unarmed toy solider {listen + doctor who}

at the time in which I write this post, a brand-new episode of Doctor Who aired last night. due to the fact that I have a teething two-year-old + was given the chance to escape with the husband for a private night out as an early 24th birthday celebration, I wasn't able to watch it until this afternoon.

the episode's title? Listen. 
the topic? Fear. 

it found me where I was at, sitting on the floor with my toddler climbing over my shoulders like a jungle gym and my husband groggy and headachy from late nights and little sleep. it found me, this fifty minute episode of a supremely wonderful and nerdy British television show. it found me in the wake of personal upheaval and messy {more than slightly broken} community.

so listen. if you listen to anything else, listen to this. 
you’re always gonna be afraid even if you learn to hide it. fear is like a companion, a constant companion, always there. 
but that’s okay because fear can bring us together. 
fear can bring you home
{Doctor Who, Listen}

you don't have to be a fan of this show to wrap your fingers around the truth found in the above quote. fear is an ever-present companion. there is fear of the unknown. fear of the known. fear of failing, fear of succeeding. fear of breaking down. fear of losing what you have. fear of not being good enough. fear of being too good. 

fear of being, maybe. 

the list. oh, it seems to go ever on and on. and right now, I'm finding myself standing in one of those fear-spaces. some might call it a dark night of the soul {or a dark month of the soul, in my case}. some might call it doubt. or questioning. even thrashing. I'm really good at thrashing these days. 

but listen. if you listen to anything else, listen to this. 

in the aforementioned episode, a gun-less toy solider stands watch over a frightened child. and I can't help but reach out and wrap my fingers around this metaphor of plastic until man-made and God-made are practically fused as one. because there is something so holy about this idea of the unarmed solider standing guard. no weapons forged by man, but fierce. 

{a Lion needs no weapons. it is one.} 

do you see?

so listen, beloved. listen well. 

perfect love, the kind that lays down unarmed with arms spread wide, casts out fear. perfect love, the beaten and bloody epitome of Holiness, casts out fear. 

perfect love stands guard. 

the blessing of more

{via pinterest}

"can you show me the sign?"

my own words hit me in the face as I asked my toddler daughter to recreate the ASL word for "more," tapping her tiny fingertips against one another. she was asking for another cracker, another drink of water. we've been teaching her these simple little signs since she was barely old enough to hold up her head on her own. and now here, as we approach the second year of her life in a matter of weeks, she still knows every gesture.

please. thank you. milk. more. 

that last one still takes my breath away.
let me tell you why.

::

I remember seeing her, sitting casually on a too-tall barstool, her tattoos clearly visible, her blonde hair fresh with pink and purple streaks. she looked like a vision of everything I wanted to be. there was about fifteen of us gathered around her, listening to her speak over us.

her words caught me off-guard.

I want you all to see me as more than just the founder, more than your coach, more than a published author. I want you to see me as more than just that. see me as me, okay? 

the concept was so foreign. it didn't feel right. surely she misspoke. because how could any of us do that? she was all these amazing things, this powerhouse badass of a woman who had come up gasping from grief + destruction + hardship. she was a phoenix. how could I see her as "just her"? that was a disservice to her greatness.

wasn't it?

and this thing of her -- just her -- being more. I didn't understand it.

except then I sat down on the couch with her and looked into her eyes.

// how are you? 
// how are you? 
// how are you?

and then it started to click.

::

"can you show me the sign?"

that simple little phrase knocked me back. as I watched my daughter's baby fingers form that word in the chaos of my lunchtime kitchen, I found myself breathing a blessing over her.

you are more, Daughter of Eve. 

you are allowed to ask for more

and that more is you. 

you are Lion-breathed, filled with wild Holy breath from the lungs of the Most High

what more does anyone need but 

just simply you? 

dwell in your muchness, your more-ness. 

oh my daughter, accept the blessing of more. 

for when there aren't many words left {#Furgeson}

{via pinterest}

as far as Ferguson goes, I've been silent. 

I mean that as literally as you can get. nothing on social media. not my Facebook or my Twitter or my Instagram or my blog. nothing. period. 

silence. 

and that, for me, is odd. there are very few social issues that leave me at a loss for words. this one, however, has done exactly that. 

I am at a loss for words. 

let me be very clear here :: I have not been silent because I am white. I have not been silent because I have an unpopular opinion. I have not been silent because I am afraid. 

I have been silent because it has been one of those moments where you are confronted with something so overwhelming that it leaves nothing behind. there have been so many amazing words shared already. {you can find a couple fantastic and powerfully gentle posts here and here.} there have been arguments on both sides, strong words flung and feet planted into the dirt. the Internet is good at controversy, after all. 

what could I possibly say? wouldn't I only be adding to the noise?

because let's be honest :: there's been a lot of noise. madness. tumult. 

all I can do is pray. 

and that's pretty much exactly what I'm going to do here. 

:: 

oh God. 

bring peace. 

oh Lord,

bring comfort. 

oh Jesus. oh sweet Jesus. 

bring clarity. 

