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.

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?}

fire-walking

{photo by Jennifer}

{this piece has been recorded in my own voice here.}

we live in a place where being naked is forbidden, in the literal sense of sleeves and cleavage and measuring tapes, and the metaphorical sense of words and eyes and thoughts. in fact, I think the fear lies closer to the words than the wardrobe.

it's common knowledge that being covered up to the neck is accepted and seen as the best choice. and if you choose to bare anything that steps outside the line, you risk getting hurt, and it would be your fault. because they told you the rules, and you stepped outside the circle.

it's barefoot coal walking with everyone whispering around you, you're going to get burned, you're going to get burned, you're gonna get burned. someone comes forward with shoes, a pair of socks, nylons. their offerings are well-meaning, but the intent is the same: cover yourself. they're tugging at your ankles, and you're wobbling, clumsily trying to stammer out a plea for them to stop. but then you're face-down on the embers with burn marks on your face, and the chiding comes in thick and fast.

you brought this on yourself, you know. that's what you get for playing with fire. we warned you.

but they missed the point. you're walking on hot coals with your bare feet, and you weren't getting burned until they started trying to cover you. your brave is showing, and it looks good on you. just because your bravery got scorched doesn't mean it went away. it just needs a little salve.

so you arch your neck and throw the socks in the fire-pit, with the shoes and the nylons, and maybe you take off your coat and add it to the pile. and you take a wild step, with the chant pulsing like blood in your veins. it's become your life-source, more oxygen and water than simple words repeated.

your brave is showing. your brave is showing. your brave is showing. 

repeat it as many times as the lies come, and maybe one more so that the brook-stone sinks deeper into the giant's forehead. it's not unladylike to wield a hammer, you builder-woman you.

there's wind on your skin, and it's cold and it'll make you shiver. but you'll take another wild step, and you'll hear the skin-sizzle and smell the smoke, and the flesh of your toes might char, just a little. but that hurt, it's the right kind, the kind that comes when you wake up and everything aches from the pushing and the stomping and the pressing with your back against the stone. the ache that comes when you wake up and find you moved a mountain overnight.

your brave is showing...step...

your brave is showing.... step...

{this post was inspired by my tribe of writers, the ones that hold my hand and my back in a way I've never experienced. want to join us in Story Sessions? there's always room for you with us.}

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.

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.

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?}

if you dare

it's the one about revelation. it's the one about life unrestrained and the stuff that comes along with it, day by day.

it's the one about renewal and restoration. embracing the challenge, living in the freedom we craved and received and now are almost too afraid to reach out and take.

{via pinterest}

i thew my hands in the air and said

"show me something"

He said

"if you dare, come a little closer."

stay // rihanna

and i'm digging in my heels and shaking my head back and forth because i'm afraid. but arrows have to be pulled back to fly forward, and so i'm releasing my grip and letting my head lean up with mouth open to taste the rain of His goodness and mercy. 

sometimes i feel like a collage, scrap paper pieced together like little girl dreams of this and that with glue sticks and glitter, except with bigger girl dreams that are just as fragile and just as deep.

it's like holding that match to newspaper, watching the flames expand and the statue turn from stone to new living skin and blood and breath. the thunder rolls like the churning mantra in my soul, and i find
my way to stomping and lifting my face to the sky.

if you dare, come a little closer.

hesitant on the water's edge, whispering, i'm thirsty...will You promise not to hurt me? 

and He says that He can make no such promise, but i come and dip my hand in the stream anyway because the Water is living and i am dying slowly without Him flowing through my body like liquid Light.  

:: because i begged Him to show me something.

and He did. 

{linking with dear emily where we rejoice in imperfection} 

ashes :: what wondrous love

{via pinterest}

what wondrous love is this 

oh my soul //

oh my soul //

i've been softly singing these words as i wander though my morning. it's been notes that have hung on my tongue since Saturday afternoon when i stood and watched as tongues of fire devoured my in-law's barns and vehicles. 

but the wind turned in the nick of a second and spared the house. melted slightly, scorched and warped slightly. whispers of what could have been, but were not. what wondrous love is this.

and now i find myself on my knees as i ponder what He let me see. i walk a line between grief and awe, of sorrow and wonder. because i'm learning first hand about refinement through fire, and seeing things that i never connected before. 

beauty from ashes, life from the ground's barest places. this is the thing He has been pushing on me in recent weeks. i have the firebird on my ankle, placed there the night that we remember His cry of it is finished. 

and He spared the house like He spared my soul, with His breath and His wind and the rain that came pouring down like tears as He saw the grief and wept Himself for love of His own. and as i walk through the ashes and embers and charred remains of wood and metal, i realize this more and more. 

