please stop

{via pinterest}

this one's for the lonely

the ones that seek and find

only to be let down

time after time

this one's for the torn down

the experts at the fall

come on friends get up now

you're not alone at all

:: comes and goes // greg laswell 

dear world, please stop. 

stop battering down my door with a thousand voices telling me just how i should mother, how i should parent, how i should be. 

it's breaking me down before i've even begun.

dear fashion designers, please stop.

stop teaching us to hate our bodies, because we already fall down enough and we need to love this thing that carries our souls and hearts and breaths and dreams. it's okay not to be a size 2. 

it's killing our daughters. 

dear mothers of the world, please stop.

stop hating one another because one holds a baby to her breast and one chooses another form of life-giving food for her little one, because one chooses to return to work and another can hold her baby from dawn to dusk. 

i can't bear it any more. 

dear church, sons and daughters of the King of Kings and Lord of Love, please stop.

stop screaming hate when He said love, stop twisting words to mean what He never meant. put down the torches and the pitchforks. 

it's making Him weep

and He doesn't recognize you.

what else can i say but please. please, from the bottom of my heart, cloaked in all the love i can muster...

:: please stop :: 

circles repeated

{via pinterest}

:: i am drawing circles in the earth.
i am marching around my Jericho. 

those words, those two simple lines, started a post that i wrote on the last day of January. my circle journey had just started, and i almost want to laugh and then weep at how far i have come.

because all of me has become a circle. and i can say that with laughter as i watch my belly grow and grow and continue to grow. and i watch the mandella of prayer in which i have found myself kneeling become visible and evident on my skin, dark purple twisting lines that create

the most intricate
the most precious
the most beloved
and the most frightening of prayer circles that i have ever witnessed.

i've learned more about myself in these past nine months than i ever could have anticipated. and yes, it has been nine months now, at the dawning of this morning's fingers of rose and pale gold. i've had to release the rigidness to which i have steadfastly clung, because i wake up every morning without a single clue as to what i might encounter.

and this journey of her safely beneath my skin is almost over, and with a scream of mine and a wail of hers, she will be here...and this makes me tremble, loved ones. this makes me tremble in the most sacred of ways, and the most human of ways, as well.

{via pinterest}

i feel like this circle is fragile. like it could break if i press the wrong way, and everything falls to pieces. it's that fear again, that serpentine voice whispering my ear, you shall not surely die, but you shall be like God. 

and now i understand why Eve's temptation was so great, why the first woman reached out for the fruit that whispered lies of simple solution, of knowledge of what is and what could come.

but i'm letting Him guide my fingers from sparkling poison apples to something brighter, something dirty like Carpenter's sandals, something dusty like the hem of the Rabbi's cloak.

grasp Me here. 
and down on your knees is where you will find Me, the most clean and the most pure. 

because faith is found in circles of prayer and blood and freshly cut covenant
where the fire can pass between the torn pieces of me to lodge in the fullness of Him.