Spirit of the living God,

fall fresh. 

oh Lion, 

breathe. 

oh mighty Father, 

sustain. 

selah. selah. selah. 

krispie treats + grief

I'm grieving.

which conversely means that I'm in the kitchen a lot.

it's a thing I've always done. cooking is a sign of the placement of my emotional barometer. when I'm feeling things strongly, I bake and cook until the kitchen overflows and counters brim with goodness.

my grandmother is standing on the edge between earth's shallow pale and the glittering Holiness that is Aslan's Country. and she's ready to make the leap. and so we wait, wait for the appointed time.

I don't like to talk about grief. I really don't.
so I'll talk about Rice Krispie treats instead.

I'll talk about the way I stirred the melting marshmallows and butter together without thinking, a groove into which I fell so easily. because that's grief. it happens without thinking. it just comes and falls heavy and you find yourself doing the dance without understanding the steps. you just do.

I'll talk about the way I usually don't butter the pan, but this time, I did. because that's grief. you can't predict how you'll handle it, or if it'll be the same as it was last time or next time or the times before and after. when you find yourself bowing against it, you grieve your way. not his way or her way or your mother's way. you pour out in your own stream. no one else's.

I'll talk about the way I flung butter with my fingertips instead of neatly with a spatula. normally, cooking is tidy intricacies for me. little steps by little steps. but this time, it was just a little sloppy. a little haphazard. because that's grief. it's not tidy or ordained. we can try to make it that way, but it really isn't. it's greasy and slippery and creeps up your elbows and clings to everything it touches.

{via pinterest}

I'll talk about the way I burned my hand on the still-too-hot mixture of cereal and vanilla-aroma'd sticky goodness that poured from pot to pan. because that, that is grief. it hurts. even if you don't want it to, even if it was an accident and you would just rather not hurt at all no oh god no not even a little please...

grief hurts.

and I'll talk about the way it fell into the pan and filled in all the gaps. the way I used my hands, again, slathered in butter over the knuckles and over the little pale crease where my wedding ring normally sits. because that's grief. sometimes you just have to let yourself be buried in it, just a little, where you can still see yourself through the thin sheer coating that slips over your life. your hands are still there. just covered.

and then I'll tell you about the promise of deliciousness. I'll tell you about the way it seeps into my body through my tastebuds and fills me up with the knowledge that soon there will be treats. soon there will be sweetness. but there was burning and slathering and mixing and aching and weeping so that this particular pan of Rice Krispie treats might have a tinge of salt mixed in among the goodness.

because I know the ending. and oh, it hurts so bad that everything burns. but there is a promise. a whisper of what it will taste like when the door opens and I see it all, so clear and plain.

oh death, where is thy sting?
oh grave, where then is thy victory? 

dear Focus on the Family, Fantine was a prostitute.

{via pinterest}

dear Focus on the Family,

I want to ask you about shame. I want to ask you about the way you dug your hands into a big pail of soapy water and scrubbed away at the dirt that is humanity.

and then I will press the play button on that ancient cassette player and let you listen to the words you wrote down on a piece of paper and handed to a woman to read as she voiced the role of Fatine in your radio drama recording of Les Miserables. 

and then I want to ask you more about Fantine. they called her a prostitute in that alley and she was appalled. you could hear it in her voice, the way she spit the last syllable of her accused profession. "I am not a prostitute," she snaps.

except she was. and you changed it.

did you think you were doing her a favor, tidying her up and making her presentable for the hordes of Christian listeners that would be gathering around their listening devices with their children and their grandparents. did you want to make it easy for them not to answer questions from inquiring little mouths :: daddy, what's a prostitute? 

but really, you did Fatine a disservice. and in the process, you did us all one, too.

Van Jean saves her, gathers her fever-riddled body into his arms, vows to tend to her little girl. the story is beautiful, yes. but it was beautiful the way it was. in fact, it was better before you changed this important detail. 

she is worthy of saving because of her humanity. does supposed morality make her worthy somehow? does her profession of sex worker make her less allowable? or does it make you uncomfortable? that idea that Jean Val Jean, Prisoner 24601, gathers into his arms the body of a woman who has slept with countless men for the money they press into her palm -- does it make you clear your throat and side-step the issue?

{via pinterest}

obviously it does. because you took it away. you made her fragile and moral, a newly made virginal woman with a child from long-repented sin, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

what then do you do with this Man, Jesus, as he reached out his hands to the naked woman flung into the dirt with pointed fingers from Pharisees? will you scrub her clean, too, until she is covered from neck to toes with a cloak and pretend no one knows what's underneath?

to love another person is to see the face of God. 

{les miserables}

because when you take away Fantine being a prostitute, you take away the Gospel-glory that clings to the edges of everything. you take away the holy breathing of the One who speaks Life over the gory and the broken and the smelly and the base. He takes the sh***y and pitches His tent there.

so, Focus on the Family, Fantine was a prostitute.
and the glory in that is immeasurable.

the silent-growing green

today I cracked eggs into a bowl and blended them with milk and garlic powder and hand-cracked black pepper from my own little grinder. the jagged little lines on the edge of the broken eggshells are as tidy as I've been lately.

expected sharp edges.

today I climbed on my hands and knees under my art table set up kitty-corner from the washer and the drier and picked up little pieces of torn cloth and ripped paper and matchsticks and little boxes of laundry detergent. the mess is where I've been at lately.

it felt good to tidy it up.

