when thrashing isn't a thumb war

{photo by dramaticelegance]

these past several months have been all about the Story for me. the funny thing is, despite the fact that my entire being is storytelling, it's really never been something that has met the criteria for my focus.

i've heard that phrase "let Him write your story...only you can tell your story" over and over as long as i can remember. i was raised in the Church; it's one of those things that fit in our little dictionary of words we all know. but it faded. and in some respects, my faith began to fade, too. 

writing that phrase made me nervous. i am loathe to write anything about shaky faith because i tend to hear the same things in response. it makes people uncomfortable, edgy, to think about faith being anything but concrete. we talk about it in whispers, as though it's a very dirty secret, casting furtive glances over our shoulders just in case someone might hear. 

my precious friend Mandy {who has written a book about her own personal thrashing which can be found here} wrote these words on her Facebook page ::  I don't have answers. I can't prove a thing. My faith is custom fit. Messy and mysterious. This is all I've got. 

ever since i read them, they've been humming in my soul. there's a strange sort of freedom when someone else speaks that same thing that's been sitting in your heart for a long time, maybe even before you knew they were there. 

part of telling my story is lifting my head up and acknowledging the road i've walked instead of keeping my eyes down to study the cracks in the sidewalk. the thing is, i didn't trip. i faded. Mandy uses the word "thrashing." and that's a good word. it brings up a picture in my head of a man on a mountain in the throes of a wrestling match with the Son of the Most High, from the darkness until the dawn. 

{photo by dramaticelegance}

and damn, that's powerful. the thrashing, the wrestling, the wandering....it happens in the night. that dark night of the soul. and then comes the dawn with Light shining down on the flattened grass and the bruises and bumps and bleeding places. thrashing isn't a thumb war. it's a guttural cry as you charge into the complete darkness. and sometimes you run into a tree. but you pick yourself back up and snap off a walking stick and pull yourself along.

sometimes pruning leaves you messy // right there on the inside //

and it's that moment in the shower // when you're crying to match the water 

// but then you come out // and the steam pours off //

and you're coffee and tea and warm blankets from the drier 

// fragrant and steaming and clean

words by me :: #mypoetryseptember

:: and it's all part of my story. 

it all comes back to the Lion. it's in that dark place where you have no idea what might come skulking out of those darkened doorways that He curls up quietly at your back. and sometimes, when you need him the most, when fear threatens to consume you and has crawled down your throat

He roars. 

laid bare :: in which i learn that courage groans

{photo of myself, courtesy of nikki} 

sometimes being brave is easy. 

you know what you want to do, and you take first one step and then another and suddenly you're across the bridge without a second thought. and your footprints are there, and looking back, you're aglow with what you have done.

you were brave without realizing. 

and then comes the hard stuff, the realities as the glow of bravery washes away and you realize that not everyone see the same footprints you do. you see the whole path, the big picture, and they see the toe marks in someone else's way.

yesterday, i made a choice. a choice to drop every facade, a choice to dare and be brave and be luminescent :: woman. i chose to live what i have been speaking here for the past several months. i chose to pose semi-nude. 

and i didn't just do it to say i could, but for the hearts of the woman i have held in my arms as they weep and whisper, i starve because i am starving. 

and so i laid myself bare. no make-up or jewelry, no primping save a brush through my hair. there were no touch-ups to take out stretch marks or freckles or those things that i try to cover up with my fingers with down-turned eye and whisper, don't look.

and i closed my eyes and burst into smile and climbed the summit to meet my Savior there in a hush of holiness and a gentle murmur of "on earth as it is in Heaven."

and i met stones on the way down. 

they had their points and they had their reasons and they had their laid-out plan. and i can't help but respect conviction, because after all, i have my own. and it was my husband who stood up with his hand on my shoulder and took the step in front of me and took so many extra arrows in the chestplate, my warrior-man. and i did the best i could, but i sat down and shook with weeping because it was just too much to bear. 

