Blitz, it’s amazing how quickly these differences evaporate. It doesn’t matter if she’s sitting across from her old crush; she’s just trying to get rid of that yellow 4. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t know how to pronounce her name; he’s just trying to keep up with everyone else. It doesn’t even matter that they’re all supposed to be studying for exams; these moments come rare, and they come sweet.
Peeling back a layer of stereotypes and judgements reveals our humanity and our stupidity. We’re human to connect over a card game. We’re stupid to judge people based on our outside view of them. When everyone is focused on getting rid of that Blitz pile, the Earth seems to spin a little smoother and the rain seems to fall a little lighter and the smiles seem to get a little brighter.
It makes you realize that despite our differences, we’re all the same. We’re all trying to fit in and enjoy high school and pass our classes. We’re all stuck in the same English class, breathing in the same oxygen and laughing out the same carbon dioxide.
When you notice this, people tend to become more beautiful.
Words pulse through my fingers as naturally as a heartbeat. Thump thump, thump thump. Word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, creating a masterpiece of flowing thoughts.
It’s downright beautiful.
It’s like music; it can’t be explained or completely understood. You’ve just got to breathe it in and appreciate every word.
In terms of writing, this year has been amazing. I’ve never written to so much depth as I have this year. Blog post after blog post. Chapter after chapter. Poem after poem. Over and over again, never the same, always beautiful.
Thank you for being here to read the 100th post on my blog.
Sometimes you read a book and it tears you apart. Every time you read it you were weeping, sobbing, breaking for the characters. You scream at them, cry for them, love them. That’s what my relationship with Someone Named Eva is. It’s a challenging relationship, but I love it and wouldn’t be able to break up with it if I tried.
I first read it several years ago, and I don’t even remember how I came to buy it, or even why I bought it in the first place. I called it my favourite book simply because it was a good book…one of many. But lately I’ve realized that it truly is a gem, a rare, unheard of jewel that I honestly adore.
Someone Named Eva, by Joan M. Wolf, follows the story of an eleven-year-old girl in Lidice, Czechoslovakia during World War ll. Hitler’s soldiers come to her town and take everyone away. The men and boys are separated from the women and children, who are taken to a school gym. The children were examined and, if they were deemed “suitable” for Aryan standards, they were sent to training centers to become German citizens.
Milada was one of those kidnapped children sent to a training center along with other girls. Through the course of two years, she learns the German language, prohibited from speaking her own language, and is given a new German name, Eva. She is told that her family was killed in an air raid, even though she knows that to be a lie. She begins to struggle with remembering her native language and even her own name, hanging on to the stupid, desperate, child-like hope that she will be rescued by her family.
Even when she is adopted by a German family, she tries to believe that her family will come for her. “Eva” realizes that she has come to love her adoptive family, even though they are the enemy.
And then the war ends. Her new family, once rich and prosperous, is now broken and torn from the war. For the first time, she wonders if maybe, just maybe, her family won’t come for her. Maybe they forgot about her, or don’t know where she is, or can’t come for her. The hope that she has clung to for so long is slowly falling apart.
There is more to the book, but that would of course spoil it. I will say that I can never get through this book with dry eyes. To be put through so much grief, loss, and pain…it would be terrible.
I guess part of the reason I like it so much is that it’s an unknown book. It’s not a popular, spoken-about book where you hear about it every five seconds. And it’s real…you don’t have some stupidly happy, smiling book where nothing is wrong and everything gets solved. The end of the book is a lot worse off than the beginning…but I guess that’s what war does.
If there’s one book I could recommend to you, it would be Someone Named Eva. It’s real, heartbreaking, and beautiful.
“Okay, God,” I say, “I’m going to read the Bible every day before school. I know I promised that a few months ago at church camp, but this time I mean it. I am 100% committed to you.”
Lovely prayer, isn’t it? It’s the kind I pray at every youth campout, during that one night as everyone’s crying and confessing and the worship leader is quietly singing while lightly strumming a guitar. If you’re anything like me, having grown up at church and VBS and Veggie Tales, you know what I’m talking about.
But that prayer is what I pray over and over again. And it’s only during camp or youth group or sometimes church. You see, my heart is in that prayer, but only for that night. The next few days I might wake up early to read my Bible, but by the end of the week the passion is gone. Maybe I sleep through my alarm clock. I tell myself I’ll read it after school. I’ll do it on the bus. I forget.
I make God promises thousands of times, and each time I break it.
Have you ever been at some church camp and you’re learning how to hear from God? I remember one time, during a Hearing God session, I went into an empty room, closed the door, and sat down on the floor facing the wall. Then I began pouring my heart out to God.Telling him everything–my problems, my fears, my failures. I admitted that I usually only talked to him and didn’t wait to listen. So this time, after a while of rambling, I shut my mouth and listened.
My eyes wandered around the room. I was in a classroom for ages 4-5 at my church. There were handprints decorated on paper, and cute animal stickers stuck to the walls. Yellows and greens were painted on the walls. I still remembered not long ago when we had built the church, when it smelled so new and fresh.
