yes...and no {five minute Friday}

I'm back.

and I think five minutes just might do for a perfect start.

because right around five weeks ago, I had another baby. and it was a long road, not five minutes, but seventeen days of groaning and laboring and prayers of sweet Jesus, please, let it end, bring her here, let it end. 

but we got our Shiloh. 7 lbs, 2 oz. we got our "one the whom the holiness is promised." and she is perfect and big sister is in love and so am I and so is my husband.

{I'll blog her birth story soon, I promise}

but then I was no longer pregnant. so the voices started clamoring. it didn't take long, and I'm not sure how many of them were in my head vs. actually shouting in the real world. part of it was the hyperemesis and the inability to do just about anything for so long, and then the prodromal labor, which took away the rest of my strength.

and it sounded tempting, these invitations.

come do this.
be this. 
do this. 
be this.
come back now be with us now come do everything you have been doing and haven't been doing. 
now. 

{photo via Unsplash}

and I started saying yes. louder and quicker than I should have.

and it got dangerous.

my physical health was important, of course, but that wasn't the biggest worry. the biggest worry was my mind, my heart, the breakdown that comes when we take on too much, say yes too quick and too loud and realize that we just aren't ready for the yes-ing to start. not yet.

so I'm saying quieter yes and remembering to speak no a little louder and a little firmer.

I just got back to my life, and it's different now. we have two little dove daughters, our wildflower girls. one turning three in a matter of weeks, my Marian with her big blue eyes and wild curls and a vocabulary that terrifies even talkative me. and then little tiny dark haired LoLo with her coos and wide awake watchful eyes and her gentle infant nursing sounds all night long.

yes and no.

both important. both beautiful.

both in their time.

I haven't done five minute Fridays in a very long time. I haven't really blogged in a long time but that isn't the point. the point is: I'm back and it feels good. and starting here, one of the places where my blogging got its start, feels fitting and beautiful and like a returning to myself again. so join us here, write in five minutes, and find the beautiful again.

I've missed you all :: I look forward to getting to know all of you again. 

the f-word

i remember the first time i said the f-word

in front of my mother.

and her face turned pale and she cleared her throat and spoke

“you know we don’t approve of that word.”

i remember the first time i wrote down the f-word

in my journal.

and my fingers quivered and i whispered inside myself

“do I really approve of that word?”

i remember the first time i said the f-word

to my husband.

and he smiled with his eyes from the driver’s seat and said

“good. I’m proud of you.”

i remember the first time i said the f-word

in relation to Jesus, spoken casually about Him, in His direction,

and i  felt power flow out of Him and heard the wind whisper

“that’s right.

I’m a feminist too.” 

{i'm doing 40 days of poetry, a new adventure for me. i'm sharing them with you, little bits at a time.} 

rejection of the Story

{via pinterest}

there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you :: maya angelou 

i haven't started a blog post with a quote in a long while. but this quote...mm, this one, i felt was all too appropriate for my soul-season right now. 

i have a lot of emails sitting in my inbox right now. one of them is one that has been sitting there since February of 2011. i can't bring myself to delete it, even though i really really really really want to, more than even i realize. 

it's my very first novel rejection letter.

frankly, it wasn't all that surprising. the publisher had asked for my first fifty pages of my {still} unfinished fantasy novel, and i had sent it along with a small shred of trepidation in my heart. and i heard back. they thought it was wonderful. they used words like "brilliant" and "beautiful imagery" and "radiant." 

but it just wasn't for them. 

and i cried. it was the strangest most painful compliment i'd ever received. it was as though they were saying :: your work is good, great even. it's just not good enough. 

i never finished the novel. it's still sitting in my WORD file, completely untouched since that rejection letter arrived in my inbox more than two years ago. 

part of me wonders if it's because i needed to let it die, like a stone-pile monument to the moment i realized that i was officially a rejected writer {rejected as in, a right of passage to have your words turned down}. but then, maybe it was because i got scared. maybe the idea of a monument, a reminder, was romantic in a strange sort of way, and i was okay with leaving it like that instead of facing that fact that rejection sucks and i wasn't looking forward to dealing with it ever again. 

which, as a writer, is laughable. 

which, as a human, is laughable. 

rejection comes, like brutal hammers or like shards of glass in your shoe. it's there, banging down your door, right in your face. it's there, whispering quiet doubts that borrow deep into your soul and lodge there, eating you up into nothing until your story shrivels away into broken twisted stems. 

no light, no air, no water :: the story dies. 

{via pinterest}

and so i'm writing again. it's September. there's a thousand things happening this month, so many challenges laid out on the road in front of me like Turkish Delight, tempting and covered in powdered sweetness. it's a luring concept to take them as excuses to just not write, to just let the story lay "one more day." 

but there's a table laid out before me, gleaming and right, brimming with love and light by the Hand of the Lion with enemies and rejection pressing at the edges. but He growls so low into my soul. 

courage, dearheart

I have known you long. 

and i dine for strength. and my laptop perches gently on His broad back. i write, and He leaps over the kingdom of darkness until we rest on a beach with the gently cresting waves giving me glimpses into His Country across the sea. and i dip my toes into the Light-Water. 

and the Story puts out leaves. 

{want to enter a community of Story, of grace, of Jesus, of growth? Jesus found me in story 101. are you ready to take the leap? you won't regret it.}

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...

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}

in which i am His // and me

i started this blog differently.

rather, i didn't write the traditional "hi, my name is..." post at the very beginning. i started out to be a private poet.

in fact, i never have written one of those posts. at first, it didn't feel right to me to talk about myself or share random scraps of this and that.

i have a bio page which talks about me. but it's just crumbs on the plate that is me.

this is one of those times when i wish i could open my soul's door to you -- just to let you peak inside and get a glimpse at this watercolour wallpaper which paints a picture of the real Rachel.

with her mother's middle name and orange circles in her eyes 

with a new-found obesession with dreadlocks and searching for greater soul

because that's the real me.

am i strange because my favourite kitchen item is this teal and white ceramic bowl, all vintage and old? i have no idea where this bowl even came from, how it managed to find its way into my tiny culinary corner. but it did. and it's my favourite. 

 i can read the same book over and over again; i can find different things within each ink jot and somehow love it more. i've done that with Shakespeare and with Rowling.

i love the touch, the feel, the aroma of the printed word. i will never buy an eBook. not ever. 

i didn't use to write in lowercase letters all the time. in fact, i was a perfectionist with capitalization and punctuation. i'm recovering from that. 

{via pinterest}

i'm discovering the sacred now. it's a walk, and it's a painful one. but i'm letting Him drive now, and it's a better journey. 

i'm intensely claustrophobic. even sleeping bags freak me out. if i can't move my feet, or my head can't turn, then i'm bound to panic. 

i love vanilla. and cinnamon. and spices that tantalize my lips and tongue. 

i love wooden spoons and wooden bowls and ice cream with them both. 

do you see me better now? 

these are just bits of me. i wish i could paint you a picture. i don't know if you'd see what i see. i think i like that, though. 

i learning to love my rosepetal smile and my watercolour eyes. 

i'm learning to walk, that it's okay to break. 

i'm learning Him

and in the process 

i'm learning me.