savoring the book {Portals of Water and Wine}

{photo by Emily + Joel}

you have the ability. I push you because I know you can. so go and do. you don't have an excuse. 

I was sixteen, perched in an uncomfortable metal folding chair, my too-heavy backpack leaning against my calves while Jane Austen nestled on the table in front of me. all the other students had left. it was just me and my Literature teacher, her black dress severe as a Bronte sister and her eyes piercing with knowledge.

you don't have an excuse. she tapped the paper in front of me, covered in scrawling red pen. rewrite this. I won't even grade this one. you can do better. so much better. 

and so I did. I wrote. I wrote papers until midnight the day they were due. I read books and underlined and highlighted sections and fiddled with weirdly thick paper from the Barnes and Noble "Classics" section.

I never stopped. even after school was long over and those books were tucked away into the first, and then the second, batch of moving boxes, I never stopped.

and then I wrote a book of my own.

Portals of Water and Wine

{you can find the paperback version here and Goodreads here}

:: :: :: 

Naya lives in chaos. Her family is shredded, with only bare threads of her long-dead mother and her absent father still lingering in her house. And then she hears the name -- Alonthiel -- spoken as a promise of freedom and escape, if only for one fleeting summer. 

And so she goes, hand in hand with her two best friends, allowing herself to slip into a new world of ancient origins, magical and sacred. 

Inside the gates of the hidden Fae city, Naya finds more than she could have ever dreamed. So much is waiting for her: magic, strength, and answers to the secrets kept from her since the death of her mother -- all lingering mere miles from her doorstep.

 But when a dark force threatens to raze her newfound home, leaving only rivers of blood in its wake, she must harness her fire -- or watch Alonthiel fall.

{photo by Emily + Joel}

:: :: :: 

it's been out for eleven days now. honestly, I've been buried in the swirl of book sales and the tummy-lurches of pregnancy's first trimester. that's part of the reason that I haven't shared about the book in these past days since release. 

the other reason? I've been carrying it all in my heart, savoring and treasuring it like Mary did as her growing Son changed her paradigm on a daily basis. 

I wrote a book. I never had any excuses. 

{all the photos in this post were taken at my release party. we were able to record the Google Hangout where I did a short reading/Q&A from the book, which you can watch for yourself right here.}

precipice

{photo by jennifer upton}

I found my word for 2014. and it's a scary one.

normally, I keep this under wraps until right around the end of the month, the end of the year. there's something about that cresting that has always appealed to me. I appreciate symmetry, waiting for the start of the end to speak about what word is to come. but this year, this year is different.

this year is a big one.

it's been building, this strange activity that I started just for fun. I had no idea that He would use it to change me, shape me in such a powerful way. how could I have known? it was just a clever pastime, something everyone was doing.

in 2012, it was brave, that word I now use far more freely than I ever imagined I would. but He heard me and whispered, brave you will be, dearheart. but it must be built. 2012  was a year of expectancy, of pregnancy, of birthing, of pain and sickness and surgical knives. it was the year of delivery. it was the year of motherhood.  

then came 2013, and with it, came release. I remember wondering, why this word, and thinking of what it could mean for me. I wanted to be made new. I just forgot that Holy fire was often involved. it brought me the first year of my daughter's life, the loss of a dream house and the finding of another. it showed me that I'd forgotten how powerful grief could be as I mourned the death of one grandmother and brain cancer in another.

now 2014 is right around the corner, and it's breathing soft down my neck. it's not stalking me, it's not threatening me. but it is making me quiver as it breathes the word straight from the mouth of the Lion, whispering it over my soul.

precipice. 

when I heard the word, curled under a quilt beside the Christmas tree while Survivor played on the television, my everything shook and I wept. there was something overwhelming about this word. simple letters, laid together in order, enough to make me tremble with the power it brings.

{photo by jennifer upton}

first I was brave, brave enough to climb the mountain. and then came the releasing, the start of the shedding, finding what was holding me back and weighing me down. and now I am on the precipice. and as my precious sister Elora spoke to me, prophetess that she is: nothing is holding you back now. you've released everything. now you're free to fall.

I've talked about this birthing before, this cervix-like opening, a Red Sea of blood with my soul as a midwife and the Lion of Judah as a coach at my back. it's standing on the edge of a cliff with the water beneath me. the waves are beating and the rocks are shaking and my footing is a combination of steady and unsure.

