knowing him with the lights on

{via pinterest}

I want to talk about sex.

again.

on Monday, I wrote about Beyonce and her husband-lover and the way they held each other close and moved as one flesh at the Grammys, and the way the Christian world rose up against them. I wrote about redemption of sex and of freedom to wrap arms wildly around the neck of marital lust.

and that was when I realized. I've found a voice and I've started wondering things...more things.

I wonder why we're made so afraid of sexuality, as though being sexual creatures is not something Holy-Created, as though whispering the words or leaning too close on your husband's arm within the confines of Church is scandelous. we look at the wedding rings and we know, we see the pregnant women and smile at their joy, all the while refusing to acknowledge what brought this new life into being.

I wonder why we can read the words laid out in Biblical black and white, but then cringe and giggle and find ourselves whispering the names for our body parts in sheepish undertones, as though they are not there if we don't pronounce them, as though our sexuality is non-existent if we do not speak its name.

there's safety in the darkness, quietly tucking ourselves into dimly lit bedrooms, curtained off like voting booths, every action a secret and never discussed. it's as though we expect our bodies to burst into flames if their flesh is exposed to the light. sexuality is the new vampirism.

but there's that Hebrew word :: yada. that word that comes up whispered in the early pages of the Word, when the first man took the first woman into his arms and knew her. that's yada. that's knowing. and then comes the word, the whispering of be still and know. that's yada. same word, same holy hush falling.

I delight to sit in his shade,    
and his fruit is sweet to my taste.
:: song of solomon 2:3

we as woman are told that we are dangerous. each morning as we dress, we cover the danger, and the more we wear, the safer we become. we press our palms against the man-hands beside us and blush, hesitant in that affection, that rare bit of skin allowed to brush in public. there are expectations, and being Beyonce isn't one of them.

{via pinterest}

and so we go home and turn down the lights and slip down to our skin in darkness and slide under covers, less for warmth of body and more for safety of soul. who are we protecting? is it ourselves, the shame from the outside carrying into this marital room where only you and he will ever lay? are we protecting the man that shares this mattress, that burden placed upon our bodies for all male creatures...how are we supposed to turn it of for him, for one hour or two or six, and then make sure that we put the vixen away, and carry on as normal for everyone else that we are supposed to call "brother"?

I want 
to do with you 
what spring does with the cherry trees.
:: Pablo Neruda

and so we come back to yada. being known, the deepest and most intimate knowing of all. it's holy ground. shaking is appropriate.

so you, oh woman, you are not dangerous. your body is not a wrecking ball and your touch is not acid. your loving him is not a sin, and your wildness need not be hidden. not here, not with him.

did you know that silence is not required here? it is allowed, of course, but not required.

it's in those moments when bodies meet, not passing like ships but merging like an eclipse, that the loudest crashes are heard. because that is the sound of walls tumbling. every move he and I make together is a pass around Jericho walls, and with a mighty shout, the fortress crashes.

so, oh woman, blow out the candle and flip the switch.

he can call me Peaches with the lights on.

dark horse

{pinterest}

i am my own dark horse.

i love that expression :: dark  horse, emerging from the back of the pack, from nothing to prominence. there's something so powerful about the image. it's sacred.

it's something i've come to realize about myself in recent days. this process of blogging has been a gradual metamorphosis, a process of flushing out what i really think about the world, about my faith, about what i want to do with my writing. i was this strange caterpillar creature, this thing that had its own strange beauty, but looked just like all the rest. and then i crawled into my cocoon and things started to shift inside.

ever since i started lifting my eyes to meet the faces around me and speaking a little braver, i've felt vulnerable in a way that i haven't experienced in a long time. i've been doing a lot of thinking, filling my mental pages with so many notes and thoughts with very little making it to paper. that's odd for me, as i tend to gravitate toward scribbling ink-notes on any scrap within my reach.

i'm starting to realize that blogging might be more of a contact sport than i originally anticipated.

so you wanna play with magic. you should know what you're falling for. 

baby, do you dare to do this? i'm coming at you like a dark horse.
:: dark horse :: katy perry ::  

i just wanted to write pretty words. i just wanted to be famous. i wanted to play with the big boys and girls who sat at their computers and sussed out beautiful words and had people gasping and nodding and whispering, "so true, oh yes, very profound."

i don't know when it got so real. i don't know when i stopped writing the surface and found myself under the water, completely engulfed. i don't know when my voice started getting louder. it's still shaking, but it's getting louder.

love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

and i'm starting to realize that this rise and fall, this wave and this shift, it's normal. it's what i can anticipate now as i'm opening my shutters further. the more Light that plays on the floor, the warmer i become. it's filling me up, exploding out my fingers and toes. it's the most holy-hush i've ever experienced.

i'm becoming more and more okay with my lack of "safe faith." it was a statement, repeated over and over, almost becoming trite like a repeated mealtime prayer :: not safe, but good. but it's not just words anymore. it's my existence. i have flung myself off the cliff, and i'm falling at break-neck speed. it's a whirlwind. 

but i can smell Him in the air. 

a question :: selah cottage

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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.

