Juleianna Schilter

Juleianna Schilter
It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it. - Mary Oliver

Monday, February 10, 2014

What to do when everything has been stripped away


From where do you regain hope?

Hope? When all that is left is broken pieces of what used to be your life. When once filled rooms are empty shells of what used to be. When reasons for waking at the sun's rise doesn't seem to exist anymore. When cooking for four has turned into cooking for one and sometimes two. When what you believed in is up for questioning. When truth becomes fogged by greater prevailing agendas. 


Life's meaning has been taken miles down the road. You sit in silence alone with your thoughts and millions of questions. You raise your sorrows and pain to the God who promises never to leave you. To never forsake you. 


...But you feel left, you feel forsaken. You feel thrown into the wind. With humble hands filled with bits of broken hearts you ask Him to take the shards of worry, your sadness, your fear, your confusion your everything broken. In hope to make it right again.



So you sit and listen as the days embark and the hours pass. Listening and waiting for the epiphany to come. For the answer. Through this, it feels like your darkest hours. Where you meet your anguish head on. Not running from it, not hiding, not taking to bad habits or idle time wasted. For this is the time when you are gaining clarity. Perhaps not understanding, because sometimes in this life when we are deep in the valley, understanding to our circumstances does not often come until we are out. Along the hillside, or atop the mountain. But clarity into where you belong in this storybook called life. 


I have found myself getting lost in translation when trying to understand the why's and the how's. I realized I have not gained anything positive or growth worthy other than to reopen and add heaps of salt to my raw open wounds. I realized this because as I lay sobbing and hurting crying out, I was incapable of learning the reasons why I was where I stood present in this point of life. I learned through experience that no matter how hard we try to control matters, we are not always responsible for the outcome. That sometimes the system fails us. Our parents, friends, sisters...We cannot control how others will behave or their actions. It's in that very thought process that I was learning to embrace my outcome(s) by not losing sight of what I believe in or what mattered to me most. My core. My very being.

Often I find myself crying aloud wondering, why did my prayers go unanswered. Why did He answer their cries and pleads and empty promises but failed to answer mine? It's that very question in which I pause today. I am wrestling with that one. I have always enjoyed the expression "One one door closes, another one opens..."  But what does that really mean? During this dark late hour, as I sit among the low lit lamp, tucked away in this humble room, I pause and ask once more but not my last: "Why? Why me, why us, why this?" What is the purpose, the lesson, the message?"  I try desperately to cleave to the truths that seem to really speak to my heart. I hold tight to the notion that God is not finished with this chapter. That though my current circumstance may be riddled with deep confusion and pain... somehow, somewhere, at some point...justice will be fulfilled and all the countless wrongs will be made right.

For in that...I have hope.

~Thanks for reading with me :)

"Hope is the thing with wings..." ~ Helen Keller




Thursday, February 6, 2014

The Liar's Club

                                  Soul Sucker

                                                                   Prologue



      The Liars Club. The year is 1886. Welinburg Vermont, population 2,100. During a time when merriment was eroded and common sense spared. Lamp oil was found scarce and acute awareness was neglected. When denial persevered and discernment for common good was desolate. 
     The weak walk around this earth tormenting and infecting the innocent. Usually the very one's who are seemingly mild, meek and reserved. Posing as amicable neighbors in every viable occasion. Like an epidemic disease they spread venom through out the land. Spilling into social spheres causing division and destruction. Their venom effects the integrity of the innocent's reputations. Venom weaving and entangling places and inner circles of the innocents world and livelihoods. 
     For these people do exist. They habituate in your town, your neighborhood, your schools...they are inevitably everywhere. For it's mandatory and vital that you may attention. Pay great mind to those with whom you cross paths with. For they very well could be members of the Liar's Club...

~thanks for reading with me!
To continue on, meet back here tomorrow for chapter one.





Meet My Illustrator




Myra Fiacco

Myra Fiacco lives in Indiana with her husband and two young daughters, Phoebe and Lola. When she’s not illustrating or writing, she is working to instill the love of art into her family. With an artistic background and bucketful of ambitions, she stretches her creative limits with the hope of filling shelves around the world with inspirational and entertaining books. Myra runs a blog for her daughters, phoebeandlola.blogspot.com, and an adjoining Etsy shop that continues to grow.

“To create, no matter the medium, is to give to life to the motionless and salt to the flavorless.”

Little Pumpkin Men



                                           Featured Rough Draft

                                               ...How adorable are they already?