never forget

{via pinterest}

i've been pondering this thing of sacrificial womanhood, this thing of mothering that can often come without warning and change your life in an instant. 

a year ago this month i discovered that my life was about to change for the better and for the strange and for the mysterious that i still do not fully understand. and i look at this child, this beautiful warrioress with rosebud lips and sea-blue windows to her tiny soul, and i am humbled. 

i have learned that brokenness is essential to this journey, to this place of being mother to someone so small and so earth-shaking. this journey has been turned into a war by some who would rather turn the innocence of children into a battleground, and that makes it so very hard. 

this world is a battleground enough. i war every day for the soul of my child, fighting off lions like a mother bear who has been wounded by a thousand spears with words like ugly and fat and not good enough.

and i am learning every day to die to myself so that He might live through me for the betterment of the little one who is so small that she cannot even yet form the words "ma-ma." brokenness is something hard to swallow, a pill that looks so jagged and fearsome that even the mighty shrink away. but i must do this, for me and for her, and for all that comes after for us both. 

{momma and Marian, four months old}

i prayed for this child, and i pray for her still, as her shrieks and coos fill my every waking moment and even those moments when i would rather be asleep instead. and then she smiles at me and puts a tiny chubby hand against my lips with a giggle, and i melt inside. 

i am undone :: 

so in the night hours, when the house is silent save for throaty husband snores and the clicking tick of the refrigerator, i whisper to the little girl curled in the crook of my arm. 

:: never forget, little one :: 

someone loves you. i promise i do. and He does, too. no matter what you do in this life, i will love you. and He will too. 

it's not a crime to be beautiful. feeling pretty isn't a sin. size 16. size 2. whichever you are, you are. the scales don't define you. you are a lioness, a King's daughter, and that is what matters. 

breath is precious. life is short. so live your breaths. 

and never forget.

never ever forget.

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. 

dark light

live in the light

{via pinterest}

stand in the sun

never look back.

these words have been whispered to me by a thousand voices in a thousand languages for the course of my entire life. and i think if you were raised in the church, you heard it, too. 

there is a place in this world where dark reigns supreme for six months of the year. the earth is tipped and the light cannot reach it there, not for all those weeks of night. and the people there wrap in furs and tangle fingers together and wait...

because they know that there is an end to the darkness. and then comes the six months of light, and the darkness fades into a place of echoing radiance that spills from fingertips and spiraled ends of hair.

but they feel the light because they knew the dark. they cannot appreciate one without the other's balance. 

it's the same with us, the same with the life we live and the breath we inhale every single day a thousand times without even realizing. and the voices that whisper never look back are wrong to wish you blind to the past and wide-eyed to forever. 

both are needed. we have a moon to cool the sun, and a sun to warm the moon. we must have both for tides and seasons and growth.

what matters is how you breathe in the night. do you stare at the midnight and scream light is dead, and never will come back again?

or do you look at the stars and say there is light here. 

for you were once dead in your sin

but God, rich in mercy, made us alive.

:: ephesians 2:1, 4 ::

i refuse to stop loving for fear of the night. i will dance below the stars instead, fingers spread toward the moon and inhaling beam after beam of silver light. 

for i was once dead,

but God...

be alive :: battlecry

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do you want to live?

i hear this question every day. not as a cry of despair or a wail of longing, but as a battlecry.

do you want to live?

my heart beats this word. LIVE. LIVE. LIVE. who knew the very act of breathing could be more than just breathing? because there's more to this thing of living than just inhale-exhale-repeat times a thousand. oh, no.

living is so much more than being alive. did you know that today, as you press through crowds or stand in kitchen solitude?

do you have little ones clinging to your leg chanting their own reprise of mommymommymommy? or is there a thousand other voices clamouring for your attention, and you aren't sure which one to answer first?

because you're alive. your heart is beating and your blood is flowing. but are you living? really?

this is a battlecry, i promise you.

do you want to live?

because i think you should crave to LIVE. oh sister, grasp life by the mane and roar your existence to the Heavens. we are Lion children, Heaven's heirs. and we're living like miners in the goldrush, fingers pawing through the muck for maybe a nugget of truth, or maybe a nugget of lies.

have we forgotten how to live in Light? as daughters and sons, adopted to glory?

stop where you are. 

stop right now.

and look. rip off those sunglasses as those who are blind and feeling their way from brick wall to muddy bog. because there is a path to take, dearhearts. and it's lying down before you, crying out

i'm here! see me?

sometimes it's a charge. other times it's tentative steps, learning to walk all over again. so won't you leap? and won't you live?

cry out, warrior. be brave. and live.