Music Defines

I love how our lives are defined by music. 3EB's Semi-Charmed Life came on the radio the other day, and Scott and I yelled simultaneously, SOO 8th GRADE! I'm always amazed at the power a single song, melody, chorus, or phrase has to instantly scoop us up and put us right back in a memory of a summer, a relationship, a state of mind. For example,

Alanis - pretty much ANY song from Jagged Little Pill, aka the album of my adolescence, puts me right back on the bus to and from Jakarta International School. My friends and I listened to Ironic, Learn, and that song about the poor kid whose parents expect too much from her (shout out to Hannah for our angsty road trip sing-a-long to this song!)

Duncan Sheik - Barely Breathing. This was the first song I remember hearing on American radio after we moved back to the States. I listened to it over and over, probably in hopes that it would make me a normal American 8th grader, ha.





John Mayer - Split Screen Sadness. Oh man, straight back to junior riding around with Navita, when we would vent about our "tragic" boy situations. How sad were we??







Gavin DeGraw - Just Friends - countless sing-a-longs with JMo and Jaz










Matt Wertz - Sweetness in Starlight - on the first CD Scott gave me. Sorry to cheese it up.

So there you go, I suppose this might be the soundtrack of my life thus far. What music defines your memories?

Heartbreak

Disaster doesn't even begin to describe it. These pictures speak for themselves. After we had watched the devastation unfold from Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar over the past couple of days, Scott and I went to visit our friend Mar, a Burmese woman who owns our favorite Thai restaurant with her husband, Issi (he is Thai). When we got to the restaurant, we were greeted by Issi and his 12 year old son, and they informed us that Mar had suffered a heart attack earlier in the week. Half of her family is still in Burma (as she still refers to it), and she has been unable to contact them because lines are down and the government is limiting access to telephones, so naturally when Mar found out about the extent of the damage, she reacted strongly. She came downstairs to say hi, and I've never seen such profound fear and pain in someone's eyes.

Over 100,000 people are dead, and the world watches helplessly as the death toll climbs and the government exists in its iron-fisted, heartless bubble. This really makes me take a step back from my "gigantic" (read: tiny) problems that look so trivial in light of the devastation that overwhelms these people's lives. My heart aches for Mar and her country, and I know God is weeping with us as we watch.