Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory

Oscar Wilde said that...

I was thinking today that music and my memories are very intertwined. I used to be haunted by the song 'Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again'. It was during listening to that song that I realised quite how ill I was, how, for better or worse I had been irrevocably changed. I sang that song at Church the other night and I felt like it wasn't haunting me anymore. It was just a painful memory - not a reality. Nothing is the same because God came, thats what the song says. I used to think it meant that because I had been ill once, I would always be. I thought that until this past couple of months when I have been happy and (dare I say it) getting better. Singing that song, as praise to God and as service to him and Church, lessened the pain it used to bring near when I heard it. I'm trying to change that pain into a blessing to others...and, after all, that is what I have wanted all these years. To make what I have gone through, am going through, worth the struggle so that it can be used to show people, just a little bit of God's amazing grace and love.

Home

It's a funny place. It is the place I longed to be during that first week at LST - yet now I am here, I want to return to LST. Strange.

I think LST might just have become home in these past 10 weeks -it is the place I feel I belong. I have never felt that I belonged anywhere; not really. Home has always been where Mum is -and while I love being with her and being at home with her. I am not home, not really. Home is that place where I have been happier than ever before. I say ever before, and it sounds melodramatic -but there have been some days during the past term that I have not been plagued by bad memories or pain, there have been lots of days where I have not remembered until I fell into bed. There have been days where I have awoken from a peaceful sleep. Most days, I have wanted to get out of bed to be able to experience what the day holds for me. I have met people who I love - people that, in such a short space of time have become like family. Some of you may not know how incredible, how long awaited this sort of happiness has been for me. It has been something I have had to fight for every second on some days. LST has shown me what I have been missing, but more than that, it has shown me happiness, security and something near to peace. It has, most importantly I think, shown me hope. That although bad days such as this come, they do not have to stay, the good ones will come again and that they can be enjoyed without being followed by destruction. If this is one thing that I will take into 2010 it is Hope.