twenty-three :: the year of shedding

{photo by dramaticelegance}

it's six'o'clock in the morning. being awake at this hour wasn't exactly my plan today. after all, it's my birthday. but there is something about this year :: this twenty-third year. it cries to be remembered. there's something impending, something important about this year. and i have no idea what it is.

// this is the year of shedding. 

i haven't seen a sunrise in such a long time. i treasure my sleeping. it's a very rare commodity in this house, what with a sweet small one who sets the time clocks with her precious voice. but this morning, i'm awake at six'o'clock. and i'm more than alright with this change of plans.

i've written a lot about thrashing in the past couple weeks :: this concept of letting go of answers and letting questions become acceptable, of having no idea what i'm doing...and it being okay. it's this flailing thing, dipping my arms to the elbow in the paint. it's that trying to dance, the learning, the splashing. and it might be more ridiculously awkward than i care to envision at this point.

i'm learning more about God than i ever did from my fundamental seat. i finding myself more undone by Him than ever before. i'm feeling like i've had a blindfold on, and i'm lifting it up, one inch at a time, and letting the Light in.

it's releasing my inner selkie soul. selkies are seals, magical and ocean-dwelling, emerging from the sea to be all woman, wild and beautiful. and that's what this twenty-third year will be for me. it's an emerging, a releasing. i'm reaching in deep and drawing my wild out. this time last year, i was holding a week-old baby girl in my arms, too overwhelmed and too afraid to mess anything up for any sort of awakening. i was where i needed to be.

{via pinterest}

and now i'm still where i need to be. it's all new and fresh, a one year old daughter curled into the curve of my arm, and my shoes left far behind on the path. it's holy ground, this venturing, even if i have no idea just how holy this space might be.

part of me is still sitting in grief from the loss of my grandmother on Saturday. my soul is still kneeling, sitting in a quiet shiva. but there is that low Voice in my ear ::

grief is great. only you and I know it yet.
let us be good to one another. 

and i feel the breath on my neck, and i know that twenty-three will be a year to remember. i am selkie girl in a year of shedding. and He still holds me there. not safe but good. He's been there for twenty-three years, curled at my back. i don't think He's going to stop now.

i'm right by the window.
and oh, this sunrise...it's luminous.

unsanitized sanctuary

{via pinterest}

i'm a watcher.

when i go places, i find a corner in which to tuck myself and i start to gaze. not awkward staring, but secret studying from under long, dark lashes. it's an art, studying the world, perhaps the most education of behaviors.

:: because you learn about yourself when you look at the mirror of another's eyes.

this is why community is so important, perhaps more important than this thing of too many words, too much sentiment that trails off and runs into trivialities when we stop paying true attention. i think this is why this concept of {wild}erness appeals to me in such a soul-thudding way. it's more than just a metaphorical landscape. it's a place where the soul wanders and wrestles and clings tight.

it's amazing how many of us are holding hands, taking step after step through the wilderness together, one made of pines and one made of sand and another made of barren stone. but we're all there together.

if you have a deep scar, that is a door.

if you have an old, old story, that is a door.  

if you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door.

:: Clarissa Pinkola Estés

we've crafted a place together, a worn and rugged sanctuary with water for washing and shelter from our individual storms. our mermaid cave with bit of preciousness, our hunting shack in the midst of the mountains. and there in the middle is a burning fire and blankets knitted to fit each of our souls, a perfect match of blue and green and white and cranberry red.

it's comforting when the world is trying to twist and turn and wipe every germ of "unclean, unclean" from the surface of faith.

why is the world obsessed with taming faith? even in the ruggedness of the mountain wilderness, somehow we always seem to pack hand sanitizer to spray all over everything, including the body of the Most High. 

