A Grief Observed

A Grief Observed, has been an amazing book to read . It is the first book that I have read that truly captures the essence of genuine love, but not because of a romantic life but because of the tragedy that C.S. Lewis went through. Something that caught my attention was the paragraph when C.S. Lewis refers to God as a surgeon.

"If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all pain up to that point wold have been useless."

The power in this sentence alone could have been an entire chapter. It reminded me of when I had to get stitches for busting my chin open when I was a child. The pain of course hurt entirely, but I knew getting stitches would hurt all the more. I did not want to go through the healing process because I knew that the beginning would be tortuous. I would have rather sat there in my pain and agony instead of getting the proper treatment that I needed for a complete healing. Thankfully my dad is my doctor and he insisted on going straight to the office to get my stitches.

Okay, okay, so they were just stitches compared to open heart surgery, but still, if you knew my personality and my fear of hospitals, this is a BIG DEAL to me. When I read this line in the book I started thinking about what my dad would have done if I would have asked him to stop in the middle of my operation. The entire surgery would have been for nothing because it would have only been half completed, half healed, and worse, half of my chin still would have been open for infection. In infection that would have only gotten worse and, perhaps, an infection that could have spread throughout my body. I would first like to point out that even asking to stop in the middle of an operation would have been an absolutely ridiculous request, because no doctor in their right mind sets out to perform an operation even questioning the thought of stopping in the middle. A doctor's job is to heal, not partially heal.

With life, we, as humans, will go through sufferings, the key is to get through it completely and courageously. Stopping half way through, before reaching your ultimate victory of being free will not heal you, but only mask over the hurt. This is not smart, for if there are still things that need to be completely rooted out of your life and sewn back, one leaves room for even more hurt and anguish to seep through. So something that might have only taken a year to complete is now taking four to five years and, perhaps, even more. One must complete the entire operation on one's life if one wants to be healed and have the ability to walk in freedom. This, in more simpler terms, is what I believe C.S. Lewis was trying to get across within this section of his book.

After Prayers/ Lie Cold

I was first introduced to this poem just the other day during our meeting at the Resturante. I found it completely confusing the first time I read it but as I read the poem over again it started to make since. I believe that the first part of the poem, "Arise my body, my small body", refers to C.S. Lewis getting off of his knees after praying so that he may slip into the covers of his bed. After his time in prayer, he refers to the Lord as being merciful as He forgives his sins. Throughout the whole poem he addresses himself as pale, small, puppet-like and mortal, as to define humans without prayer as being dead to their soul and a puppet to the world. I love how C.S. Lewis refers to himself after praying as "emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up", to point out the fact that when we do come to God with our confessions we are emptied out and made a new from all of the dirt that hindered our life.

Whenever I get into bed at night I am always freezing because my roommate keeps the air conditioning on cold and all I want to do is warm myself up with my sheets. I crawl into bed and finally get comfortable, and then it hits me. I forgot to turn off the light, inevitably realizing that I am going to be freezing once again. This is what I feel C.S. Lewis was trying to interpret when writing the second half of his poem, when he say's, "be not too quickly warm again". Even though Christ forgives our sins, we, as human beings well ultimately sin again and that once warm feeling will turn cold if we continue to live in sin. Humans are frail beings, we brake under pressure and give in to temptation. We mess up by our own, by "the riot of our blood and breath", enabling us to sin once more. However, just like I do at night, humans long for the warmth of freedom, they never want to stay in a pit of destruction or a bondage of sin, and this is what brings them back to their knees before God.

Instead of ending the poem in a depressed state, casting all humans cold/ dead to sin, I believe that life returns to the beginning of this poem. Life is a cycle. We go through trials and we may sin but ultimately if we repent before God, He is will forgive us, just like C.S. Lewis stated, "We are forgiven". Not we might be forgiven, we ARE forgiven. Yes, we might sin again but God looks at our heart. When we come before Him and He sees that we are sincere, He is faithful to forgive and not only forgive but to restore. In this, we find hope to live and in this we are able to find peace to succeed.

Happy Endings

"Happy Endings", interestingly enough did not have an ending that struck me as happy, expect the first one of course. But, even the first one seemed too perfect and nowhere in the ending did it say anything about spirituality or doing good for others, which I pray ultimately brings my life to a happy ending. If nothing else works out in my life, I would at least like to be able to look back on it and know that I did good for others.