{photo of myself, courtesy of nikki} 

and my dear friend wrapped arms around my shoulders from across the United States and spoke softly to my soul, 

courage doesn't always roar

sometimes it whispers, sometimes it groans

but it is still courage.

and it came from all sides, from the east and the west. 

:: brave. brave. you are brave.

and it came from His own lips, too. 

:: My daughter is brave

and i knew it would happen, but i didn't expect the intensity of the ache. and i knew it would be hard to be brave, that the journey over seemed so easy but the path down the mountain was a rocky tumble. 

so why did i do it, then?

because you are beautiful. i promise you are, dearheart. 

and i'll do whatever it takes for you to see it for yourself.

my daughter drew life from this body, whispered into my being by the Breath of the Lion. and she changed my visage, my skin, into a portrait made with blue eyes and soft red hair and baby's breath on my neck. and i fit no molds, not that i did before, and i'm learning to be okay with that. 

i am my Beloved's, radiant and adorned. 

thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.

:: song of songs 4:7

// // 

{i want this to be a gentle place, a place of love and respect. if you have something to say, please say it with love and words seasoned with salt and Life. i have disabled anonymous comments because honestly, i am still learning to be brave, and i think you should, too. if you don't want to write your response publicly, my inbox is always open to you. i also have a zero tolerance policy for fat-shaming, victim-blaming, "slut"-shaming, etc.}

falling up :: five minute fridays

{via pinterest}

falling scares me.

i watch The Amazing Race and whisper with my husband, i want to do that with you. and we talk about each challenge...could we, would you? but the height ones seem to make me swallow the hardest

and then there was the man who smiled at the tallest building in the world and said, oh, i love the heights. and i started at the screen agape, heart filling with something i still don't understand just yet.

and i'm realizing that it's more than just the simple heights of feet and inches up against the clouds. i've found myself afraid of high living, because there's always that chance i might plummet down with just one little misstep. and nothing scares me like that  idea that maybe i'm not as steady as i like to think.

but falling just might be what needs to happen. because there's that rush as your eyes close and the Breath rushes past your cheeks and there's nothing but you and the Lion in the silence, and you realize all of a sudden that you're flying.

i'm in awe of the way His wings feel against my cheek. or maybe it's the shock of the feathers sprouting out of my own fingertips as He whispers about the wings of eagles that He promised low in my soul.

it's sacred, holy ground. 

:: holy air.

and when my feet touch the ground again, i lift my wings to cover my face and whisper

worthy worthy, holy holy

maybe one day, i'll lean back with eyes closed and let myself just tumble hand in the hand with the One who fought death and won. tandem diving from earth to Heaven.

{linking five minutes of unedited stream of consciousness with lisa-jo }
join us?

being imperfect mommy

{my family, May 2011}
me, my mommy, my daddy, my sister

your mother is so amazing
you have a fantastic father. 

these are words i hear often, frequently filling my ears from the lips of those who encounter the people that raised me. not just church people, not just family people, but strangers too, sometimes, who know me through them.

my father is the life of the party, loud and wild with a whistle and a laugh that both boom and echo so loud that they can be heard in the front of the church where i sit, compared to the back where he sits with my mother, always just that one second after the joke when the rest of the laughter has died away.

but he has these eyes, my father, the eyes that draw men to speak and share their hearts when most would rather withdraw and be quiet. he was good to his girls, my dad, my mom and sister and me, and soon his granddaughter too. most men wouldn't have cared. my daddy did.

and then there's my mom. this red-haired, coffee-carafe toting powerhouse who often starts her sentences with i'm not perfect or only by the grace of God am i here. and she's right, of course, because it takes God and only God. but mommy needs to give herself some credit too. because she spends hours with women, holding their hands and weeping with the broken. she gives of herself endless and endless to teenage girls who love her and call her mom like i do, and it's amazing.

and women tell me that listening to my mom is like listening at the feet of Jesus. and it is, because she raised me when she could have said no, and adopted me when she could have been content to give to others who didn't hold corners of her flesh in their fists. but she chose a daughter, and then another. and gave even more of herself -- the most bits of herself -- to us, my sister and me.

and i'm going to be a mom soon, any day now. and i sit and press my hands to my swollen stomach where my daughter, due tomorrow and stubbornly waiting beneath my skin where she seems to be quite comfortable in her silent liquid world. but wouldn't you be too?

i want to be the kind of mom that has people come to my little girl and say your mom is doing good. your mom is amazing. 

