little girl loved // two weeks

{taken the day of her birth, bare minutes old}

my daughter is two weeks old today.

and i've been resisting the urge to blog endlessly about her for fear of turning into one of those moms who can't exist outside their children.

but she's so new, and so precious, and i can't help but fall in love with her all over again every single time i look into her tiny face and see those blue eyes staring back at me and see that tiny mouth curl up into a pouting smile that illumines me.

the first days of her life are a mental blur for me, a blur of morphine and hospital blue and white stripped blankets. and now they are a different sort of blur, an exhausted new mommy blur of sleeping sometimes but not all the time.

clocks have stopped having a meaning for me. 3am and 12 noon and 4:15pm have all become times to curl my body around my newborn child and feed her from my own body and inhale her sweet indescribable infant aroma.

and though she be but little

she is fierce 

:: william shakespeare ::

{two weeks old in Daddy's arms, already so much different}

there is a strange fierceness about this tiny creature that came from my body. the way she demands attention with the loudness of her wails, the wildness of her intense blue eyes. 

there is no secret that she will be a warioress, 

// and she already is, in a way. 

at two weeks old, she is already little girl loved, small fairy-child treasured. and now she sleeps on my husband's chest curled in a soft pink daisy-patterned blanket with her rosebud mouth partially open and an arm tucked beneath her head. 

and i'm overwhelmed with the fierceness of this small one, of Aslan's newest and smallest daughter, currently a cub but a strong lioness in the making. 

i'm mad with love, with a fire i did not know i could ever possess. 

i'm mother, more than i ever was before. 

and i am two weeks mother to a lioness. 

arrival // Marian Abigail

she is here. 

my bug, my angel, my soul-wailing warrioress. 

:: Marian Abigail ::

9-16-2012

9:21pm

9 lbs, 6 oz, 21 1/2 long

my labour was induced on the 15th at 7pm. i laboured for 24 hours with no change, breathing my way through contraction after contraction, praying for strength as they grew and then faded and then grew again.

but then her heart began to struggle as i contracted. oxygen found my nose and fluids found my veins and we watched and waited and prayed. 

doctors came and my mother held one hand, my mother-in-law held the other, and my husband stood at my head while i wept in fear and whispered

please God...

please...

labour was too hard on her, they said. and she was big, bigger than they had ever imagined my body could produce and bear for so long. and the time had come, the appointed time, for this child to enter the world. 

they bound my husband up in baby blue scrubs and clad us both in green mesh caps and numbed my body from breasts to toes. and i laid on the table, arms spread wide and shaking like a leaf with whispered words into my ear and his hand clutching mine, and His hands holding all three of us. 

and they pulled her from me, this child of the strong lungs and dark hair that covers her head like the softest duckling feathers.

 in a rush of blood and life-giving fluid, my daughter was born and laid at my cheek so our skin touched. 

and i heard her wail, and i wept. 

and now she lays against my side, curled in pink and white blankets as my body heals among the IVs and foam cups with ice chips. we're a tiny family here. 

my strong little miracle. my heart outside my body. 

my Marian. 

my daughter. 

jumble // tomorrow

{via pinterest}

i'm all over the place right now.

bag packed, clothing washed...did i remember everything? do i need one more blanket, another outfit, just in case? am i overplanning, under-doing?

i'm excited. i'm so, so excited.

but

oh Lord, i'm so scared. 

:: tomorrow is the day ::

i've been counting down for this day for 41 weeks and 3 days that have seemed to stretch endless in front of me. and now this is the end, no more waiting.

i'm being induced tomorrow, the stroke of noon is where this pumpkin starts to transform from me to Mommy. it could be hours, it could be days. i don't like this unknown where i sit right now, this not knowing.

but this i do know.
He is greater. He is in control.
He is God. i am not.

so pray for me, would you please? because i'm so very small, and this seems so very big. and i need peace to do this big thing, this foreign and beautiful and frightening thing.

i'm bringing life through blood. it's sacred, a reminder of Him, really. the Stone Table broke when blood was spilled, and my body might break in this pursuit of motherhood. i'm ready to be carried, lifted up and held.

tomorrow is begin.
tomorrow is the start.

and He is greater.

Narnian almost-newborn

{via pinterest}

i am Reepicheep.
a mouse who must be held back from attempting combat with a dragon.

i'm marveling at the grace and joy that this life brings, to inhale and exhale courage that never seems to let up these days.

there is a kind of happiness and wonder 

that makes you serious. 

it is too good to waste on jokes. 

:: the last battle  // c.s. lewis

and that is where i am right now, right on the cusp of so many things, so much change. and i am breathless with excitement.

i understand that Narnian wonder again...i think i had forgotten what this feels like. it used to be my passion, to leap into the pools and come up to the tune of Lion's breath and steel growing alive from the ground.

because that's what this time is for me, a transition from summer to autumn, the time when the earth comes so alive and grace overflows so that the earth brings life from nothing.