My favorite line in this story happens to come from ending C, when John is talking to Mary. He tells her "how important she is to him, but of course he can't leave his wife because a commitment is a commitment." Once I read that line, I immediately questioned his character and his line of thought. To what type of a commitment is he in, because cheating on your wife, even though you stay with her, is not committing yourself to anything. Commitment requires a level of responsibility and devotion; if you do not have those two key elements then you are not prepared to commit yourself to anything. Of course, you can learn your lesson along the way, but the commitment of marriage, which I believe is a word that undermines the true meaning of marriage, which is a covenant relationship, is definitely something you need to be ready for.

According to Google search, the divorce rates for first marriages are 50%, for second marriages, 67%, and for third marriages, 74%. These statistics are quite shocking and will continue to go up if people cannot stay true and honest to the commitments that they make.

Commitment is a character trait that should be highly valued; however, I did not notice any of the endings in the story really highlighting this significance in relationships.

The whole story is titled "Happy Endings", but only one ending is actually "happy", according to the book. Perhaps that is what the author was trying to get across to the reader, that people are expecting this great life after they find "the one" but in reality, life is messy and difficult. I agree to an extent, if that is what the author was trying to get across. However, I also noticed that not one of these relationships had God as the center. If God is our creator and He is not in the center of our lives then it is obvious to why these particular scenarios never really worked out. I have a feeling that if in just one of these scenes, one character would have started going to church or found a friend who believed in an intimate relationship with the Savior, than a feeling of self-worth and dignity would have entered into their lives and a happy ending truly could have taken place. With that said, I believe an important lesson in each of these optional endings is to find out, "who you are" and more importantly, "who's you are", instead of trying to find self-worth in other people. Finding an ultimate happy ending for your own life only comes from finding the Father.

Brooke Yerrington: Unprompted "What We Talk about When We Talk about Love"

Then Terry said, "He beat me up one night. He dragged me around the living room floor by my ankles. he kept saying, 'I love you, I love you... What do you do with a love like that?"

This completely and utterly angers me when I read about women who stay in an abusive relationship because they truly believe that the man loves her. What type of love drags a woman by her ankles and allows her head to hit everything in sight? This is not a love that I have grown up with or observed so I cannot submit to believing that the man loved her. Yes, he could have been mentally ill but when I read the book it seemed to me that the man was more of a maniac.

I find it ironic that as the story goes on Mel becomes drunk and shows more and more hostile characteristics towards Terri, his wife. He is short with her with his words, tells her to shut up, and hogs the conversation so that only he, himself may talk and tell his stories.

Mel criticizes Terri for thinking that her x-husband actually loved her, when he does not even show her much love or appreciation, in fact, I feel like Mel was more concerned with talking and drinking and the fact that he was off call that he did not even have time to love his wife; the very topic he was lecturing his friends and his wife about. Mel and Terri kept saying they loved each other but I could not help but feel the awkwardness and the tension of their relationship through the text. My feeling is that maybe Terri does not have the best taste in guys and that Mel does not really love Terri.

I could not really pin point the exact interpretation of the text, besides the point that it was a narrative of couples talking about love. However, what I feel the author was perhaps trying to get across is that love is valuable and not many people are truly living love out in their relationships. As the texts goes on it describes a car accident that happened with a drunk driver and an old couple. The couple survived but it describes how the man was angry, not because of the accident but because he "couldn't turn his... head and see his... wife" since he was in a cast. Through the process of telling the story it shows the reader that Mel does not have the very thing He was talking about, Love.

Brooke Yerrington: Unprompted "Listening"

Have you ever felt that the world is weighing down on your shoulders? Or perhaps that you were spreading yourself too thin? Well, I have. The struggles of life can be difficult and the expectations unbearable, and to think we are only in college; we still have our whole life ahead of us. We have graduation, finding a job, maintaining the job, managing money, finding "the one", getting married, buying a house, paying off the house, taking care of loans, taking care of kids, raising the kids, and all so they can grow up to go through the same life cycle we did. Sometimes I sit back and think it is just not worth it because it makes me feel like all I want to do is quit, pack up and go home. But then something happens every single time I hit rock bottom on my emotional scale, someone or something happens to pick up my spirits in which that "someone" or "something" encourages me to keep going. It is during those times when I actually feel God's presence and His love and mercy that He yearns to give to me. I do not understand God's timing and why He chooses to help me when He does, but I guess that all comes with the mystery of God.

