I am in the midst of carrying my cross, and I am embarrassed about it. I want my eyes fixed on Jesus’ feet: His toes caked with dirt, leather straps stretched across his insteps, blood dripping from his head and down his face and hitting the crusted ground. And I am not doing my part, I’ve decided. For I am on Jesus’ back, underneath my cross, which is on top of Jesus’ back. And he takes one labored, tortured step and then another. Stumbling and holding the cross–His cross and my own–and getting up again, always moving forward, forward, forward.

I close my eyes. This is a nightmare. But it isn’t. It is absolutely real. I am on my back, weak and immobile, and unable to help in any way. My clothes are ragged and torn. My hair is matted in clumps. My face is streaked with dirt and tears. And I am ashamed of my embarrassment–for I am confused now. Am I embarrassed because I want, truly, to be carrying my own cross? Or am I embarrassed because I can’t and people will see my weakness?

Oh, there you are again, Strength. And Pride. You want to save yourself, Jennifer, don’t you? You want to be your own Savior, yes? You say you love Jesus but yet you detest that He is the one doing the saving? You want to be the one to get glory and fame?

But this isn’t true, I decide. These are thoughts of self-contempt, and I give them to Jesus, asking him to decipher my confusion for me. I can’t manage it alone. For I am bewildered by this scene. What is happening? How are You carrying me? And why do I not want to be carried? What is this tension I feel within?

And then I am off His back, struggling next to Him, attempting to budge my own cross that is stuck in the dirt near His feet. My knees threaten to buckle beneath me, the weight too great. But then I stumble forward and don’t fall; I manage to take a step. I am confused until, with astonishment, I realize what is happening: my cross is angled so it rests on top of Jesus’ cross.

I walk forward because He carries my own cross too.

Every few moments Jesus pauses, the burden pressing heavily on his shoulders, his head, his back. And in the middle of one of these pauses, He looks at me, eyes so deep and kind, and tells me to lift my head. What?!

Somehow, I manage to look around me, behind me. It is like the camera has pulled back and I have a bird’s eye view of the whole scene: the streets of Jerusalem and hundreds, no, thousands–no, countless people (angels?) glowing white, carrying crosses. There are people filling the streets of Jerusalem, each trudging upward.

The camera pulls back some more.

The people are walking not just through Jerusalem. They are walking through towns and through cities, through walkways and through corridors of homes. Here, everywhere, steadfast and determined, people are walking. Onward, onward, and up up, to their own Golgatha, the place where they will plunge their own crosses into the ground.

How many times did Jesus tell the disciples to take up their crosses? To give up the things of this world that hold them back from the complete surrender of mind, body, and heart to the worshipping of God?

What are you showing me, Jesus? What does this mean?

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

Luke 9: 23-24,ESV

Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?

Matthew 16:24-26, MSG

What Jesus shows me is beautiful. And He is beautiful. And together, the saints join together, having picked up their crosses.

And there will be a day–and it may not be long now–that we are the ones in glowing white–our clothes no longer ragged and torn, our skin no longer dirty and scraped–when we revel in worship for the King who carried his own cross and who leads us the way to surrender–all the while making it possible for us to carry our own crosses too.

Let us reject self-help. Let us embrace self-sacrifice. Let us surrender to love. Let us be blessed by Your leading, Jesus.

Friend, what do you see in this scene? Are you letting Jesus carry you? What does it mean for you to let yourself be crucified? What needs to be taken to the cross? Pride? Self-worship? Envy? Bitterness? Malice? Distrust? Hard-heartedness? What is He asking to help you with? What does He have to show you as He walks with you, your burden His own?

Will you spend a few minutes imagining this scene? Sanctify your imagination to Him now.

And, if you feel like He is leading you to process your experience, will you write out your thoughts? Will you consider sharing them with us, in the safe community of Loop Poetry Project, as a poem? Join us right here.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Praying now, as I join you up this hill,

Jennifer

Easter night. Curtains open. The sky so dark I can no longer see out, just my reflection in the glass. It is a beautiful lull from the fun of March Madness. (We are a UCLA family and have had a lot of fun cheering on our underdog basketball team this season.) A few books next to me and one in my lap. This has been a season of listening and exploring–I hope to always seek wisdom and self-awareness.

