After much debate I decided to go back to an old favorite series but with a new twist! I’m going to call this series “Rock or Knock” and I’ll feature different songs that I (or you) love or dislike, hence the “knock” part. I’m going to try to provide a nice little balance between awesome songs/artists and songs/artists you should generally avoid if you actually like it when your eardrums don’t bleed. The songs will probably be themed around love or lack thereof (the “knock” songs will probably fall into the second category as I have a few in mind that are a perversion of love), though I can’t always promise a theme to the songs. That being said, as always, I’m quite open to song suggestions or artists to check out! Please leave suggestions!
Rock or Knock: ROCK.
Song: A Thousand Years
Artist: Christina Perri
Lyrics:
Heart beats fast
Colors and promises
How to be brave
How can I love when I’m afraid to fall
But watching you stand alone
All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow
One step closer
I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more
Time stands still
Beauty in all she is
I will be brave
I will not let anything take away
What’s standing in front of me
Every breath
Every hour has come to this
One step closer
I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more
And all along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more
One step closer
One step closer
Words can hardly express how much I’ve fallen in love with this song, which is exactly why it has been on repeat for days now. Despite the fact that this song was in a Twilight movie (which I usually ignore) I just can’t get over the beauty of it!
Oh, the glorious feeling of your heart beating fast, and thanks be to God that it doesn’t just happen when you see that oh-so-cute someone! Then, as we know all too well, the fear sets in and we find ourselves asking how can we brave, where is that strength within us? Our pasts and the hurt from long-since-gone relationships threatens to overtake us and we begin to wonder how we can possibly love again when we are so darn afraid to fall. Suddenly, in a majestical moment of clarity and divine intervention (at least when love is right) we see that person and somehow, some way, the doubt and the fear disappear and vanish into thin air. For me it is kind of like incense rising up in prayer, it is beautiful to behold and I love to watch it vanish, which is the same way I feel about those fears and doubts that seek to overtake us. Let them disappear like incense.
One step closer…I love this lyric perhaps the most. Ok, that’s not true, I don’t know if I could pick my favorite if you made me but this one definitely ranks pretty high up there. It reminds me a lot of
not Myself (which was actually the first song I ever featured on this blog, fittingly enough). Each day, each moment, each step we get one step closer to the person we are supposed to be and to the person that God intends us to spend the rest of our days with. One step at a time. It may be a slow and potentially painful process but if we take it one step at a time, taking time to enjoy the little moments along the way then the beauty of it all can shine forth.I could go on about this song forever and I just might. The chorus! “I have died every day waiting for you…” sounds a bit depressing, right? Not at all! It is not so much that I have died because you aren’t here, it is that I have died to my desire for you to be here, right now, on my timeline. I have died to that desire because I know it hasn’t been time yet, but I also know that when it is time it will be glorious and I know that in the meantime my love for you only grows day by day, even if I don’t yet know your face or your name, add one more day to the thousand years I’ve already loved you. “Darling, don’t be afraid I have loved you for a thousand years…” to some that might sound creepy. To my hopelessly romantic heart it sounds amazing. I remember when Mr. Irish and I first got together and we talked about how some people (most people, in fact) wait a certain amount of time before dropping the “L” bomb. Some people are afraid of it, some people fear that it may change the dynamics of a relationship and not always in a good way. We said it pretty early on, at least by most people’s standards, and I can tell you that there was absolutely nothing scary about it. In fact, it was one of the most beautiful moments in my entire life. I have loved you for a thousand years and I’ll love you for a thousand more…I hear that and I can’t help but think of the love that God has for us and how He has loved us since the beginning of time and will never cease loving us. One day in His courts are better than a thousand elsewhere, so what would a thousand years of His love be like? Unimaginably beautiful.I will be brave. I will not let
anything take away what’s standing in front of me, this is a true pledge of love. Love, as I said earlier this week, motivates us to be more, it gives us the courage and the grace to be brave, to stand up in the face of anything – financial woes, job offers out of state, in-laws, etc. – and still choose love. Love fills our hearts and drives our choices. And just as each step has brought us closer, every breath, every hour has come to this, to love, to standing up against any and every other force in the universe and declaring your love, whether it be for your future spouse or for God or both, every second has come to this, to the defining moment of sharing that love or hiding it under a bushel basket, of saying yes or walking away. It comes to this, it all comes to love.
All along I believed I would find you, yet another beautiful declaration and pledge of love. If you’ve read my blog at all before August of 2011 you’ll know that in my heart I’ve always believed that love would come, that in time (God’s, not mine!) Mr. Wonderful, Mr. Soulmate and I would meet. How wonderful to be able to tell that person someday that you always believed you would find them. How wonderful also to tell God that all along you knew you would find Him and once you get to Heaven to tell Him how much you’ve been waiting to see Him in all His glory. “Time has brought your heart to me…” time, God, fate, destiny, call it what you will, the forces at work in the universe (I’m gonna go ahead and give God the credit on this one) have brought your heart to me and my heart to you. I love that image…God giving my heart to my soulmate and Him giving me my soulmate’s heart to guard, to keep, to cherish and to love. Time and God have brought your heart to me, what a beautiful exchange of Love for love as we keep God in the middle of all that we are.One step closer…
**update**
One step closer to the person you are to become doesn’t just apply to the time that we wait for our soulmates to come into our lives, it applies also to every day of the rest of our lives as we get one step closer to the saints we are all called to be. The relationships we enter in to are meant to continue moving us one step closer to perfection and to paradise.
One step closer…