{via pinterest}

and i fear i won't be that kind of woman for her. i fear i'll live in flesh and in self, and not in the Jesus-shawl that my mother drapes over her shoulders when the world brings her to her knees. and i fear that i'll chose my own feet instead of kneeling on the sheepskin that my father has used for prayer since i was a little girl.

i have big shoes to fill, these ones of sacred parenting that were emulated for me by the two most amazing people i have ever encountered. and sometimes i call my mom crying, and tell her that i don't feel good enough to mother like she mothered.

and then i remember that He fathered her, and me, and my dad, and my husband. and fall is coming, a death and a life all at the same time. and my little one is coming to make me a mommy, and to make my husband a daddy.

and we won't be perfect parents. but we will be parents who love. i won't be my mom. but i'll be me, and that'll be okay, won't it?

and she'll love me for me, those tiny flailing arms and fluffy little cheeks and big still-unseen eyes of an unknown colour and hair to match, also still unknown.

but He died to make me worthy to hold this tiny one in my arms and call her my child, and made me worthy to be called mommy. He didn't die to make me perfect, to make me supermom, to make me anything but me.

He died to make me whole.

and i'm who she'll call mommy

imperfect mommy who loves Jesus

loving mommy who tries

her mommy. 

who loves her forever & always 

{linking my imperfection with dear emily and her community today. join us?}

stony place :: ebenezer

{via pinterest}

i'm still in the stony place. the  rocky, rough place that i think we all touch from time to time.

the place where i'm learning to rest for a time, but i feel like i can't let myself breathe without guilt. 

inhale no rest

exhale too much to do

it's the funny place where we feel guilty for doing right, for stopping for a half a moment just to breathe. because i'm learning to embrace the do not need to do instead of dwelling on the must do now or else. 

and the whole day yesterday, i had a window open to write a new blog post. but i never wrote a word. and i thought it would be a bad thing, that i would wake up to negativity or a heart overflowing with shame for slacking. 

but i didn't. 

:: i woke up breathing ::

and that's what i'm supposed to do. and i made toast and coffee and ate both slices, slow and without worrying about the clock with the silence of the house and the whisper-scent of winter breezes that smell like springtime. 

and i still felt strange, but i didn't know why. but it was a good kind of strange, like icy-cold soda on the hottest day and the way it runs down from lips to stomach and you feel the coolness all the way down.

so i'm taking these stones that make my place rocky, and i'm building an altar. and i'm carving ebenezer into the bottom stone. 

here has my Lord helped me. 

{linking my broken prose with emily today}

ink smears

do you know what it's like to hear the voice say

flip the pages and flow

but to have no idea what the flow means? black and white in sunless nights without the urge to fight anymore?

did i forget my passion once again, like the strummer with the broken strings who forgot how to sing in the night we mentioned before?

it's battlescars from movie stars who pinch invisible rolls and wail "i'm fat" and nothing can heal that but reality.

and it's hard to get past that when the mirror speaks lies and the world speaks water for truth but the reality is wine, but we tossed it out with the trash because we counted the calories on the back.

do we remember who we are? 

the chosen people with broken telescopes that won't look past tattoos and high heeled shoes and conceiling black robes that leave everything to the imagination?

we forgot our before with empty shores of seashell glass and glassy eyes and one footprint where two would have failed.

because it's nothing we can done alone. because silence is okay, but pushing the door shut and crying don't let anyone see, don't let anyone in

i feel more broken when i turn my back to Him.

because He already sees, and it's broken hearts that He heals and tattered scrapbooks that paint His portrait when we couldn't even see the road.

so black and white is okay, i think, in the long run when all we have is the sun at our back and the Son at the front where the ink flows and we can acknowledge our broken pieces.

so pick up your pen, dusty traveller,

the dawn is here and the ink is flowing.