So I am leaning into a new movement. Taking a deeper look at how my sins point to strongholds–idols I worship, ideas I hold onto that reveal my heart’s affinity toward so many things other than God. In prayer this morning, using imaginative contemplation to experience the scene of Jesus’ tortuous laboring up to Golgotha–and the three hours of suffering on the cross under dark sky before he breathed his last breath–I think about grace and justice. I am afraid, mournfully, that, even in my depravity, I have lived most of my life expecting mercy.

Crazy right? And how?

Jesus, the lamb of God, chose to give everything to hold up our side of the covenant–how can I love anything else more than Him?

But if you look at my life, you’ll see that I have. This wisdom from R. C Sproul makes me squirm:

“We are not really surprised that God has redeemed us. Somewhere deep inside, in the secret chambers of our hearts we harbor the notion that God owes us his mercy. Heaven would not be quite the same if we were excluded from it. We know that we are sinners, but we are surely not as bad as we could be. There are enough redeeming features to our personalities that if God is really just he will include us in salvation. What amazes us is justice, not grace.”

R. C. Sproul

As I sit with these words, I confess to Jesus my self-righteousness. I am selfish and wretched and yet dearly loved by a God who loves and loves and loves. I confess that I have tolerated my sin more than I have detested it. I confess that when I do this, I minimize the saving power of His grace.

I ask Jesus to reveal to me the idols I worship. And He begins by pointing out two things I have worshipped my entire life. Strength. And independence.

Strength is something I cling to because it feels like security against failing. I struggle to accept my failures. And certainly not because I don’t fail, but because I struggle with not hating myself a little more when I do.

Failure feels intolerabe. It makes me feel weak–and I don’t like feeling weak: weak mentally or physically or emotionally.

Jesus guides me deeper.

I tell Him I think strength is an idol I have been worshipping my whole life. I have believed the lie that strength means security. Strength means power. Strength means being in control. I have ascribed to the world’s definition of strength rather than God’s, which is based on love, humility, kindness, trust, relationship.

The strongholds of strength and independence have had a firm grip on me. I have always worked hard to be strong–and on my own–and I have had little tolerance for weakness in myself. Of course, this affects my closest relationships too (in a not-so-positive way). I have admired strength–and I have wanted it around me–as comfort. I have also felt good about myself when I felt I was strong and I didn’t need to rely on anyone else for help. And I have appreciated people being strong and independent around me because it has motivated me to work harder to be strong and independent too.

What insidious pride. These lies, these strongholds, have got to go.

So this morning I give these idols to Jesus. I give them to Him to destroy. I give them to Him to break. In His name. With His blood. I make a declaration: I no longer worship strength and independence–and I ask Him to help me to embrace failure and relationship and trust and vulnerability and not fear them. (Oh, I have feared them.) I tell Him I have failed because I have worshiped strength and independence rather than God. And this failure humbles me and makes me realize how I am undeserving of grace and yet am desperate for it.

When I fail next, Lord, help me to see it and feel it and not run away from it and be defensive about it. Jesus, come, come, come.

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For the Loop Poetry Project project this week, will you join me in considering your definition of strength? Think about a time in your life when you witnessed it, or ascribed to it, or demonstrated it. What was the scene? What was the deeper motive or feeling? What details do you associate with strength? What rises to your heart when you think of that word and what it means to you, personally? Will you write a poem about it and share it below?

Remember we are not shooting for perfection in our writing here. We are aiming for honesty. For openness. For letting ourselves be the scribes for our hearts. (They have something amazing to say.)

Or, you can share it in the private group over here.

May God bless you as you let Him define strength for you,

Jennifer

I used to think prayer required words. Words to express thoughts. Words to articulate feelings. Words to coax quiet places out of hiding. Words to claim truth. Words to encourage life.

Words were something I believed I never had enough of. Or, at least, not the right ones.

And I believed that to engage with God, words were required. After all, words form story. Words shape meaning. Ideas. Dreams.

And how could conversation with God–prayer–not involve words? How can communication take place without them?

That’s what I used to think.

When my heart couldn’t find its way to God, I filled journals with words. My words. His words. It was through the words of conversation that God’s voice wrapped itself around me and became my new home.

Then two years ago, in the middle of a year of therapy and the pursuit of a ton of healing, I struggled to find words to talk to God. My heart was hurting, and I didn’t trust my own thoughts. And the thoughts I did have I struggled to articulate. So I tried to communicate with God using a different approach: writing poetry. It helped more than I could imagine–an amazing tool to tap into deeper emotions and ideas that were otherwise uncovered.