{via pinterest}

deeper and deeper i am sinking into impossible Love that is almost wordless, inexplicably powerful except for when you experience something beyond yourself. 

He dwells within her

she shall not be destroyed.

::psalm 46:5

because my soul is something tucked away, and He lives in every corner of me, and i'm learning to let Him paint my soul His colours instead of mine, and gently mold me into something more beautiful than i could ever comprehend. and if that takes ashes and ink and clay and soot, so be it. 

and so i'm back to the words that i've been singing for three days. 

what wondrous love is this

// oh my soul

// oh my soul

kumbaya

{via tumblr}

it's more than three syllables, more than a simple campfire chants with guitars and jean shorts. it's more than that.

:: kumbaya. 
come by here. 

it's the word my soul speaks in the darkness when i'm reaching out into seeming nothingness and i'm empty and the dark night of soul is pressing in tighter and tighter.

:: kumbaya

it's the dance of the soul bathed in light as joy comes bringing in the morning with a laugh and a whisper of better things, beautiful things made new like He promised.

:: kumbaya

it's a silly song, one that every little child can sing by the time they've seen five summers. the words are used to mock, even, those who seem to want to lower weapons and hold hands across enemy lines. but it's more than that.

{via pinterest}

:: kumbaya
oh Lord, come by here. 

it's the rings in the tree, repeated and widened year after year. it's that knitted line in the scarf, threads woven by hand that speak of love when wrapped around neck and palms. it's the sacred footsteps of the seeker who has nothing left, the nomad who wanders the desert to find the spring of water and sits in the shadow of Him that sees.

for I have stood in the presence of the God who sees me.

kumbaya.
a word transforming.

it is come by here, Lord. it's a little girl crying come find me, Daddy. 

and El Roi, the God who sees, Abba Daddy. oh, He comes running.

it's more than a firelight song. it's a heart's burning cry.

it's the breath of our lungs.

::kumbaya::

sparks {102-117}

today is cold. wet. rainy. so grey and oppressive.

the kind of day that makes you want to curl up and just shut the world out. no more noise or cold or wind and rain.

nothing good. only the dark.

but i find this crackling hearth in my soul. and i sit beside the soul-glow and find the warm from blessing upon blessing.

• 102. cableknit sweaters and knitted scarves

• 103. letters from friends. hand-penned words in lavender pencil, even from growth comes love. 

• 104. acoustic guitars 

• 105. three amazing performances of OZ! 

• 106. friendship

• 107. birthdays. 21 years of light. 

• 108. peace. the chance to slow. to rest. to be still.

• 109. hot chocolate

• 110. Ravenclaw. 

• 111. discovering i am more than i can see, worth more than i might think. 

• 112. Him. what greater blessing is there than my King? 

• 113. warmth.  
• 114. touch. 

• 115. surrender. 

• 116. family. 

• 117. light. 

again, small things. 

my little things.

but on these days of darkness, of grey, of cold and damp

these are my sparks. 

my flames to melt the ice.

Phoenix

"God uses broken things. Broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume." ~Unknown

The past is a complicated thing.

So many of us attempt to erase the past...doing our best to clear our slates and start fresh every morning as we arise.

I will admit, I often find myself bogged down in regret for the things I have done in my past.

It's hard to keep from viewing myself as a broken mirror...Pandora's box, opened and poured out on the world in tears and pain...a soiled, tainted dove.

There are times I am overcome with the fear that the flames of my past have burned up any good or worth that could possibly be found in my heart.

And then I remember...

...at the bottom of the box, there still remained hope.

Gold is refined through fire.

Blood has already been poured out.

Death has already been battled and won.

My soul has already been saved.

The past is there for us to remember, to learn, and to grow. If we forget, what good has our pain been?

So, from the ashes, my hope shall spring.

I am His.

I am a phoenix.

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king. ~J. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings