Comfort {Five Minute Friday}

The rain drenches May’s magnolias; the last petals let loose, carpet the soaking earth.  Spring has come again, and there’s a kind of comfort in seasons unfolding, one after another, around, around, around.

My oldest asks for tea after school, and I see a little bit of my grandmother in her. And there’s a kind of comfort in generations of tea.

There’s a comfort in driving the roads whose wildflowers I once knew by heart, being hemmed in by the same gentle mountains ridges that held all my early years.

The more I listen to my own daughters’ stories, the more I remember the gifts of simple trust and holy imagination. Spring is come again.

Joining Lisa-Jo Baker to write for five solid minutes on the word Comfort. I love this sweet community of writers. Hop over and read others’ posts on Comfort from this week!

Framing the Fragments (Guest Post for Message in A Mason Jar)

Today I’m sharing about a dear friend, whose honesty and steady listening has marked my life and my painting. Join me at Darcy Wiley’s beautiful blog, Message in A Mason Jar. (psst- while you’re there, you can enter to win a print of the watercolor Nest!)

She lives in faraway Texas now, but these little-ones-playing-wildly-in-the-background days we talk on the phone nearly as much as we did in junior high.

It was autumn when she told me, gently: “I love your work, I really do. But it lacks some of the tension and messy brokenness that makes your story yours.”

I wasn’t expecting so much honesty, but wounds from a friend can be trusted, and few people know (and love) me so well as this particular one. She knows I draw little birds and acorns, favorite lines of Christmas hymns and a whole series of eggs, all expectant, full of April hope. These are the pictures I want to hang on my fridge, to call me towards home and invite me in to a place of daily abiding.

I shuffle around her words, awkwardly mumble something about not adorning my walls with images of a bleeding heart twice flattened by a Mack truck.  And this wise friend, she didn’t pull her words back or defend them at all. She just let those words sit a while….

{Click here to continue reading at Message in a Mason Jar. Don’t forget to enter to win the print Darcy’s giving away while you’re there!}

A Study in Brokenness

In writing and in life, I harbor a growing appreciation for folks who can wrap one white-knuckled fist around hope and let life’s broken ugly drip from the other open palm. I think we need both- the truth of a kingdom coming, the reality of new life, unfettered hope and the acknowledgment of the hard, broken, the dim glass we see through.

My own small faith came nearly unraveled when I could not make sense of my sister’s unexpected death. Over time, my heart was stitched back together, with ample doses of listening friends, unafraid to sit with someone in grief. Now I can’t sing the melody of redemption and grace without the weight of this broken world lending it’s low, dark harmony. And now, the tension is leaking off the brush, too.

The more I paint, the fewer words I scratch. Somehow, wishy-washy watercolor seems to hold more than letters and punctuation, and these days, I prefer it. So last week, I slipped two new prints into my etsy shop.  These ones – the nest and the cup. These are the beginning of a series: A Study in Brokenness.

These images are my grasping to capture the hard places of a kingdom come and not yet come.

These are for the mama bird holding their breath, letting her hatchlings take fumbling flight.

These are for the dreamers burying well-laid plans, unclenching fists to the One who births dreams.

These are for messy middle where redemption is veiled, and hope is deferred.

These are for the beautiful ones pressing on, waiting for restoration.

These are for the brave ones taking flight, and remembering the place from which they came.

These are for me, and for you, friend.

I would love to hear, how you hold on to hope in the midst of brokenness, what Scripture or words or images quiet your heart in the hard times?

{And if you’d like, hop over to Be Small Studios for more on these prints, or follow Be Small Studios on twitter and facebook. And check back in here tomorrow – I’ll share a guest post about how the words of a friend precipitated the art.}

Tell Me Again

The pile of laundry in the corner of the bedroom’s grown large again, a testament to my bent towards ideals over systems. A testament to a good many other things, too, I’m sure. Let’s not write about that.

***

Read it again, the words fall from their lips before mine utter the end…

Again, again! My life is full of litanies:  storybook on repeat, a piggy back ride, the walk home from school, washing the rugs, welcoming friends in.

***

There were words spoken months before we exchanged vows, an old college friend gave her three fold manifesto on newlywed marriage:

Don’t get a TV the first year – be creative with your time together, at least for those once-in-a-lifetime first 12 glorious months.

