auld lang syne

{via pinterest}

it's the end of 2012. how did that happen already? 

this year has been full of a thousand moments, a million things that i wasn't expecting. i am better for them, i know, even if they broke me as they came. 

the last day of 2011, He gave me the word -- one word -- brave, and i didn't know why. and then i found out why thirteen days later when expecting brave became reality, and Marian was waiting for me then. and then everything went up and down in a kaleidoscope of colour and newness and fear and tears and joy. oh, so much joy in this year. 

i used to look back on the calender squares and wrinkle my nose. good riddance to that 365. but not anymore. now i look back and whisper i was brave. i was so brave. 

i was also silent a lot this year. looking back at my blog, i've watched my words slowly trickle down to a drip and my stream of consciousness become dammed up and locked away. is it out of place, sacrilegious even, to compare myself to Mary in these months? both Marys of the Word, in fact.

one bore the King of Heaven under her skin, bound up all these things and treasured them so deep within her heart. silent solitude was this mother of the Holy One. 

and the other sat at the feet of the Man and listened, worshiping there on the ground with eyes turned up to hear away from the business and the pull of others to come and be lost in the grind of life. 

{via pinterest}

both listened. both were silent. and i've done much of that in 2012. 

i learned that brave does not mean unafraid. if it did, no one could ever be brave because fear is there wherever you go. it means exhaling and letting go, leaving the empty to be filled by He who is greater than i. 

starting last year, i gave up resolutions and took a word instead. my word is brewing in me now. i can taste it, feel it stirring so electric and so passionate within my heart. 

2013 is a blank canvas yet. untouched. but oh, soon it will be full of paint and lines and so much colour. i'm carrying brave over and i'm adding on. and my soul will magnify the Lord. and i will declare, oh, He is Risen and Alive and thus, i too will live in the volume and the grace of the King of Glory. 

i will leap barefoot in paint puddles and cry holy holy holy. 

see, I am doing a new thing!
    now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.

::isaiah 43:19::

dive

{via pinterest}

sometimes people ask me how i intend to keep my warrior's heart alive with a baby on my hip. that it seems glorious now to speak of the sacred and of the Light, but that my time will come when infant cries and sleepless nights will overtake me and that i will flicker out from fancies into realities. 

these are the people that set my determination even deeper to swipe the paint beneath my eyes and grip the temple pillars with white-knuckled fingers. 

since when is the sacred a fancy? and when did motherhood kill the Light? 

have i missed something? 

a wise woman once told me that the weight of her son on her back bore her often to her knees. and isn't this how it should be? where children pull on skirts and guide closer and closer to the Cross, because children are warriors too. 

and i am ten weeks with this one, still silent save for the fluttering heartbeat beneath my skin. 

but this child will not blind my eyes from seeing Light or colour or Heaven's kiss along the earth. i know that it will be hard, and perhaps tears will blur or exhaustion with draw me down to my knees, but i will not be made blind.

:: He promised that i would never be blind again ::

{via pinterest}

i feel like i have toes pressed against the dock with water lapping soft beneath, and the wind whispering brave through my hair. 

maybe this dock is higher than i think, perhaps a ship's yardarm. and there is still this whisking, flowing water beneath my bare feet. 

and i could dive, or i could stay on the edge and wonder always what would have happened if i let go and simply slipped from air to aquatic. 

i think.

no, i know. 

i'm diving. deeper than i've dared before. and i refuse to act as though i am unafraid, because i have shaking fingers. but i've put down roots of brave and i will let the still, small Voice whisper in the night.

courage, dearheart. 

for I have overcome the world.

big picture details

this is one of those days that i wished i painted.

because this day has been a canvas already flooded with too much colour for one heart to bear.

it took a distant voice down a telephone to soothe a frazzled soul like mine when batteries stop working and computers become electronic nightmares. when the sweet woman with the tender voice soothed the tears of this flustered pregnant woman, i felt a embrace from Heaven.

this entire day, these few hours that i have been awake from a sleep of strange dreams and tangled thoughts, i have had a reminder that it's okay to focus on the little lines instead of the bold strokes for a change.

because it's hard to see the forest for the trees and the trees for the leaves and the veins for all the big picture being pressing against our noses.

and sometimes we need to look past the image in the stained glass window and let the colours swirl over skin.

because it's not always about do.

:: it's about be :: 

and even He whispers of the simple things, like love and hope and grace and brave. do we forget that He knows, that He lived like us and stepped in our path? that He wrote the story and already has the ending etched on His palms?

most of all

let love be your guide

and so i'm not looking at my computer with the broken battery that i cannot unplug for lack of power. i'm looking at the pools of glory in the wood between my worlds of chaos and Light.

and more moments of barefoot wading, and sacred moments of colour and peace.

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}

understanding brave :: being

{via pinterest}

it's the first of three sixty five. 

i woke up this morning and laid in bed, staring at the curtains as they fluttered in the frozen breeze. 

:: and i didn't feel brave ::

i made coffee, the first strong pot of a new year, steaming in my mug with fragrant wisps of steam. 

 :: and i didn't feel brave ::

and i looked out the window at the snow-less ground that could perhaps be confused for spring. 

:: and i didn't feel brave ::  

but brave isn't feeling, is it? because feeling lie and emotions betray and too often hearts don't know what they should, and minds know too much of what they shouldn't.

no, brave isn't feeling.

it's being. 

it's not about awakening and leaping from bed to floor with sword in palm. it's about living, all on its own. about thinking less and meditating more. about inhaling and exhaling and repeating the action a thousand times with barely a thought. 

that's my first portion of brave. 

the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud

was greater than the risk it took to bloom. 

:: anis nin :: 

{via pinterest}

because brave isn't a battlecry, not really.

it's a love song. 

it's those halting, lonesome notes that ring over the night. it's the sweetness of a Lion's song, of a call to come and drink. 

because brave isn't something that comes naturally. it's waking, and knowing. it's living and breathing and standing and clinging to the mast in the storm and knowing that there is an end. 

it's watching the gale blow from the shelter of His arms, and knowing that a Lion's mane is stronger than a thousand storms. 

it's not being unafraid, because fear comes and fingers shake and there's so much unknown in the silence. but He promised a rainbow, and it makes me brave to know that colour comes again and grey is broken like shards of glass that slice the bonds between Life and death. 

it's brave to be His.

brave :: oneword 2012

my word scares me. 

it's not brash or strong or resilient.

it's not the one i anticipated, or the one i would have chosen. 

it's not fearless or determined or radiant. 

it's brave. 

i obsess over strength. weakness is something that terrifies me. wouldn't i want to be something gripping, something changing that would shake the world's foundations? 

but this is a shaker, in His way. because this world is made of rock and ice. it's fearless or nothing.  courage has been left roadside, ached to be forgotten. 

because courage isn't fearless. courage is being afraid, and standing. 

and i want to dig roots down deep into the soil at the foot of the Cross and wind this vine around the blood-stained wood. 

because i'm seeking courage, and i'm seeking strong found only in Him. 

courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; 

courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.  

:: winston churchill ::

so 2012 will not be a year of squelched fears, but of eyes met and courage found in the sacred corner. 

it will not be a year of silence, of bound tongues and captive hands, but of freedom and voice in the darkness. 

it will be a year of new. 

a one-worded year of Light, of sacred touch and inhaling glory from lungs to tongue-tip and back again. 

2012, a year of brave.

to live is the rarest thing. most people just exist, that’s all.

// oscar wilde //