for when you're sitting in limbo

{my girl and my love watching the snow.
they teach me the most.}

I am in the state of limbo that every writer who has ever submitted their work for publication knows intimately. it's the period between submission, the pushing of the words out from your hands to another pair of stranger-eyes, and the hearing of the acceptance or the rejection.

I sent my short story, Coffee, out for publication right around the end of January. I haven't heard back yet, and that's to be expected, as I was told it could be as late as April 1st before I heard anything in either direction. I still check the acceptance page of the publication's website every day.

my friend Brandy says this: just putting yourself out there is a win. aim for rejections. it's so foreign to me, this concept that even releasing your words is a step in the right direction, that a rejection letter is a sign that you did the impossible. you wrote something and sent it out.

honestly? I'm not in that place yet. I can't look at rejections as positive reinforcement, as reminders to keep trying. I haven't been able to stop the heart-pounding when I think, maybe they won't like me. it's reminiscent of being a child, right on the edge of the all-wood playset in the yard of the school, wiggling my fingers back and forth against my legs as I watched the other children chase and swing and toss pebbles at one another.

I just want them to like me. 

writing is vulnerability personified. I've said that before, that exact sentence almost exactly a month ago when I acknowledged that this process is, for me, wandering deep into the lair of a dragon. even more than that, it's realizing that I have no weapon, and that my intent is to ask the beast to share a meal with me. writing is walking up to the Big Bad Wolf, holding out my basket and whispering,

Grandma's not home. do you want to share?

{my writing space}

that's how I can tell that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. there's a whole new kind of fear that comes when you recognize your calling and understand that breaking bread with dragons can be written in my resume under "job description." it's one of those moments in the tent, the kind where you overhear the Angel of the Lord tell your husband that you're going to have a baby at ninety years old, and you laugh because it's impossible. you have to laugh. it's that or cry.

the website for the publication to which I submitted uses the words "in progress" to refer to a work that hasn't been "completed" {passed on} or "accepted for publication." I think that's prophecy, in it's own way.

I'm still waiting. I'm still in progress, fidgeting a little bit as I wait to hear where my words will go next. I'm still refreshing the page every day, still watching the number beside my name, the one that identifies me as a writer.

I can feel Him looking at me, straight through the doorway of my tent, the place where I sat and laughed when He spoke a calling over me. I can hear the way He shakes His mane, the way the wind whispers through the wilderness and weaves around Him. 

Rachel, why did you laugh? I will return, and you will bear. 

wine-tasting

tonight at WalMart, a woman touched my arm and spoke life over me.

I've never met this woman before and I doubt I ever will again. we were standing between peanut butter and hot chocolate mix and Keurig coffee cups, me leaning upwards on tiptoes for a jar just barely out of reach, her pushing a cart down the row toward me from behind.

"I just want you to know, I feel like you need to know, you're doing a good job at whatever it is you're doing." 

and then she walked away.

holy. holy. holy. 

this woman had no idea what those words did for me, the second breathing of prophecy over me in the past twelve hours. she has no idea how deeply I've been creatively pushing myself, she has no idea about the vulnerability hangover I've been nursing since I submitted my fictional short story for publication perusal on Monday, followed by pouring raw words of a far less fictional sort in yet another direction last night.

she has no idea that today was the day that I stood crying at my kitchen counter, overwhelmed with a thousand things bearing down on my shoulders. she didn't know that I've been laden with self-doubt and low on words since acknowledging my own worth. {does it get more ironic than that?}

{photo via pinterest}

I am the biggest enemy to my own creativity, to my own setting out and declaring. I'm fearlessly committed to encouraging others to embrace their words, tell their stories, pour themselves out, peel back the roughage and let their brave show naked and raw and powerful. and then I find myself at the top of a tree, a kitten who had no problem scaling the trunk and finding my cheerleading perch, but now I cannot get down and I'm suddenly stricken with unmatched fear.

