this is a song - featherstone by the paper kites

I promise you will like this song. 
It is one of those songs that you can't not like because it is too simple and pretty.
A healthy serving of Fleet Foxes with a dash of Local Natives.
Plus the music video is a bunch of wild indie hipster children having the most epic pillow fight.
Thank you Hilary Skinner.

"And my love is yours but your love's not mine"

thoughts from my favorite hymn

Where can I turn for peace?

Where is my solace
When other sources cease to make me whole?
When with a wounded heart, anger, or malice,
I draw myself apart,
Searching my soul?

Where, when my aching grows,

Where, when I languish,

Where, in my need to know, where can I run?

Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?

Who, who can understand?

He, only One.

He answers privately,

Reaches my reaching
In my Gethsemane, Savior and Friend.
Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching.
Constant he is and kind,
Love without end.

This is my favorite hymn.

I have a very special place in my heart for this song, especially this arrangement.

What I love about music is that when I have feelings and don't really know how to address them, there is always a song that knows exactly how to put my emotions into words and make it epic. This song is a perfect example. These lyrics could not have been written more precisely. 

However, as therapeutic as music is for me, it has its limitations as well. It can't fix everything. The ultimate source of peace for me is through my Savior Jesus Christ.

It doesn't matter what I have done, how lost I feel, how crazy I may think I am, Jesus Christ is able to understand without fail every single time. In a quiet whisper, He touches the dusty dark corners of my soul in a powerful and overwhelming way, filling me with a tranquility unlike anything else.

There have been so many times in my life where I RUN to Him. 

Where I feel so completely alone in my own personal Gethsemane, on my knees and am so desperate for something, ANYTHING to latch on to. And it amazes me how within a couple minutes of quiet meditation and prayer, He reaches out and calms me.

I feel so blessed to have experienced these moments where His presence has completely filled me with so much joy that my heart bursts and I am moved to tears. He reminds me that I am an individual with a unique purpose on this earth in this life and that I am so unconditionally loved by someone who looks at me in a perfect perspective despite my flaws and mistakes I've made.

I not only know that Jesus Christ is real and lives, but I believe Him.
I trust Him to understand the emotional potluck that I am perfectly and clearly. 
I not only trust him in times when I am in need of comfort but in times of repentance as well. 

I have an unwavering testimony that He really did die for me so that when I sin and repent, He can thoroughly cleanse me and will do so with no ill feelings of judgement or disdain but with only love and understanding. It is through this process alone that I truly feel I am made whole again.

The amount of love I feel for my Savior is immeasurable. As I look back, the moments in my life that I have felt the most clear-headed and happy are those that I have let Him in to guide me through.There are not enough words to express the amount of gratitude that I have for Him, His perfect example, the Atonement, and His constant love without end. 

my spiritual disclaimer about music

When I find a song that I like, I like it. I like it so much that I will listen to it on repeat forever, all day and all night. But that is just the beginning.

I will memorize the lyrics. 

I will look up the song meaning and facts about the artist. 

I want to know why they wrote that song and who inspired it.

I will watch the music video. 

I relate it to experiences, people, and feelings.

I want it turned up loud in my car and I don't really want to talk to people when I'm singing it. 

I become attached to the artist and rely on them for my mood. 

That song becomes a narrow tunnel that is my brain. 

No I don't think this is healthy at all. 

Some people might find it dramatic and ridiculous how emotionally invested I am in music. 

But it's also very real.

Ellie Goulding's newest album Halycon came out right in the middle of a broken heart.

It was like getting a prescription straight from the doctor. Her entire album was about heartbreak and I self-medicated by listening to it for weeks. If my emotions were composed into a melody, this is what it sounded like. Each song represented a different stage of feelings that I felt about the overall situation be it anger, bitterness, hope, indifference, depression, optimism.  And in the end, after feeling all those feelings so strongly and just enduring through them along with the album, I came out better. 

I don't know what it is about haunting melodies and vocals and soul-piercing lyrics but they give me a natural high unlike anything else. 

My personal philosophy of what makes good taste in music is passionately loving various genres of music and not just liking but knowing the song. It's also recognizing and respecting others preferences. What makes good taste in music is having a strong sense for it. 

Will I claim that One Direction are artistic geniuses who have started a musical revolution? No.

Will I confidently state that their pop perfection makes me want to scream and violently move my body in dangerous ways? Yes.

Music has always been there for me in the highs and the lows. A song for every dance party, road trip, beginning relationship, night i can't sleep, potential wedding song, you name it. I've got a playlist for every occassion with a music library of 5,224 songs and counting. 

The fact that music makes me feel things so strongly, be it emotionally and/or physically, be it a straight up gangster with Jay-Z or a grungy groupie with the Black Keys...this is what makes music my remedy as well as my addiction.