To Whom It May Concern

To everyone who has ever had their heart broken:

I may not know you personally. I may not know your story. And I surely can’t feel the pain that you feel. But regardless of any of that, these words are for you. May they inspire you, uplift you, evoke feelings within you, or do what they have to do.
If you say you’ve never had your heart broken or had your feelings hurt, you are a liar. That’s right, you are lying. We all have, right? No matter how little, how big, how mediocre it seems, it was big enough to break you, so it must be something. You failed your math test. Your teacher hates you. Your father beats you. The girl you like doesn’t like you back, and now you can’t even be friends. You have no friends. Everyone hates you. We all have our moments, we all have our breaking points. Sometimes it’s too much to handle. Sometimes people call us over-dramatic. We walk our school hallways, we walk down our streets, we go to our dreary jobs, and we wonder, and we wait, for SOMEONE to notice. For someone to care. Will this pain ever end? Will this history stop repeating? Or worse, will our lives just ever cease to be...and will anyone care when we are gone.
I cannot claim that I don’t have these feelings myself. I go through rough times. Maybe not as rough as you, but they feel hard. I get upset, I get downtrodden. I feel there is no hope sometimes and will please someone just CARE for one moment, please. Sometimes I lie awake at night, same as you, wondering will this pain ever stop. Why am I being dragged through this valley with no end in sight? Why why why?
It will never make sense to me why God does what He does. I suppose that’s what makes Him God and me human. I don’t understand. And this irregular heartbeat that keeps me up at night will never make sense to me. As I write these words, I still feel sometimes hopelessly lost. I don’t see the end, and I can’t tell how this began. I don’t know the answers to all our questions. I can’t tell you why it hurts so bad and I can’t tell you the pains you experienced will be fine in due time. That you’ll be fine. Some hurts, they can’t always heal totally. It will not always be fine. You cannot cover everything up with a smile and hope for the best. Sometimes, we must be messes. Yes, coming from a world of shut your mouths and be civil and perfect, will ya, I am saying, be a mess. Let it out. For once, don’t hold back. Scream, hit a pillow, cry your eyes out till you have nothing left in your body and every inch of your body shakes. It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it. For your sake, get messy, and pour it all out. You cannot restore a broken vase when you keep trying to pour water in it. You empty it out, and you fix it then.
When you are broken down, when you are lying with no more energy in your body at all, when you cannot pick up yourself at all, and are on your knees, you are in the most perfect and beautiful position ever. You are desperate you are hungry and thirsty for something more. You are at that point, where you need something the most that won’t leave you empty all the time. It is not drugs. It is not sex. It is not money. It is not a girl. It is not a boy. It is not acceptance among peers. It’s God.
Say what you want, shake me off, tell me I’m wrong, or just scoff in disgust right now. That’s okay. You can have your own opinion. Think for yourself, that’s good. I’m not trying to be offensive, I’m just being real... this is what works for me. What do you have to lose? From my perspective, I found the world to gain. I tried other things... I tried to go it alone. Who needs God right? I’m fine by myself. It’s my life. I control my destiny, correct? It didn’t work so well. It still doesn’t, on the occasion when I try to control my own destiny. When I control myself, I go towards things I want, not things I need. I lean to what will get me by for the moment, cause the rest doesn’t matter. Without God, I have no purpose. Why do I live another day to just end it dully with no hope to live for? It’s just a life. It was brought into the world unknowingly as just a way to make two people happy or something of the sort, and it can easily be taken out.
But what if life wasn’t just... to exist? What if I, what if you, what if all of us, were uniquely designed and crafted perfectly for a purpose in this world? What if the same Being who made the universe cared enough to come make you, an insignificant speck on the face of a massive world, just because He thought you were worth it. Whoa. You mean something to the same guy who made the whole big fat gillion mile universe? Well now that just might add a lot of weight to your life. You are not nothing you are a gorgeous creation. You are no mistake, no oops, no pile of crap, no worthless person, you are special. You have purpose and meaning, and to fully grasp that is something that we can scarcely take in.
For all of you out there that are broken hearted, for those with no hope, with no desire to live on, I get it. I have been there. Life is hard, and too much to bear sometimes. But there is hope, there is rescue. In the words of David Crowder:

"And there’s nothing wrong with you
And nothing left to do
But believe something bigger
And there’s nothing wrong with love
I know it’s just enough to believe

Don’t give up now
A break in the clouds
We will be found
Rescue is coming now"


Don’t give up now. You have purpose, you have meaning, and if you made it this far, you have endurance. God has a plan for you. So pour yourself out and let Him wash you clean and start anew.

"But I will call on God,
and the LORD will rescue me.
Morning, noon, and night
I cry out in my distress,
and the LORD hears my voice.
He ransoms me and keeps me safe
from the battle waged against me,
though many still oppose me.
God, who has ruled forever,
will hear me and humble me."
Psalm 55:16-19

This goes out to everyone who’s ever had their heart broken. If you made it this far, message me, leave me a comment, anything. Go ahead. We can talk about this. You can tell me I’m wrong. I don’t mind at all. Let’s just talk about this.
I may not know who you are, and why you are hurting, but everyone who is broken, you are on my mind and heart everyday at least once.



-Kaitlyn

Quiet in My Town

Maybe it's not the things we didn't do.
Maybe it's not the choices we did not choose.
Maybe it's not what we could not do.