But still. Just an overreliance on words.

Aren’t words sometimes limiting? Can words possibly hold everything of a life? Of an idea? Of a dream? While I believe that words can be a springboard for healing, are they really the healing itself?

And prayer? Isn’t prayer–conversation with God–limited when we rely purely on words? Isn’t connection with God, just like connection with another person, something that can be experienced in a place deeper than words? A place where words are, perhaps, born, but not required for connection to occur?

When I look at my journals lately, I am finding fewer and fewer words scribbled inside. It is not that I am praying less. But my conversations with God and Jesus and Holy Spirit these last few weeks, particularly, have been more experiences of listening and watching–being close to Jesus in scenes of His life while on earth, walking around with Him, holding His hand. Or sitting with Peter in his anguish within the high priest’s gate. Or huddling in heartbreak with Mary at the foot of the cross for the hours of Jesus’ suffering, in agony and pain.

I believe this is prayer. And these last few weeks my heart is too heavy for words. How can I ask God how He is feeling about the suffering of His son while He watches Him on the cross? How can I ask Jesus what He is thinking when He is interrogated by the high priests and tortured by the entire company of Roman guards? I can’t bear it.

While words fail me. God’s and Jesus’ and Holy Spirit’s presence does not. And I am calling this prayer. And I will choose this any day. Whatever it takes to be close to Him. In all seasons. In all moments.

I trust the words will come again. They will be useful. And I still bring my journal with me when I sit in the Trinity’s presence and go on adventrues with them. But filled pages of a journal does not determine my connection with God. And, words or not, I don’t want anything holding me back–not from the Life Jesus is offering me now.

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How is your heart in this season? At the end of Lent? After a year of isolation due to Covid? Have you joined us for writing poetry with the most kind, lovely women in the private group, Loop Poetry Project? Or are you staying quiet in these weeks? Have you been able to access your deeper feelings? What are you doing to allow God in?

Please let me know in the comments–or send me an email. I’d love to connect with you.

Bless you, dear friends. May the love of our risen Savior comfort you and lift your heart now.

Jennifer

The week with you in the desert was not what I expected. I always pictured it as a desolate place. A place of emptiness. And loneliness. An absence of goodness and hope and sound.

But it wasn’t that, was it?

When the Spirit led you into the desert, you were not dropped off and abandoned. Holy Spirit never left you.

How could I have imagined, without you, that those 40 days involved this scene: a bonfire and mirth and story after story of your Dad—his character and his laughter and his adventures in creating all that is beautiful and wild and good?

I couldn’t see this on my own.

Now I admit, while I watched, I didn’t hear every inside joke the two of you shared. But thank you for letting me gather close so I could hear the fire crackling in the night and the sound of your voices as you both sat cross-legged. Leaning in, leaning in, leaning in.

When it was late, your body weak from lack of food, you laid down on your side on the ground, a rock for a pillow, and Holy Spirit sang you to sleep. In the middle of the night, when the temperature grew cold, he covered you a garment to keep you warm. And he kissed your forehead. And he stayed next to you. All night, Keeping you safe while you slept.

When the 40 days had ended, Satan came to tempt you—asking you to prove your identity: turn this rock into bread, throw yourself down and see if angels come to catch you, stand on this mountain and consider all the influence you’ll have on this earth if you bow down, right now, and worship him with your life. And you didn’t flinch.

I never thought you did. But I didn’t understand—or spend time trying to understand—how.

But now I understand, at least a little bit, after spending that week with you at the desert bonfire: you were loved. You let Love fill you and strengthen you and protect you and equip you. Your Dad’s love made Satan’s words ridiculous. While you were physically weak, your body deprived of food, you were never sad or discouraged. You were spiritually so, so strong.

Thank you for how you choose to be filled with Love and you show me Love—and how you discerned Love’s voice above all other noise.

I hear it.

Love makes any desert one worth visiting.

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Friend, the desert isn’t always the place we think it is. It might be desolate. Or it might be fertile in surprising, unusual ways. It might be isolating, lonely. Or it might be rich with adventure and meaning. What is your experience in the desert? How does your heart interpret it? Write a short poem on your “desert.” Let us feel it, know it. Tell us a story. Give it a name. Write it below, as a comment, or share it with the kind poets over at Loop Poetry Project.