I am ravenous for my own self-worth. it's there. I can smell it, the way wine drifts over from the glass and makes your mouth water and your tastebuds spring to life with anticipation. but someone convinced me that I'm a teetotaler and that picking up that glass would be death to my soul.

but the Lion is whispering, not roaring {He knows what my soul can hear}.

if you do not drink, lioness, then you will die of thirst. and there is no other stream. 

being brave enough to lift the glass, to down its contents and let them flood the depths of me is only half the battle. the second part comes when I must step forward and speak, knowing that they'll know what I've been drinking. it's a different kind of intoxication, the kind that brings life instead of death, the kind that leaves deception at the gate and ushers in life like electricity through the heart of a corpse.

it's not chasing the fear away. no, not at all. it's embracing the fear, letting it do what it must, letting it prove itself futile and watching it drift away on the breeze like ash as the brave-flames stoke higher and higher still.

if you'll excuse me, I've been invited to a wine tasting.

{inspired by a Story Sessions prompt. join us? there's always room for you here with us}

catalyst

{photo by Rachel}

there's nothing like the word "catalyst" finding you during a vulnerability hangover.

it's one of those "mysterious ways" kind of circumstances where you really just want to draw away from the world and from the eyes that are peering in at you through your literary fishbowl. that's what writing is, in a way. it's being a fish in a tank, and people are staring, and sometimes they ignore the sign that says, don't tap on the glass; it frightens the fish.

people like to tap anyway.

writing is the epitome of vulnerability. there's that quote by Red Smith :: there's nothing to writing. all you do is sit down at at typewriter and open a vein. and we chuckle and shake our heads in that funny way we do when something is true and it amuses us. but then, all of a sudden, it's not so catchy and amusing anymore when you poured yourself out and you're a little weak and wan and woozy and the little glass of orange juice just isn't cutting it.

it's that thing of wandering into Smaug's mountain and realizing that I haven't brought a sword at all.

and then comes that word, glaring big from the upper right-hand corner of the sermon notes. catalyst. it's a perfect pairing with my word for 2014 :: precipice. 

a person or event which causes quick change or action. 

I've been writing big brave scary words already, twelve days into 2014. and it's left me feeling like I'm outgrowing my comfortable skin, like I caught myself sipping a little too much of Alice's drink me potion. it's growth, and it's intense, and it hurts. 

{photo by Rachel}

but there's something causing quick change and action. and it's not me. I'm not powerful enough for that, not on my own. I'm shedding all the garbage that's been collecting all over me, cleaning all around the battery connection cables that tie Him and I together. I can feel the glowing, the arcing when He and I meet.

and this is what makes the thrashing all worth it, every last bloody filth-plastered moment. 

sometimes it takes an emptying of words to realize you have so many left. sometimes it takes a visceral precipice looming up straight ahead for me to remember that His breathing is more buoyant than wings.

because it's because of feeling so completely stripped raw, down to nothing at all with barely even my own skin to keep me warm, that I can find myself sharing story -- my story, your story -- and breaking bread with dragons. 

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.

when the f word gets you published

{photo by me, art by Mandy}

I'm being published this coming week. on the eighth. this is a big deal, a long time coming. I'm not sure if I have a lot of eloquent thoughts left in me. in all actuality, I'm pretty overwhelmed.

as much as I'm excited to be out in the world, my work with my name attached being shown to eyes who have never even heard of me or this place before, there is also a strange sort of trepidation. because I did a thing, a big thing, one of those wild things that you don't think about when you're doing it because you don't think it'll go anywhere. and then, all of a sudden, it happens.

I sent in the piece to Literary Orphans because I didn't think it would be accepted. that was risk number one. putting my words out there was the big step, allowing myself to acknowledge that I have to start somewhere, that my words have worth and value.

and then came the hammer. they wanted it, every last word. including that one glaring flashing word right there at the end. that fifth word in the last line. it's the kind of word you don't say in polite company. it's the kind of word that slips out by accident and you find yourself blushing and stammering an apology and wanting to hide.

