inked :: redeux

{songbird for joy, flower for feminine, branch for strength}

two days before 2012, i crossed an item off my bucket list with ink of permanence on my skin.

four days ago, i did it again.

and now my shoulder bears the reminder of the best thing i have ever done. this is a memorial of her birth in the most perfect of ways. pain and blood that results in beauty, and this is what birth is and this is what i will bear on my skin for all eternity.

but it's more than that.

and these stones shall stand as a memorial...

for when your children ask

what does this mean?  

:: joshua 4

one day she will touch the mark on my shoulder, and the one on my wrist, and the ones that i have yet to get but will soon bear. and she will ask, what does this mean?

and i will tell her our story. i will tell her how i wrestled with God the day she was born, and how i was humbled, and how He was victorious. and how she was pulled from me like Moses from the water and laid in my arms. and she is my ultimate memorial to His grace. 

{via pinterest}

and that i am marked on my shoulder, and that i am marked from hip to hip, because i love her. 

and then i will point to the cross and tell her of the One who gave her to me. 

i will tell her that He is marked, too, because He loved her, too. because He loved her most. and that His Father has her name engraved on His heart, and that He wrote love in blood.

some people glace at my skin and wrinkle their noses. 

that's permanent, you know.

 even when you're old. 

and i smile. because i never want to forget, and i never want them to disappear. i'm proud of them, my story. my tattoos are my stones in the water, stacked high to remind the children of God from where they have come and where they are going instead.  

and i want to remember always what my Lord has done. 

and so i am inked. 

{linking imperfect with emily today. won't you join us there?}

stony place :: ebenezer

{via pinterest}

i'm still in the stony place. the  rocky, rough place that i think we all touch from time to time.

the place where i'm learning to rest for a time, but i feel like i can't let myself breathe without guilt. 

inhale no rest

exhale too much to do

it's the funny place where we feel guilty for doing right, for stopping for a half a moment just to breathe. because i'm learning to embrace the do not need to do instead of dwelling on the must do now or else. 

and the whole day yesterday, i had a window open to write a new blog post. but i never wrote a word. and i thought it would be a bad thing, that i would wake up to negativity or a heart overflowing with shame for slacking. 

but i didn't. 

:: i woke up breathing ::

and that's what i'm supposed to do. and i made toast and coffee and ate both slices, slow and without worrying about the clock with the silence of the house and the whisper-scent of winter breezes that smell like springtime. 

and i still felt strange, but i didn't know why. but it was a good kind of strange, like icy-cold soda on the hottest day and the way it runs down from lips to stomach and you feel the coolness all the way down.

so i'm taking these stones that make my place rocky, and i'm building an altar. and i'm carving ebenezer into the bottom stone. 

here has my Lord helped me. 

{linking my broken prose with emily today}