anticipating scarcity

{photo by Jennifer Upton

I am vibrating. 

there's really no other description for the way I'm feeling than that. vibrating :: a quivering, a throbbing. it's more than just anticipation. in a sense, it's an overwhelming soul-tremor. 

this season is a cracking. it's foreshadowing of the next season of Holiness, for the breaking and bleeding and the tearing from top to bottom. there will be an earthquake then, too, as angel feet brush against stone. it's an opening in the darkest of places. it's a springing forth in complete darkness. 

there's a reason this is my favourite time of year. it's the time of the year where the darkness is not only expected, it's accepted. there's a word that flutters around the December page on the calender :: scarcity.

but then, that's been a theme over the entirety of 2013. a thousand things happened this year, things that filled me with more conflicting emotions than I thought a person could contain without exploding. there was grief so great it threw me on the ground, there was euphoria beyond my wildest
imaginings. there was loss and love and a mighty settling. but there was a scarcity.

a scarcity of knowing. 

there was peace, even amid the tremors. but there was barely any sort of knowing. and honestly? I'm not expecting 2014 to have any more knowing within it than 2013. I stepped into 1/1/2013 with a word on my tongue: release. and oh, every time I take a word, I wait for the impact. it always comes. and this year was no exception.

{photo by Jennifer Upton}

there was so much releasing. there were times that the letting go was pried from my tightly clenched fingers. I did not want to let go off the house that I was sure was the perfect one, my magic purple dream house tucked in the woods. I didn't want to let my grandmother go, but then, I didn't have a choice on that one, either.

but then, He was a table-toppler. He didn't come to settle into a corner with a cluster of lambs gathered around His feet. He came to stand in the gap, to stretch His arms out and shake things up. but He came in silence, first.

it's so appropriate that we end the year on this Savior-coming note. this Advent, this expectation. that's how every single year ends, wrapping its arms around us and crooning gentle against the ears of our souls.

yes, things will be scarce. and there will be such weeping, and such shouting, and such laughter, and such brokenness that you fear you will never stand again. but breathe, dearheart. there will always be air. and there will always be Me.

my word for 2014 :: it's coming, slowly. it'll be here when it needs to be. things never happen the same way twice. but there will be scarcity, this I know. and maybe it's time that I sat in the light of a candle, incense smoke swirling, and allowed it to settle here with me.

there is a scarcity of knowing. 

but never a scarcity of promise. 

meeting poetry

{photo by jennifer upton}

I remember where she found me, a step beyond the shelves of

appropriate and good Christian girl.

she found me in the place

where technically, neither of us were supposed to be.

she was forbidden, but only a little, because her big sister

was the right kind of words

the kind that might not send me to hell, the kind that King David

penned and approved.

I found her in the wanna-be classroom, the place where

I hid my black lipstick and let the hair hang into my eyes

she was key-shaped angst and a forbidden road to the required

she whispered, “drink me,” and I obliged.

she was sin

or maybe she was water turned to wine

the kind that they disapproved, but that He raised in a glass

and spoke, “this is My blood.”

she turned me into smoke, the good kind

incense and candle wisps,  

the kind they said would send me down a road too wide

and He and She and I were okay with that. 

when you haven't written a book

{photo by Jennifer Upton}

I'm the blogger than hasn't written a book.

it's funny, and then, it's not, because everywhere you look anymore, having a book with your name on the cover and your picture on the back is becoming the norm. at least, in my circles, it is. and it's damn intimidating.

it's hard to feel like a lioness when you're mewing and scratching at the door in your own head.

recently, I wrote for Preston Yancey about what women want from the church. my answer was voice, the chance to stand up and speak on par with all the other masculine heads that tower above me. and then i start to get a good look around me, and I start to think, well, maybe my voice doesn't count because it's never been between two covers. 

I am Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole with nothing to hold onto, finding myself flat on my face in a strange sort of Wonderland. I'm a flower with the wrong kind of petals, they whisper...or am I just imagining it because I'm too scared to admit that maybe I might fit in here after all?

I don't have an MD, but then, I'm not a doctor. I'm a healer with a satchel of words. I feel like a midwife in a world full of modern medicine. and it's not wrong, because there's a time and a place for those who have greater experience in other areas than me. but sometimes you just need that silence, the hands that wrap around your shoulders and whisper, breathe through this. I've got you. 

this is how I will {eventually} write my book. this is a vow to myself. it's a pledge that my words belong in hands, shared over coffee and firelight, breathed from one mouth to another.

I just hope that I'll eventually find my corner and admit to myself that I myself am breathed from the lips of Holiness, that every fibre of my being hums with the chorus of the Spirit-Song composed before the dawn of time.

I'm the blogger that hasn't written a book.

yet.

the f-word

i remember the first time i said the f-word

in front of my mother.

and her face turned pale and she cleared her throat and spoke

“you know we don’t approve of that word.”

i remember the first time i wrote down the f-word

in my journal.

and my fingers quivered and i whispered inside myself

“do I really approve of that word?”

i remember the first time i said the f-word

to my husband.

and he smiled with his eyes from the driver’s seat and said

“good. I’m proud of you.”

i remember the first time i said the f-word

in relation to Jesus, spoken casually about Him, in His direction,

and i  felt power flow out of Him and heard the wind whisper

“that’s right.