Or maybe it is.

Death is a funny thing. I've had a few distant "great" relatives die when I was younger, but never has it hit home quite the same. Today my dog of 9 years died. It's upsetting and unsettling when someone or something you've grown to know so well just up and... leaves your life. I will never see her in the mornings when I wake up, I will never again experience her slobbery tongue all over my face, and I will no longer get to yell at her when she eats my food off my plate. Even the bad things, I miss. I already miss it, and I know it'll get worse before it gets better. I'm able to squeeze it from my mind every few minutes, but then I'll think back to watching her on the vet's table... her lifelessness... petting her and not feeling her heartbeat... her rising and sinking chest. But I know she was in pain. And I know it was her time to go.

Before she passed away, I was thinking the other night about all the things, even as a dog, that she never got to do. She never had puppies or went to the metroparks and got to run around a yard freely with no leash. I started feeling like maybe I hadn't loved her enough either. That's when I had my moment. Life's not about those moments, those things, those regrets. We can never help from thinking about them, but we cannot let it consume us. Life's about those beautiful moments. But life's also about the hardships and the pain and the agony and the struggle of it all. If I asked Miley/Hannah, she would say "it's the climb". It's everything.
It's the good, it's the bad, everything about life is simply... remarkable. So we have to embrace the pain along with the joy. It's not about what we didn't do, because our lives were beautiful enough without them, weren't they? We smiled all we could, and we cried all the same, but it's all the part of life that brings you to that final moment, where you can say, "man, what a ride".

So I'm sad about losing my dog so soon (or so it seemed), and yes I'll miss her furry little body barreling towards me when I get home, but I feel more than blessed to have had the time I had with her. She was a sweet dog and a great playmate, and I thank God for having her for as long as I did. It's her time to rest now, where there's no pain or sorrow. In the big park in the sky. =)

I know that this all happened for a reason, and I know it's almost right to be sad, and I now that there's a season for everything. But I won't blame God or shake my fist in anger... because I know that when I too am lying there in my deathbed... I'll be thanking God for the opportunities I had. The sad and the happy, because in the end, that's what it's all about. That's what makes us appreciate the happy in our lives; the sad times and the tears. And I'm more grateful than ever for my life... even though I have to go through it without my Muffin anymore.




-Kaitlyn

Moving On and Moving Over

In life, there are few things we honestly have to accept, in my opinion. In fact, maybe there's nothing we have to accept. We can deny and refuse our lives and nobody can force us into believing or coming to terms with anything. With this said, there are a few things that we probably should accept. Death is one of them. I don't want to be one of those people who walks around believing her goldfish is just "sleeping". But this topic is over played and inconsistently talked over. Something I've been struggling with coming to terms with is moving on.

For some people, moving on is simple, cut and dry. You graduate, you break up with your girlfriend, you lose your job; no big deal. You'll just keep going on. Because lost opportunities and missed dreams are just a matter of life. And yes, that's very true. Extremely true. Then why is it so hard for some of us? We get stuck in a cycle of grief and bereavement; concerned only with the fact that we missed something. But why do we care so much? WHY? Human nature maybe. maybe accepting something is over is almost as if to say, "well that was a nice little memory, what's next?". We wanted it to last. We wanted whatever great friendship, job, or whatever to be a consistent. Because something ended never smells so sweet. It fades and becomes the woodwork of our lives.

Recently I read A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis about the loss of his wife. At one point he's considering how to move on from her death and start anew, or at least find a less painful way of life aside from grieving. He remarks that, "For this fate would seem to me the worst of all, to reach a state in which my years of love and marriage should appear in retrospect a charming episode- like a holiday- that had briefly interrupted my interminable life and returned me to normal, unchanged. And then it would come to seem unreal- something so foreign to the usual texture of my history that I could almost believe it had happened to someone else." It's difficult to say, but this is what events become in our lives. Past pieces of our existence. We can't go back, and even if we are given a second chance, it is not the same because the first was a distinct period of time, beginning and end. As will the second chance later be known as. A time and a period in our lives.

I suppose I'm sounding rather grim, to say that we must accept that past is past and moving on is our way of survival, but there is always hope. Especially because my audience here, in front of glowing computer screens, is composed of young adults and teenagers. To quote Zac Efron (yes Kaitlyn is quoting Zac Efron... no one is above it) in 17 Again, "When you're young everything feels like the end of the world. But it's not; it's just the beginning." It's so simple, and so true. The opportunities before us are brighter and bigger than we can imagine. This idea is only to be put at "tested and true", because you can only understand the truth behind it once you experience it. Leaving high school is not the end of the world. Your boyfriend dumping you is not the end of the world. Losing your job is not the end of the world. It's just the beginning. And how much more lucky or blessed can we expect to be?

Moving on may be a state of mind, or it may be a challenge to overcome. Whichever way you want to look at it, it's never nearly as difficult in retrospect. If we ceaselessly strive simply for the best life we can find, maybe it won't matter so much that that better life requires losing some things along the way. They may become memories, but don't be sad, just remember that even if the reality of events and moments leave you, you were blessed enough to have them in the beginning.

After all this, for you I pray there may always be hope waiting around the corner for you. Whether it be acceptance of expiration dates or moving on to something better. Whatever God may bring you, may it become the best in the way you embrace it.




-Kaitlyn