it smells like everything but smoke.

{via Unsplash}

2015 showed up without warning. One minute, it was the year of precipice -- the year of death and life, the year my book was born, the year my marriage passed the five year mark, the year our daughter turned two, the year we found out that we were adding a fourth member to our family.

The year that turned me inside out and rubbed salt on my skin.

And then I blinked. And 2015 arrived.

My year of burning. 

Every year, I pick a word. Or rather, the word picks me. It finds me in the snow, in the dark, between the clinking of dirty dishes and the noise that my vacuum makes when it sucks up a sock by mistake. It slips into my soul the way water slides around stones. It doesn't move them, it just makes itself at home in the spaces.

And this year of burning // it's already started. It started when I dared to speak the release date for the second book to my writing coach, and she smiled through Facebook chat and said,  HOLLA. Just like that, all in caps. From anyone else, it would have made me smile and I would have moved on. From her? It's a tattoo on my heart-walls.

Holla. You got this. You do this.

It started when our entire plan for birthing this second child was turned on its ear by a cowardly stranger, leaving me scrambling for plans B, C, and D...and maybe even E. It all went down between rushed footsteps to the bathroom and a smell-sensitive husband standing outside the bathroom door with a water bottle and a hairband and a soft apology. It happened in my weakest moments, leaving me feeling even weaker in the process.

2015, you're already burning shit away. And I mean that literally figuratively. All the crap, all the stuff that I came into this year carrying? It's burning away. And it stinks and it's making me gag and feel weak and empty in the moment. But then I feel lighter, better, when I walk away.

It's the kind of year where I stop apologizing for making metaphors out of morning-afternoon-evening-all-the-time sickness. It's the kind of year where I acknowledge mistakes and dig my hands in deeper until the mud creeps up to my elbows, the kind that smells fresh and earthy and full of growth potential.

I can't help but wrap my entire body around the story of the three men in the fire that turned into four, because Glory was made perfect in flames and they were never alone. And they came out without even the smell of smoke on them, because they were wrapped up in Lion's breath -- flame retardant from He who would eventually fight a path through hell all for my soul.

Burning is beautiful. Burning is deadly. I'm okay with both.

So basically, this is where I leave you. Or begin with you. I'm not entirely sure which is more appropriate, but both apply ::

2015 is a year of burning. Of birth. Of rings of fire, physical and mental and spiritual. I can anticipate the raw that will be in this place. Less censored, more jagged.

Less talking, more words.

And a hell of a lot more burning.

when I was one of the X-Men

{photo via pinterest}

we were given lessons in how to touch. I wouldn't think it was real unless I had experienced it myself, first hand, sitting shoulder to shoulder and toe to back with my peers. there were big smiles as they demonstrated on the stage, one boy and one girl.

always from the side. never from the front. girls have breasts. don't cause a brother to stumble. arms around the shoulder, quick squeeze. 

we called it "nacho"-ing, a playful turn of phrase coined from the lauding of the "non-committal side hug." we were being taught how to stay pure. we were being taught how to protect our brothers from stumbling, from being ruled by that strange thing behind the zipper of their jeans. we were proud of ourselves.

my body was dangerous. I had to be careful. we all knew that. we were dangerous beings, with our shapely hips and our growing breasts that might press into a boy's chest and send impure thoughts racing though him like poison.

I was one of the X-Men. my name was Rogue. to touch me was to die.

because I was a girl. and girls were poison, except to our one-day husbands.

I'm going to let you in on a secret. it didn't protect me. it did the exact opposite. 

it taught me that I was dangerous. it taught me that my body was a cactus. all I could do was hurt, all I could was destroy. it taught me to hate me.

this same dangerous theology creeps through the ranks of the youth groups and the purity conventions. raps and songs and t-shirts and seminars abound. we grip the hearts of those girls, sitting shoulder to shoulder and toe to back with their peers, and whisper, you are in charge of his mind. you are in charge of protection. you are the problem. 

who put us in charge of stripping them down until they keep their arms crossed across their chests and their heads down with shoulders bent to hide that they are women, God-made and Heaven-adored? where is the mandate to shake the least of these, the little ones, until all their worth comes dropping out the bottom like gold doubloons down the storm-drain?

we are resisting innocence in our chase for purity. we are hanging stones instead of breaking them to gravel.