:: ::

sometimes i think we get lost, as writers. we find a goal and pound toward it, head down and jaw set. at least, that's how it is for me.

and it's so easy to get lost in the words and the ever-rising word count and let my own story get lost completely in the haze. my fictional self is the kind that delves deeply into worlds made from scratch. and when I sink my fingers in, I let the story ooze all around and fill in all the spaces that aren't made from flesh and bone and blood and skin and family ties. that's how it works in my head.

other spaces become quieter. I used to think it was me dropping the ball, letting my blog fall slack. now I realize that it's an expectant hush.

a friend of mine asked the other day, is it okay if I still write books even if my blog has quieted down? the answers were resounding. do you. yes. oh yes. 

I wasn't the one that asked the original question. but I've been asking it for a long time. and I've been getting lost in this story of mine. I couldn't help but wonder, is this a bad thing? to turn my focus toward my book and my family and let my internet voice fade a little bit? 

there are writers that fill the internet, voice after voice after ringing chiming voice. they seem to be doing all the things, filling up pages upon pages of books and tending to their little wild ones and loving their spouses and writing blog posts on the regular.


but they aren't me, are they? and they aren't you.

:: ::

I talk about the wave a lot. that wave that separates Earth from Aslan's County, the one that crests and hides and then dips just enough for a sneak peak of what is to come. and sometimes I feel like I'm surfing that glorious wave. I can taste the salt.

I'm writing my book. still plodding on, adding pages and paragraphs, watching the word-count go up and feeling the excited prickle as things fall into place in the story that my dreams wove and my mind is baking from scratch like a new muffin recipe. I have no idea how it's going to turn out in the end. but I know that I can bake, and I know that it smells amazing.

so I'm on that wave. and yes, this place has fallen quiet, waiting in eagerness for the next wave to come. there are nights I sit in the darkness of my house at my desk with my candle flickering and the aroma of incense filling my nose as I compose just one more set of a thousand words. and I'm basking in the holy ground that is this particular kind of creation.

:: ::

today I went outside in my bare feet with grass between my toes to scrape away dead leaves and sticks and growing maple seed trees away from the roots of my hearty little rose bush.

it felt good to see the silent-growing green.

and that's where I'm at right now. I'm cresting a wave and catching just a glimpse of what lies on the other side. I'm feeling Holy Ground at my feet and my sides and my back. it's glorious, loves. and it's so frightening and so new and there are days when I cry a lot and swear that I cannot do this.

but then I get back up and I feel that salt water splash in my face. and I know. this is my place. this is my calling, where the God who sees me has shifted Heaven and Earth to place me. He shed precious crimson blood to dye a thread to hang in this window.

here is where I want you. 
come dwell here. come write here.
with Me. 

keep your eyes open for the silent-growing green.

to a writer, for the moments

{my writing space}

for the moments when your words are few

run your fingers over the words you already have

for the moments when your words are flowing

let them pour hydration over your soul like ocean waves 

for the moments when you are broken down

carefully grasp the pieces and tuck them away

for the moments when holiness feels close, so close

reach out your fingers and accept the permission to touch the Word made Flesh. 

for the moments when you feel deflated

open your lungs and remember what oxygen tastes like. 

for the moments when you feel like dancing

spit out the fear and let your hips and soul move like one

for the moments when you feel like your flame is guttering

reach in the fire and remember what makes you burn.

feel the rumble in your bones. rise up, holy twigs animated by Glory and soul and oxygen. you have breath in you, even when it feels twisted out.

rise up, bones and skin and pumping blood and unseen glowing soul. you are aching and sore because you are working further up and further in. keep on. feel the rumble.

:: you are nearly there.

for when you're the {literary} odd one out

it's hard when you feel like the odd one out, when you feel like you're surrounded by people all doing one thing, all focusing their energy into something that is the exact opposite of "your thing." right now, I'm surrounded by memoirs. I'm seeing book after book moving from the hands of my friends and fellow bloggers and landing on bookstore shelves.

and it's hard when I feel like the odd one out, standing in the corner with my dragons and my faeries and my portals made of water and wine and looking glasses and I wonder, what am I doing? really. what am I doing?

I've talked about this before. I've talked about being the blogger that hasn't written a book. I've talked about my resolution to write a book in 2014. both of these are edging their way into my soul again, but in a completely different way. see, my word for this year is precipice, this thing of standing on the edge of a cliff. everything's been shed, and now I'm free to jump. right? 

maybe not. 

because I'm the blogger who writes fiction. I'm the blogger that can't seem to make memoir come out right, the one that watches beautiful personal stories flow from the hands of the ones I love and call "friend" and "inspiration" and "brother" and "sister." and I'm the blogger who, up until today, was planning on giving up fiction entirely.

it's burned me, this thing of writing magic and make-believe and inventing worlds and people from the recesses of my mind. February was a hard month for me, a month of feeling more and more drained away from the fictional calling that I've felt since I was four years old. it left me feeling silly, fragile, like a little girl who watches the butterflies flit from flower to flower, gluing wings to her back and then nursing a broken leg from her plunge from the roof of the garage. 