{via pinterest}

we wouldn't want to get blood on the sofa. 

but He was the One that bent with a towel around His waist to wash our feet with a soft murmur of follow Me. 

there's a painted wooden sign that sits on the wooded island across the river from my sacred hideaway. i can't ever see what it says, but i like to imagine :: warning, wildness beyond this point. and outside this special sanctuary, i see a sign just like that one. 

caution :: wildness ahead

it seems to fit. He's not a tame Lion, and i want to be like Him.

so i'm curled around the fire with sisters all around in our church in the wild, a sanctuary together. and the Lion is singing a wild song to the stars.

the hard thing // letting Him bleed

{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}

i'm a hypocrite. 

quite frankly, writing that sentence up there took a solid fifteen minutes and i'm still sitting here looking at those terrifying three words and considering deleting them and being a little less honest. but that's the point, isn't it? 

because i'm all about whispering soft to warrioress souls, reaching my fingers out to them, while locked down in my heart with my fingers curled into unrelenting fists. not of freedom but of tightness, of a strange sort of rebellion that doesn't make me all that eager to be transparent. 

i heard a spoken word piece {of sorts} when i was younger, before i knew what spoken word was and just how much that concept would have a grip on my soul. i remember being fourteen and sitting there in that room with my eyes closed and listening to the faceless voice speak. 

hands up, clenched, control. 

hands down, release, open palms. 

it's not that fist pumping of warrioress pride, it's that raging face to the wind that screams i will not let go and You cannot make me. the past several months have involved a lot of tears, a lot of weeping, and whole lot of unattractive raging that would put those of you who read my words far away from me. 

i'm willing to reach out and touch the broken ones like He did. but i won't let myself be broken. and if i am, if i find myself in pieces on the floor, He can't touch them. those pieces are mine, and He might cut His fingers, and then i would be responsible for cutting the Saviour. so i shut down, and slam the door behind me, and leave Him standing there

knocking.

and that knocking doesn't stop no matter how deep i press against the back of the wardrobe with a fur coat wrapped around my head. but it's scary to look at myself in the mirror on the inside of the door. because i want to be Lucy, little seeker lioness with Narnian renewal in my braveheart steps. 

{photo of myself, taken by Photography by Kjelse}

but i'm Edmund with a belly full of darkness weighing heavy. i'm a scaled Eustace with a smug sort of blaming everyone else for my failtures. i remember the words they shared on the beach. "you weren't as bad....you were only a jackass, i was a traitor." me, see, i'm both. 

but then i realize that they were changed. and that Lion bared His claws and ripped the vileness from the skin of he who was too weak to do it himself. i want to shed my skin. 

He's okay with cutting His fingers and bleeding for me. after all, He already shed every drop with my name shivering with sacred Love in every cell. 

i just need to let the control slip from my fingers. i need to let Him bleed. 

i'm leaving a pile of burned dragon scales, ugly and broken, on the sand. and i'm stepping out on the back of the Wind, His back, broad and soft and warm. 

and gently He hums into my hair
the worst is over. 
there is no need to talk of what has past. 

broken lines // mosaic

{via pinterest}
artist unknown. if you know, share it with me? 

i couldn't pass this one by.

not when my entire life has been broken from the start, and not when my passion is reaching out the broken ones and tucking them in close against me.

we've been made to think that broken is a bad thing, something to be ashamed of, to coil around and huddle in the darkness. but being broken makes mosaics, those little intricate lines and cracks that make up the letters into words of our own deep stories.

being broken hurts. it's not something anyone wants. we don't set out each day wonder, oh, how might i break today? :: but maybe we should.

i hate being broken. but it's not a shame thing. i'm pulling back the cover on my heart, the thick woolen blanket wound around my shoulders and whispering to each of you, come here, dearheart. let's sit together and put it all together.

it's what sisterhood is all about, taking the bits and showing the bright Light that gleams from between each little crack. it's what the Lion does best, breathing soft Life onto hearts and watching them mend, but leaving the soft marks behind.

and the Pharassees chant, "all you need is Jesus. but then, you need this...and this...and this thing too..." and the milestone hangs heavy and all you can do is collapse.

no dress code or stand up sit down or running away from the shadows. because He's in the shadows.

He's in the Light. He's in the dark. 

:: He IS.

the marks are art, lines of ink on the page. they speak of a greater story, a deeper grace. they show that you are strong, wandering through fire but held tender and close. it's stepping off the cliff and standing on air, hovering gentle on Lion's breath.

