The Brightest Lights (Name Change)

Hello everyone!

  As many of you know who read my blogs and have been reading them for the past year and a half, I love blogging!  It is one of my favorite past-times!  Whether I am actually typing one up to publish the next day or whether I am catching up on some reading of blogs that I follow, Blogger is something that is always up on my screen.

  I have been very cautious and particular about how often I blog and how often I am on blogger.  While it's on my computer screen most days of the week, I limit myself to writing no more than 3 posts a week, and maybe an extra one for my Craft Room blog.  Maybe that sounds like a lot to some of you, but there was a time (last summer) when I would write two or three entries a day, every day, for a few weeks... And I realized I needed to cool it down a bit.  So I did.  Now I have limitations on how often I blog and so on :)

The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows.... (Taken by yours truly!)

  Well looking at the title, I will explain.  Lately, I have been listening to a lot of new undiscovered music (per usual) and one of my favorite songs at the moment is called "Brightest Lights" by King Charles (feat. Mumford & Sons).  The entry line to the song, and overall the chorus, says, "The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows and that's where I'll be found..." and other words to follow.  Well.  Regardless of whatever the song is truly about (I don't think I've really been closely paying attention to what I've been singing - nothing bad - but you know how sometimes you learn the words to a song mindlessly just because you hear it a lot and then sudden;y one day you realize what exactly the song is talking about?) I have really been thinking about just that one line in a lot of different ways.  Not because it has been comin' out my stereo system, but because the vision I get has been resounding throughout my mind the past few days.

  When I started this blog, I called it "Fly From the Highest Swing" also named after a song called "Dream" by Priscilla Ahn.  The reason I chose it as the title is because of the song itself.  The song recounts the innocence of a little girl who has dreams of many things and at one point she says, "I had a dream that I could fly from the highest swing, I had a dream!"  And later, changing the words a bit, she says, "I had a dream that I could fly from the highest tree, I had a dream!"  And the whole idea behind it is that she had such a powerful imagination that she dreamed of flying from the swing - if only she could get high enough!  Same thing for the rest of the song, she had a blossoming imagination that ultimately, in the end of the song, helps her look back on her life to say, "I've lived it full and I've lived it well, as many tales I've lived to tell I'm ready now to fly from the highest swing... I had a dream."  Such power and dolce.  And that same kind of sweet and powerful, overwhelming innocence that couldn't hold back her inner-most being was the same kind of feeling I wish I could have felt more often as a child.  So I figured that, by writing to my heart's content about whatever I so choose, I could feel that invigorating feeling of swinging so high that if I could get just high enough... I could fly from it.  I wanted to feel that I was able to release that energy into writing, and sharing it with the world.

  While this is still the reflection I want to have with my blog, blogging thoughts and opinions, interests and hobbies, I have grown a lot through my writing and I have come to a place where I feel a name change can be representative of what change I feel has been made.

  The Brightest Lights is the name I am choosing to change my blog title to.  It's feels to me just as free as Fly From the Highest Swing, but instead speaks from the growing part of me.  While Fly From the Highest Swing meant to me the innocence within getting out and feeling release, that little Jessica has grown up a little in the past year and a half and now she's thinking more along the lines of using the same inspiration she's been having to make an impact.  If that makes sense.  Although shadows are not permanent, everyone sees where the shadows lie.  Although not permanent, everyone can see where there are bright lights.  And according to my calling, if I'm to be a Light in a Dark place, then I feel that the name suits :)

  Not that it's an entirely big deal to anyone, but that everyone can know where my writing heart is at the moment and also understand that they are really reading the same blog as before.

In Christ Alone,
Jessica