I've been shedding, chips of me falling off and splashing into the water. and now, here comes 2014, right around the corner. and my toes have found the very edge.

precipice.

nothing holding me back. I'm free to fall.

anticipating scarcity

{photo by Jennifer Upton

I am vibrating. 

there's really no other description for the way I'm feeling than that. vibrating :: a quivering, a throbbing. it's more than just anticipation. in a sense, it's an overwhelming soul-tremor. 

this season is a cracking. it's foreshadowing of the next season of Holiness, for the breaking and bleeding and the tearing from top to bottom. there will be an earthquake then, too, as angel feet brush against stone. it's an opening in the darkest of places. it's a springing forth in complete darkness. 

there's a reason this is my favourite time of year. it's the time of the year where the darkness is not only expected, it's accepted. there's a word that flutters around the December page on the calender :: scarcity.

but then, that's been a theme over the entirety of 2013. a thousand things happened this year, things that filled me with more conflicting emotions than I thought a person could contain without exploding. there was grief so great it threw me on the ground, there was euphoria beyond my wildest
imaginings. there was loss and love and a mighty settling. but there was a scarcity.

a scarcity of knowing. 

there was peace, even amid the tremors. but there was barely any sort of knowing. and honestly? I'm not expecting 2014 to have any more knowing within it than 2013. I stepped into 1/1/2013 with a word on my tongue: release. and oh, every time I take a word, I wait for the impact. it always comes. and this year was no exception.

{photo by Jennifer Upton}

there was so much releasing. there were times that the letting go was pried from my tightly clenched fingers. I did not want to let go off the house that I was sure was the perfect one, my magic purple dream house tucked in the woods. I didn't want to let my grandmother go, but then, I didn't have a choice on that one, either.

but then, He was a table-toppler. He didn't come to settle into a corner with a cluster of lambs gathered around His feet. He came to stand in the gap, to stretch His arms out and shake things up. but He came in silence, first.

it's so appropriate that we end the year on this Savior-coming note. this Advent, this expectation. that's how every single year ends, wrapping its arms around us and crooning gentle against the ears of our souls.

yes, things will be scarce. and there will be such weeping, and such shouting, and such laughter, and such brokenness that you fear you will never stand again. but breathe, dearheart. there will always be air. and there will always be Me.

my word for 2014 :: it's coming, slowly. it'll be here when it needs to be. things never happen the same way twice. but there will be scarcity, this I know. and maybe it's time that I sat in the light of a candle, incense smoke swirling, and allowed it to settle here with me.

there is a scarcity of knowing. 

but never a scarcity of promise. 

permission to not be a Christian anymore {page six}

{photo via dramaticelegance}

i've been sitting on what to write in this post for more than a week. i was so excited when i wrote my last post, so excited about my own bravery to share pieces of my story, that i wanted to share more and more and more. and then the brave went away, and i sat in all the silence. 

because i've come to a realization over the past several months. it's something beyond what i ever thought i would acknowledge :: something i never thought i'd be brave enough to say. 

i can't be a Christian anymore. i just can't.

and i know those words cause a certain level of discomfort to billow up in the stomach of those Christians who read them. there's something that sits wrong, the instinct to grip me by the shoulders and say, no, wait, no, don't say that. that's not right. don't do that. don't say that. 

but before you throw a rock at me, ask me what i mean. ask me what i'm giving up. because honestly, it's not Jesus that i'm giving up. not by a long shot. i refuse to give Him up. 

but i'm giving up my supposed white robes and taking the Israeli dirt covered one instead. i'm spending time with the unclean ones instead of the ones that whisper. and I'm picking up the lame ones that the Church has hobbled one too many times. because i feel like the Church is locked in this childish game, the one where fingers grasp an arm and connect hand to face over and over with the chant, stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself. 

and then they wonder why the bruised ones don't return.

it makes me cry, hard and long, a keening wail into the night. i feel so like Him in these moments, screaming, oh God my God, why have You forsaken me? because i feel so alone, like i have love smeared all over my hands but everyone else is afraid to get the stains on them.

it's that word, that strange word that has become so warped and twisted. they will know us by our love. it's written there, in black and white. but why do they know us by all the things we hate? the laundry list of the things Christians won't touch is too long. it's like whiplash, what i'm allowed to eat or drink, where i'm allowed to shop. because we should be making a stand, right? they should know that we don't give money toward this and that and the other thing.

but instead, i'm closing my eyes on the deck of the ship, and i can hear the roaring of a dragon. it's me, with scales on the ground and skin ripped and bleeding. and He has claws and eyes...piercing, calm, quiet eyes. and He's tearing, and rending, and gashing, and i'm getting smaller and smaller and smaller still.

{via pinterest

the point of being with Jesus is not to be made bigger. the point isn't to be seen on the streetcorners with signs of broken bloody babies and screeching murderer into broken lives. the point isn't to grasp the arms of the ones with rainbows on their cheeks and glare into their eyes to make sure they know that they're sinners and we hate them.

and people on the street are catching my arm. do you know Him? do you know Him? and i say no, i don't. but He knows me. and He knew me before i was the Christian definition of desirable. He knew me when they dragged me out and flung me in the dirt. and He wrote in the dirt and they walked away in silence. He knows me. 

i'm tired. i'm so tired of being forced to act like i know Him, all of Him, every in and out and twist and turn of this thing called Christianity. if this is what Christianity is, then that's not a title i claim. i claim one thing, and one thing only.

i'm still thrashing. but i claim Him.
and He claims me.

the elephant in the room

{via pinterest}

i want to talk about elephants.

there's something about them {as anyone who follows me on instagram will notice} that captivates me. i've started to notice this metaphorical parade of these creatures following me, never too far behind. people ask me all the time, why elephants? what do they mean? and my answer has shyly, sheepishly been :: i don't know.

i hate not knowing. really, it's one of those things that i struggle with the most. my favourite question is "why?" and i ask it perhaps more than i should. i want to know why, i want to know what. i just want to know. and so when these elephants began to appear in my life, stepping into my path one at a time, i wanted to know why.

and then i found a secret message, tucked in-between words gifted to my heart from my dearheart friend Teresa. and the rest came in a Lion's-breath whisper straight into my very soul.