You will be living mirrors for each other, walking around seeing your deepest beauty and grittiest grime reflected right back.

Preach the gospel to each other everyday.

All three have proved good advice; but I seem to have forgotten the last.

***

On Tuesday night, when shame wraps tight and threatens to choke, I ask him straight: Preach the gospel to me, please. Don’t tell me I’m doing the best I can, or that everything will be okay. Remind me that in the midst of this broken world and my sin-sick soul there is a redeemer, One who makes whole and makes new. Tell me the story of the cross, and sing of the empty tomb, of Pentecost and the garden and the pearly gates.

Tell me slow, tell me again.

Joining Lisa-Jo Baker for Five Minute Friday. We gather and write for five minutes straight on one word. Join us? This week’s word is again. Hop on over to Lisa-Jo’s to read some of the other beautiful Five Minute Friday posts.

Meditations from a Snowy Day

Sometimes winter is study in contrast: fresh-fallen snow adding weight to heaven-stretched bare branches. It’s a black and white world, and I see, say the obvious.

But Sunday, when clouds came down and kissed the ground, all the white fields bled into fog-shrouded sky. Only the very small space before me held its shape, stayed faithful to line and form at all.

And sometimes I can see far across the river with clear eyes, but other days (this same winter season) I can only speak of the small radius of my arm’s length.

These fog days, I learn to keep the circle close: tend the meditations of my small heart and love the ones who pass through my doors – let mystery hold the rest. Limited sight can be a view-finder, an invitation to offer my all in this present moment. I learn by failing, to drink up the Word; let loose of what’s happening outside my limited sight.

How can I see into another’s heart, know what tomorrow holds? All my sight is through a glass dimly.

Tomorrow the cloud may dissipate, and surely spring will follow winter; my heart and my vision will expand, but this day, I am centered on small, true things that I hold close in the fog and in the clear.

(All photos taken with my phone. Lesson learned: when adventuring on snowy days, bring real camera!)

(in)RL Conference 2013

Just in case you haven’t heard…

There’s a conference in April that you can attend in your living room {or a coffee house, or almost anywhere}. It’s called the (in)RL Conference and it’s put together by the amazing crew at (in)courage. Let me tell you, the folks over at (in)courage are the real deal. These are women who love community. (In)courage creates space and conversation to encourage growth and whole-hearted living both online and in your own real life community.

The idea is that you register, tune into the webcast Friday night, and then watch the rest of the webcast together with friends (and food…) on Saturday.  Last year, I registered for the first ever (in)courage conference, and watched it huddled under a blanket, contentedly all by myself. A series of streaming videos initiated conversations about justice, service, and sacrificial love that have stayed with me this year.

This year, I’ll watch it with friends, make it a party. If you are longing to connect with other women in your life or celebrating the community you already have, think about hosting a meet-up in your area. Or, sign up and watch it in your jammies like I did last year. Either way, it will be well worth your time.

Today is the first day of registration, and you can check it all out here!

On Marking the Days {A New Year Post}

When I was a child, and her own mother was dying, my grandmother would invite me to sit next to the hospice bed, my little feet dangling. She’d hand me the latest copy of Ideals magazine, and ask me to read the printed poems and prose to my great-grandmother’s fading ears.

I am grown now, and just before Christmas my daughter came home from school with her first collection of Kindergarten poems. A generation has passed, and this week I sat heart-heavy next to my grandmother’s bed with only whispers of I love you, longing to cement the lines of her face and sweetness of her smile into my mind’s eye, wishing I’d brought an old book of poems.

It is a new year and I have no resolutions or great aspirations, not even a simple one word for the year. These days, I don’t so much mark my time with calendars pages or liturgical schedules. I am simply leaning into the seasons: the wintering months where dormant dreams sleep and the awakening hope of someday spring, the heat of long summer nights followed by the decadent descent of all that autumn glory, again, again, again. And the rhythm of this created world holds the melody of my days and years.

I count the seasons by early sunsets and snow-buried gardens, the hope of song birds’ return, and the quiet heartache on the anniversary of the last day I saw my sister laugh in this life. Days and months are marked by memories that ground me in my story: that first, very long date exactly one decade ago, where we talked India and art over an order of steaming chai and an apple sliced up, peanut butter on the side.