I remember the first time I hugged the man that would become my husband. I mean, really hugged him. I had just returned from a summer in South America, long weeks of sleepless nights and experiences that filled me with wonder. and there was my boyfriend, standing on the curb beside my parents' van, smiling. I didn't think. I hugged him, hard. from the front. and I can promise  you this :: the thoughts in our head were not about breasts or penises or sex or impurity or stumbling blocks.

we were embracing.
that was all.

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.

in which I want to talk about the lambs

I want to talk about the children. I want to talk about the little ones, the least of these, the ones with single-digit years on this earth who have already lost more than any adult should endure. let alone them.

I want to talk about hills to die on and covering Blood and swords and flailing arms. I want to talk about planted flags and crossed arms. I want to talk about little ones caught in the crossfires.

I want to talk about politics and the Church, how somewhere in the middle they merged into a hydra with foaming mouths and breathing fire. I don't know where the Bride went, and I think her Groom is grieving.

I want to talk about eyes. I want to talk about the way the world is watching our every move. I want to talk about how a leader who identifies with Jesus Christ and also with the ugliest of hate died this past week, and how the world rejoiced and danced in the streets. because they hate us, and we wonder why. they taste the word "Christian" on their tongue and spit it out. His name makes up the first part, and they're spitting Him out because of us.

it's rending me.

{photo via pinterest}

I want to talk about how this day left me short on words. I want to talk about the grooves that heels are grinding in the dirt with the kicking and the screaming while He is writing in the dirt right beside us, phrases familiar and convicting.

He says, let the little children come, and do not forbid them. we say, but Jesus, we're doing this for You. 

a friend of mine called it "holding the least of these as hostages in [a] culture war," and he's right. because where you stand on the issue isn't the point. it's really not. the point is that we are commissioned. to set the captives free, to tend to the widows and the orphans, to give a cup of cold water to these little ones.

did we forget? did somewhere, somehow, the footprints on the beach and the trace reminders of the Son of Man serving breakfast on the beach disappear? because I can't stop picturing His face, the gentle lift of His head, His meeting Peter's eyes and softly speaking, "oh Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me? feed my lambs."

we've missed something big, something intrinsic to who He is, this Son of Man, this Prince of Peace. today made it clear.

I can't stop hearing His voice.

do you love Me?
feed my lambs.

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. 

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?}

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 write to remember

{via pinterest}

I write to remember.

I write to remember the way my daughter's head smelled the first moment they laid her in my arms, even as my body still groaning from the opening and the pulling and the needle stitching flesh back to flesh.

I write to remember the way his arm encircled my shoulder and his fingers dug into my hair as I sobbed into his chest the day they called and said that the matriach of my paternal family had slipped from terra firma to life abundant.

I write to remember the way that my calling put down roots in the same moment that a woman looked at me and called me reprobate, called me voice of distention, and the friend I had brought to defend me somehow slipped from my side to hers while I blinked.

I write to remember the freedom that started way  back when tears streamed down my parents' faces while my sister and I planted our feet and shook our heads, done with navy blue skirts and rules that added up to leave us too far from Jesus to be the right way.

I write to remember the heartache because it twisted my road like a snake shedding skin, whisking away death like rain washing mud from the base of a splintered cross but leaving the blood-stains. the death has to be remembered to celebrate the life.

there are days I'd rather forget, things that seem better to slip away through my fingers like an hourglass in reverse, days I'd rather use feeble fingers to push the hands of the clock backwards, even though they leave dents in my flesh. if someone invented cocoa butter for the soul, the kind that fades stretch marks and scars back into oblivion, there are days I would be tempted to buy them out of stock.

but I write to remember the way that Glory tastes on my tongue when all I've been eating is mud for a month. I write to remember the way His fingers feel on my cheek, the way His mane breezes like a whisper of be still and know, better than a hankie for wiping tears away.