:: it's okay to quiver. baby {elephant} steps count. 

fear. oh fear. it's the elephant in the room, to use the cliche. it's the thing we aren't supposed to do, but the one with the deepest-sinking claws. and it buries itself in and snarls and refuses to let go. and i'm holding out my hand, begging and pleading for Him to take it away, but then He reaches out and i jerk back my hand. i'm afraid to let go of the fear.

{from my own art journal. photo by dramaticelegance}

and those elephants, so big and bold and strong enough to even take on a lion in the wild, quiver in fear at the sight of something whiskered-small. they have fear too, these mighty things.

i've started to realize more and more, as i reach in and take hold of the story deep within me, that there are fear-chains wrapped around each word. it's being held down, tight, doing its level best to keep the Story stiffled. it tried to do it once already. have i forgotten that it failed? the Story ends with broken chains.

and so these elephants follow me, a sweet gentle parade, trunks swaying and nudging my back. and the Lion leads the way, a strange and beautiful party. we're walking, and inside we're quivering a little, because our Guide isn't safe. but oh, is He ever good.

and something is churning deep inside with each light barefoot step of mine, and each plodding waltz of the elephant feet.

i can hear the chains snapping.

a question :: selah cottage

{via pinterest}

today is the birthday of my dearheart soul-sister, Beth. she's having a giveaway over at her place for her precious art awakening e-course, MADE, which begins in four days. my own heart cannot bear the excitement of stepping beside amazing artist-souls and merging in community with them. but there, at her place, she asked a question.

:: what question has been pressing on your heart lately?

we closed on our new home on Monday.

we got in the car after the papers were signed and i cried. i still don't know why. there was a lot of emotion in this entire process, more than i could ever hope to sort out into the neat little piles most prefer when it comes to feelings. i'm okay in my jumble right now.

in the jumble, there comes questions. beautiful, wild, frightening questions that i honestly don't know how to answer. but there is one that comes up and holds my hand, nestles in the crook of my neck and whispers softly,

what are you going to do with what you've been given? 

i've been handed a precious gift. a new space, wide and untouched yet by our hands. we've smeared paint on the walls, covering over the cracks and spaces left by previous owners, changing pale blue and white to dark purple and slate grey. we've carried in cardboard boxes with hand-scrawled words like cookbooks and fragile and DVDs and placed them in each room where they belong.

i've been given a canvas of wood and stone and cement and plaster. now what am i going to do with this space i have been given? it comes back to that word i chose for 2013, before i knew what was coming, before i knew the way this road would feel beneath my feet.

{via pinterest}

// release //

every year i pick a word. and every year it changes me, powerfully, in a sweeping strange way that i can only equate to fingers dipped into paint and spread wide to change the very depths of my soul, as though a wall needed repainting. 

and so i'm packing up each thing i own, shaking off the old dust and leaving in this place. i don't want to take it with me to this new place. what am i going to do with what i've been given?

i'm going to release the old. i'm going to smear the new on my canvas, dipped straight from my soul. i'm hanging the portrait of the Dawn Treader on the bedroom wall and whispering close, Aslan, Aslan, Aslan...

we named our new home selah cottage :: the little home of peace. and that's what i want to find there. i want to reach out my hands, open and waiting, and let the Peace beyond all i can know rain down and fill me up. i'm laying down art here. i'm making an altar, a monument to Glory, in the selah of my new space. 

i'm being made new. 

You make me new

You are making me new

You make beautiful things out of us. 

{beautiful things :: gungor}

unsanitized sanctuary

{via pinterest}

i'm a watcher.

when i go places, i find a corner in which to tuck myself and i start to gaze. not awkward staring, but secret studying from under long, dark lashes. it's an art, studying the world, perhaps the most education of behaviors.

:: because you learn about yourself when you look at the mirror of another's eyes.

this is why community is so important, perhaps more important than this thing of too many words, too much sentiment that trails off and runs into trivialities when we stop paying true attention. i think this is why this concept of {wild}erness appeals to me in such a soul-thudding way. it's more than just a metaphorical landscape. it's a place where the soul wanders and wrestles and clings tight.

it's amazing how many of us are holding hands, taking step after step through the wilderness together, one made of pines and one made of sand and another made of barren stone. but we're all there together.

if you have a deep scar, that is a door.

if you have an old, old story, that is a door.  

if you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door.

