stepping into silence

{photo of me by photography by Kjelse}

{over the next several weeks, maybe even months, i will be writing here and there from elora's thirty days of prompts. this is something that i have never done before, something raw and fresh and gorgeous and potentially painful. so please, be gentle with me. you can find all posts i have written from these prompts here}

:: what are you waiting for?

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

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

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

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

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

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

:: i can start writing that chapter now.

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

{photo of me by photography by Kjelse}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

craving space

i am craving my own space.

ever since we lost the dream house, the place in which we are tucked now has seemed to slowly be closing in around me. it's begun to feel smaller than it every had before.

i find myself sitting at the kitchen table with my art, merging paint and canvas with dishes and bank statements. it is not my space, it is collective space but not in a communal artist way. it in shared in a life way, a way that doesn't ever stop but simply moves around me. and sometimes, it feels like it is slowly pushing my artistic spirit down the nearby garbage disposal.

mermaids crave the ocean, the wide and the open, the salty spray and the peace of the selah-crashing waves. i am landlocked, in more ways that one, with the nearest water being bottled and chilling in the fridge.

and maybe that is why i have grieved the loss of this house so deeply, in a way that almost seems like a part of my physical self had fled. it has been a rending, a true exploration into that word that has become far stronger than i could have ever anticipated :: release. 

art has become something powerfully present in my life in recent months, especially as my own faith journey has taken unexpected twists and turns. it's that demolition, as my husband calls it, the breaking down of all i once knew save for the foundation of the Lion to whose shimmering mane i cling. i'm relearning the sacred, finding my soft Psalmist voice again. it's release. 

:: and even in the crush, releasing myself might be part of the grand scheme of the things after all. 

because i'm past the point of being able to find a corner of my own in this tiny little place we currently and i reluctantly call home. though home is where your heart is, and my loves are here. so this is home. i am creating in the midst of our life, where the Light shares between my ink and paper pages and the aromas of home-cooked food and laundry soap.

and so i'm laying out the brushes and opening the journal, a new blank page in the middle of my worship place at the kitchen table. i light a candle and exhale the holiest of God-Light to the tune of stillness in the midst of the household busyness. i'm learning how to find my warrioress self amid the pulsing thrum of vacuums and pasta water boiling.

finding my space which i crave so desperately.
even if it means this mermaid swims {for now} in the kitchen sink.

{linking with dear emily for imperfect prose}

art is for you

{via pinterest}

i remember the first time i saw the ocean. i was a little girl, landlocked from birth, with a swimsuit that matched the ocean and short hair hacked by even younger hands. and my soul inhaled the salty air and murmured,

:: i am home. 

it takes diving into a pool and sinking down to rise up into the place He sang into Life. it takes cresting the ocean's wave to even catch a glimpse of His eternal country. there's something powerful about this idea, that it takes deep immersion until all you can see is the Light hovering on the surface of the water from down below.

we are all soul-creatures, made to be seen, 

created to be tenderly cradled and adored, 

yet we tremble at the thought of it.

love like water :: wild rain

so often i wish i had a mermaid tail tucked away in the closet, shimmering and waiting for me to slip inside and dive into the sea :: to return home, in a way, to a place that i never truly held but always flowed through my fingers.

i think it's part of why i've gone back to being an artist in recent days. it was something i had given up after comparing myself to others who were "better" even though all we were was different. i was seventeen when i put down the brush. all it took was an art teacher's slightly raised eyebrow and the words, maybe art isn't for you. 

all i can do is reflect back on words i've written before :: it's those moments in the dark where we wrap our arms around our knees and kneel within ourselves to the waves of crashing Love that threaten to overwhelm us. it's a tremble, not a cringe. it's a breathing, not a hyperventilation. 