I write because my cat chases beams of light on the carpet and my daughter giggles at her own reflection. I write because Holy is unchained and death flows backwards through the cracks in the stone.

I write so I don't forget the way home.

{this is my answer for all those times when I'm asked "why do you write?" this is where I have found myself, and this is what Story Sessions has taught me how to capture and hold tight. there is a seat for you with us, dear one. come join us}

prayers of the people {guest post for Osheta Moore}

{photo by Jennifer}

oh Mighty King,
step down and see.

oh Creator of all,
reach down and hold.

oh Daddy,
help us.

we are living in a land of divide, of lines drawn in the sand to keep the colours from blending together when they bleed, except when a boy of darker colour is bleeding on the pavement from a bullet fired from pale-coloured hands. and that's when it merges into shades of grey fog, and there's so much staggering, and so much confusion. and there's so much weeping, Jesus. there's so much weeping.

because there's hands up, clenched fists pounding against walls that should have been knocked down years ago, that should have never been raised at all. we're shuffling back into iron chains that You bled Yourself dry to corrode into flakes of rust.

{dear ones, today I'm over at Osheta's place, pouring out my prayers like water on the ground. read the rest of the post here, and then join me today in prayer for eyes to be opened, hearts to be healed, and peace to consume all.}

in which He did not call us to be jerks

{photo by Jennifer}

there's a picture going around my newsfeed, a cartoon drawing of a bleeding man dressed in a rainbow shirt being bludgeoned by men holding Bibles. these caricatures were drawn to make us think, to draw the nodding heads and the "mmm"-ing and then "how true, how true" from those who identify as Christians. but I feel like it gets forgotten that the idea of the Sword of Truth being wielded like a butcher knife is more common, that we're good at passing out scarlet letters, carved into the chests so that they never forget they are sinners.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: they know us by the things we hate instead of by our love, and that's the opposite of the way He meant for things to be.

do you really wonder why they hate us? why when someone hesitantly says, "I'm a Christian," there's groans and eyerolls and muttering?  I've heard the laughter myself, heard the mocking voice of the ones trodden undo so-called holy feet. there should be something different about us, the ones who don "small Christ, wandering followers of the Rabbi" as our moniker. and unfortunately, there is something different :: the fact that we so often choose to us Truth as an excuse to cleave flesh from bone and then drag them by the hair to the foot of the cross.

you're forgiven and you're going to like it. or else. 

you want bluntness? you want transparency?

Jesus did not call us to be assholes. He did not bleed Himself dry to raise a horde of sanctified jerks, to lead an army of righteous indignation. when He said to turn the other cheek, He didn't mean by slapping one until the head bows in apologetic pain.

{photo by Jennifer}

it breaks me down when I think back to the hearts I turned, the way my own words sliced and my own hands slapped and my nails clawed frantic to make them see their sin. but instead, I scratched the corneas of their souls until things were blurred and tears streamed and they stumbled away into fog. I pray someone else came behind me and loved them better, loved them like He would have done.

sometimes I look at the story of the Crucifixion, the way they ripped His body into shreds and spilled His blood on the courtyard stones, and I think, maybe there's more of a picture there than at first glance. because that picture, it's visceral and holy and grace personified. but I can almost see Him looking up from beneath the thirty-ninth lash, thorns pressing into His skin, and maybe I can read His lips.

I took this already. I'm doing this for them, for you, for all. 
it's covered. it's taken care of, once for all.
please don't do this to anyone else.  

