catalyst

{photo by Rachel}

there's nothing like the word "catalyst" finding you during a vulnerability hangover.

it's one of those "mysterious ways" kind of circumstances where you really just want to draw away from the world and from the eyes that are peering in at you through your literary fishbowl. that's what writing is, in a way. it's being a fish in a tank, and people are staring, and sometimes they ignore the sign that says, don't tap on the glass; it frightens the fish.

people like to tap anyway.

writing is the epitome of vulnerability. there's that quote by Red Smith :: there's nothing to writing. all you do is sit down at at typewriter and open a vein. and we chuckle and shake our heads in that funny way we do when something is true and it amuses us. but then, all of a sudden, it's not so catchy and amusing anymore when you poured yourself out and you're a little weak and wan and woozy and the little glass of orange juice just isn't cutting it.

it's that thing of wandering into Smaug's mountain and realizing that I haven't brought a sword at all.

and then comes that word, glaring big from the upper right-hand corner of the sermon notes. catalyst. it's a perfect pairing with my word for 2014 :: precipice. 

a person or event which causes quick change or action. 

I've been writing big brave scary words already, twelve days into 2014. and it's left me feeling like I'm outgrowing my comfortable skin, like I caught myself sipping a little too much of Alice's drink me potion. it's growth, and it's intense, and it hurts. 

{photo by Rachel}

but there's something causing quick change and action. and it's not me. I'm not powerful enough for that, not on my own. I'm shedding all the garbage that's been collecting all over me, cleaning all around the battery connection cables that tie Him and I together. I can feel the glowing, the arcing when He and I meet.

and this is what makes the thrashing all worth it, every last bloody filth-plastered moment. 

sometimes it takes an emptying of words to realize you have so many left. sometimes it takes a visceral precipice looming up straight ahead for me to remember that His breathing is more buoyant than wings.

because it's because of feeling so completely stripped raw, down to nothing at all with barely even my own skin to keep me warm, that I can find myself sharing story -- my story, your story -- and breaking bread with dragons. 

precipice

{photo by jennifer upton}

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

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

this year is a big one.

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

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

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

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

precipice. 

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

{photo by jennifer upton}

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

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

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

precipice.

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

anticipating scarcity

{photo by Jennifer Upton

I am vibrating. 

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

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

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

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

a scarcity of knowing. 

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

{photo by Jennifer Upton}

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

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

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

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

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

there is a scarcity of knowing. 

but never a scarcity of promise. 

the elephant in the room

{via pinterest}

i want to talk about elephants.

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

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

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

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

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

{from my own art journal. photo by dramaticelegance}

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

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

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

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

i can hear the chains snapping.

a question :: selah cottage

{via pinterest}

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

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

we closed on our new home on Monday.

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

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

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

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

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

{via pinterest}

// release //

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

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

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

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

i'm being made new. 

You make me new

You are making me new

You make beautiful things out of us. 

{beautiful things :: gungor}

:: 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.

that wailing rhythm

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

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

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

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

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

and i wailed. // oh, that wail. 

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

and yes, sometimes, you have to wail.

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

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

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

before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

you must wake up with sorrow.

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

and you see the size of the cloth.

:: naomi shihab nye

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

{via dramaticelegance}

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

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

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

and you and the Lion count the beats together.

// releasing all over again

{via pinterest}

i used to blog every single day.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

the King of Kings is holding back my hair.

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

and i'm ready.

send it off // unafraid

{via pinterest}

i stand amazed in the presence 

of Jesus the Nazarene.

and wonder how He could love me

a sinner condemned unclean.

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

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

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

thank you for your interest, but...

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

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

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

:: but oh, the glory.

{my little reader}
photo property of DramaticElegance

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

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

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

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

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

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

shattered alabaster

{via pinterest}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

:: vance havner

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

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

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

watching her watching me

{via pinterest}

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

:: mary oliver :: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

releasing here, living here. 

for my little one. 

for me. 

for Him. 

red-lettered lowercase

{via pinterest}

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

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

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

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

:: frederick beuchner :: 

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

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

and letters are the first step.

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

awake my soul

awake my soul

awake my soul

you were made to meet your Maker. 

and that is where i live now. 

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

:: releasing.  

in which i release

{via pinterest}

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

and my OneWord365 for 2013 was confirmed.

:: release :: 

to free from confinement, bondage, pain

to let go

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

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

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

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

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

{via pinterest}

You can have it all. 

it's far too heavy for me. 

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

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

and i will be made new. 

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

the way

oh, how He loves

auld lang syne

{via pinterest}

it's the end of 2012. how did that happen already? 

this year has been full of a thousand moments, a million things that i wasn't expecting. i am better for them, i know, even if they broke me as they came. 

the last day of 2011, He gave me the word -- one word -- brave, and i didn't know why. and then i found out why thirteen days later when expecting brave became reality, and Marian was waiting for me then. and then everything went up and down in a kaleidoscope of colour and newness and fear and tears and joy. oh, so much joy in this year. 

i used to look back on the calender squares and wrinkle my nose. good riddance to that 365. but not anymore. now i look back and whisper i was brave. i was so brave. 

i was also silent a lot this year. looking back at my blog, i've watched my words slowly trickle down to a drip and my stream of consciousness become dammed up and locked away. is it out of place, sacrilegious even, to compare myself to Mary in these months? both Marys of the Word, in fact.

one bore the King of Heaven under her skin, bound up all these things and treasured them so deep within her heart. silent solitude was this mother of the Holy One. 

and the other sat at the feet of the Man and listened, worshiping there on the ground with eyes turned up to hear away from the business and the pull of others to come and be lost in the grind of life. 