Then I realized I was supposed to be listening for God. Except, my mind didn’t allow me to concentrate.
So I began praying again, asking for help to hear him and confessing more failures of being a Christian. I abandoned my grand idea of hearing God’s audible voice, and instead finally gave up and left the room.
You see, I don’t fear God. I don’t really believe, in my heart, that he’s completely capable of everything he says he is. I struggle with understanding his power, and I don’t think much of the consequences of sin. I don’t know anything of holy.
It’s interesting because I spend a lot of time with elementary kids during church. My mom is the kid’s pastor, so I volunteer there with grade three kids. Honestly, I love it. The kids are great, and it’s so fun. I get to help teach them about Jesus and the Bible and being kind and the story of Jonah. But honestly, I don’t exactly know what I”m talking about.
I teach them about God and how big he is, but I don’t know how big God is. I think he’s small, dare I say insignificant, a good guy helping us do good things. Sure, I know in my heart that he’s bigger than anything I can comprehend, that he’s our Lord and creator of everything. But I’m a selfish, stupid human. I don’t understand that.
I can’t understand.
I cannot fathom God. The idea that Jesus DIED for ME doesn’t make sense. I can’t wrap my head around the idea that my sins, those small sins that I label “tiny” and “unimportant”, nailed God himself, creator of everything, creator of ME, to the cross. That lie caused God to cry, not only in sadness but also in pain. That mean joke I made about my friend stabbed into his wrist. Most of all, I don’t understand that I KILLED GOD.
I killed God.
It’s weird because I teach kids about Jesus dying on the cross. I pray, “Thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross for our sins. We love you. Amen,” to eight-year-olds. But do I have any idea what that means?
No. No, I don’t. I will never fully understand it.
All I can do is admit my failures and beg God for forgiveness. Maybe write about it. Pray about it. Talk about it.
All around us is hidden beauty–things that we are so used to we forget the magical part of the world. Every day we sleep through sunrises, glance past rainbows, and don’t notice the snow-covered trees. We tend to grumble at the grey rain, forgetting the soft sound of raindrops on the rooftops and the refreshment it gives to the world. How often do we ignore the beauty of the earth when we’re wrapped up in our own world?
I think it’s time to stop and smell the roses. It’s time we take a few moments in our day to look up at the fluffy clouds coasting across a blue sky. We need to start noticing the many reminders God gives us of his love and mercy. After all, he gave us life–the least we can do is acknowledge it and see the wonderful creation God has made. It’s time to see the hidden beauty all around us.
Do you have that place, that memory, that time that just sticks in your mind like a rainbow in a storm? It’s when you’re in the middle of a crazy, messy, beautiful time and you stop, breath, and realize just how wonderful it is. You’re making memories. You’re making something that at the time doesn’t seem so wondrous, but when you reflect on it later you realize just how beautiful it was.
Maybe you’re having a laugh attack with your cousins, trying to keep quiet because it’s midnight and everyone’s asleep. Perhaps you’re sitting down at a long, misplaced table with a steaming hot plate of Thanksgiving feast, and you glance around at your mismatched extended family and smile. Or maybe you’re sitting around a campfire as the glowing embers slowly fade, and the heat warms your skin and heart.
Those are some of my rainbows, those memories that won’t die. It’s those moments that make me realize how blessed I am and how loved I am and how amazingly crazy it is that I am alive and I am breathing.
When I glance at myself in the mirror every morning at seven o’clock, I can’t help but notice all the flaws I have. A bright-red pimple on the top of my forehead, a cluster of freckles on my cheeks, and my crooked nose plastered right in the middle of my face. I try to ignore it; I attempt to see my soft skin, pretty eyes, and straight, flowing hair. However, it’s no good–I can always picture the perfect face of a model on the front cover of the magazine article sprawled face-down on the bathroom floor.
As I brush my cream-colored teeth, questions form in my mind: Why is that model so beautiful? Why can I always see my imperfect flaws? And how can I become as beautiful as her? The truth is, I know I’ll always have that crooked nose, and no amount of make-up will ever make me look perfect. Deep down, I’m aware that nobody has that perfect body or face I always see on commercials and advertisements. That’s what annoys me–advertisers use imperfect people to make perfect images. What I see as perfection is really make-up, cameras, lights, and lots of digital repair.
Everyone longs to be beautiful, but what if beauty wasn’t defined as the newest brand of make-up or seen as the “life-changing” shampoo? Maybe beauty isn’t what’s on the covers of magazines but in fact in our hearts! If only everyone could see what it really is–beauty is love. Beauty is something not bought, but something much larger than that. Beauty is your heart.
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Wondering what this is? It’s part of a series of posts from stories and essays I wrote during school. This specific one is a paper I had to write in grade 8 about distorted beauty. And by the way, I don’t have a crooked nose nor do I have freckles. My perspective was more of a fictional perspective.
Christian and Creative 