I might have never taken a literal top-of-roof plunge. but my soul has done it and it landed in the flowerbed hard enough to crack. it made me want to quit, to hang up my fictional scarf and don the far more practical garb of non-fiction author. this is my vulnerable, somehow, more than writing accounts of my own life. I don't know how that works :: I would explain it, if I could. 

I have a tattoo on my leg, a quill pen and flowing words :: we are all stories in the end. and it's funny that I've wanted to quit with this thing of stories inked deep into my flesh. I'm starting to realize that maybe my stories aren't the ones that match the rest of the blogging set. maybe I need to start my own set with my own pieces. my stories could open wardrobe doors. 

I'm not quitting. I can't take credit for that, not even a little bit. it's because my husband has his own sweetly blunt way of telling his wife to write though the spastic ramblings on the other end of the phone. it's because my thinker best friend spent forty-five minutes on the phone talking me out of tearing out the pages and burning them. it's because my tribe rallied around me and breathed life back into my words. 

it's because the Lion is holding me mid-air with His breath. not falling, but flying. 

so yes, I'm still writing a book in 2014. I'm still rallying around my words, or at least, I'm trying. they're just not the same words as everyone else. I'm not standing in the corner alone with my dragons and my faeries and my portals. not anymore. 

I'm stepping out and extending my hand. 

hi. I'm a writer. I write fiction. 

barbed wire snapping song

{photo by Elora Ramirez}

we live in a world of barbed wire fences.

we're pressing flesh against sharp points and rough edges. we're desperate enough for touch, for connection, for community, that we are willing to endure the slicing and the bleeding and the tetanus-created lockjaw of silence. and it's all for the sake of being touched.

and here I am, in my home with the hardwood floors and the windows that face the East with the sun flowing in, humming Children of the Heavenly Father with tears in my eyes. because this can't be what He meant when He breathed His name over us like the holiest of commissions.

it's fitting that we're stepping into this time of year, slowly placing one foot in front of another as we approach each station of the Cross, each moment in the journey from Son of Man to Lamb of God. we're approaching His time of broken body. we are standing mere feet away from the blood-stained Israeli stones.

and I'm hushed in the holiness of it all. hushed in the realization that there was the barbed wire of nature that pressed deep into the forehead of fully-Man-fully-God. there was the bits of bone and metal and stone twisted into leather strips that severed skin from muscle and bone.

the barbed wire was destroyed the moment that death started working backwards. 

"it is finished." and He meant it, every weak and agonized syllable. it is done. it is complete. there are no more fences, no more twisted rusted metal gates designed to shred and tear and bleed and sever. it is finished. 

we're good at swords, somehow. we're good at evisceration in the name of love. we're good with breaking, but not so good with loving the broken. we're good with thudding, not so good with the gentle touch. we're good with barbed wire fences and darkened windows.

I want to be good with Jesus. I want to become good with Holiness streaming from my lips like water and Grace filling the baskets surrounding my feet like so much bread and fish created from scraps of "all she has is..."

I don't want to be so good with a sword. I want to be better with wire-cutters. there are wounds, blood, all for the sake of being touched. there is the virus of silence raging rampant through the veins of those who have been bound and gagged by the well-meaning millstone carvers.

but look at yourself, beloved ones. those scarlet letters are written in chalk. the rain is coming, pouring, and they are blurring into streaks that match the glorious sunrise. do you hear? that is the sound of rust caving under blades.

run free, lioness. He has laid flowers in your hair. He is leaping, arms raised and mouth wide open at the joy of you. the sight of you has Him undone.

the night has ended. this is the Morning. 

{beloved, there is room for you with us in community. no barbed wire there. only meadows. 

join us.}

the labour room

{photo taken the day of Marian's birth
by Abigail Dahl}

pressing in is not always elegant. it is not always a tender touch of hands on shoulders, it is not always what happens in a jubilant moment at the end of a church conference. it doesn’t always happen in cherished community.

sometimes it’s a falling, a plunging of brokenness and tears onto the couch, a visceral sobbing into cushions as the vice of pressing in seems like it will crack you from head to toe like a china doll left in the ruins of an abandoned museum.

it can be the scariest thing you’ve ever experienced.

for me, it was the day my daughter was born...

{I'm sharing the story of the day Marian entered the world, the day that everything shook, and the day that pressing in became tactile holiness. join me here for the rest, won't you?}

the ashes

today is the day of ashes. today is the day where sins are spoken aloud for the sake of repentance from Dark and a purposeful turning toward Light. today is the day when fingers brush against foreheads and the sign of the cross lays plain in a darkened smudge upon skin. tradition speaks of palm fronds from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebration being used to create the ashes. it's cyclical, symbolic if not literally done. 

the ashes are made by His coming. 

this phrase evokes a holy hush within my soul. sins are spoken and forgiveness is sought, and the ashes are smeared in the shape of the instrument that smothered the air from His lungs as His life drained out. for me. and the ashes were made from the waving fronds of the King's entrance into the city. 