{linking five minutes of unedited "broken" writing at lisa-jo's today.}

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. 

tribe :: being seen

{via pinterest}

i think i have found the most beautiful word :: tribe. 

and honestly, it's a word i used to hate. there was this movie we watched when i was younger. i don't even remember the name. but this woman called her children "the Lacey tribe" and never told people all their names because "life is short and time is precious."

and it made me feel strange, unsettled, even when i was eight. because why wouldn't time be precious enough to list off your own children's names? why lump them into this vile thing...this tribe?

and then i realized something for the very first time, just yesterday, at almost twenty-three years old :: being part of a tribe is about being known.  to take the idea and make it about being identity-forgotten, to strip away the you-light from this candelabra of tribehood, is to destroy the very essence of what it is to be.

because the Lion sang tribes into existence from the soul of the man who wrapped himself in fur and lied, who worked fourteen years for love, who dared to wrestle in the hour of his unknown. and from him there came twelve, and from one came the One. and there is something so precious, so unique about each tribal voice that led to the breathing of the Most High.

being in a tribe, finding your circle and your family of exhale :: it's about being see. it's about gazing and locking eyes with another, the brush of fingers over your cheek to leave a soft painted blessing on your skin.

{via pinterest}

// because you're seen. 

it's not about being smooshed into some sort of grey-hued mass where you blend in, where you simply are. it's about the circling of arms around you as sisters braid your hair and wind your neck with colour. and there in the caves with the soft lap of the water against the stones, the light flicking and the Light flowing from He-Who-Sees gathered in their midst. 

we see you, unique one. 

we know your name. 

and i know theirs. because i'm their family, and they are mine. and we take the time to see their lives and call each soul by name. just as the Lion who sang the stars, one burning flicker of light at a time, and whispered their names in the darkness. 

dearest daughter, 

I have known you long. 

:: gentle, gentle

{via pinterest}

 we are not gentle people. we have very heavy feet, and so often, they find their way to treading heedlessly on the dreams of others.

dreams are gentle things. they are big things, even if their keepers have no idea just how wide their wings might spread. they are delicate things, easily broken if they are not given care. it doesn't take much for careless fiddling to pluck each feather from its place and leave them a pile. and then the dreamer must rebuild, if they ever dare again.

there is sweetness deep inside, a kind of fruit worth savouring but so easy to bruise and destroy if we press too hard. and we are not gentle people.

:: but i want to be. 

i've started to focus on my mouth recently. the way my lips form words, the way they open when i inhale. what comes out with the breath, i wonder?

is it Light, radiant and luminescent, whispering Life into each soul that i encounter. or is it too late because my fingers caught the flame and pinched it dark?

because the seekers are met with sideways glances and the wrestling ones are given a wider berth, and the lonely hearts echo like windchimes in a wasteland, an empty beauty that everyone else is missing. and the whispers come, how dare they? they should know better. 

what you held in your hand, 

{photo property of dramaticelegance}

what you counted and carefully saved, 

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness. 

{Naomi Shihab Nye}

and i can't help but look at them and quietly weep because i've been there, just where they are. and maybe i still am, a little bit, because my footing is learning these mountain heights, where the other does leap like grace and i'm still white-knuckled. but i look to my left and to my right and see others there. beautiful ones with half-plucked wings wrapped in linen and eyes so full of soul that it takes my breath away.

this is my tribe, my Love-sisters. and we've made a circle of shoes on the ground where we all sit together, this holy sacred place that hums with hints of Lion's song still so alive in the earth. and we plant our seeds, one beside the other, and watch them lift their boughs to the sky and murmur, He-Who-Sees is here. 

and we hold hands and hum familiar notes that shimmer in the new-breathed air from a Lion's mouth, the place where we have all found ourselves. there is water there, for we are deep-living mermaids with transforming souls. there is fire there, soft and warm to comfort shivering souls. and softly, together, we seek His face.

and we are holding hands and whispering together

gentle, gentle 
:: we are brave