{via pinterest}

it's hot cinnamon apple cider and burning leaves coupled with soft pink sheets and hand-crocheted booties in purple and mauve.

it's mustard yellow sweaters and chunky knit scarves with fresh-printed books by candlelight...Goodnight Moon and I'll Love You Forever take up the shelves where Austen and Bronte used to reside.

this is where it starts. this is the begin.
she is four days late, but i know she will arrive.

and then we will tip over the wave and catch our first glimpse of Aslan's county in her newborn eyes.

and i will teach her to being a roaring lamb
a dragon-fighting mouse.

being imperfect mommy

{my family, May 2011}
me, my mommy, my daddy, my sister

your mother is so amazing
you have a fantastic father. 

these are words i hear often, frequently filling my ears from the lips of those who encounter the people that raised me. not just church people, not just family people, but strangers too, sometimes, who know me through them.

my father is the life of the party, loud and wild with a whistle and a laugh that both boom and echo so loud that they can be heard in the front of the church where i sit, compared to the back where he sits with my mother, always just that one second after the joke when the rest of the laughter has died away.

but he has these eyes, my father, the eyes that draw men to speak and share their hearts when most would rather withdraw and be quiet. he was good to his girls, my dad, my mom and sister and me, and soon his granddaughter too. most men wouldn't have cared. my daddy did.

and then there's my mom. this red-haired, coffee-carafe toting powerhouse who often starts her sentences with i'm not perfect or only by the grace of God am i here. and she's right, of course, because it takes God and only God. but mommy needs to give herself some credit too. because she spends hours with women, holding their hands and weeping with the broken. she gives of herself endless and endless to teenage girls who love her and call her mom like i do, and it's amazing.

and women tell me that listening to my mom is like listening at the feet of Jesus. and it is, because she raised me when she could have said no, and adopted me when she could have been content to give to others who didn't hold corners of her flesh in their fists. but she chose a daughter, and then another. and gave even more of herself -- the most bits of herself -- to us, my sister and me.

and i'm going to be a mom soon, any day now. and i sit and press my hands to my swollen stomach where my daughter, due tomorrow and stubbornly waiting beneath my skin where she seems to be quite comfortable in her silent liquid world. but wouldn't you be too?

i want to be the kind of mom that has people come to my little girl and say your mom is doing good. your mom is amazing. 

{via pinterest}

and i fear i won't be that kind of woman for her. i fear i'll live in flesh and in self, and not in the Jesus-shawl that my mother drapes over her shoulders when the world brings her to her knees. and i fear that i'll chose my own feet instead of kneeling on the sheepskin that my father has used for prayer since i was a little girl.

i have big shoes to fill, these ones of sacred parenting that were emulated for me by the two most amazing people i have ever encountered. and sometimes i call my mom crying, and tell her that i don't feel good enough to mother like she mothered.

and then i remember that He fathered her, and me, and my dad, and my husband. and fall is coming, a death and a life all at the same time. and my little one is coming to make me a mommy, and to make my husband a daddy.

and we won't be perfect parents. but we will be parents who love. i won't be my mom. but i'll be me, and that'll be okay, won't it?

and she'll love me for me, those tiny flailing arms and fluffy little cheeks and big still-unseen eyes of an unknown colour and hair to match, also still unknown.

but He died to make me worthy to hold this tiny one in my arms and call her my child, and made me worthy to be called mommy. He didn't die to make me perfect, to make me supermom, to make me anything but me.

He died to make me whole.

and i'm who she'll call mommy

imperfect mommy who loves Jesus

loving mommy who tries

her mommy. 

who loves her forever & always 

{linking my imperfection with dear emily and her community today. join us?}

please stop

{via pinterest}

this one's for the lonely

the ones that seek and find

only to be let down

time after time

this one's for the torn down

the experts at the fall

come on friends get up now

you're not alone at all

:: comes and goes // greg laswell 

dear world, please stop. 

stop battering down my door with a thousand voices telling me just how i should mother, how i should parent, how i should be. 

it's breaking me down before i've even begun.

dear fashion designers, please stop.

stop teaching us to hate our bodies, because we already fall down enough and we need to love this thing that carries our souls and hearts and breaths and dreams. it's okay not to be a size 2. 

it's killing our daughters. 

dear mothers of the world, please stop.

stop hating one another because one holds a baby to her breast and one chooses another form of life-giving food for her little one, because one chooses to return to work and another can hold her baby from dawn to dusk. 

i can't bear it any more. 

dear church, sons and daughters of the King of Kings and Lord of Love, please stop.

stop screaming hate when He said love, stop twisting words to mean what He never meant. put down the torches and the pitchforks. 

it's making Him weep

and He doesn't recognize you.

what else can i say but please. please, from the bottom of my heart, cloaked in all the love i can muster...

:: please stop :: 

circles repeated

{via pinterest}

:: i am drawing circles in the earth.
i am marching around my Jericho. 

those words, those two simple lines, started a post that i wrote on the last day of January. my circle journey had just started, and i almost want to laugh and then weep at how far i have come.

because all of me has become a circle. and i can say that with laughter as i watch my belly grow and grow and continue to grow. and i watch the mandella of prayer in which i have found myself kneeling become visible and evident on my skin, dark purple twisting lines that create

the most intricate
the most precious
the most beloved
and the most frightening of prayer circles that i have ever witnessed.

i've learned more about myself in these past nine months than i ever could have anticipated. and yes, it has been nine months now, at the dawning of this morning's fingers of rose and pale gold. i've had to release the rigidness to which i have steadfastly clung, because i wake up every morning without a single clue as to what i might encounter.

and this journey of her safely beneath my skin is almost over, and with a scream of mine and a wail of hers, she will be here...and this makes me tremble, loved ones. this makes me tremble in the most sacred of ways, and the most human of ways, as well.

{via pinterest}

i feel like this circle is fragile. like it could break if i press the wrong way, and everything falls to pieces. it's that fear again, that serpentine voice whispering my ear, you shall not surely die, but you shall be like God. 

and now i understand why Eve's temptation was so great, why the first woman reached out for the fruit that whispered lies of simple solution, of knowledge of what is and what could come.

but i'm letting Him guide my fingers from sparkling poison apples to something brighter, something dirty like Carpenter's sandals, something dusty like the hem of the Rabbi's cloak.

grasp Me here. 
and down on your knees is where you will find Me, the most clean and the most pure. 

because faith is found in circles of prayer and blood and freshly cut covenant
where the fire can pass between the torn pieces of me to lodge in the fullness of Him.