when He comes, the Darkness bursts into flame. the blackness becomes Light and redemption is spoken in a voice once whispering but now rising in volume. that is what this season is. it is a whispering start that lifts and intensifies with each passing day. this season is not about what you are giving up, it is not about forty days of enduring life without internet or caffeine or breakfast. 

this day is the calm that settles before the storm. this season is the rumble that comes to alert all who hear that there is a bursting coming, a breaking forth unlike any other. 

so this year, I am pursuing Lent with an air of anticipation. I am leaving shame, expectations, guilt, self-loathing, and scarcity on the skull-shaped hill. I am wearing the ashes on my soul because they are a reminder that darkness is brief and that Water is stronger than dirt. 

this is the day of ashes. this is the day of repentance. this is the day of heads bowed to the floor, ears pressed flat to the earth, listening. this is the day of the whispering.

my Deliverer is coming. 

my Deliver is standing by. 

me, a Jesus feminist {the becoming}

when my friend Sarah Bessey wrote a book, I clicked pre-order the minute the button turned green. after this was done, I sat on my couch and cried. the tears were desperately needed. there was freedom twenty years in the making behind that click.

the name of the book was Jesus Feminist.

it arrived on my doorstep on November 6th, this yellow book with the big black letters, the symbol for femininity right next to the symbol of my faith. I opened the book, and my eyes found the first line of the first chapter :: Jesus made a feminist out of me. and something inside me gasped like a man drawn out of the ocean.

it was an answer to everything that had been brewing inside me since the moment I realized that Jesus Christ didn't see me as less because I was a woman. 

when you grow up a woman in the conservative Church, it's hard to feel like you have big things inside. it's not always intentional, sometimes you don't even realize that it's happening. but it's easy to fall into the idea that since your body curves where a man's does not, that since your pronouns are she and her, you were birthed to be a stumbling block.

somehow it got put into our heads that feminism was the opposite of appropriate femininity. somehow the word became trampled and twisted underfoot until it stopped being recognizable as anything but ugly. 

but it's begun to occur to me that He spoke "woman" when everyone else was crying "girl," not as a word of derision or as a caustic word spit out in the direction of the "weaker sex," but as a badge of honour. He touched us when others shied away. His words of "follow Me" fell on female ears as well as male. there was no line in the sand with the Son of God.

{photo by me}

“we reject the lies of inequality, we affirm the Spirit, we forgive radically, we advocate for love and demonstrate it by folding laundry, and we live these Kingdom ways of shalom prophetically in the world.” 

Sarah Bessey :: Jesus Feminist

I find myself leaning against my husband more these days when we sit on the couch, tentatively asking if he approves of this new wild me, this new feminist wife, so different from the one who cried during her wedding vows, and yet, so completely the same. and he's supportive in every way he can be, even if sometimes it's just a hand on my arm or a kiss on the side of my head in the silence past midnight. 

and so here we are, standing on the other side of a book that changed the way I see the other Book that has been in my grasp since the days of pattered Bible covers and sword drills. I'm standing here on the beach while the Son of Man makes breakfast for all the ones who follow after Him, male and female alike. 

Sarah's book opened my eyes. but this Jesus Christ, this Prince of Peace and Word Made Flesh.

He's the one that made a Jesus Feminist out of me. 

in which I am doing something

{photo by me via Instagram}

in 2011, I wrote 297 posts.

it was the second year of my blog, the first full year from January to December. my mother called me prolific, and it was true. I was writing a post nearly every single day, sitting at the computer agonizing over something to write that was profound enough, that was rich enough, that was "good enough" for me to push publish and let it fly. and if I ever missed  a day, ever missed a step, I would apologize profusely, as if I had broken some never-made promise to always be present, always have words.

since I started writing, I've always felt like I had something to prove. that's what happens when you get married a week after your nineteenth birthday instead of going to college, and people are breathing down your neck for you to do something. it's not commonly done, choosing to become a wife instead of pursuing a degree. and so I wrote, wildly, and in some respects it was good because it was a honing period, a chance for me to understand the edges of my voice and what it had the potential to sound like , eventually.

but I had to clear my throat first because I had so many other voices at war in my vocal chords to the point that it was hard to figure out which was mine and which ones belong to everyone else. they taught me a lot, these other voices, because they pruned me down by making me feel uncomfortable. their words fit in their mouths so perfectly, but they were the wrong shape for mine.

:: :: 

I started to press myself deep into the Lion in those days, the ones that heralded the start of my thrashing as I shed my dead skin and sunk deeper into that lioness hide where I belonged, a selkie of a land-bourne sort. that's when I started to realize something.

maybe Susan wasn't "spared" death in the train crash because she was leaning toward boys and make-up and things that were pushing her into socially-appropriate adulthood. maybe it wasn't Lewis' way of chiding children for growing up, for choosing to walk . because if that was his point, if his purpose was to chase away adulthood and keep them locked in innocence forever, then Aslan wouldn't have been needed, and His own words would have been made void.

{photo by Nikki Jean Photography}

there, I have a different name. you must learn to know me by that name. that was the very reason you were brought into Narnia, so that by knowing Me here, you might know me better there. 

and in those words, I started to understand.

