guts and stardust

Sometimes I see words strung together in such a way to make me stop.

And think better things.

Just today I read this on a small card:

Friend, you are a divine mingle-mangle of guts and stardust. -Frank Capra

And I read it again and thought about guts and what that meant. I thought about how it even sounds ugly. Guts. That it infers something messy; because that is how life gets and sure, you can stop there, overwhelmed. You can look around and just sit down in the mess, close your eyes to it or wish it away.

That’s what I used to do when I was little. I’d start the monumental task of cleaning my room, pull out all of my clothes from my closet, get distracted by putting together new outfits out of the clothes that I hadn’t seen for at least a few months, and suddenly get overwhelmed by the even greater mess I now had around me.

And I’d close my door to the mess. I’d walk away until I had the strength to come back and face it.

And sometimes that’s okay.

But it takes guts to face the mess, to clean it up as best you can and then go about fully living in your space.

And then there’s the stardust. There’s a fantastic mingle-mangle, which makes me think of all kinds of whimsy. Of the hope that your dreams start as something quiet, a whisper that you dare to speak to the world, and then just maybe you find yourself singing songs to people who listen. Or you’re the fantastic mom that your baby needs. Or your friends are calling you because they’re watching the movie that you wrote.

And stardust makes me think of something else I just read that made me stop:

“…He kissed me…and every single thing in my body–my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.”        –The Help, Kathryn Stockett

That feels like the stuff of stardust to me. It’s beautiful, it leaves you glistening, and it’s innocent.

Yes, it takes guts to get yourself good and dirty as you face the mess, but there’s stardust too. And it leaves a sheen on you that won’t fade anytime soon, I think.

I hope, anyway.