I’m a feminist too.” 

{i'm doing 40 days of poetry, a new adventure for me. i'm sharing them with you, little bits at a time.} 

the Holiness midwife

{photo via dramaticelegance}

dear you,

yes, you, the one with the Charlie Brown Christmas tree and the pile of tangled lights. you, with the expectation piling up in droves around you while sparkling decorations and Christmas carols threaten to drown you in a haze of grief and overwhelming fog.

it's okay.

it's okay to shut down Pinterest and buy cookie dough from the store. it's okay to leave the elf off the shelf and the cardboard star hanging sideways off the top of the tree.

it's okay to bury your head in your hands and sob to the tune of Jingle Bell Rock because you're too exhausted and worn down to turn the radio off.

because that's not the point, is it?

this is the season of Word becoming Flesh, the season of being stripped down to beyond the nothing. sometimes, it's even a time of fear. because waiting can be scary when you can't see beyond that curve in the road. it's a pregnancy, an expectant quivering. it is a cracking, an opening cervix through which blood will stain and Life will come.

it's the time of imperfection. if we were perfect, there would be no need for this season, for this waiting for the cry of One who came to gather us into Himself. for the One born of blood who came to bleed. He was born to stain, to leave a mark on all He touched.

He was not born for tidy.

it's okay to let go. to relax and let it come. we scream through the contractions and labour through the waiting. the Holiness is the midwife to this birthing, strong enough to bear it all.

and so you, you dear beautiful expectant soul. there is so much permission here. there is permission to breathe and pause. there is permission to quiver. there is permission to be imperfect.

sometimes you have to fight to find the sacred in the Advent. sometimes, you light a candle amid the piles of dishes on the kitchen counter and close your eyes and whisper,

i am waiting, i am listening. 

{this is another in my Story prompt series. would you joint us? there is always room for you}

a letter to December

dear December,

you begin on a Sunday this year, and i love that, because that's symmetry and my heart likes that. it feels right to begin at the beginning of the beginning.

you're permission for me. this is Advent, expectation of newness. it's always been sacred for me. it's not just you, December, with your specially marked pages and the little square boxes all in a row. because i'm more than just boxes, and you know that.

but then, so is He.

i feel so often like all the mystery has been drained out of Faith, that is is left only to words from experienced mouths, eyes that have read the same words but understand them "better." they tell us what to see, and our eyes must find focus or else we are assumed to be wanting.

but you, December. you, season of Advent. you, Son of Man. you, Word made Flesh. you are permission to embrace the mystery. you are the entryway into all the things that so many who walk in and out of those familiar doors find to be sacrilege.

but you come with a breath of icy cold and nights so dark they are almost blue and glittering whisper of a thousand stars. you come with heartache and tears and pain just as much as you come with sacredness and magic. you come with devastation and you come with expectancy.

but you are also a promise.

oh come, oh come, Emmanuel. 

{this is another in my prompt series from story sessions. we are a community of women, of writers, of seekers. join us?}

dark horse

{pinterest}

i am my own dark horse.

i love that expression :: dark  horse, emerging from the back of the pack, from nothing to prominence. there's something so powerful about the image. it's sacred.

it's something i've come to realize about myself in recent days. this process of blogging has been a gradual metamorphosis, a process of flushing out what i really think about the world, about my faith, about what i want to do with my writing. i was this strange caterpillar creature, this thing that had its own strange beauty, but looked just like all the rest. and then i crawled into my cocoon and things started to shift inside.

ever since i started lifting my eyes to meet the faces around me and speaking a little braver, i've felt vulnerable in a way that i haven't experienced in a long time. i've been doing a lot of thinking, filling my mental pages with so many notes and thoughts with very little making it to paper. that's odd for me, as i tend to gravitate toward scribbling ink-notes on any scrap within my reach.

i'm starting to realize that blogging might be more of a contact sport than i originally anticipated.

so you wanna play with magic. you should know what you're falling for. 

baby, do you dare to do this? i'm coming at you like a dark horse.
:: dark horse :: katy perry ::  

i just wanted to write pretty words. i just wanted to be famous. i wanted to play with the big boys and girls who sat at their computers and sussed out beautiful words and had people gasping and nodding and whispering, "so true, oh yes, very profound."

i don't know when it got so real. i don't know when i stopped writing the surface and found myself under the water, completely engulfed. i don't know when my voice started getting louder. it's still shaking, but it's getting louder.

love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

and i'm starting to realize that this rise and fall, this wave and this shift, it's normal. it's what i can anticipate now as i'm opening my shutters further. the more Light that plays on the floor, the warmer i become. it's filling me up, exploding out my fingers and toes. it's the most holy-hush i've ever experienced.

i'm becoming more and more okay with my lack of "safe faith." it was a statement, repeated over and over, almost becoming trite like a repeated mealtime prayer :: not safe, but good. but it's not just words anymore. it's my existence. i have flung myself off the cliff, and i'm falling at break-neck speed. it's a whirlwind. 

but i can smell Him in the air.