I See Fire

I haven't felt like I've had much to say lately. At least not much worthwhile...it hasn't really felt like anything has changed. Stagnant. Stuck. But something in me is stirring...like a slumbering dragon waking up.

It's a new year. I turned 24 two days ago. And I've spent today curled on the couch wasting away...no school due to -15 weather. Cold. Very Cold.
Most of my Facebook wall today was videos of people tossing hot water into the air to see it turned to snow. Not original anymore people...haha.
Honestly, this song is the only reason I'm excited to be 24. I've waiting all my 20's to be this number to claim this song as mine. The words are now made perfect to where I'm at: "I want to see miracles, to see the world change....You're raising the dead in me." I'm not copping out.

I saw the movie Frozen during Christmas Break...then yesterday I finally saw the Hobbit 2.
So I guess I've had fire and ice on my mind lately. Can't quite wrap my mind around it but I feel like there's something deeper and significant that I'm missing. So I write :)
That ginger princess in a winter wonderland resonated with me. Even this winter won't last forever.

I am both fire and ice.

It was a dark cold January, twenty-four years and two days ago...when I came. Ice rained from the sky and coated the roads slick. Father's hands gripping the wheel, eyes alert, cautious. And my mother, trying to hide her distress, passenger. Cars in ditches to the left and right. Dangerous passage. I could have been born in the backseat of a car in a ditch, but God's hand was guiding and I arrived at the hospital safely.

A cold night. An ice storm.

Then the surprise at a daughter born...with red hair.

Amy Alyssa. Fully...my name means "Beloved Flower in a Dark Hollow Valley"

But my Dad's nickname for me growing up was "Flame."

In describing the journey I've been on thus far as an art teacher...lately I've been telling people that I feel like I've lost a lot of the fire and passion I came in with. Partly self-preservation I suppose. I've had to learn to let a lot of things go and be okay with it. I can't do it all. But I've let myself down in many ways...

It's hard to explain...I think God has set some sparks in me again in the last two weeks. A very needed rekindling. I just need a little air to burst and shed light on a very cold dark season. I'm tired of just surviving...I want to thrive. I want to burn. "Come be the fire inside of me...come be the flame upon my heart."

My youngest brother got me two things for Christmas: A homemade card that says "Beloved" on the front, "In A Dark Hollow Valley" on the back, and a pop up Alyssum flower when you open it. Also a set of six paper lanterns like the ones in the movie Tangled, the way for the lost Princess to find her way home. I've been needing that reminder about who I really am and who I'm called to be.

I had this hauntingly beautiful song on replay for at least two hours today:

Watch the flames burn auburn on the mountainside.  I see fire.