Love,

Jennifer

Now has often felt like it’s been in a hurry. If not running, Now is ready to run, expecting to run, considering what supplies she needs when the gun goes off and the racers are at their mark and it is time to go, go, go.

Why does Now feel like she is running—running away from me?

This happens almost every day, this conversation with Now. To be specific, it happens around two or three in the afternoon. I start counting down with Now how much time she has left until I need to make dinner. I start asking her what moments, exactly, are available to me to soak up, use up, mark up until Now is just plumb worn out and tired.

Like me.

I confess I beat up Now a lot. I am not nice. But expectant, greedy. I am a weigher of meaning, qualifying and quantifying—measuring what matters to Now and what doesn’t. Deciding what for Now is worth doing and what for Now is not worth a moment at all.

And that, I am realizing, is the reason why Now runs away from me so often; or, at least, why, I am sure, she seems always on the verge of running. It’s because I am expecting Now to run. I am expecting Now to run away. I am expecting Now to not want to be here. With me. Now.

It is no wonder that with this kind of pressure to perform, why Now struggles to relax . . . and breathe . . . and be comfortable . . . and want to stay.

So, Now, here I turn to you with contrition. I am sorry for my behavior. I am sorry for my despising you. I am sorry for wanting more than what you can give. I am sorry for my thinking that what you are giving is not what I need. I am sorry for my lack of gratitude. I am sorry for my pride. I am sorry for my contempt. I am sorry for my judgement.

You hold all things. You hold all goodness, all possibility. You hold my past and my future. You hold the promise of hope. You hold what was and is to come, your hands wrapped around it all like the most beautiful, shining gift. Why do I want to twist it from your grasp?

Please forgive me. I give you my heart, my mind, my imagination. I give you my attention. You deserve it. I deserve it. Teach me to be kind to you. I want to be kind. Now is where I want to be. Nowhere else. Please stay.

I was captivated. The scene at the temple. Simeon, a man old and in love with God. He let Holy Spirit lead him. Heart wide open. Ready for God’s moving.

He wanted God to move in him. And so God did.

For years he waited. Hearing God speak to him many years ago: he would not see heaven until he saw the face of God.

He believed Him. And so he waited. Faithfully.

On the day God whispered to him to enter the temple, Simeon did not hesitate. He did not worry about what he needed or what he didn’t–what supplies he should carry with him, or what clothes he should wear. His heart beat with excitement. Today . . . he would see God.

As his feet found the steps to the holy building, he saw a young mother and her husband. At eight days old, the baby was circumcised and given his name. The name shared by the angel. The name given by God–and told to the young girl–before the child was conceived. And now, four weeks later, the young couple ready themselves for the ceremony. They will present their baby to the Lord.

Simeon, both energized and amazed, made his way through the temple. Expectant. Eager to get close.

The mother held the baby to her arms, her husband protectively near. Simeon met their eyes as he approached, his legs now weak beneath him and his empty, open hands shaking at his sides. There He was, in her arms. The baby, the King, the Son of God. The One who would bring salvation to the world.

He couldn’t resist. How could he resist God? Holy Spirit led him there this day, guiding him into the temple. And now He whispered again into his heart and Simeon was overwhelmed.

There. There He is. Behold. Me. All Glory and Hope. My Son.

How could he turn away? How could he think about anything else? How could he notice his aching joints, his tired eyes, his heart about to burst from excitement and thrill and joy!? How could he not hold the baby this young mother held with adoration and love? How could he not scoop him up, right out of her arms, and feel his warmth, smell the sweetness of his skin?

God must have whispered into the young mother’s heart too–and maybe the husband’s. How otherwise would they let a man they had likely never met–a man they had probably never seen–come and take up the baby from their arms?

And with their consent, Simeon took the baby and held Him to his heart. He looked into his eyes opening from sleep as he moved from his mother’s arms to his, and Simeon was held there too. Held by Everything. Held by Love. Held by the Father’s hands holding him as he glorified God, the Savior of the whole world.

Such wonder! Such rapture and amazement! How Simeon must have laughed! And cried! And called out in gratitude and joy! And how God must have leaned in close, in delight at Simeon’s love for Him! For his Son! For his openness to Holy Spirit in him opening him up, wide open, to receive and receive and receive the love of God.

