yes...and no {five minute Friday}

I'm back.

and I think five minutes just might do for a perfect start.

because right around five weeks ago, I had another baby. and it was a long road, not five minutes, but seventeen days of groaning and laboring and prayers of sweet Jesus, please, let it end, bring her here, let it end. 

but we got our Shiloh. 7 lbs, 2 oz. we got our "one the whom the holiness is promised." and she is perfect and big sister is in love and so am I and so is my husband.

{I'll blog her birth story soon, I promise}

but then I was no longer pregnant. so the voices started clamoring. it didn't take long, and I'm not sure how many of them were in my head vs. actually shouting in the real world. part of it was the hyperemesis and the inability to do just about anything for so long, and then the prodromal labor, which took away the rest of my strength.

and it sounded tempting, these invitations.

come do this.
be this. 
do this. 
be this.
come back now be with us now come do everything you have been doing and haven't been doing. 
now. 

{photo via Unsplash}

and I started saying yes. louder and quicker than I should have.

and it got dangerous.

my physical health was important, of course, but that wasn't the biggest worry. the biggest worry was my mind, my heart, the breakdown that comes when we take on too much, say yes too quick and too loud and realize that we just aren't ready for the yes-ing to start. not yet.

so I'm saying quieter yes and remembering to speak no a little louder and a little firmer.

I just got back to my life, and it's different now. we have two little dove daughters, our wildflower girls. one turning three in a matter of weeks, my Marian with her big blue eyes and wild curls and a vocabulary that terrifies even talkative me. and then little tiny dark haired LoLo with her coos and wide awake watchful eyes and her gentle infant nursing sounds all night long.

yes and no.

both important. both beautiful.

both in their time.

I haven't done five minute Fridays in a very long time. I haven't really blogged in a long time but that isn't the point. the point is: I'm back and it feels good. and starting here, one of the places where my blogging got its start, feels fitting and beautiful and like a returning to myself again. so join us here, write in five minutes, and find the beautiful again.

I've missed you all :: I look forward to getting to know all of you again. 

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.

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?}

the guy

i'm not sure how to start this post off. i have a lot to say, so much that it's brimming over and twisting my tongue into knots with the magnitude of how to begin. i feel like whatever i say, no matter how carefully thought out and prepared for your eyes, will fall entirely too short.

it's about this guy. this man i've spoken off in bits and pieces, mostly because he doesn't mind being waiting offstage while i write my soul in the center.

this man i call "husband."

and i'm ashamed to say, i've had the sun in my eyes. too blind to honestly appreciate just how much this man has done for me, and is doing in days of exhausted wife with piled clothes and unwashed plates.

he works in a factory, fifty hours of grind, and still has a volunteer's pager strapped to his belt for when fires start and cars flip over. he works all day, and sometimes late at night when the beeping wakes us both and he grabs for boots with bleary eyes and tousled blonde hair, barely time to press a kiss to my sleeping lips before he's gone out the door to save a life.

now he takes the piled jeans and puts them in the machine, and washes dirty plates and knives when my feet ache too much to stand. and when my stomach churns, he sits outside the door because it makes him sick too. but he does what he can because he doesn't want to leave me alone.

there's late-night runs for grape slushies and onion rings with ranch dressing, and countless nights of sleep disturbed while his wife tosses in discomfort and leaves little room for him in bed with the thousand curving pillows and left-side sleeping.

and still his strong fingers find that one spot in my back and press for relief, and rub my neck and brush my hair. this is man i share a booth with, pancakes and bacon and root beer every Saturday morning. the exhausted man, the hard-working man.

{via pinterest}

the one who kisses my nose and brings home chocolate when he knows i'm overwhelmed. the man who holds me in one arm with the other hand on my stomach, waiting to feel the kicks for himself.

and my daughter carries his genes. oh, how honoured i am to carry the strength of this man's flesh and bone merged with mine to create a whole new tiny warrioress for the world. she is not all me -- she bears more than my feeble strength. she has his too, and i am so glad.

this is the man i'm having a baby with, the one i'm sharing my life with. the one that waited in a white suit with a red rose on his lapel at the end of a long aisle two and a half years ago.

this is my husband. this is my hero.

so the nights will still be long, but he will still tangle his legs with mine and run his fingers through my hair while he rubs my back and waits for a little kick to remind him that he is "daddy."

 he is altogether lovely.

this is my beloved, this is my friend,

    daughters of Jerusalem.

love thyself

{via pinterest}

there's a lot of things we're forbidden to do in this life.

as Christians.
as women.
as breathers.

and it's confusing sometimes. the world whispers love thyself to the broken ones, and then the woman who just learned to love herself is covered in whispers and pointed fingers and lowered glances.

then it's broken all over again and the slices are deeper the second time around.

it is too far a step to say that my Jesus weeps when broken ones break again, especially in His house? He's the one that said come to Me, heavyladen ones. for My burden is light...


this makes me want to stomp the ground until my bruised feet bleed and sob for the unborn one dancing against my skin at night. because in barely a breath's time, i will pass a life through fire and water and blood into this world, and this small life will inhale a world that already is out to destroy.

and my little one will grow into this place of love to hate and love again turned to shredded paper scraps of hate that used to spell a love letter from Heaven to parched ground Earth.

and what they will teach my daughter is clucking tongues and judgemental glares if she doesn't quite fit the mold that my Jesus has already stomped into shards of blood-covered glass the day He spread two arms wide and wailed it is finished.

{via pinterest}

and my son will learn from the school of bloodshot eyes and tear-stained cheeks that gentlemen are dead and gone, and men are fighters and not lovers and silently seated when they should be standing on the chairs and beating the pulse of love and respect.

this breaks me down into a pool for my unborn one, for his wife or her husband, and for the ones that came before and the ones that come after.

i want my child to have the words of precious Sarah as their heartbeat rhythm, that i will one day no longer teach but they will live.

we are thumping along with you, out here in the world [soon], reminding you that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. 

and you have a voice and a reason for being. you have a future and a hope. 

know who you are, small [one], and when you forget, we'll remind you.

:: in which i write a letter... // sarah styles bessey :: 

and so i will find my place on my knees tonight, with the music playing in the background and the candles flickering around the darkened midnight room. heartbeat thudding love yourself, little one. 

because i love you. 

and He does too.