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// 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}

the silent moment :: everything

i remember the night i held a gun to my head. and it was the quietest moment of my life.

i was seventeen. the gun was plastic, a $2 knicknack from WalMart, one of maybe twenty just like it, tossed into a plastic bin and carried from one country to another. i was one of close to four thousand other teenagers all pressed closed and gathered in a Peruvian resort, all in pursuit of discipleship and missions. seven of us felt something tug at us. we were performing the Lifehouse Everything Skit.

it's burned into my head. standing on that stage, the music in the background, every step and movement rehearsed to an art. and how can i stand here with You and not be moved by You....and then came the lifting of the pistol to my head.


it was the most profound hush of my entire life. everything else seemed to fade out, a whisper in the background as i met with the Most High for the first time in the most sacred of ways. it was the first time i ever heard Him speak. and i was holding a plastic gun against my temple.

you're about to throw yourself at Me figuratively

darkness is holding death

throw yourself at Me literally 

i will catch You. 

let go of death, grasp tight to Life

i will catch You. 

{photo by Ron Nickel; property of dramaticelegance}

i was supposed to drop the gun to the floor. 

i threw it across the room. 

i was supposed to lean toward my friend playing Jesus, reaching for his hand. 

i flung myself at Him. 

there were other actors there, playing temptation, lust, deception, distractions. they were there to fight me, to keep me from Him. they were acting, and so was i. but there was something deep in me that was not acting. something had broken inside me. and it got loud inside me for a split second. it was a moment of warring, clawing and clutching for the hand of the Holy One.

and then He dove in and held them back. arms stretched out, He held back the flood. 

and the quiet came again. the hush of the Holy overcame me and something inside me settled. i was on my knees, three thousand miles from my American home and comforts, from my familiar church and my well-known faces. 

He met me there, silent in the crowd 

with a plastic pistol to my head. 

:: 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.

what the silence taught me

{my space, unafraid of clutter}
photo property of dramaticelegance

i've been practicing silence this week. i didn't press myself hard one way or the other, and i refused to let legalism be my governing force. i simply let myself sink down, down into the ocean-rushing.

oh, the things that happened when i stopped shouting and let the Light soak in deep.

we met a new place, a white cottage tucked into the urban wild. we put our names on a piece of paper and let the Lion prepare to sing us a new word :: home. and oh that space has potential, and my fingers can twist gently around the banister of a place called mine, and his, and ours, and His, too.

dearhearts, we're buying a house and making it home. 

the irony is, i finally found my space here. tucked between the kitchen sink and the front door, there it was. i think He was waiting for me to exhale, ending up with my forehead on the table with ink on my fingers and paint in my hair, before He slipped this new space into my grasp.

i learned to embrace
:: and i learned to sever. 

i learned to cut and rip and take something mysteriously called "whole" and make a new kind of wholeness from the pieces. there's nothing wrong with reaching out and finding the secret messages humming deep within a secret place.

oh, let us know Him.

His going forth is established as the morning;

He will come to us like the rain

:: hosea 6:3

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i'm excited about August. the last month in our place of almost four years. it's a page-turning, a severing embrace. it's bittersweet, i'll admit. but oh, am i excited.

it's like i'm finally seeing the design among the broken pieces. because July was so deep and full of grief, so full of shattered bits that didn't feel smooth like seaglass but were jagged enough to gash and scar. but then i realized that there was something beautiful coming. it's a birthing, a labour in blood and
tears and even some breaking deep inside.

and then Life streams forth, and glory is born. i've been fired like molded clay, not made hard but made strong. a few feathers floated to the ground, but my wings are still beating strong in the wind.

the silence taught me to grasp tight while i sever. the silence whispered to me of strength. because He was not in the fire or the wind or the crushing storm. but that still small voice, that hush-holy selah...

the Lion found me in the silence and spoke a hard thing into my soul.

it is coming.
and i am eager to breathe.

sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone 

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

// david whyte :: sweet darkness \\

stepping into silence

{photo of me by photography by Kjelse}

{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}

:: what are you waiting for?

for Story 101, we are entering our week of silence. this is our time to step back from the internet, our time to breathe, our time to embrace our writer souls. honestly, with the amount of time i spend on the internet every day, this prospect is slightly terrifying. 

:: but maybe that's what i was waiting for.

see, as a stay-at-home mom, the internet has been my retreat. it's the only "getaway" i have from my life as momma. but maybe it's holding me back. maybe i'm waiting for something that isn't going to happen. maybe i'm waiting for my life to go back to the way it used to be // before my precious little wailing warrioress came into our lives. 

i'm never going to have that life again.
and that's okay.

because Marian is my new life. this is normal. this is my radiant normal beautiful new life. this is my gift. this is my now.

so maybe this week of silence, this time of resting away from the internet {in part}will be my first step toward embracing my new place. i know i need to stop fighting what is. i need to stop waiting for the new house to find my space. i need to stop waiting for this illusive magic moment before i accept the pen that the Lion is pressing into my trembling fingers.

:: i can start writing that chapter now.

in some respects, i'm still bristling at this concept of internet silence, even if only in part. it was always a punishment, a stripping away of something that connected me to a world that always seemed so far away.

{photo of me by photography by Kjelse}

but i am seeking ways to heal my eyes from that past view. i am hoping, daring to reach up for that scarlet rope hanging in the window. it feels so dangerous to hope. i am still recovering from the loss and confusion and heartbreak that this year has already brought me.

but there has been such joy there too. and that is worth the hoping and the risking and oh, the releasing.

there will hopefully be a lot of returning to the journal in this week of selah. a lot of art, a lot of postcards made and sent. a lot of breathing.

oh dearhearts, won't you gather around me here?

pray for the Song of the Lion to permeate my soul? pray for strength and deep, deep grace? pray for Life, for Light, for Glory. 

pray for rest. 
pray for selah. 
pray for silence. 

{don't forget about the self-care giveaway taking place here. i would love to bless you with some tender gifts, precious ones.}