:: Clarissa Pinkola Estés

we've crafted a place together, a worn and rugged sanctuary with water for washing and shelter from our individual storms. our mermaid cave with bit of preciousness, our hunting shack in the midst of the mountains. and there in the middle is a burning fire and blankets knitted to fit each of our souls, a perfect match of blue and green and white and cranberry red.

it's comforting when the world is trying to twist and turn and wipe every germ of "unclean, unclean" from the surface of faith.

why is the world obsessed with taming faith? even in the ruggedness of the mountain wilderness, somehow we always seem to pack hand sanitizer to spray all over everything, including the body of the Most High. 

{via pinterest}

we wouldn't want to get blood on the sofa. 

but He was the One that bent with a towel around His waist to wash our feet with a soft murmur of follow Me. 

there's a painted wooden sign that sits on the wooded island across the river from my sacred hideaway. i can't ever see what it says, but i like to imagine :: warning, wildness beyond this point. and outside this special sanctuary, i see a sign just like that one. 

caution :: wildness ahead

it seems to fit. He's not a tame Lion, and i want to be like Him.

so i'm curled around the fire with sisters all around in our church in the wild, a sanctuary together. and the Lion is singing a wild song to the stars.

:: in which i'm Tangled up in Brave-ry

{via pinterest}

{over the next several weeks, maybe even months, i will be writing here and there from elora's thirty days of prompts. this is something that i have never done before, something raw and fresh and gorgeous and potentially painful. so please, be gentle with me. you can find all posts i have written from these prompts here}

every time i breathe, i am reminded what is like to be a woman in this day. every time i put my toes outside my own little circle, i find myself attempting to be swallowed by this creature that is confusion.

it's why i have so deeply adopted release as my precious word for 2013, and why it has been so hard to live the words i speak. or, in this case, type. more often than not, i feel like my soul competes for a place against the modern definition of "sense." in faith, in life, in motherhood, in the very essence of womanhood itself.

i found a poem someone anonymous had left with magnets on the bookshelf at the library today, as i sat and pondered being a woman, being a mother to a little dove-daughter who has woman brewing at her core. it fit, deeply, like a puzzle piece locking in a secret sacred place within my heart ::

worship Light through enormous shadow

rain, mist, storm will be

swim above

never beneath

dream

drive on

smoothly

luscious life can shine

:: author unknown, and they want it that way :: 

i sat with my little one today and watched Tangled. and sometimes we watch Brave and sometimes it's Beauty and the Beast. they're tales of princesses and true love and beautiful dresses, and people beat down my soul-doors and cry, how can you stand strong as woman but embrace fluffy dresses and princes on white horses?

did you know it's possible to acknowledge love and still embrace myself? because we all need someone, after all, and it's okay to have a bow and arrow in your back pocket but still look out the window and whisper, someday...

warrioresses have two hands, one for the bow and one for the Words.

{via pinterest}

:: but needing a warmth to curl against when the nights are cold doesn't make you a traitor to strength or a backstabber to progress. it makes you created with God-breath in your lungs.

because we all know He spoke truth when He murmured like breeze among Eden's leaves, it is not good that {s}he should be alone. 

and sometimes we just need to sketch the solar system on our palms and look down and realize that we are held in more than ink and skin but in Light and Breath from the lungs of Glory.

it's okay to release what you think you know and turn your neck so that you look behind you just to make sure that the Breath will carry you when you take that step off the cliff. and maybe you have to build your wings on the way down using the string from your bow and the feathers from your arrows.

but you're still warrioress.

vespers in the wild :: uncensoring glory

{photo property of dramaticelegance}

my soul and i had vespers in the rain tonight beside the river with the Most High. the funny thing is that i didn't even know what to call the moment. and then came the word into my soul, gentle but strange.

vespers. an evening prayer service. 

and we hummed a gentle song to the splash of water-drops on the surface of the water, a song i've whispered familiar since the day i first dared to touch, even before i knew what it was. we had church together, me nestled at His feet, the rain tapping out the hymn-rhythm

what wondrous love is this

oh my soul, oh my soul

all i wanted to do was press my face into the sandy soil. even now, sitting here in my space, sky darkening and stars rising on the other side of the windowpane, i yearn to lean up and brush my cheek against His palm. 

why do we only think that God is in a building, tucked among supposed "sacredness," confined in a neat-pressed suit in the front row? He isn't a tame Lion. what is our obsession with caging God? 

the sky is big, but He's bigger, and He made it string by string. the Lord of Heaven was humble enough to spin threads into skeins, weaving chords into fabric, tossed out wide and streaked with His own brand of love-paint. 

:: why must we make Him fit our tiny space? 

{via pinterest}

we debate heatedly between unforseen and sloppy wet, back and forth as though all salvation depended upon words in a song that mean nothing when we should be in wondrous soul-gasping at oh, how He loves us, oh...

we shut the door on His story and tie a muzzle around the mouth of the Lion of Judah because the words He speaks aren't the ones that sit smooth. milk is cool and simple, nothing complex, nothing wild. and so we pour out the Blood behind the bushes and pass the milk-filled chalice around. it's easier to swallow. 

we censor glory to fit our mouths and shut the lid on Light when it's just too bright without sunglasses, and we left ours at home. He is Light without a spotlight or a pulpit or a podium to make His space appropriate. 