I can remember two specific times when I woke up in the middle of the night, knowing the busy day that awaits me and still not being able to go to bed. Instantly, whenever this happens, I know God is trying to get my attention and I fight to go back to sleeps until I give in and reach for my bible and start reading. It is probably the most intimate time I could ever spend with God. Are three a.m. dates, in which I am getting pretty used to now, literally makes me feel like the rest of the world is sleeping and only God and I are up. I know in reality many people are actually up but to sense the aloneness with Him is an irreplaceable feeling. In both of those nights God completely slapped me in the face with things He had been trying to tell me for a long time. It is kind of comical how we, as human beings, think we cannot hear God, when in reality He is always talking to us, we just finally have to shut up and listen. Maybe that is why He likes to wake us up in the middle of the night, because He knows that we will be too tired to talk, and so we sit and listen. I cannot even imagine how well off my life would be if I would just listened to God all day long. I am happy that I have realized the importance of listening and how God so eagerly wants to talk to us.

Listening will keep you from getting into trouble or getting out of trouble and it will most definitely benefit your life as long as you are listening to the right people. Further more, listening to God's word will help you in more ways than one, especially those who are wanting to give up on life's goals, life's ambitions and the joy that life carries. I encourage whoever reads this that if you are going through a tough time, sit and be still before God, listen to Him for He longs to talk to you and let His words renew your strength.

Literary Profile

Hi, my name is Brooke Yerrington and my earliest childhood memories of literature would have to be when I was staring school. I can remember sitting in my classroom, right before nap time, and the teacher would always have a book to read to us. I loved listening to all the different nursery rhymes, especially "Mary Had a Little Lamb" because I loved animals. I can still remember sitting in class and actually wishing that I could have a lamb to bring to school too. However, school was defiantly not the starting point of literature in my life, it was actually every single night before I went to bed. My dad would read to my sister and I a bedtime story every single night. Even though most of his stories were made up, his imagination and vivid details painted new worlds of ideas in my head. They were always comical and had my sister and I laughing hysterically. Throughout the years I was not much of a reader but had read some very profound books as my life with Christ blossomed. When I was going through a tough time in high school, dealing with rejection and a loss of identity, my friend recommended a book called, "Redeeming Love" by Francine Rivers. It was probably the first book I actual read because someone recommended it to me. It helped with so many things in my life, especially with learning of God's unconditional love, something I have yet to fathom. I had felt ashamed, condemned, and alone, all because of the many mistakes I had made. The book taught me that I was not alone, in fact God was with me ever step of the way and He had a purpose and destiny for my life that He was not going to let me miss. The gift of literature should not be taken lightly, for it matters in so many different ways. Words are very powerful, in fact they can be used for destruction or they can be used to lift someone up and revive them from the state they are in. Literature can make you laugh, it can make you cry, it can tell you about our world's past, present and future. Literature informs, entertains, and in some cases, delegates. It is a useful tool, in which answers are found and things are made clear. It is vital that we, as the human race realize just how valuable literature truly is, because I believe that our future is in the books and that is why literature matters. Unfortunately, with such a wonderful gift given to creation, it also has its flaws. I direct this comment strictly to the press, in which I believe is corrupt but powerful. Powerful in a sense that it has the ability to persuade the minds of society and the ethical thinking of our government. For this type of literature, or should I say news, sways the facts and information they choose to publish, which in turn, molds the minds of society to believe a false pretense. Tabloids are also another form of literature that I believe does not matter because they have absolutely no moral basis in which they gain or conduct their information. It is almost sickening to know that such a wonderful form of art, the ability to write and inform others, has been demoralized to a standard of low satisfaction. Nevertheless, thankfully, there are stories with publishers that do hold higher standards for themselves. There are authors who believe there is a great reason to write and it all started at the age of childhood when they heard the imagination and fantasy of their first bedtime story.