He died to make us alive, died to tear down walls and bring separation to a minimum. He cradled the broken ones closest, touched the untouchable, and laid the twisted paths straight. there is Truth we seem to forget :: this thing of grace, this thing of mercy, this thing of Love that passes through death's grip and into Life abundant.

and this, this is the marvel of marvels. 
that He called me beloved. 
{c.s. lewis}

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?}

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.

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}

why I don't hate the Church

{photo by Jennifer}

why do you hate the Church?

I get asked that question a lot, especially by those who have found themselves reading my plea for permission not to be a Christian anymore from last year. I'm finding myself having to explain myself over and over, in my awkward stammering way which belies the confident way I lay out my words in writing, that I am not targeting the Church. I do not hate the Church. I have no ax to grind, I have no vendetta.

my choice to refrain from referring to myself as a Christian was not because I have turned my back on my local body, and it's not because I'm sitting and staring daggers at any other believer-housing building that I have encountered in my past.

mostly it's because I'm tired of need-to-know religion.

in her stunningly visceral book, Pastrix, Nadia Bolz-Weber writes the following words which drew an audible gasp from my mouth and brought me to tears the first time I read them :: "we want to go to God for answers, but sometimes what we get is God's presence." and that right there is why I needed to lay down the name.

because we've somehow set it up that walking into Church and into Christianity is the way to have all the answers, to find the magic guidebook and a pile of glimmering power-ups. we have somehow given the impression that there is a laundry list of answers just waiting to be discovered, and if you look long enough and walk the paces with exactly the same amount of distance between each step, we will find it and everything will be made clear.

but if that's what you're looking for when you throw in your lot with the Lion, you're going to be disappointed. it's mystery. it's grace that is completely beyond comprehension. it's redemption for all, no one left outside.

sometimes, I get this wild mad idea that maybe the Church doesn't have to be clean carpet. maybe we can go back to the cross, the splintered wood stained with blood and the way He talked to the thief hanging beside Him while they mocked him from the ground.

I've stepped back from religion. I can't do the treasure hunt anymore. but that Carpenter from Galilee cooking fish on the beach and smearing mud to restore sight?

I cannot get enough of Him.

here's to indecency

{photo by Jennifer Upton}

monotony is easy. safe is easy.

quite frankly, there are days when I'd so much rather withdraw into the protected little hovel I dug for myself in the early days. sometimes I want to go back to when the words were pretty and drew a crowd and fit where they was "supposed to," according to the rule list.

who made those rules? I'm still not exactly sure. but I can tell you this much :: it wasn't Jesus.

two days ago, I wrote about being published with profanity. the piece isn't even live yet -- not until Wednesday -- and already, I'm feeling the pressure to apologize. I've been told that I'm pushing the envelope too far, that it's so great that I'm expanding my horizons, but no one likes a lady with a potty mouth. that just because I'm saying that it could be holy doesn't mean that it will be.

I've even been told that holy ground is not mine to declare. I've been told that I'm trying to pull the power out of God's hands, that Moses didn't light the bush on fire, so why am I?

because He already lit my soul on fire. 

I'm not declaring holy ground because it's a whim, because I'm throwing the word around to land willy-nilly on any spare scrap of earth. it's because the first spark was kindled hot in the depths of my soul by the Lion's roaring.

and sometimes it's not always presentable. sometimes holiness is scandalous, the kind that makes people put their hand to their mouth and whisper about you in the shadows. sometimes you can hear them talking, feeling them pointing, talking about decorum and the way it should be.

but He made me risky. He showed me how to shed the world's clothing and walk a little closer to the line, whispering,

I didn't draw that line. walk My line, not theirs. 

that's what being a writer is. it's shedding the appropriateness of social norms, it's digging your fingers into the smothering wardrobe of darkness and ripping it off in shreds. it's pure risk, pure surrender.

so, here's to clinging tight to the filthy robe of the Rabbi and realizing that the path is easy without all the extra weight pulling me all over the road.

here's to holy, sacred indecency.

