From Sand and Ash

by Amy Harmon

But we have to live in order to learn. And sometimes we have to fight in order to live.

Jesus gave himself willingly. He could have saved himself. But he was God. And he chose. Eva is just a girl. She wasn’t given a choice. The Jewish people have been stripped of choice. They have been stripped of liberty. They have been stripped of dignity. And they cannot save themselves.”

Life is hell shot with just enough heaven to make the pains of hope all the sharper. Life is impossible. Ugly. Agonizing. Inexplicable. Torture.”

Sand and ash. The ingredients of glass. Such beauty created from nothing. It had been something Babbo had marveled about and something she’d never understood. From sand and ash, rebirth. From sand and ash, new life.

She vowed to push back, to make glass from the ashes, and that courage was a victory in itself.

We are all products of the places we are raised, the people who love us or have power over us, and the things we hear, over and over again, as we grow.

Fear is strange. It settles on chests and seeps through skin, through layers of tissue, muscle, and bone, and collects in a soul-size black hole, sucking the joy out of life, the pleasure, the beauty. But not the hope. Somehow, the hope is the only thing resistant to the fear, and it is that hope that makes the next breath possible, the next step, the next tiny act of rebellion, even if that rebellion is simply staying alive.