Wise Words and Song Lyrics

On Monday I watched Fellowship of the Ring for the first time with a friend. Since watching it, I've been hearing quotes from that movie everywhere. Seriously, it's creepy. Besides the strange deja vu feeling, I've been pondering one quote in particular. It's a snippet of a conversation between Gandalf and Frodo. Is says:

That last line, spoken by Gandalf the great, is very inspirational, thought provoking, I must say. "We only have to decide what to do with the time given to us." It's true. Each day when we wake up in the morning we have a choice to make. We decide how we are going to spend our time that day, if we're going to choose joy, if we're going to help people. At the end of the day, what do you want to have accomplished?

I set certain goals for myself each day. Finish these school subjects in this amount of time, write said amount of words today, edit this many chapters. Those are the things that I choose to occupy my time with. But when I look at that schedule although it takes up nearly all of my time, I don't see anything lasting in that. Yes, education is important and my writing is important and can be a lasting thing in the long run, but what about the day to day things? We mustn't be too caught up in our lives and our schedules to see the needs around us.

Frodo wishes that the burden he carries, the ring, wasn't placed upon him. He wishes that it could be lifted, that he wouldn't have to endure the frightening trip into Mordor. But don't we all feel like that at some point in our lives? Don't we wish that our burdens could be lifted, that we didn't have to face the fires of Mordor, so to speak?

We are each given things, a mix, good and bad. Someone once told me that "We have to learn to use the whole deck, even the bad cards can be used for good." It's true. Bad things happen to people, we're broken and bruised but the amazing thing about the human heart is it's ability to heal and the even more amazing thing is God power to heal it. If we give our bad cards, our burdens to the Lord, he'll show us how to use them. That's all we're asked, to use what we're given in the time we have.

I  remember hearing something that said "There's beauty in the breakdown." It's when we finally snap, when the pain gets so bad, the burden so heavy that we realize, we weren't meant to carry it alone. God may not take the burden away, because there are lessons yet to be learned, but He will help you carry it and sustain you when you fall apart.Song lyrics are floating through my mind as I type this. "Isn't it beautiful/The way we fall apart/Isn't it wonderful/The way we break our hearts/It's magical and tragical/The way we fall apart." (And yes, I realize I'm kind of going off on a tangent here.) So, here the song I quoted from, for your entertainment purposes:

Hope you enjoyed the read and the song! :)