He is where His are.

and so i'm going to have vespers in the wild, tucked in the moments between His every breath. i'm diving into His space, the ocean of His glory, and letting Him shed away my snakeskin for a sacred-Lioness mane and a mermaid tail.

what do i know of You who spoke me into motion? 

where have i even stood but the shore along Your ocean? 

what do i know of holy // addison road

craving space

i am craving my own space.

ever since we lost the dream house, the place in which we are tucked now has seemed to slowly be closing in around me. it's begun to feel smaller than it every had before.

i find myself sitting at the kitchen table with my art, merging paint and canvas with dishes and bank statements. it is not my space, it is collective space but not in a communal artist way. it in shared in a life way, a way that doesn't ever stop but simply moves around me. and sometimes, it feels like it is slowly pushing my artistic spirit down the nearby garbage disposal.

mermaids crave the ocean, the wide and the open, the salty spray and the peace of the selah-crashing waves. i am landlocked, in more ways that one, with the nearest water being bottled and chilling in the fridge.

and maybe that is why i have grieved the loss of this house so deeply, in a way that almost seems like a part of my physical self had fled. it has been a rending, a true exploration into that word that has become far stronger than i could have ever anticipated :: release. 

art has become something powerfully present in my life in recent months, especially as my own faith journey has taken unexpected twists and turns. it's that demolition, as my husband calls it, the breaking down of all i once knew save for the foundation of the Lion to whose shimmering mane i cling. i'm relearning the sacred, finding my soft Psalmist voice again. it's release. 

:: and even in the crush, releasing myself might be part of the grand scheme of the things after all. 

because i'm past the point of being able to find a corner of my own in this tiny little place we currently and i reluctantly call home. though home is where your heart is, and my loves are here. so this is home. i am creating in the midst of our life, where the Light shares between my ink and paper pages and the aromas of home-cooked food and laundry soap.

and so i'm laying out the brushes and opening the journal, a new blank page in the middle of my worship place at the kitchen table. i light a candle and exhale the holiest of God-Light to the tune of stillness in the midst of the household busyness. i'm learning how to find my warrioress self amid the pulsing thrum of vacuums and pasta water boiling.

finding my space which i crave so desperately.
even if it means this mermaid swims {for now} in the kitchen sink.

{linking with dear emily for imperfect prose}

that wailing rhythm

the rhythm is a funny thing. it's an entity of its own. can't you hear it, thudding and pulsing slow below your skin, that gentle thumping by which our bodies sway?

there's one in the air, too. i can feel it, the rhythm of thunder crashing and lightning answering back in brilliance of light. it's majestic and strange and powerful. i don't think i understand it fully...will i ever?

life is a rhythm, one of those things that isn't really composed with ink and pen on paper. i wish it was, because my words seem paltry to sum up the inhale-exhale that seems to make up every second of every day until the day it just doesn't anymore.

:: but apparently vulnerability is the rhythm i needed to find. 

the very night after i wrote about releasing, we were struck with a strange sort of loss. we had been chasing a dream, a purple house tucked into a grove of green countryside and garden mermaid groves. and we had it, right there in the curve of our fingertips, and then it was gone, because that's how real estate works.

and i wailed. // oh, that wail. 

see, i write about the Lion's song a lot. it's a melody that hums beneath my skin and courses through my body like blood and electricity wedded together in the strangest and holiest of matrimony. i can hear it, that low growling hum to which my feet have found a rhythm to stamp and my lungs have found notes to cry and keen.

and yes, sometimes, you have to wail.

sometimes it's all we have to keep us going when everything seems a muddled blur and off-center to the point that even the melody seems to have faded. but there's always that rhythm.

sometimes it's hard to find your original self when everything under the sun has been done. and you watch yourself drumming on the side of your cup with a bamboo stick as the teabag bobs like a ship in the calm, and you wonder, am i in the calm too? 

i had never understood that expression until the day my life stood still and i caught my breath when i raised my hands and begged the moon to stand still over me. Joshua needed the sun to fight, but somewhere, the moon stopped too over some corner of earth.

before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

you must wake up with sorrow.

you must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

:: naomi shihab nye

and perhaps in the calm is a place to catch your breath, when the crush and rush of the world is pulling you right and left and backwards and forwards and pinching off pieces of you until there is nothing left at all.

{via dramaticelegance}

and you need a minute to heal from the scrubbing, so you bury your nose in the tea and you breathe. the poking and the prodding leave fingermarks all over you in shades of invisible bruise, like starry-night constellations that tell a story, something glorious that might heal another when they touch the marks the world left behind.

so weave a crown of blooms from the basket by the door labeled "weeds" and peer up at the world through one-too-many loose tendrils of escaping hair. find the pool, still in the calm, and study the freckles like cinnamon sprinkled over something made with apples and dough and that whisper of love that you don't understand how you can taste, but you can.

and pick up your drum from beside the door and dive into that pool until the bottom becomes the top and out you emerge into glorious Light where the world hums in a fresh newness. and the rhythm of your heart merges with His.

and you and the Lion count the beats together.

