Search This Blog

12/31/2009

Broken Songbird




When I was six years old I had a vision of my future. I didn’t understand it fully but I kept it close to my heart. It’s been my life’s dream to see that vision fulfilled.

I am a simple girl. Love, hope, compassion – these are the things I am made of. I always thought that when I sang it was more than just words coming out of me but a blessing or hope to someone who needed it. I had a secret wish that people felt loved when I sang for them. I think the dreamer in me still believes that.


The more people I come to know the more I have found that a dreaming heart draws many arrows. Why is that? What makes a dreamer such a threat? The stories we have heard from childhood are happy endings that do not prepare us for the real wolves of the world. The dragons with teeth and nasty words and ball bats hiding behind fake smiles… they are real and they hurt people. They hurt me…

Where is the Cinderella story that is more realistic? She gets locked in the tower for ten years and escapes only after the Prince has stopped looking for her and moved on. Her youth gone and no one knows that she exists. I never heard that version. Where does she go from there? Can she find hope after her dreams are shattered? Does she hang on to her dream or except the reality of the new world she’s in, no big rainbow weddings and fairies to bless her? Hope seems downright dangerous then doesn’t it? The realistic friend will be standing next to her whispering, “Be realistic, being a maidservant ain’t so bad.”

Being in a hard time myself I have had to ask for help. Begging family and friends to help us out of trouble. I was shocked to find so many people struggling to eat and pay basic bills. Smart, hard working people, who don’t deserve what has happened to them. I feel like the world around me is collapsing like a house of cards.

What does a broken songbird do to help anyone when she can’t seem to help herself?

I am torn between several actions at the moment.
a. crying ‘woe is me’ and crawling into a pit
b. wishing I had the strength to sing some love on people and believing it still worked
c. become a realist and be content to put my dream away forever
d. begging God for mercy on the hurting people of the world

I have already tried (a) without success but maybe I’ll probe further into the others and share my findings.

Desperately seeking harmony,

Leah Michelle Banicki