:: it's a word that starts with the letter f. 

but then, I've been learning to stop apologizing for my words. all my words. including those sharp ones that tend to make the good Christian girl in me wince and recoil slightly. He's used worse things than the f-word.

He put two prostitutes in the lineage of His son. the fully God, fully human Prince of Heaven. He didn't need to take the things that the world saw as lesser, as dirty, as inappropriate, and put them in the line that brought His son to earth. but He did. 

{photo of me, taken by Nikki Jean Photography}

I've started finding myself breathing a little easier. even though I'm mostly rambling, even though I don't have to explain myself to anyone. I learned this last June when I discovered that courage groaned, and it was a beautiful thing.

maybe sometimes, holiness is a little ragged, a little rough. maybe sometimes sacredness involves digging in the dirt until there is mud under your fingernails and you find yourself staggering into the holy places. sometimes the words that come flying from your lips are the ones that don't fit in the world, the ones that get you pursed lips and side-eye glances and tsk-ing under the breath.

so I will tell you this. if the word is going to offend you, if it's going to turn you against me, if it's going to make  you want to throw rocks at me, then please, don't read the piece. I'm okay with that, really, I am.

but if you think that maybe, just maybe, that a Lion's roaring can drown out the profane, then oh, dear ones, give it a chance. sit on the words, let them in.

because sometimes, even the f word can be holy. 

{the piece is live on Literary Orphans as of right now HEREyou can read it or not, that is your choice. I did not choose the artwork behind the piece :: that was up to the editor. if that also offends you, if it takes away your ability to soak in my words, then please, abstain from reading. love and grace to each of you. bear me gently.}

the quivering curtain {on being published}

{photo by Jennifer Upton}

I bought a calender on Saturday.

actually, technically, I bought two of them. one is the kind you hang on the wall, with beautiful pictures to look at each day of the month. and then there's the day-planner sort of thing, with each day marked out in lines with space for me to write my plans for the day, the week, the month.

we're at that midpoint. the darkest night is behind us and the bright burst of Epiphany is in front of us, coming closer and closer. closer still is the new year. I always marvel at the way a new year can feel so incredibly fresh, how burning one calender and hanging up a new one can conjure up such a profound change.

and I'm wordless.

I got the email one hour into Sunday morning. the one that started with "dear Rachel," and then the words blurred around me and my blood started pumping so loud in my ears that I could barely focus on anything else. I zeroed in on certain words :: thank you for submitting, we'd like to accept your piece for publication in our next issue...

it's surreal, I think. I say I think because I'm not even sure how I feel about this yet. 2014 is coming, fast, and it's the year I've pledged to open my mouth and put my words out there. I've decreed myself a writer, claiming the title that has been waiting for me to accept it for years. and then, right before the end of 2013, it started.

it's that light, pressing around the edges of the door. we're in the middle between the darkest night and the startling light of Epiphany. it's eager, excited, whispering of magic and wonder and intense power. I can't remember the last time I have felt this level of anticipation and enthrallment over the idea of a new year.

{photo by Jennifer Upton}

it's been a wandering year, a year of thudding and pulsing and weeping and keening and throwing things away and putting others in places of honour. and the further we get, the deeper we slip. I'm starting to understand why.

the stripping isn't over. the pruning and the baring and the birthing is far from over. in some respects, 2013 was the prologue, the overture, that quiver of the cast moving behind the curtain. He and I, we've done battle this year. and we're not done. it's been that slow peeling, that agonizing flailing. and I've stopped apologizing...at least, I think I have. but it's not like He and I are backed into our own corners just waiting for the next bell that supposedly comes when the bell drops. that's not it at all.

it's just the end of one calender and the start of another one.

it's huge and wild and sacred and so intensely huge. I can feel the ground shaking

and I can hear Him roaring.

{more is coming in regards to my being published  by Literary Orphans on January 8th. I'm still processing the joy and the fear that comes with this. words are brewing.}