Elyon's Circle

I'm back!

Confession: I never left... I just didn't know what to write about.

However, then it was brought to my attention by my grandpa that if I'm going to have a blog, I should write on it. I believe he said something like, "You're taking up space online that someone else could be using." Haha. I love my grandpa.

So, like I said, I couldn't think of aaaanything to write about. Nothing. My mind was totally blank. Writer's block maybe? Whatever it was, my mind was like my gas tank right now... empty.

Then it came to me... so, here it goes... it's a long one, so please hang in there... ahem...

I'm a crier.

This may, or may not surprise you. If you were surprised, Katie would look at you and say, "Oh yeah- she was BAWLING at the end of The Green Mile." Jered would probably sigh and say he doesn't get it. My mom would probably say I get it from her.

Regardless. It's true. I cry at movies... all the time. Embarrassingly enough, I have even sobbed uncontrollably because of shows like Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.

But it's not just movies. You know, great actors and sad story lines can bring lots of people to tears. Lately, it seems that books have that effect on me too, and that is what this post is about.

Not all tears are the same. I cried when Sirius, Dumbledore, Moody, Fred, Tonks, Lupin, and even Hedwig died. That was because of the relationships in the novels, and even the relationship I had built with their characters. They were sad tears. Tears of, "Isn't there a way for them to come back? Something? Anything?" I teared up when Lucy and Edmond weren't able to return to Narnia. When Aslan brought Prince Caspian into his second life in Aslan's territory I got bleary-eyed too. Thus Narnia brought out both sad tears and some bittersweet tears as well. Nothing full-scale like the other books, but I think that's due to C.S. Lewis' wonderful way simplifying and understating huge deals.

Well... over the past few weeks, I read Ted Dekker's Black, Red, and White. Honestly, it took me awhile to get into the books. In fact, the first one took me twice as much time to read as the others. By the time I got to the second one, I was excited to keep reading, and by the time I got started on the third I was upset when I had to put the book down for work. I wanted to jump back in whenever possible.

Where does the crying come in here? Well, without revealing the entire storyline and quite possibly ruining this series for anyone else, it might be a little difficult to explain. I'll give it a shot.

I enjoyed Ted Dekker's writing. Not because I thought it was spectacular. I wasn't blown away by his language. I actually thought some of it was a little repetitive. But, I will give him this, he can really describe emotions and evoke them in readers.

What Ted Dekker did to evoke such strong emotions in this girl was to take a bunch of great components and put them together... you know- suspense, life and death situations, family issues, and romance. But he took it a step further.

He didn't stop at romance. Oh- and I'm not talking sleazy romance like you would find in the romance section at a book store, or the kind that Chandler's mom writes on FRIENDS. I'm talking innocent, whole-hearted, no holding-back, good old-fashioned WOOING. The kind of stuff we don't see in today's world anymore.

And before you think that I am just a romantic sap(I don't like to think that I am one, but it's possible that I am), Dekker goes even further than good old-fashioned romance. He takes on the "Great Romance." What he does is take something that we only know in metaphor, and turned it into something literal. He somehow turned head knowledge into heart knowledge.

Gosh, it's hard to explain without giving away the book!

What if I put it this way? - Dekker brings God's love, judgement, and heart, and portrays it in an incredibly understandable story. Not understandable because the story is like our life, but through his use of emotions, I was able to see how God feels about me. How He loves me. How He forgives. How He hurts when I hurt!

The best I can do is to recommend these books. If you haven't read them- please do. And don't let the unique storyline and set up scare you away from them. Push through until you get to the point I came to- where you can't put them down! I promise you won't regret it. It may also shed light on the title of this blog. =)

Well, let's bring this full circle. Tears.

These tears were mainly tears of awe. Through Thomas' story, I saw that God's love overlooks any fault after we give ourselves to Him. He cries out in JOY that we are His! Wow. Once we are His- He is ecstatic about how perfect we are to Him. Unbelievable. And that right there, is enough to make me have trouble seeing my computer screen right now.