{linking imperfection with emily}

three things :: spoken word

sometimes i wanna write what i feel.

i want to take what i see and do the undone and fix the unfixed and light the snuffed candle all over again. but then i look and i say, do i even see? do i even know anything?

and so i take my pen and my paper and my too-many thoughts and i sit and i wonder just what might happen if i knew something, anything at all.

i watch the people, feet on pavement and pavement on feet. and i realize what i know.

i know three things, because sarah kay says good things come in threes, and she's right, after all.

:: i know that light kills the dark ::

and when you're walking in the dark and there's nothing but a match in your pocket, it's a good thing to know. and when you're walking in the Night and there's nothing but a verse in your mind reminding to be still and know that I AM...it's a good thing to know.

:: i know that art is the voice even when it never speaks ::

i know that sometimes the silence of a paintbrush screams SEE ME and the whisper of just one wavering note in the empty concert halls cries I CAN DO THIS AFTER ALL and the raised arm on a stage is the salute to all things undone and all things done over and over and done well.

:: i know that mystery is just that, and it's okay to not know ::

{via pinterest}

i know that knowing is part of the battle, and when you don't know what you know that it can crush and scare and be unsure. but it's okay to have a mystery that you don't understand.

and it's okay to let Him be the mystery of Love and Flesh and Man and God all in one small infant bundle, growing up up up to be Death and Life and Salvation and Water and Broken Bread with Wounds that Heal.

that is what i know. no more shaking ground for i stand on What, on Who i know.

because i write what i feel and i feel what i know. and i know Him and little else. but that's power, okay? that Light is more than enough. that Water is more than enough.

because i know these things. Him and Him only.

everlasting, time over time, from age to age.

Alpha and Omega, You answer. because You know

more than three things. 

spark

do you ever wonder 

what you were born to do? 

do you ever watch the street musicians, battered guitar and plastic tub drums tucked into cement corners? do you ever watch their eyes?

because if you did, you'd see something. something raw that only a seeker could find.

you find the spark. every dreamer has one, i promise.

do you ever wonder why there that's moment when tears roll down, but not from sorrow? from that agonizing beauty of perfect joy found when you find it.

:: that spark :: 

{via pinterest}

that cross in the windowpane, that little moment of gaze when the sun peaks over the ridge and pours over your face.

that moment when hands go up and eyes fly shut, because this is praise in a way. it's pure Glory, pure majesty. it's that thing when the world goes black and it's You and God and nothing else. spotlights shut down and the room is dark but everything shines.

because it's what you were born to do. it's what your soul craves, that voice in your heart that cries

sing. breathe. paint. 

be artist, be writer, be vocalist. 

be spark. 

and there's nothing you can do but listen. because we are, after all.

because we're doers. we're breathers.

we're dream touchers, star-gazers.

{sharing this imperfection with emily today}

prelude to the grateful

{via pinterest}

every single year, right around this time, i find myself overwhelmed in the crush.

it's this season of preparing and orchestrating and oh, so much family that seems to emerge from every corner of the woodwork. 

for those of us who stand under the banner of red, white, and blue, tomorrow is supposed to be the day we take a few minutes to soak in the gratitude of our lives. 

i need to freeze in place

because i have much. 

it's hard to not get lost in the 

if only i

if we only had

if we obtained

but my soul sings this year. this time last year, i was drowning in self, in circumstances which i would have done anything to avoid. 

but He knew that i needed pruning. i needed pain to find the glory again. 

{via pinterest}

and oh, how my blackened soul rebelled. i withheld my joy, letting it slowly wither from lack of gratitude's water upon the cracking soil of a wounded heart. 

but then He gripped my soul. 

stop this, child.

let go and let Me heal. 

let Me restore your joy.

and then i began to seek again. and i have been unable to stop my hunger, my burning fire for those things that make this heart sing of Him.

and so now i drop the dishtowel and turn my back to the stove for just a moment. and i find that moment on my knees in the corner with His Love Letter spread out before me on the floor. 

because of Him, i stand.

how can i keep from gripping His robe and letting my gratitude from pouring over His feet like some strange perfume. 

tomorrow is Thanksgiving. 

but so is today. 