I have absolutely nothing to prove for being in the Land where He placed me. 

my voice and my story and my authenticity are mine, breathed holy straight into my lungs from the mouth of Lion on the mountaintop. it is a shift from the familiar, and it makes me feel a bit of a dervish. but this view, it's breathtaking.

I've spit out the salt water. my throat is clear.

and I'm prepared to speak.

blessings on the sh***y

{photo by me}

blessings on the sh***y, she said to me, and I gasped. it's impossible not to gasp when someone lays prophecy over you like that after you confess to her that your Wednesday has been more like a Monday and there isn't much left except to sit.

she blessed the ugly, the parts of the day that we don't talk about publicly because they make everything fade a little, and no one wants to see your fading. except that David wrote a hundred psalms where he cried from the recesses of the cave, the ones where he begged for rescue and in the same breath, he whispered, in You, oh God, I put my trust. 

she blessed the tangled, the cracking spots, and I'm starting to see why. because those cracks let a little bit of light through. who says that breaking lets in the darkness? I've had a lot bottled up, tiny fists beating against the glass wall, fairy dust merging with gunpowder, and the glory was suffocating while I leaned all my weight on the lid.

and then she blessed the sh***y, and I cracked a little.

live into it, she urged, and I felt something give. those strange-faced ones, the ones that speak into my life without relationship, they warned against the dam, warning that there was pulsing wildness behind it, and it could kill someone if let free. hold it up, keep it together, press your fingers in like mortar.

but then I realized that I was dehydrating, that my skin was cracking and my hair was fading from fire-glow to guttering embers. fire and water don't mix, but that's the paradox, isn't it? because without Living Water, I have no air, and the spark flickers. and my fingers came free and the water gushed like uninhibited Elven stallions to drown the black horde clamoring behind me. it was deep drinking, full soul hydration, saturation in pure life.

live into it, she said, and I pressed against the thin places, the spots where the darkness flew out and the Light streamed in like holy saline straight into the veins of my soul.

and so, oh love, wherever you are.

blessings on the sh***y. blessings on the thin places. blessings on the broken glass, blessings on the tangled.

live into it, dearheart. pen your Psalms in the cave.

{my dear friend, Esther, the woman who spoke these words over me, wrote something of her own on this subject. read her words, won't you?}

wine-tasting

tonight at WalMart, a woman touched my arm and spoke life over me.

I've never met this woman before and I doubt I ever will again. we were standing between peanut butter and hot chocolate mix and Keurig coffee cups, me leaning upwards on tiptoes for a jar just barely out of reach, her pushing a cart down the row toward me from behind.

"I just want you to know, I feel like you need to know, you're doing a good job at whatever it is you're doing." 

and then she walked away.

holy. holy. holy. 

this woman had no idea what those words did for me, the second breathing of prophecy over me in the past twelve hours. she has no idea how deeply I've been creatively pushing myself, she has no idea about the vulnerability hangover I've been nursing since I submitted my fictional short story for publication perusal on Monday, followed by pouring raw words of a far less fictional sort in yet another direction last night.

she has no idea that today was the day that I stood crying at my kitchen counter, overwhelmed with a thousand things bearing down on my shoulders. she didn't know that I've been laden with self-doubt and low on words since acknowledging my own worth. {does it get more ironic than that?}

{photo via pinterest}

I am the biggest enemy to my own creativity, to my own setting out and declaring. I'm fearlessly committed to encouraging others to embrace their words, tell their stories, pour themselves out, peel back the roughage and let their brave show naked and raw and powerful. and then I find myself at the top of a tree, a kitten who had no problem scaling the trunk and finding my cheerleading perch, but now I cannot get down and I'm suddenly stricken with unmatched fear.

I am ravenous for my own self-worth. it's there. I can smell it, the way wine drifts over from the glass and makes your mouth water and your tastebuds spring to life with anticipation. but someone convinced me that I'm a teetotaler and that picking up that glass would be death to my soul.

but the Lion is whispering, not roaring {He knows what my soul can hear}.

if you do not drink, lioness, then you will die of thirst. and there is no other stream. 

being brave enough to lift the glass, to down its contents and let them flood the depths of me is only half the battle. the second part comes when I must step forward and speak, knowing that they'll know what I've been drinking. it's a different kind of intoxication, the kind that brings life instead of death, the kind that leaves deception at the gate and ushers in life like electricity through the heart of a corpse.

it's not chasing the fear away. no, not at all. it's embracing the fear, letting it do what it must, letting it prove itself futile and watching it drift away on the breeze like ash as the brave-flames stoke higher and higher still.

if you'll excuse me, I've been invited to a wine tasting.

{inspired by a Story Sessions prompt. join us? there's always room for you here with us}

inked and unfolded

{photo by Rachel}

I want to unfold. let nothing in me hold itself closed. 

for where I am closed, I am false. 

I want to be clear in your sight.

:: Rilke 

every time I get a new tattoo, people ask me why. in fact, it's become such a habitual thing that I immediately start to consider my why the second my body touches the artist's table. it's a holy experience for me, stepping from the wide open outdoors into the small shops with needles on the tables and art in its own right covering walls and bodies. 

on Friday, as I leaned back on the table with the leg of my jeans rolled up and the buzzing of the gun in my ears ringing like a holy chant, I could feel the reason, the why flowing through my soul like electricity. 