{sketch by alexandria for dramaticelegance}

this is for me. and my mermaid soul is seen by the One who wove kelp into my hair and called my soul to love of depths.

there is a seacove of my own, tucked gently beneath the waves at the edge of Aslan's Country, that place that hums a familiar melody and whispers of one day, forever. there in that place is a set of paintbrushes made from the mane of the Lion who gave it up for me to Live freely. 

it's a metamorphosis of sorts, a shedding of the ugly and the embracing of the mantle of glory.  it's stepping away from the shadows that confines my feminine soul into certain boxes that aren't allowed to stand here because it might not be right. 

it's being brave and letting down my hair. He promised to come to us like rain, and like water does He fill my soul to overflowing. 

and this is where i am :: tucked in my cove surrounded by sisters of soul and ocean, the crash of the ocean and the roar of the Lion harmonizing tender. 

because He promised
art is for you,
My mermaid daughter. 

upward gaze ::

{via pinterest}

i've decided to stop looking down

because all that's down there is grass and dirt and my feet and the path less traveled. 

and He's not underground anymore, because He's risen and now sits among the stars. and i'm going to spend my hours in the stars this spring. no more shame with downcast eyes and hesitant steps that aren't exactly sure, that aren't exactly steadfast. 

now that she's back in the atmosphere

with drops of Jupiter in her hair

she acts like summer and walks like rain

reminds me that there's a time for change ::

drops of jupiter // train

people are living on the "even the..." too much these days, while i'm rubbing the eraser over those words until they disintegrate into thin rubber strands on the paper and get brushed away as far as the East is from the West. 

i'm resolving and loving regardless. and that includes loving you in the skin you're in, and looking past sex and race and orientation because those are words but they're are who you are, too. because He didn't stop and pass out checkboxes just to make sure the crowds were lovable before He stretched out His arms and poured out pints and pints of redeeming blood. 

so why do i?

so no more looking at the crowds with pointed fingers, Church-Bride. no more figures where faces should be. see the dove daughters and rainbow hued sons and paint-streaked kings and offbeat queens, just like He did. 

and that means loving you too. it means loving me like i'm worthy of His death and rising and loving and sword to the throat of Hell for me, oh all for me. and for you. and them.

:: amen.

so let it be.

the fifth page :: mystery

{via pinterest}

{to read the first page, visit here}

{to read the second page, visit here}
{to read the third page, visit here}

{to read the fourth page, visit here}

conviction is a powerful thing. it's something that can come out of nowhere, something that you never saw before a hand touched yours and words were whispered, you should look.

today, it took a whimsically tangled ski trip and a sacred blog post to grip my soul and turn my head toward you should look.

it's time to look at ourselves, the sisters and the brothers and the sons and the daughters of the Mighty One. it's time to look at who we were and the mold into which we are squeezing ourselves just because we think we have to fit. have we gotten stuck in the place where sacred gets sidelined, talked about in whispers and not fully understood anymore? 

{via pinterest}

because it feels as though we let it go, and we stopped seeking when we stepped through the church doors. 

we have somehow entered the place where candle-lighters are greeted with wrinkled brows and those who seek the holy are the strange ones who look to hard for "the emotion." because mystery in the Word, not understanding everything that greets our eyes and tugs our souls...

is this wrong?

shouldn't we just know?

we need to step back and breathe and seek. we need to be free to acknowledge that it’s okay to be a mystic, a seeker in this dark world. where candles make your soul ring in the darkness and we invite the Creator to come and create WITH us.

this season is God with us, celebrated and overwhelming with candlelight and silence in the beholding. this here, this is the time where we find ourselves willing to open our door to the fragrant and cast aside the understandable. and for this, i raise shaking hands to broken clouds and whisper, 

come have me, won’t You?

spark

do you ever wonder 

what you were born to do? 

do you ever watch the street musicians, battered guitar and plastic tub drums tucked into cement corners? do you ever watch their eyes?

because if you did, you'd see something. something raw that only a seeker could find.

you find the spark. every dreamer has one, i promise.

do you ever wonder why there that's moment when tears roll down, but not from sorrow? from that agonizing beauty of perfect joy found when you find it.

:: that spark :: 

{via pinterest}

that cross in the windowpane, that little moment of gaze when the sun peaks over the ridge and pours over your face.

that moment when hands go up and eyes fly shut, because this is praise in a way. it's pure Glory, pure majesty. it's that thing when the world goes black and it's You and God and nothing else. spotlights shut down and the room is dark but everything shines.

because it's what you were born to do. it's what your soul craves, that voice in your heart that cries

sing. breathe. paint. 

be artist, be writer, be vocalist. 

be spark. 

and there's nothing you can do but listen. because we are, after all.

because we're doers. we're breathers.

we're dream touchers, star-gazers.

{sharing this imperfection with emily today}