Opening Credits: Life in the Fast Lane- Eagles
Average Day: Runnin Down a Dream- Tom Petty
Spending Time with Friends: Young- Kenny Chesney
Driving: Nothin But a Good Time- Poison
Bad Day: Bad Day-Fuel
Fight Scene: Best of you- Foo Fighters
Mental Breakdown: Broken- Lifehouse
Life is Okay: Pocket Full of Sunshine- Natasha Beddingfield
Graduation: Graduation- Vitamin C
Longing for Love: Layla-Eric Clapton
New Crush: Better Together- Jack Johnson
Secret Love: Too Bad About your girl- The Donnas
First Date: First Date- Blink 182
Falling in Love: Accidentally in love-Counting Crows
Love Scene: Collide- Howie Day
Breaking Up: I got over you- Daughtry
Long Night Alone: Lonely Day-System of a Down
Wishing for love to return: Love song for no one- John Mayer
Fighting for Something: If Everyone Cared- Nickelback
Proposal: Making Memories of You- Keith Urban
Wedding: Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton
Reflecting on Life: Here's to the Night- Eve 6
Reflecting on Love: Make a Memory-Bon Jovi
Death Scene: Comfortably Numb- Pink Floyd
Closing Credits: Freebird- Lynyrd Skynryd
Monday, May 26, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
To Write Love on Her Arms
So here recently I have been seeing this phrase. I never really knew what it meant, in fact I thought it might even be a band or something. I decided I wanted to learn more. I found the fan page for it on Facebook and I began reading it. Come to find out it was a written story about a girl's struggle in rehab. We have all had an addiction, struggle, or have been depressed about something.
The official website: http://www.twloha.com/
Here's the story:
TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS.
by jamie tworkowski
Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."
I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.
Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.
She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.
The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.
She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.
I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.
Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.
She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.
On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.
Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.
After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.
She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.
As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."
I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.
We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.
We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.
I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.
The official website: http://www.twloha.com/
Here's the story:
TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS.
by jamie tworkowski
Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."
I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.
Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.
She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.
The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.
She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.
I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.
Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.
She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.
On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.
Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.
After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.
She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.
As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."
I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.
We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.
We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.
I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.
A Few of my Favorite Things
- Making memories
- Peace, Love, & Happiness
- Music: Finding news bands, learning about musicians, interpreting song lyrics
- Fashion
- Movies: Mostly sports, romantic chick flick, or funnies
- Summertime: warm weather, romance, great times spent with friends
- MTV: because I love The Hills and music
- Concerts: My first one was the summer before freshman year of college & it was one of the most amazing experiences ever.
- All American Guys: you know; tall, dark, and handsome.
- California: For some reason I am obsessed with this way of living. I am from there, but have sadly grown up in the middle of nowhere. L.A., celebrities, music scene, wine country, the beaches, Hollywood.
- Road Trips: In actuality the furthest road trip for me was going to Texas and it doesn't count because it was more like a family vacation. I want a real road trip with my closest friends. I have always wanted to go on Route 66 and hit the high points of the U.S.
- Boston Red Sox: why because baseball is America's past time. And because I understand the sports.
- Golf: it's my new hobby. I really don't care to play any of the sports I played growing up so now I took up golf. It's the one thing I have patience for.
- Art: I like to think I can draw and all that, but I probably can't. But My art history class really opened me up to a lot of breathtaking pieces. Basically all Italian Art from back in the day really took me away. I felt like I was there. Also landscape pieces and van Gogh. And of course we cannot forget commercial/vintage art.
- American History: Now I have nothing against learning about other cultures, it's just I like American History best. The wars, learning about how our government used to work, civil rights movements, and of course the decades.
- 60's & 70's: Those are my favorite decades; why? Because I think it would have been amazing to grow up during that time. I am obsessed with the music, fashion, , politics, way of life, the drug culture. Everything about it.
- The Mafia: I think Godfather and The Sopranos turned me onto this.
- College Basketball: I am not going to lie; I like Indiana. Big Bob Knight Fan.
- Scrapbooking
- Broadening my Horizons
- Magazine Journalism: Nothing against the newspapers, but they don't have that pizazz that magazines do. Magazine are more fun to read.
- Photography: Capturing a moment in time, a priceless expression.
- Reading: Yes I know it's hard to believe that us young folks read nowadays, but we do! Some of us that is. I used to be really into the whole crime/murder/suspense, but now I am into the chick lit and discovering the classics. Oh and autobiographies of some of my favorite people.
- Sociology: I hate my Soc 220 class, but I did enjoy reading the book on my own. Sexual Revolution, Drugs, Mental Disorders, Demographics- all very interesting, and something EVERYONE should learn about.
- Politics: Something else EVERYONE should be clued in on. It's our civil right, our civic duty to vote. We should care about our country and what's happening to it. I am not a big fan of war or Bush for that matter. We need change. We need to focus on our domestic front.
- Animals
- Long Talks: Or good conversation. Meeting someone you can talk about anything with and for hours on end; that is the best feeling.
- Vacations: I have been to all the southern states and some out west. I have only been to Mexico outside the U.S. There are many more places I need to visit.
- Global Warming: GOING GREEN. Saving our planet. It's real, it exists.
- Daydreaming: I do this a lot. And I need to start writing down my day dreams instead of just living them out.
- Planning my future: my five year plan changes-a lot.
- Massages, Pedicures, Manicures, Getting my hair done, Make-up
- Outdoors: Very refreshing.
- Quotes: where I draw my inspiration from other than music.
- Singing and dancing: even though I suck
- Sunsets and sunrises
- Shopping
- Halloween: by far the best holiday. And no I am not a Satan worshiper.
- Drive Ins
- Flowers
- Reality TV
- Thunderstorms
- Lazy Days
- Seafood, Mexican, Peanut butter, Cheescake, Spicy: all great stuff
- Reminiscing: the best summer of my life was the summer before my senior year. It was one of those moments that you knew your life changed at that very moment-forever.
- Laughing a lot.
- Youtube: it's a great place I have come to discover.
- AND of course writing. Maybe one day I can write a book.
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