I am not old, but already my days are filled with remembering: life beginnings and last embraces, little mittened hands held on winter walks to school and anniversaries of all kinds. I ache with remembering, sit with it – feet dangling, let it draw me back to the One writing all these days before one of them came to be.

Post Office Lines

I laugh when I see the line wrapping around the old brick post office. Behind the counter the post man, who has always been there, takes his sweet time measuring width and height and depth of package, checking it twice. It’s lunch hour and he is in no hurry to thoroughly explain each and every possibility for delivery confirmation, optional insurance, and letter expedition.

The woman waiting ahead of me tells me how much schools have changed, how she’s glad she birthed her children whilst young. I learn about her grandchildren and the old combination locks the PO Boxes kept before the keys – how she wanted to purchase one when they redid the place, but every last one was melted down for scrap metal.

We wait and make small talk and my racing heart slows a bit.

I think of the four hundred year silence between last old testament prophecy and the birth of Christ. I think of the nine months between Mary’s angel visit and the Shepherds’. All those everyday days.

The hard and the quiet is where the longing is birthed, and there’s a slow knitting together that happens inside empty soul places when our every-days become holy ground.

And there are high holy days to be celebrated and I’m not one to shirk the dance and loud-off-key-singing of the extraordinary beauty and goodness, but there’s something, too, to the conversations at the post office, the oatmeal making and the kitchen cleaning.

I’m learning slowly to lean into the ordinary, unglamorous everyday; to seek the hidden and the not seen (or blogged about) treasures; to let the ache grow and draw me back to the center, the Word, the quiet.

My friend Phileena says it beautifully: “Advent doesn’t feel any different to me than how I live daily.”

Joining Emily for Tuesdays Unwrapped.

Sacred Everyday {Guest Post for Micha Boyett}

I can’t remember exactly when I discovered Micha Boyett‘s writing at Mama Monk, but I can trace the influence her gentle, steady words have had on my heart these past few years. Her posts about the contemplative life in the midst of the everyday have been a gift. She is wise and honest and she is the real deal, friends. I’m so honored to be sharing over at her blog today for the last of her Sacred Everyday series. Would you join me? Here’s an excerpt:

I am an artist, and I see all life through this lens. All our days, we are making art: creating, with our hands, our words, our silence and our lives. We make oatmeal for breakfast and love letters to slip into lunch boxes. We write on each others’ lives in delicate strokes of compassion and jagged lines of judgement. We create bridges, cultivate community, fashion idols.

We were made and we are making, always. Imago Dei.

Some artists, they dream of a small studio… [Keep Reading...]

Ordinary Light

Light.

I think about it as I sit near the tree, all other light silenced: just twinkle here. In the near-dark I can’t see the cardboard castle or collection of autumn’s acorns still lingering on the dining room table. It’s nice here in the dim.

This morning, I stood at the kitchen sink, wondered how so much light pours in though these old, small windows. I imagine a hundred year’s worth of women washing dishes right here in this light, and a few good men too.

On Sunday night we lit one small candle and read ancient words about light dawning on those living in the land of deep darkness (Isaiah 9).

A small candle for a great light.

…

All year, we seek to shine spotlights on any shimmer of hope, drawing attention to the everyday gifts that point back to the giver.

Other times, it’s the hard, broken parts we illuminate. We share from the depths of our ache, and are reminded that this is not our home.

We watch the sun rise steady on dark, hidden chains; shine light into the dark corners of injustice.

…

In high school art class, I rushed an oil pastel of a hand clutching a candle in the dark. It was decent, but my instructor gave me a C and wrote the word trite next to the grade. The grade reflected the amount of effort I’d invested, but I challenged her anyway. She crossed out trite, wrote redundant instead.

It’s true, there’s no shortage of metaphor or message when it comes to light and dark.
Last night I sketched a campfire for paper-doll shepherds hailing from a printable Bethlehem.

And I wonder if they could see their little flame at all when the glory came. All year long I build my campfires, look for ways to name gifts and illuminate beauty in brokenness. But when Christ-light comes in the midst of my ordinary, my attempts to illuminate this, that, or the other thing seem small.

I warm myself near the fire for now, heartsick for Light who envelopes all my striving and acedia, my feeble attempts and brave footsteps, all the heartache and dark places in this broken world. Come, Lord Jesus.

Joining Emily Freeman - whose artful words are a gift – to look a bit closer at the everyday this day.