moon chasers

Moon Chasers,
       Dreamers, racing barefoot on the beach
    Believers, grasping for what's always just out of reach

thoughts: unedited

sometimes i get so wraped up in understanding things, in editing my own thoughts, and articulating them in a beautiful way that i forget that honesty holds its own beauty.
i forget that so often the words that have challenged me and changed me have been simple truths and honest thoughts.

i'm a dreamer and its easy to live in a world of endless possibilities, to live in the land of what could be, instead of living in the real world unfolding all around me.
i've grown wings and i want to fly and it's a struggle to keep two feet on the ground when you feel like you could be sailing through the sky.

at the risk of going against every poetic and romanticizing bone in my body, i'm saying this:
raw, unedited, real life is more beautiful than 1,000 polished possibilities.

i want to write more raw words, pieces of life less edited.

it's easy to making writing a place for expressing only the deepest emotions and the strongest truths,

but shallow emotions matter too and small thoughts and spots of existence. 

so here's to honest words and raw beauty in the silent moments and passing thoughts and mundanities of everyday life.

if time were a wave

 Change rolls in like the tide
and our hearts ebb and flow with color and emotion:
     jubilation.
 exhaustion.
       expectance.
        confusion.


   "I hate change" 
or at least the process of it.


and after one-hundred-thousand comings and goings,
i'm still learning what it means to hold closely 
and live with open hands.

casual car ride conversations

"So, how's your heart?"
"I don't know. I haven't stopped to listen to it lately," she says with a laughter-filled smile.
  
and i smile too. it's an honest answer for most of us on many days. 
  
so, I take a moment;
 and I stop to let my fingers feel my own pulse, 
feel my heart beating beneath the piles of clean laundry and post-its and half read applications.
  I feel it beating fast like i'm running late to class again, 
                       and slow like i'm dosing the afternoon sun with a friend.
I feel it pulsing anticipation and eager longing and fear,
                             uncertainty and desperation and deep desire.
here's my heart
beating with all the feelings of life. 

loose dirt

         growth, taking root right beneath the earth's surface
beauty isn't born of hard ground and firm soil
  and flowers make their bed in dirt that's been tossed and turned over
                                                  disrupted,
                                            disheveled,
                    where the foundation is being undone. 
seeds need loose dirt,
   dripped and drenched with water,
                              muddied,
                           unstable
what we really need is to be shaken.


here is where the growing begins. 

turning monday

tonight,

I'm thankful for moments of tasting,
and seeing,
and breathing God's goodness in this life we live together.

"All fear is but the notion that the love of God ends."

I've been wrestling a lot lately with fear,
with the fact that I feel like my life and day-to-day decisions are so often driven by my fears- and they are many. 
so, i've been asking myself: really, what am i so afraid of? 
        what does it mean to be free in Christ and to live fearlessly in a fallen world?
    what does it mean to fear God more than the world?


i don't have answers. and i think right now, maybe I'm just afraid of that. 


but i've fallen asleep every night this week with these words on repeat:
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?.. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."


and His love casts out fear. 

a proverb

learn to fail and make mistakes with grace.

when i wake to a world of grey

grey,
that's how my heart feels sometimes
those mornings when i wake to the day feeling like i left half of myself back in bed
not wholly here
missing vivacious present living
tired
weary
worn thin
transparent

so i cover myself is bright colors, hoping my spirit will mimic the clothes i wear
praying for brightness
for another form of sunshine
for life, full, vibrant life
for living fully alive

it's been a season of learning simple prayers,
of learning dependance,
of learning to need, desperately. 

so many mornings this winter this word has been my prayer,
with eyes barely open,
mind only half awake
joy.
please, Abba, bring joy.
help me delight in the abundance of your grace, 

in the sunshine of your face
when all the world looks cloudy,
grey

eightdaysin

twelve words for 2011: 

  12. laughter

  11. friendship

    10. family

     9. thanksgiving

 8. joy

     7. humility

     6. need and dependence

         5. change

     4. freedom

   3. process

 2. the gospel

1. grace

these words have characterized my year. and i've been reflecting lately on how this past year, in many ways, has been one of busyness, 

  and weariness, 

 and fullness. 

of feeling well worn by life, like it's made me to look like my favorite old pair of jeans with tears and loose threads and holes in both knees. 

     a year of learning the hard way over-and-over again. 

               of the pride and people-pleasing with me being knocked down 

                                                                                           brick

                                                                                                                by

                                                                                                                    brick.

it's been a year of rejoicing, of more uninhibited playing and laughing and feeling,

                             of celebration.

    and it's been one of newness, of new life being breathed into me, 

                                     and eyes beginning to blink and see, when they didn't know they had been blind.

and this year, 2012 brings still more life

          vibrant

      vivacious 

         colorful life.

this year, i'm praying for re-creation.

                                          for real, tangible, heart-grabbing ways of

                                                                                                  being  

                                                                                              made    
                                                                                                      new.

   for daily reminders that re-creation is as much a present reality as it is a future one.

 i'm praying for  

               rawness,

        for sharing life in mess and process,

                     for an open heart as well as an open door.

this year, 

   i want to make new mistakes because I'm entering new places and trying new things.

i want to read things that challenge, and inspire, and change me.

                     i want to laugh until my sides hurt, 

                                                    to delight in sharing homemade meals,

                                           to bask in the sunshine,

                                                                 and wear dresses in the summer and spring.

                                                         

                                           to live more in freedom and less in fear

            to celebrate life moment by moment

                             and take time to enjoy my family.

  to cry hard with people over broken things,   

                  to ask honest questions,                                     

                               and live like deep friendship is forever, not just for a season. 

                 i want my life to breathe and speak and sing of his grace

                                                                                                always.
                          because these words are true, "Behold, I am making all things new."