{linking this imperfection with my dear emily}

seashell grooves

sometimes i wonder why God gave seashells little grooves on top and on the sides.

they're so beautiful as it is.

why put the bumps? 

the rough spots

the little cracks 

that could be counted as blemishes to their delicate grace?

and then i wonder as i'm asked to

link up a post, old or new, that you feel is broken or imperfect.

why my broken pieces? why my flawed canvas?

don't you want to see what i can do? what good things i have in my treasure chest?

and then i take a look through my little wooden box, the same way an innocent child seeks to find something precious to share with daddy.

but to my shame i realize that i'm all broken.

via pintrest

every last one of my treasures are cracked, or broken, or riddled with flaws of this and that.

and i hold up my nothings like a disappointed child to whomever may still love me.

and my Daddy picks it up. exclaiming over it as though i have some long-forgotten riches that the world has sought for centuries

and then i see.

i see it well.

this broken treasure is all He wants. because it's all i have.

and i am His child. and like a loving Father, He delights in what i have. in what i can do. in those little things to which He leads me day after day.

if He demanded my perfection

i'd be lost.

perfection is not what He asks for....

...He asks for my imperfect prose. 

He asks for my grooves. 

linking up with emily at imperfect prose
also featured at heather's beautiful corner of raining silence

am

dear self: 

you have to hear me now.

this is what i am not.

because this is what you keep telling me i am. 

knife-point. razor edge. whispered screams that never stop chanting this mantra, as though you are tucked between my earlobe and my throat. 

i'm sick of hearing what i am not. 

your voice is too sweet. too smooth. too easy to take in, this poison pill.

empty. broken.

measured in loss.

worthless to all. 

you have been weighed. measured. found wanting. 

no. one. loves. you.

i hate to break it to you.

but YOU. ARE. WRONG.

because you have failed to take into consideration

the other voice.

the stronger voice.

the gentler voice.

the voice of Love. 

Strong. Beautiful. 

Fixed. Repaired. Adored.

Loved THIS much. {arms outstretched to fit the rugged cross}

I love you. 

Mine. 

your voice will fade to white noise.

you will be one day be forgotten.

it is His voice that will endure 

through eternity. 

Linking up with Emily: imperfect prose on Thursdays
Yes, this now a weekly song for which I wait each week. 

Sans

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.  ~Kahlil Gibran


To the right is a picture of me. A picture of which I am honestly not all that fond.

I am not wearing even the tiniest bit of makeup...my hair is wind-tossed and blown out of proportion by humid summer winds.


It's not my best look. Not even a little bit.


Normally, I would never even consider posting a picture such as this one for all the world to see. 


However, there is a reason behind this strange behavior.

PAICFBWAA. 


The above jumble of letters stands for People Are Imperfect Campaign For Bloggers Who Are Awesome -- a truly brilliant idea started by Olivia and her simply spectacular blog, Of Horsefeathers. 


The concept? To embrace ourselves as truly beautiful and imperfect women.

The challenge? To post a photograph of ourselves with all the external "beautifiers" stripped away. 


To be entirely real.

I will be entirely transparent and say that I am a very insecure individual. There are so many things I dislike about myself...so many things that, if given the chance, I would take away or add in a heartbeat. 

I struggle to love myself....and as such, I struggle to let myself be loved by others, even those who look me deep in my eyes and whisper "you're beautiful" every single day. 


In my own eyes, my own beauty is non-existent. 


And so, I war with myself.


But this is a step for me.


Perhaps a small step...maybe even more of a two-inch wiggle. 


But it's movement forward. 


Sans makeup...sans styling.


One tiny step at a time.


I'm learning to love me.


I'm learning to be imperfect. 


I don't like standard beauty - there is no beauty without strangeness.  ~Karl Lagerfeld