// releasing all over again

{via pinterest}

i used to blog every single day.

before the season of my life when i was pregnant with our daughter, i was hitting publish every single day. and it was less because i was prolific, and more because i had a simple selfish goal in mind: i wanted to be famous.

at the time, i was barely out of my teens {which, if you want to be technical, i'm still barely out of my teens} and was shuffling my way around the youth blogging world. and let's be honest, there are some amazing young bloggers out there who are really putting their voices out there.

and of course, i wanted to be just like them. i've wanted to be a famous writer my entire life, and i suppose i thought, if i can't get a book published, i'll put my blog in the limelight instead.

but i lost myself somewhere in that process. i can remember staring at the laptop nearly sobbing with fear :: i don't know what to say. i'm out of words. but i have to write. 

my pregnancy which started out my 2012 spun me for a much needed loop. and down i came from my self-constructed pedestal , striking a lot of rocks on the way down that rocked me to the very core. my husband calls it the demolition. i call it the dark night of the soul. my wrestling with the Most High.

:: it was here that i started to find my voice.


the poet-king wailed his psalms, his poetic voice. and like David, wrapped in a cave in the side of a mountain, i started to strum my soul's strings and things started to come out. scary things, things that intimated me, things that made me want to shut down and give up.

but something told me not to do it, that maybe there was a purpose in this little internet corner that was about more than being famous, that was about reaching out and smearing warpaint on the cheeks of those who needed to know there was more, that they were more....and that they were seen. 

there is a gush of sacred, an embracing of selah, and the screaming wailing war-cry akin to giving birth. because it's a hard process, and it takes incredible strength. and it's okay to reach out, to take the hand of a soul-doula and press your forehead to hers and let it pour.

maybe it's not about the amount of words i can pound out in the space of a week. because i've started to find my groove, less posting but more writing. my word for 2013 was release, a word that i did not fully understand until these past couple months. a word that has been gripping me by the heart and speaking in the voice of the Lion that i adore

:: let. the eff. go. 
release to Me, you lioness.  
because I promise, I have not failed you yet.

and i've started to exhale, feeling all of me unclench and the surrender coming like a broken dam that brings a lot of tears and a lot of clinging to the One who is counting every single drop. the One who is seeing my awakening and is stroking my hair while i let it all go.

the King of Kings is holding back my hair.

and i'm not done yet, not by a long shot. i'm still working on my book, a dream that i have never given up. i have a brand-new jar of warpaint and a beautiful tribe with their hands on my shoulders.

and i'm ready.

:: gentle, gentle

{via pinterest}

 we are not gentle people. we have very heavy feet, and so often, they find their way to treading heedlessly on the dreams of others.

dreams are gentle things. they are big things, even if their keepers have no idea just how wide their wings might spread. they are delicate things, easily broken if they are not given care. it doesn't take much for careless fiddling to pluck each feather from its place and leave them a pile. and then the dreamer must rebuild, if they ever dare again.

there is sweetness deep inside, a kind of fruit worth savouring but so easy to bruise and destroy if we press too hard. and we are not gentle people.

:: but i want to be. 

i've started to focus on my mouth recently. the way my lips form words, the way they open when i inhale. what comes out with the breath, i wonder?

is it Light, radiant and luminescent, whispering Life into each soul that i encounter. or is it too late because my fingers caught the flame and pinched it dark?

because the seekers are met with sideways glances and the wrestling ones are given a wider berth, and the lonely hearts echo like windchimes in a wasteland, an empty beauty that everyone else is missing. and the whispers come, how dare they? they should know better. 

what you held in your hand, 

{photo property of dramaticelegance}

what you counted and carefully saved, 

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness. 

{Naomi Shihab Nye}

and i can't help but look at them and quietly weep because i've been there, just where they are. and maybe i still am, a little bit, because my footing is learning these mountain heights, where the other does leap like grace and i'm still white-knuckled. but i look to my left and to my right and see others there. beautiful ones with half-plucked wings wrapped in linen and eyes so full of soul that it takes my breath away.

this is my tribe, my Love-sisters. and we've made a circle of shoes on the ground where we all sit together, this holy sacred place that hums with hints of Lion's song still so alive in the earth. and we plant our seeds, one beside the other, and watch them lift their boughs to the sky and murmur, He-Who-Sees is here. 

and we hold hands and hum familiar notes that shimmer in the new-breathed air from a Lion's mouth, the place where we have all found ourselves. there is water there, for we are deep-living mermaids with transforming souls. there is fire there, soft and warm to comfort shivering souls. and softly, together, we seek His face.

and we are holding hands and whispering together

gentle, gentle 
:: we are brave

send it off // unafraid

{via pinterest}

i stand amazed in the presence 

of Jesus the Nazarene.