I get tattoos so that I never forget and so that I can never hide again. especially this one.

I've hit that point in my life where I'm actually willing to be transparent. actually, if I'm honest, I'm less willing to be this open as I am realizing that I am meant to be splayed wide, visible for all to see. 

it's a strange sort of untucking. 

some of it is smooth and easy, the way that skillful hands fold and refold and unfold crinkled paper to form a crane. most is awkward, a dissecting, a flailing akin to the way the fitted sheet pops off the corner of the mattress when tossing and turning and nightmares cling tighter than sleep. it's not as graceful as I'd like you to think, less ornamental and tidy than my carefully placed words might lead you to believe. 

the new words on my skin read simple and smooth :: we are all stories in the end. there's a reason I got these words, this quote from my favourite television show of all time {Doctor Who}. because my life is stories, everything about it and every aspect of me. I have steeped myself in stories, my story

{photo by Rachel}

and her story and our stories all merged together. it's something I can't avoid anymore. it's something that has followed me forever. 

but that's why I get tattoos. that's why I walk again and again into the place thick with the scent of ink and cigarette smoke and something else, something rising like sacred incense from the Holiest Place toward Heaven. it's wafting out through the tear in the curtain. it's a thin place, where the Lion's roar is clearer and His breath smells sweeter still. 

because if it's there, permanent, on my skin, I can never shrug it off and leave it on the side of the road. even when I get scared. 

these marks on my skin, this new one in particular, are my Ebeneezer stone. my place of help, my flesh-guides to remind me that I am called, that I am not hidden. I am unfolding, one smooth piece and one awkward flail at a time. and each of these marks are helping me remember. 

I am clear in Your sight. 

{inspired by a Story Sessions prompt. join us? there's always room for you here with us}

when the f word gets you published

{photo by me, art by Mandy}

I'm being published this coming week. on the eighth. this is a big deal, a long time coming. I'm not sure if I have a lot of eloquent thoughts left in me. in all actuality, I'm pretty overwhelmed.

as much as I'm excited to be out in the world, my work with my name attached being shown to eyes who have never even heard of me or this place before, there is also a strange sort of trepidation. because I did a thing, a big thing, one of those wild things that you don't think about when you're doing it because you don't think it'll go anywhere. and then, all of a sudden, it happens.

I sent in the piece to Literary Orphans because I didn't think it would be accepted. that was risk number one. putting my words out there was the big step, allowing myself to acknowledge that I have to start somewhere, that my words have worth and value.

and then came the hammer. they wanted it, every last word. including that one glaring flashing word right there at the end. that fifth word in the last line. it's the kind of word you don't say in polite company. it's the kind of word that slips out by accident and you find yourself blushing and stammering an apology and wanting to hide.

:: it's a word that starts with the letter f. 

but then, I've been learning to stop apologizing for my words. all my words. including those sharp ones that tend to make the good Christian girl in me wince and recoil slightly. He's used worse things than the f-word.

He put two prostitutes in the lineage of His son. the fully God, fully human Prince of Heaven. He didn't need to take the things that the world saw as lesser, as dirty, as inappropriate, and put them in the line that brought His son to earth. but He did. 

{photo of me, taken by Nikki Jean Photography}

I've started finding myself breathing a little easier. even though I'm mostly rambling, even though I don't have to explain myself to anyone. I learned this last June when I discovered that courage groaned, and it was a beautiful thing.

maybe sometimes, holiness is a little ragged, a little rough. maybe sometimes sacredness involves digging in the dirt until there is mud under your fingernails and you find yourself staggering into the holy places. sometimes the words that come flying from your lips are the ones that don't fit in the world, the ones that get you pursed lips and side-eye glances and tsk-ing under the breath.

so I will tell you this. if the word is going to offend you, if it's going to turn you against me, if it's going to make  you want to throw rocks at me, then please, don't read the piece. I'm okay with that, really, I am.

but if you think that maybe, just maybe, that a Lion's roaring can drown out the profane, then oh, dear ones, give it a chance. sit on the words, let them in.

because sometimes, even the f word can be holy. 

{the piece is live on Literary Orphans as of right now HEREyou can read it or not, that is your choice. I did not choose the artwork behind the piece :: that was up to the editor. if that also offends you, if it takes away your ability to soak in my words, then please, abstain from reading. love and grace to each of you. bear me gently.}

the one where I'm resolving to write a book

{photo by Jennifer Upton}

I'm already working on my list of resolutions for 2014.