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. 

the Holiness midwife

{photo via dramaticelegance}

dear you,

yes, you, the one with the Charlie Brown Christmas tree and the pile of tangled lights. you, with the expectation piling up in droves around you while sparkling decorations and Christmas carols threaten to drown you in a haze of grief and overwhelming fog.

it's okay.

it's okay to shut down Pinterest and buy cookie dough from the store. it's okay to leave the elf off the shelf and the cardboard star hanging sideways off the top of the tree.

it's okay to bury your head in your hands and sob to the tune of Jingle Bell Rock because you're too exhausted and worn down to turn the radio off.

because that's not the point, is it?

this is the season of Word becoming Flesh, the season of being stripped down to beyond the nothing. sometimes, it's even a time of fear. because waiting can be scary when you can't see beyond that curve in the road. it's a pregnancy, an expectant quivering. it is a cracking, an opening cervix through which blood will stain and Life will come.

it's the time of imperfection. if we were perfect, there would be no need for this season, for this waiting for the cry of One who came to gather us into Himself. for the One born of blood who came to bleed. He was born to stain, to leave a mark on all He touched.

He was not born for tidy.

it's okay to let go. to relax and let it come. we scream through the contractions and labour through the waiting. the Holiness is the midwife to this birthing, strong enough to bear it all.

and so you, you dear beautiful expectant soul. there is so much permission here. there is permission to breathe and pause. there is permission to quiver. there is permission to be imperfect.

sometimes you have to fight to find the sacred in the Advent. sometimes, you light a candle amid the piles of dishes on the kitchen counter and close your eyes and whisper,

i am waiting, i am listening. 

{this is another in my Story prompt series. would you joint us? there is always room for you}

holy ground

{via pinterest}

it's holy ground when the darkness comes and you're sitting folding laundry and picking up dropped Apple Jacks while your husband sleeps. on the couch.

it's holy ground when you find yourself barefoot on the hardwood steps realizing that you're in the place you've dreamed of being your entire life.

it's holy ground when you find yourself shaking because the honesty and the vulnerability is coming out in gushes and waves, and you're lifting your eyes to see through the veil to the Holiest of Holy places and you realize the veil is hanging in shreds and you can see His land uninhibited. and through the tears, it glitters.

it doesn't have to be beautiful to be holy ground. 

sometimes we forget that Moses found himself barefoot on the side of a mountain with wilderness spreading vast and wild all around him, and there was a bush that burned and it was not consumed. and He was in the fire.

sometimes holy ground is burning without being destroyed.

i slipped into the mentality, somehow, that holy ground was safely tucked within the four walls with a cross on the top, and that was the only place it could be found. i remember slipping my shoes off and wandering through the grass around my parents' property and thinking, this could be holy, this right here. too bad there isn't a church here. 

but it was consecrated ground from the moment i lifted my eyes up and whispered, find me here. i've been clinging to Narnia my entire life. i cried His name over the meadows and fields that spread behind my parents' house, and i reached out for Him.

i called for Him as He had been calling for me.

we declared holy ground.

{this was the first of many weekly prompts from Story Sessions. join us, won't you?}

no more plastic Jesus

i'm sitting on big words.

i have been a lot lately. even since i let myself swing open long-locked doors and start to let the river of Story flow out. and it's refreshing, crashing waves on the bank of my soul. but every time i bend to take a drink, i start to become afraid that i'm going to drown.

i told you all the things i wanted to tell you about my story, big pieces of me that came from years of standing in a place of not understand what it was that i believed. i wrapped myself up in what i thought was the blanket of Christianity, only to find out that it was actually something completely different, and it was suffocating me.

i was disillusioned by a plastic faith. my Jesus was dime-store cheap with a wind-up key in His back. and i was the one with my fingers around the key, watching Him toddle wherever i pointed Him. and in the process, i tied the strings around my wrists and ankles and became a wooden puppet with a hand-sewn faith core. 