and wonder how He could love me

a sinner condemned unclean.

i've been singing these words all morning, my own private worship service.

see, i've been pouring over my old manuscripts in recent days, repeating to my husband over and over again my goal for this year. i will finish one of those novels, and i will get it printed in fine, smooth paper glory in a tidy stack and i will send it off.

send it off. three little words that can strike a lot of terror into my heart. because i've sent my work off before, eager and excited, only to be greeted with the stilted words of the form letter.

thank you for your interest, but...

and then two became three, and now little fingers pat my cheeks and big blue eyes meet mine all day every day. and spit-up covers first one clean blouse and then two and then i'm down to just my yoga pants and that last black tank-top, and bedtime comes exhausted with no writing done.

and i am left with more time to fear in the silence when he snores and she snuffles and the ceiling tiles number twenty-seven in the dim light from the softly murmuring television set.

there are times i press my hands to bathroom tile while the hot water pours down over my head and masks the tears as God and i share a private moment of anguish because His will is perfect, but oh, it is so hard sometimes to see the road less traveled becoming the one i'm called to take.

:: but oh, the glory.

{my little reader}
photo property of DramaticElegance

because i have so many hands on my shoulders, helping my arms reach upward when i get so very tired and all i want to do is toss the papers like confetti to the wind. and i have soft chubby fingers on my neck and little squeaks in my ears, and reassuring words of the man who pledged eternity to me, and there's soup on the stove and coffee in the pot.

so i'll take the leather bound book and i'll brainstorm while they play together on the floor. and i'll write.

because that's what this year was about. it was about release. letting go of what holds me back, standing strong on what He said and living life free without fear.

send it off, daughter.
let Me show what I can do.

and under my breath, in the silence, i'll stop counting ceiling tiles and chant like a warrior instead

oh, how marvelous
oh, how wonderful
and my song shall ever be...

shattered alabaster

{via pinterest}

we fear brokenness. we fear what comes when we are face down, palms up. we can't see our backs from this position, this place of humility.

and what if someone sees us here? they might whisper, they might talk about how low we have fallen. and whispers hurt, after all; who doesn't know that? 

but He sent them out into the streets to bring us in. the broken, the lame, the blind and the weary. and He brought us in and set us as His table, us broken ones. and He stood still in the crowd and said someone touched Me. 

we forget these stories. they get pushed to the back as we look around and stand shoulder to shoulder with others and stretch to stand on tiptoe to measure up like we think we should. brokenness does not negate the warrioress, but instead it creates glory. 

a phoenix cannot rise until it burns. 
a seed cannot grow without death. 

“God uses broken things...it is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume.

 it is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever." 

:: vance havner

it is something we are taught to fear, taught that we must flee from and hide, that we must scrabble for some token of false strength to save face. do we deign ourselves so great that our Jesus must be broken, but we find shame in this place for ourselves?

the prostitute was the first to find Him in the dawn when the stone had rolled away. those who followed Him were too full to see, but this woman was empty of all but Him. and He said her name, and she knew in a word. this broken vessel, this woman of the night now turned bright as the Son. 

raised to glory, this broken ones.
living in life, these blessed ones.

watching her watching me

{via pinterest}

are you breathing just a little, and calling it life? 

:: mary oliver :: 

it's odd, this thing of breathing. it's the ultimate release, every day a thousand and one seventy, and we don't seem to notice until we suddenly can't catch it anymore. 

and that's what life is. a die-daily, a live freely. 

but sometimes fear takes over and we breathe shallow and live the same way, afraid to put our toes in all the way and get our hair wet and streaked with color. 

there's walking and there's leaping, and there's a way to put a spring in the simple steps. there's a way to live like you're free and not like you're bound. those chains are broken, so stand up straight and dance, why don't you?

i have little eyes that watch me, big blue orbs that follow my every move and light up when i speak. and she sees the way i live. this little life breathes free against my chest every night, grabs my face in chubby fingers and looks deep in ways that only little ones can do. 

{my little seeker, my warrioress in training}
3.5 months 

and she is teaching me freedom to breathe, to squeal at the little things and embrace life. and it's okay to cry heartbroken and not hide behind pursed lips and pressed-together fingers. 

we're dancing in the living room and laughing. and we read the Colour Kittens and she watches my lips with each word. 

that's a reminder to live if there is one. and i'm still unsure, baby steps of my own, living in freedom and light and love and so much grace. 

there is no end to His kingdom, my limitless King. 

releasing here, living here. 

for my little one. 

for me. 

for Him. 

red-lettered lowercase

{via pinterest}

i went back this morning and searched out the first post i ever wrote here sans capital letters. it was a spur of the moment, unstructured piece called ink of wait that i wrote in august of last year.

and i read that little poem and i cried like i did the day i wrote it, i remember. because oh, i wrote free then.

at the top of the blog of my dear friend, emily, there is a quote. thirteen words.

here is the world. beautiful and terrible things will happen. don't be afraid.

