UNRAVELING MY FAITH: Borrowed Words

This post is part of a series I wrote over the last 6 months and am just now publishing...

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness and witherings, of tarnishings." -Anais Nin

I like to let others speak for me. What I cannot form into words, I can almost always find in a quote. You know the ones that just grab you? Jerk you right off your chair. I collect them. I scribble quotes everywhere, screenshot them,  letter them in journals.  Quotes are to be shared. Doled out like advice.

"A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else." - Haruki Murakami

The last two books that came into my possession have handwritten quotes in the front. Favorites of the giver of the books. Words are so beautiful and sometimes you can't speak clearly anymore; because of whatever reason. Maybe your heart just hurts and your thoughts are disjointed.  Maybe you devour language and literature and let people's words brand your soul and knit your thoughts together for you.

"The most beautiful voice in the world is that of an educated Southern woman."- Winston Churchill

I'm not insinuating that all your collected quotes must come from great works of literature or spiritual leaders and figures of the past. Sometimes you can find exactly what you couldn't say in a simple blog post. Another soul was feeling exactly as you are and found a way to articulate it and then they had the courage to take it and immortalize it with pen and paper or keyboard and storage cloud if that is the case. What you couldn't say has now been said and its either a tool or a weapon depending on how you choose to use it. I'm fond of texting my husband quotes whether he wants me to or not. I suppose I feel that if someone else said it then he can't take it as a directed at him. But of course, I'm probably just fooling myself on that point.

 "But there’s something deeper here too, a growing awareness that real life and real

 love have less to do with feelings and a whole lot more to  do with acts of courage, acts of grace, and acts of quiet, desperate surrender."- Jenny from Mama Needs Coffee

In one of my journals I have a page full of quotes. I try to gather my scattered jottings together sometimes and inscribe them there so I have something to reference. I'm prone to quoting things my family members and friends say. There are quotes from my kids, my husband, and even myself on those pages. Not all are wise or wordy or particularly moving. Some just needed to be recorded like a photograph. To be reread and pull you back into whatever conversation or moment spawned the words.

"It doesn't matter who you marry; they're gonna be psycho."- my husband

And upon rereading those quotes you can often see the truth hidden behind the humor. Or the pain hidden behind the wisdom. You can take solace in knowing that you aren't alone in your sufferings or in your triumphs. And if you are like me and can't always find the right words, I can almost guarantee that someone has said it already, exactly how you want to say it yourself.