I know, it might be a bit presumptuous. I might be stepping ahead of myself just a bit. but I'm shivering with the anticipation of what this coming year is going to hold. 

the big one on the top of my list: write a book. my book. my story. my words. it's been brewing inside of me for a long time -- since I was eleven, if you want to get technical. I didn't realize it at the time, of course, but this passion for story has been living inside me since long before I acknowledged its presence. 

the big things are throwing themselves at me, of course. I don't have an agent or an editor, I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing. I've only ever written fiction, save for here on my blog, and I'm not even sure how to put my words out in a way that won't sound ridiculous or overly contrived. 

they're all lies. that much I think I've come to understand over the past year. but they're damn compelling lies. they feel exceptionally realistic, not unfounded. and those are just the surface ones. there's also the big ones, the big "what if"s that take over every scrap of my mind if I'm not careful. 

what if no one buys my book? what if no agent thinks my words are worth it, whatever that means? what if...what if my words hurt someone? these are the big ones, the ones that keep me up at night. the ones that lead me to light incense in my kitchen and practically fling myself into the Ocean of Him, whispering, won't You please just take me all the way down? 

the funny thing is, I couldn't even bring myself to acknowledge that I am a writer until this past year. if anyone asked me, I'd respond with, oh, I'm a blogger. and I do NaNoWriMo. but I'm not published. I'm not a real writer or anything.

{photo by dramaticelegance}

this looming year, this precipice year, is already brimming. it's like when you're standing on a cliff beside the sea, and you can't see the waves, but the ground is growling and shuddering and trembling beneath your feet. and you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the sea is there. just one or two more steps, and you'll be off the edge. you'll be falling. 

I'm still not sure what this means for me. and I won't deny the terror. I won't deny the fear that comes with the unknown, and the wondering, and the what if's. like I said, they're everywhere.

but He knows. 

and He's standing between me and the lies, the cliff coming up behind me, and He's roaring the holiest of expletives at the ever-creeping fears. 

leave her the eff alone. she's Mine.

and still He's stepping forward, toward me, urging me onward. His eyes are telling me jump. just jump. 

so that's what 2014 is. here on the edge, six days from the start. I don't have a parachute. I don't have wings, at least not that I can see. so the plan is :: I have no plan. the rules are that I'm listening and I'm breathing and I'm taking that final step right off the edge and I'm letting myself float in midair on a puff of Lion's breath. 

and so, in 2014, I'm leaping off a precipice. 

I'm going to write a book. 

Advent and the Von Trapps

{via Jennifer Upton}

I cry every time I watch The Sound of Music. I've seen the film about thirty times, the stage production about seven times. and yet, the tears come every time. 

it's that moment when the Captain looks into a crowd full of his countrymen and softly sings the song of his people, the anthem of the country he loves so very much. there is so much story behind his eyes, a tale that the rest of the faces looking up at him and his wife and his children do not know. but they feel that same thing that he does. we all do. 

and I can't help but compare that moment to this season, to these final moments of Advent. I cannot help but take that moment and hold it against the fabric of this silent night that we are pressed deeply within right now. 

we are steeped deep within this season, our entire selves wrapped up in this time whether we want to be or not. it's unavoidable. there is a holy clamouring that comes right alongside the hushing and the softly flickering candles. 

there's a volume to this season, and it's more than just the screeching of the shopping centers. it's more than the cries of the ones who insist we are victims in a war against us, raising their voices so high against the "happy holidays" greeting that they're drowning Him out. 

it's that moment when you realize that even in silence, there is a noise. it's not about pressing the world out, locking our doors and demanding peace on earth at the top of our lungs. it's realizing that even on that stage, with the music and the song and the clapping of a thousand Austrians, it was most likely the most roaring silent moment of Captain Von Trapp's life. 

{photo by Jennifer Upton}

he was soon to wander. he was soon to take his seven children and his bride over the mountains on foot to escape the hands that sought to drag him beneath the darkest waters that he had ever encountered. but there he stood, fingers strumming the guitar held in skillful fingers. and he sang, may you bloom and grow forever....bless my homeland forever. 

and that is this season, taken from words with no holy intent, but summed up so perfectly. because we are reaching inward toward come thou long expected Jesus. we are welcoming in silence He who brought a wild noise. we are pressing knees against straw-strewn floors as we reach out, whispering, toward the infant I AM. 

but He is the one who was born a radical, with thinking so far outside the box of the words being spoken from the temples of His day. there was wildness in Him, a strange sort of peaceful ruckus. 

He is soon to wander. He is soon to place human feet on the ground sculpted by He-Who-Sees. He is soon to face the darkness of a Father's back turned as the sin of all the world and time fell upon His shoulders. He is soon to rise with cracking and shaking and thunder. 

this is the time of wild, loud, keening peace on earth. 

at the sound of His roar, 

sorrows shall be no more. 

meeting poetry

{photo by jennifer upton}

I remember where she found me, a step beyond the shelves of

appropriate and good Christian girl.

she found me in the place

where technically, neither of us were supposed to be.

she was forbidden, but only a little, because her big sister

was the right kind of words

the kind that might not send me to hell, the kind that King David

penned and approved.

I found her in the wanna-be classroom, the place where

I hid my black lipstick and let the hair hang into my eyes

she was key-shaped angst and a forbidden road to the required

she whispered, “drink me,” and I obliged.

she was sin

or maybe she was water turned to wine

the kind that they disapproved, but that He raised in a glass

and spoke, “this is My blood.”

she turned me into smoke, the good kind

incense and candle wisps,  

the kind they said would send me down a road too wide

and He and She and I were okay with that.