A poem about this thing we call gravity...

I wrote this for my mom and dad. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Gravity

by Brianna Anderson

What if things don’t get better?
It would be easier to just give up hope
and write my suicide letter.

No, this isn’t how things should be!
I know the truth, but I can’t live my life in theory;
Reality’s gravity is too strong a pull.
It’s bringing me down and I’m weary.
I can’t do this on my own.
I’m falling again, into the fear of the unknown.

The truth is only He can defy this gravity.
He is the one who will pull me up
And save me from my depravity.

Teach me again Lord, help me believe
that your grace is unending;
Even if I fail again in all that I try to achieve.
I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
I have tried to do your will
And I keep making the same mistakes.

The way life is now, isn’t something I would have chosen.
My heart feels like it’s broken.
But gravity can’t keep me down when your love overflows;
And takes me high off the ground from all my worldly cares.
They are gone now, thrown into the air.

Walking in Love

"The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”(i)

Hollywood stresses the importance of falling in love, but it fails to provide a proper example of what love is. The secular world view of love is insecure in that it has no foundation to build upon. In the world's eyes love can mean any number of things; it can be found in a committed relationship or sometimes just for the night. When love is based solely on romance and whimsical feelings, it fades with the change of emotions.

One of my favorite descriptions of love says: “Love never gives up. Love cares for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have…love puts up with anything, trusts God always, always kooks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.”(ii). That kind of love just described can only be experienced by modeling Christ’s example.

Hollywood tells us that we need to fall in love, but God tells us that we need walk in love. Walking in love means putting your needs aside for the other person. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.(iii) “It’s simple and yet it encompasses every facet of a relationship.”(iv) Showing someone you love them means walking out your life in love. Love is not just something we feel; it is so much more; it is imitating Christ’s perfect example.

John Keats said “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections...” I am just as certain of nothing but the steadfast love of the Lord; a love that never looks back and keeps going to the end.

(i) Moulin Rouge
(ii) Paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
(iii) Luke 6:31
(iv) Boy Meets Girl-Joshua Harris

This is my favorite photo shoot from Teen Vogue...its from an old issue I got last year...

Jane Austen Ruined My Life

"Professor Emma Grant has always had faith in the happily-ever-after depicted by her favorite author, Jane Austen. But where's Emma's happy ending when she discovers that, instead of a Darcy, she's married a Wickham who both breaks her heart and destroys her career? Emma sets off for England on a quest to reestablish her academic credibility by tracking down the lost letters of Jane Austen and finds a romantic adventure of her own." --Library Journal


The title of this book is a bit silly, but it was actually very entertaining. I was a little disappointed with how corny it got…still; it made several good points about Jane Austen’s writings. Many of us devotees are absorbed with the romance depicted in these novels; the language, the culture, even the clothes. And like the character Emma Grant in Jane Austen Ruined My Life, Austen fans are disappointed when they don’t end up in a happily-ever-after relationship.

I can never watch a romantic movie without either of my parents commenting how “men don’t really talk that way!” It’s true that in order to get a man like Mr. Darcy or Knightly, you have to make him up. Girls my age fanaticize over these characters. After watching the movies and reading the books, I admit I dreamed about romantic proposals and fervent courtships. But setting the standards high in hopes of getting a man like Mr. Darcy, is perhaps a bit unrealistic. I can’t honestly expect a guy from the 21st century to speak, act, and think like an Austen man.

Jane Austen’s characters are timeless and there is wisdom in her writings. She believed in marrying for love. But if you expect romance to be exactly like something out of a novel, then you are sure to be disappointed. Whether or not a man behaves romantically is not the issue, Jane Austen urges her readers to look past charm and wit and focus on good character. But I won’t analyze her novels too much… after all “the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”~Jane Austen