driftwood

{via stylemepretty}

these days i have felt very unpoetic, very uninspired.

all of my artistic energies have been focused on my NaNoWriMo novel, and all of my strength has been poured into the care of my precious warrior-daughter of now eight weeks.

and then the doctors said i needed more surgery. my gallbladder quit working, as though it wast just as tired as i was. and i went under the knife again two days ago. my body is rung out like a rag in the bottom of the kitchen sink, tossed and crumpled and completely without strength.

i am weary. i am without poetry. i am simply exhausted.

i am driftwood.

lead me to the Rock that is higher than i.

and i am tempest tossed and oh, so forelorn.

i am a ship and the waves are swelling. 

but there is One who calms the waters with a word.

peace. be still.

for I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel.

and He has gone before me, unsurprised by a single thing that has occurred over the past month. and all i can do is whisper "thank you" to the stars that illuminate my night. because the Cross is what i cling to without ceasing these days, or i would be smashed to pieces against the shoals, carved with lies. 

insufficient becomes :: enough

broken becomes :: whole

empty becomes :: filled

and i am driftwood carved to elegance, leaning against the Rock that is higher than i.

little girl loved // two weeks

{taken the day of her birth, bare minutes old}

my daughter is two weeks old today.

and i've been resisting the urge to blog endlessly about her for fear of turning into one of those moms who can't exist outside their children.

but she's so new, and so precious, and i can't help but fall in love with her all over again every single time i look into her tiny face and see those blue eyes staring back at me and see that tiny mouth curl up into a pouting smile that illumines me.

the first days of her life are a mental blur for me, a blur of morphine and hospital blue and white stripped blankets. and now they are a different sort of blur, an exhausted new mommy blur of sleeping sometimes but not all the time.

clocks have stopped having a meaning for me. 3am and 12 noon and 4:15pm have all become times to curl my body around my newborn child and feed her from my own body and inhale her sweet indescribable infant aroma.

and though she be but little

she is fierce 

:: william shakespeare ::

{two weeks old in Daddy's arms, already so much different}

there is a strange fierceness about this tiny creature that came from my body. the way she demands attention with the loudness of her wails, the wildness of her intense blue eyes. 

there is no secret that she will be a warioress, 

// and she already is, in a way. 

at two weeks old, she is already little girl loved, small fairy-child treasured. and now she sleeps on my husband's chest curled in a soft pink daisy-patterned blanket with her rosebud mouth partially open and an arm tucked beneath her head. 

and i'm overwhelmed with the fierceness of this small one, of Aslan's newest and smallest daughter, currently a cub but a strong lioness in the making. 

i'm mad with love, with a fire i did not know i could ever possess. 

i'm mother, more than i ever was before. 

and i am two weeks mother to a lioness. 

jumble // tomorrow

{via pinterest}

i'm all over the place right now.

bag packed, clothing washed...did i remember everything? do i need one more blanket, another outfit, just in case? am i overplanning, under-doing?

i'm excited. i'm so, so excited.

but

oh Lord, i'm so scared. 

:: tomorrow is the day ::

i've been counting down for this day for 41 weeks and 3 days that have seemed to stretch endless in front of me. and now this is the end, no more waiting.

i'm being induced tomorrow, the stroke of noon is where this pumpkin starts to transform from me to Mommy. it could be hours, it could be days. i don't like this unknown where i sit right now, this not knowing.

but this i do know.
He is greater. He is in control.
He is God. i am not.

so pray for me, would you please? because i'm so very small, and this seems so very big. and i need peace to do this big thing, this foreign and beautiful and frightening thing.

i'm bringing life through blood. it's sacred, a reminder of Him, really. the Stone Table broke when blood was spilled, and my body might break in this pursuit of motherhood. i'm ready to be carried, lifted up and held.

tomorrow is begin.
tomorrow is the start.

and He is greater.

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?}

unheard :: not unknown

{via pinterest}

there are a thousand beautiful sounds in this world.
and i ache to hear them all.

sometimes it's a whisper of wind in the trees,
the Voice speaking courage, dearheart. be still. 


other times it's that symphony of noise, be it music or laughter or so many voices
it's a triumph and a rejoice in the key of F and C and B and G

or it's that hiss of steaks on a grill or the sciff of a scoop through a tub of mint chocolate chip
the edible noises that comprise more than one sense at a time.

but who knew a rush on a small hand-held device could be such music
such a symphony that culminates in fierce love for something yet unseen?

because a fourteen-week heartbeat proves life when there already was.
and worry breathes a final breath when something concrete is held in the ear.

my frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place, when i was woven together in the depths of the earth. 

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be. 

