sick days.

Some kind of virus is making the rounds here. Tea and rest, tea and rest, tea and rest.

small and happy.

1. Painted rocks to place throughout the garden.
2. Black-out poetry, made late at night.
3. Nourishing our bodies with healthy, vegetarian food.
4. Coffee break.
5. Happy rug I found at the thrift store for $3.
6. Hearts from old watercolor papers.

art journal, 5/08/14.

a peek into our new home.

Thought I'd share some bits of pieces of the new place. In between arranging furniture and piecing together our treasures, I've been battling the stomach flu and dreaming about moving to Denmark (just because).

Happy--belated--mother's day to all the creative and amazing mama's I'm honored to know. You know who you are. <3

girls.

I sometimes talk myself into believing that the world has come so far. That women are, for the most part, being treated with the same respect that men garner for simply being male. Of course, I'm lying. I know better. But the talk is the hope, and sometimes the desperate prayer I'm sending to God.

I want to live in a world where young girls and women can dream of having an education, and then go after that dream. I want young girls and women to walk freely under the stars, and then come home safely. I want the roles, all the roles that every one of us has been shoved into at some point in our lives, to evaporate. I want these girls to come home to their weeping mothers, and say, "I'm here, I'm okay".

Father, send them home. This war that has always been waged against women--against the lighthouses of the world--must end. Father, send them home. Shame those who say that our wants and needs are pointless and trivial, destroy those who would only use us for our bodies. Father, send them home. Dry the tears from women's eyes, enough tears to drown every enemy.

I pray that You will not ignore our cries, that You will listen, that You will speak.

The girls are waiting.


(You can read more about the kidnapped girls here.)

faithless.

According to your faith be it unto you.

Matthew 9:29

I've been wondering lately, how much faith I actually have, how much I put into practice on a daily basis. I've been noticing my walks, literally and figuratively, and how dulled down by fear they are. Noticing how the lack of trust--in man, in self, in God--takes the shine out of life. 

I hold onto lists and numbers and ideas of how I think things (marriage, womanhood, friendship, motherhood) should be, with no clear idea of how these notions ended up in my head to begin with, and God strikes right through my pride down to the center of me. I try to stare Him down with my white-knuckled death grip on everything I feel life owes me, and a still, small voice inside asks me to let go. And I push back against it--NO. Arguing and rooting myself in stubbornness until I am utterly exhausted.

It's in these moments that my brain, I swear on purpose, forgets all the goodness I've experienced as the result of letting go. How, through a phone call, or an unexpected visitor, or by taking the wrong road on my way to wherever, I was guided into amazing, blessed situations! Led to incredible new people, or an area of the woods unexplored, or a quiet bookstore, just when my heart was screaming for all the crazy to stop. How many potential friends do I turn away from, how many needed things have been placed directly on my path, unseen by me, the woman just hoping to get through the day?

So little faith. So little trust. Such a dishonor to the sheer enormity of my spirit, the unfathomable, ancient knowing of my soul. I combat this distrust every day, every hour, knowing that I've been blessed with the gift of recognizing trouble when I see it, but also coming to new realizations. That shutting out and avoiding everyone, at times even avoiding my Creator, is not the answer. 

I was not created to be so diminished.