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both listened. both were silent. and i've done much of that in 2012. 

i learned that brave does not mean unafraid. if it did, no one could ever be brave because fear is there wherever you go. it means exhaling and letting go, leaving the empty to be filled by He who is greater than i. 

starting last year, i gave up resolutions and took a word instead. my word is brewing in me now. i can taste it, feel it stirring so electric and so passionate within my heart. 

2013 is a blank canvas yet. untouched. but oh, soon it will be full of paint and lines and so much colour. i'm carrying brave over and i'm adding on. and my soul will magnify the Lord. and i will declare, oh, He is Risen and Alive and thus, i too will live in the volume and the grace of the King of Glory. 

i will leap barefoot in paint puddles and cry holy holy holy. 

see, I am doing a new thing!
    now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.

::isaiah 43:19::

dive

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sometimes people ask me how i intend to keep my warrior's heart alive with a baby on my hip. that it seems glorious now to speak of the sacred and of the Light, but that my time will come when infant cries and sleepless nights will overtake me and that i will flicker out from fancies into realities. 

these are the people that set my determination even deeper to swipe the paint beneath my eyes and grip the temple pillars with white-knuckled fingers. 

since when is the sacred a fancy? and when did motherhood kill the Light? 

have i missed something? 

a wise woman once told me that the weight of her son on her back bore her often to her knees. and isn't this how it should be? where children pull on skirts and guide closer and closer to the Cross, because children are warriors too. 

and i am ten weeks with this one, still silent save for the fluttering heartbeat beneath my skin. 

but this child will not blind my eyes from seeing Light or colour or Heaven's kiss along the earth. i know that it will be hard, and perhaps tears will blur or exhaustion with draw me down to my knees, but i will not be made blind.

:: He promised that i would never be blind again ::

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i feel like i have toes pressed against the dock with water lapping soft beneath, and the wind whispering brave through my hair. 

maybe this dock is higher than i think, perhaps a ship's yardarm. and there is still this whisking, flowing water beneath my bare feet. 

and i could dive, or i could stay on the edge and wonder always what would have happened if i let go and simply slipped from air to aquatic. 

i think.

no, i know. 

i'm diving. deeper than i've dared before. and i refuse to act as though i am unafraid, because i have shaking fingers. but i've put down roots of brave and i will let the still, small Voice whisper in the night.

courage, dearheart. 

for I have overcome the world.

freedom :: press send {220-227}

no one told me it would be this hard.

barely two days, and this thing of brave already has my fragile fingers shaking. and all it took to make my heart beat faster was pushing that button. 

:: send ::

because the first thirty pages of my book just went to an interested publisher. it took a precious one in my life to get me to get the courage to click that mouse and let it fly from security to unsure. it's my fragile soul, a month of bleeding onto the paper and turning thought into word and imagination into fiction. 

and now it's out of my hands. and i'm petrified. because i don't do rejection well. 

really, does anyone? 

but i'm bad at counting blessings etched on my soul when i'm too busy shaking in the corner with fingers draped over eyes whispering

please don't let me fall

i can't do this.

but i count anyway, one and two and three and four...

• 220. courage. knowing that courage is more than doing, it's being. 

• 221. vulnerability. 

• 222. the voice of a precious friend, urging me to be brave and leap. press send.

• 223. grace. so much grace when i deserve it not. 

• 224. warm soup on a day so cold that noses go numb and fingertips shiver. 

• 225. fresh starts and clean slates. brand-new year, 2012. 

• 226. puppy kisses and The Bachelor on winter nights. 

• 227. healing tattoos, eternal reminders of my place on His palms. 

so i still count. because nothing stops my racing heart more than drowning in eucharisteo, in letting the focus slide away from fear and up further, in further. 

because it's being brave. it's being, all on its own.

it's surrendering in the darkness, waiting for the Light to come again.

{linking with Ann and my sisters in gratitude today}

understanding brave :: being

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it's the first of three sixty five. 

i woke up this morning and laid in bed, staring at the curtains as they fluttered in the frozen breeze. 

:: and i didn't feel brave ::

i made coffee, the first strong pot of a new year, steaming in my mug with fragrant wisps of steam. 

 :: and i didn't feel brave ::

and i looked out the window at the snow-less ground that could perhaps be confused for spring. 

:: and i didn't feel brave ::  

but brave isn't feeling, is it? because feeling lie and emotions betray and too often hearts don't know what they should, and minds know too much of what they shouldn't.

no, brave isn't feeling.

it's being. 

it's not about awakening and leaping from bed to floor with sword in palm. it's about living, all on its own. about thinking less and meditating more. about inhaling and exhaling and repeating the action a thousand times with barely a thought. 

that's my first portion of brave. 

the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud

was greater than the risk it took to bloom. 

:: anis nin :: 

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because brave isn't a battlecry, not really.

it's a love song. 

it's those halting, lonesome notes that ring over the night. it's the sweetness of a Lion's song, of a call to come and drink. 

because brave isn't something that comes naturally. it's waking, and knowing. it's living and breathing and standing and clinging to the mast in the storm and knowing that there is an end. 

it's watching the gale blow from the shelter of His arms, and knowing that a Lion's mane is stronger than a thousand storms. 

it's not being unafraid, because fear comes and fingers shake and there's so much unknown in the silence. but He promised a rainbow, and it makes me brave to know that colour comes again and grey is broken like shards of glass that slice the bonds between Life and death. 

it's brave to be His.