:: frederick beuchner :: 

and that quote grips me in the deep places that only me and Jesus can see. because it's more than just letters, after all. 

it's a fist pounding, a battle cry, a step against. because i am tired of the must-dos that Jesus didn't speak. the way the Church takes every word from their mouths and writes it in red, putting words and confinements into His mouth that taste bitter with sorrow and weigh heavy with impossibility. 

and letters are the first step.

i have turned the words of Mumford and Sons into a worship chant, a far-from-whispered battle march. 

awake my soul

awake my soul

awake my soul

you were made to meet your Maker. 

and that is where i live now. 

living in the red of His blood, and the black and white of truth and mercy. awakening to lowercase letters and unfettered freedom. 

:: releasing.  

in which i release

{via pinterest}

i was awake at midnight this year. surrounded by family and friends and so much food and laughter. and at the stroke of 2013, my father in law raised a glass and bowed his head. and in the silence that this prayer brought, Heaven's breath fell on my ear.

and my OneWord365 for 2013 was confirmed.

:: release :: 

to free from confinement, bondage, pain

to let go

i've been striving upward and onward, you see. chasing Aslan's breath before i knew fully what i was chasing. i sought Him, and He sought me. 

but there is luggage. trunks and suitcases, all with labels affixed to them that gnaw and tear at my soul. words like shame and regret and mistakes and broken and guilt. and these are things i know all too well, because i packed them up myself when i started out. and slowly, i have added to them. twenty-two years of neatly folded bundles of brokenness. 

but this is the year for renewal. this is the year for release. the year for freedom. 

back in June, i wrote real beauty // you are not fat. this was the iceberg's tip into the shame and insecurities that i carry back with me from my early years. and now i have a little one, a child with fairy-blue eyes and the strength of a young warrioress with a song to be heard. and i will not allow my shame to crush her light, to bear her down before she has even begun. 

and so i'm leaning over the cliff with suitcase wide open and tears gushing down my face as i scream to the One who knows before i speak

{via pinterest}

You can have it all. 

it's far too heavy for me. 

and i won't deny, i'm afraid. there's a lot there, a lot of unpacking to do. and there's more than just the bad things, you know. there are good things too, lumped in with the rest. there's half-finished canvases smeared with black not-good-enoughs and dreamcatchers smashed and twisted. 

but i'm releasing. and He's going to fix them, restore them. they will be drenched in the blood of the One who broke for my wholeness. 

and i will be made new. 

i don't have time to maintain these regrets when i think about

the way

oh, how He loves

alive underwater

it's a funny thing, this concept of drowning.

to be entirely underwater is a fearful thing on its own. to have the water close over your head and to sink down so low that the sun is a glimmer above your head, and the waves playing the oddest of games with your head.

and then you come up again, dripping and gasping for breath. and then you laugh and do it over again. and it feels like drowning, when your lungs are screaming for air and your eyes are fogged with water and far-away sunbeams and something else...something mysterious that i'm not sure i ever want to figure out entirely.

and it's a fear thing, to let go of the dock and sink when every corner of your mind is screaming

don't let go. 

don't you dare. 

and so we haul ourselves out of the water for dry land instead, preferring the solid turf beneath our feet to the ever-changing waves that could take us down and out of control for even just one second too long. 

and so isn't it funny that He stands on the edge of the pier, holding our hands in His, eyes fixed deep into ours and speaks a message that seems so foreign to our hearts. 

trust Me.

let go. 

you don't dare not to...

and the way to Aslan's Country lies over a river. and it lies below the surface of the darkest of pools with no bottom to speak of...

and it takes so much bravery to just dive right in. and to get there, you have to let the waves sweep over you and 

and He whispers

die with Me. 

die to live. die to self, arise in Me. 

and then we arise from the bottom of the sea, dripping wet and pouring glory from head to toe, hand in nail-scarred hand. the dove wings brush against my cheek, and the Voice from Heaven speaks a roar in my soul.

this is My beloved Son. 

in Him, I am well pleased. 

and He's holding my hand. 

relevant

five minute fridays. we write for five, and only five, minutes. no editing, no overthinking, no backtracking. linking up with the gypsy mama.

the word

RELEVANT

now GO...

i crave relevance. i ache to have a place of here and now in this world. where my past has blended into shadow and is no longer haunting my every step with its pack of has-been lies. 

i tend to place relevant and authentic on the same level. because how can we stand in a place of relevance to the world if we are not being authentic with Truth and Light? 

relevant means pertinent, connected to the matter at hand. 

authentic means real, not falsified. 

so you see how they must go together?

so many of my precious blogger friends are doing just that this weekend. they are wrapped up together in a place of relevant, authentic love and community. 


this place of sharing and precious connection where only computer screens had joined before. 

and i won't lie in that i envy them this. i wish i could be there with them, finding my corner of community with this thing that can feel so aloof at times. 

but i know i am here in my relevant place, where i need to be for such a time as this.

maybe someday, in another year, i will join them in their place. 

 i am not with this community now, but i am here. 

still authentic, still honest, still raw, and still craving this touch of relevance.