::psalm 139:15-16::

i feel like i am part of something sacred, something precious. and i'm overjoyed with this preciousness that is the soft rushing of my unborn one's heartbeat. 

it has sealed something on my soul, something magnificent. 

i am mother, and i have been for some time. but now i understand and i feel it deep in my core, where i am treasuring these things in the darkness. 

so i whisper through my tears of overflowing joy to the small one moving, unfelt but dancing beneath my skin, just as my Father has whispered to me. 

courage, dearheart.

for He has overcome the world. 

steak and potatoes

{via pinterest}

i spent last night with my parents. 


not the whole night, but enough of the night to have steak and potatoes and chocolate ice cream, and laugh until we wept with too much joy overflowing from the corners of our eyes. 


and then i leaned against the counter and talked to my mom. 


and we talked about the baby, and about everything else that comes in between. and we talked about life, like we haven't done in what feels like ages. life has been rushing and i feel like my family connections have gotten a little threadbare since the beginning of two dark purple lines. 


but we're all doing a show together this spring. mom and dad and me and baby too, all on stage together for the first time since i was thirteen. and connections form with theater lights and velvet curtains, just like they used to do when i was a child and i had my first tied pair of ballet ribbons draped over my arm. 


did you know steak and potatoes and chocolate ice cream and so much laughter could do so much? 


i think i'd forgotten. because i think i've allowed myself to retreat, to dwell too much and live too little. to wrap too many shaking fingers around fears and cling just that bit too tight. 

{via pinterest}

going home feels good sometimes. at the end of night, we got in our car and drove back to our little apartment with bills and laundry and pizza rolls in the freezer.


but going home feels good sometimes, to steak and potatoes and chocolate ice cream and the warmth of familiarity when things are too much to handle on our own. 


because two are better than one. and a bundle of sticks are better than two. and we're making our own stick bundle now, turning two to three, and five to six. 

well the sun is surely sinking down

but the moon is slowly rising

and this old world must still be spinning 'round

but I still love you

:: you can close your eyes :: brooke fraser ::

and so now i'm singing lullabies to the baby in my stomach, the same ones my mom sang to me when i was a little girl. and i'm repeating familiar melodies over and over again. 

cross shadows and repeated lines.

and steak and potatoes and chocolate ice cream. 

{thank you everyone for your patience with me as i figure out this pregnancy and my body's new way of life! giveaway winners from January are going up in a matter of minutes on the original post, and the new giveaway is up as of tomorrow morning!}

breathing mama :: practicing peace

{via pinterest}

i'm loving this freedom i'm feeling.

this freedom to just be and not do, to focus on my overwhelmed heart and not dwell on the placement of the words on the page. it's truly freeing to be like this.

i understand why Mary kept each thing close and pondered them deep within her heart. there's so much that floods my mind every single day, and i feel so close to exploding.

:: and i am practicing peace :: 

i'm not a mother, yet...am i? is it alright to have practices of parenting for something the size of a green olive that only makes its presence known in lack of sleep and overpowering nausea?

but i do. and i'm practicing peace.

because i want this child to know what i have learned, and i ache that it might not take so long. and i fear i might forget when this silence is replaced by screams and this beauty is replaced by sleepless nights and the desperation for just a moment of rest in the chaos.

but i want to wrap my arms around this child as i wrap my arms around my stomach now and whisper

peace I bring you

{via pinterest}

not as the world gives. 

because i'm birthing into chaos and madness, a world that wants to pull my little one under with every lust and doubt and fear and loss.

this wants to turn my beautiful daughter into a stick figure, never thin enough but slowly dying inside and out. it wants to turn my strong warrior son's eyes into mirrors for disrespecting the women he is born to protect.

and that is almost enough to turn me to fear and tremble, and not the kind i should possess.

but i am striving, i am aching, i am seeking peace. my first practice of parenthood, even while my child is so small and knows nothing but love within.

in a world of dark, i want to whisper Light into this yet-forming ears. i want to sing the lilting notes of Lion's song into the silence.

in His presence, there is peace. and i am kneeling here with hands pressed to belly and eyes wide to bloodstained cross.

and i'm practicing peace.

am i overstepping by being this passionate already? 

wonder mother

{via pinterest}

my mother is a superhero. and i wish i was her.

my entire life, she has been the most put-together woman i have ever known. my earliest memories are of her seated at her desk sipping at a silver, hand-held caraffe coffee with her hair laid perfect and her make-up pristine.

and i have strived to match her footsteps. and i am failing.

because as i write this post, i am clad in men's Dr. Pepper pajama pants with my hair tossed back in the messiest of ponytails, taking the smallest bites of applesauce from a plastic container in an effort to keep my stomach settled.

and i am about to be a mother myself. and i want to be the most pristine of women with my future children collected and composed. but if they are anything like me, they will be ruffians and i will be flustered perpetually.

that is, if i keep attempting to be a woman i am not. a woman that she has never asked me to be, and would never dream of requiring of me. time and time again, she tells me

be you. not me. 


and that's what i have to do. because it is weary being someone who is not me, and walking in shoes far too big for my small feet. and this is my motherhood journey, as she had hers with two daughters who both turned out a bit alright, i think.

and so i will reach out and take her hand for now. and when i get scared and when my little one is tucked away, i may run to her arms and weep for comfort that only a mother can provide.

she is my mother. i am not.

and for this, we are both grateful. and for this, we overflow.

i realized today that i have allowed this pregnancy to push away the corners of my brain. 

and i have forgotten to announce the winners of my last giveaway, which i was supposed to do in January. my goodness.

the winner of the Shabby Apple timepiece necklace is Ashley

the winner of the pearl earrings is Blythe.

congratulations, girls! contact me with your addresses as soon as possible!

and don't forget that you still have two days to enter the current giveaway.