when i talked about how i can't call myself a Christian anymore, many people recoiled, as i knew they would. how could i say such a thing? many people applauded because i didn't quite fit that "good Christian girl" look that they were going for, and of course, it would be better if i sat this one out. it proved a thousand points in my heart. it validated everything that i'd been feeling.

because i've watched what the Church has done. in truth, i've done more than watch. i was never a stone-thower. i made a point to never do that. but i held the coats and stood on the sidelines. i never picked up a rock, and that made it okay. i wasn't like that. except that i was.

i can't escape this now

unless You show me how.

 demons // imagine dragons 

and i refused to let myself realize it until my story matched up with the ones that were receiving the beating. and it it echoed like a howl across the wilderness. i melted.


this is what makes me want to tell my story. this is what makes me need to tell my story. it's what makes me stand up and say :: He knows what kind of woman i am. and He is letting me touch Him. 

it's why i've thrown my plastic Jesus into the trash and shut the lid. it's why i've ripped off the blue and white label clinging to my chest, the one with the scribbled Sharpie name that says, please don't touch me, you might get blood on my righteousness, and red is impossible to get out.

i'm sitting on big words. huge words. words that used to be lodged deep in my throat, in a prison that i didn't even know existed. and they're trickling out, becoming a brook, and then a stream, and then a river, bursting over its banks and pooling at my feet and there's a Voice whispering, I am calling to you. jump in. 

and this voice is Raw. Alive. Flesh.
there is nothing plastic about Him.

i'm kneeling there, beside the water, and there's mud and blood and messy wildness covering me from head to toe. and the Lion is there, breathing and real and wilder than He's ever been, crouching at my side. and He's whispering still,

it's not really drowning, lioness
when the Water is alive. 

i want to tell you

{via pinterest}

i want to tell you my story. but i'm scared.

i want to tell you that my parents tried, that they were wonderful people who heard a word and let it twist inside the wrong direction. i want to tell you that i still love them, and they still love me, even though i'm still healing from some of their raising choices. i want to tell you that they're changing too, and they're not the people they used to be anymore either, that they're beautiful people with His hand-print etched deeper than it ever was.

but i'm scared.

i want to tell you that i grew up in purity culture where modesty was more important than personhood, where my worth as a woman was measured by the length of my skirts and the height of my neckline. i want to tell you that i followed blindly because i was too scared to take my sunglasses off inside the Church.

but i'm scared.

i want to tell you that i courted my husband and we have so much regret from the way we were guided into love. i want to tell you that i look back and i think, why didn't i just kiss him a thousand times before i finally took a breath of courage, and why did the fear have to come so strong afterward? i think, why didn't i press that Joshua Harris book back onto the shelf and whisper, it's okay. i'm going to hold his hand and we're both going to chase the Lion instead of legalism...why didn't i?

but i'm scared.

i want to tell you that i found a way back into love surrounded by a tribe of women who helped peel the duct tape off my mouth that the well-meaning Church slipped over my lips when i wasn't looking. i want to tell you that i've sobbed my eyes out for the nearly twenty-one years lost in blindness before i dared to look straight into His eyes and whisper, i don't know You. but You know me. 

{via pinterest}

but i'm scared.

i want to tell you that i realized that i was a Jesus feminist when they placed my daughter into my arms and i looked at her face and thought, i can't let her endure what i did. i want to tell you that stepping out as a feminist was like my own personal closet with helpings of shame and grief that came alongside the breathing.

but i'm scared.

i want to tell you that i love you. i want to tell you that i love Jesus. i want to tell you that i see Him as a Lion because He isn't safe, and i can't do safe faith anymore. i want to tell You that i'm messy, and so is Jesus, and that's why i can lean on Him so fully, because i'm not afraid that me will rub off on Him. :: if anything, He's rubbing off on me. 

and like i've said, i'm scared.

but i think i'm going to tell you anyway. because He has made me a wild thing, a lioness renewed with the wings of an albatross at her back.

*deep breath*