Simeon held God in his two hands.

As God held him.

And, in even greater kindness, God whispered to Simeon’s heart to tell the mother that challenges would be coming–for her son, her baby boy, and for her. Her love for him would pierce her heart. And these words from God through Simeon would help prepare her for what was coming. I also imagine that Simeon’s recognition of this baby as God’s very Own made the young couple feel held, too, and not at all alone.

Will you join me in letting your imagination ponder the wild delight and excitement and hope in that temple scene? Will you let yourself be Simeon? Eager and humble. Faith-filled and child-like with amazement and joy. Kind and blessed with God’s favor as he, with zeal and wonder, took up the Son of God in his two hands? Will you?

Will you imagine the scent of baby Jesus? Will you imagine God’s smile? Will you feel Holy Spirit’s energy? Will you breathe in God’s breath? Will you feel his skin against your own? Will you let his eyes swallow you whole?

Consider writing a poem in response to your spending time with God. You might want to jump into Luke 2: 21-38 to contemplate this scene of Mary and Joseph presenting baby Jesus in the temple. In this case, maybe it won’t be Simeon who stands out to you in those passages. Perhaps, instead, it will be Mary–or Joseph–and the emotion they feel in these moments. Or Anna, the very old prophet who (I can’t imagine her not doing this with exuberance) declaring to all who would hear the glory of God. Or, is there another passage of scripture that you have been spending time with this week? If so, what does your heart want to express, in response?

This prompt idea is just an invitation–and you might want to write about something else altogether. Do it. Don’t hold back. This first month of the new year might be a wonderful time to reflect on the past year–what it held, what it didn’t–and, perhaps, to look forward to what is ahead, too.

I look forward to hearing your beautiful words.

Love,

Jennifer

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Still

Last year I sat behind a metal storage bin
where wooden steps led to a platform
for loading and unloading factory supplies.
From this hill, a thick bluff above Wengen,
the new year became one picture:
a woman at a white sink with
morning light shining bright on her face,
feet and hips ready to sway to
mercy holding fast the cries of the land.

The week of Christmas and I am spending more days with Joseph. The companion I seek when I am by myself, walking the dog or making the bed or wiping down a counter. The person I am asking God to help me understand–and he is different than anyone I’ve ever wanted to know.

When Father Chi invited me to spend a week with Mary, and then another, it was easy. She was nurturing and warm. We walked so close our shoulders bumped–and I could feel her hip against mine as we sat. She would turn to me and offer conversation, an observation and a smile. She let me hear her prayers, her dreams and fears. She showed me surrender and strength and faith and love. She was the older sister I never had.

But Joseph is different. And I am drawn to his quietness. I have been wanting to hear him speak, but he says more with his actions than with his words. But even those actions are ones that I undervalued at first–not recognizing the impact of quiet humbleness and the strength of obedience and the power in loving without drawing attention to oneself.

I have lived my life wanting to be seen and noticed, celebrated and praised. Long ago, I decided that validation from other people equaled my personal worth–and love. And Joseph isn’t like that, which both perplexes and attracts me. In fact, when I am with him, he barely acknowledges me at all.

Father Chi, the Jesuit priest with whom I meet on Zoom each week, invites me to notice Joseph. “Spend time with Joseph. He is a largely silent figure in the Scriptures. Let him speak.” And so, in imaginative prayer with God, I have been following Joseph. And I have been listening. And what I’ve learned? His actions speak louder than any words.

I watched him as he awoke from the dream from the angel, and his immediate trust and act of obedience in marrying Mary. I watched him not let the threat of the community’s judgment and scorn deter him from trusting in the Lord. I watched him on the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem, leading Mary on the laborious three days trek. I watched him as he went from house to house, inquiring about a place for Mary to rest. I watched him by Mary’s side in labor. I watched him hold her hand. I watched him help her clean and then hold the Son of God born as a human baby. I watched him fill with wonder at all the things he did not understand.

I watched him build a bed for Jesus when they went back home, eager to provide a home, with food and with shelter for his family. I watched him eat meals and pray to God and rise each day knowing he was loved, chosen to be the man–frail and imperfect–to parent, the best way any human could, the Son of God. I watched him go to work each day with dedication and commitment. I watched the way Mary felt safe in his presence. I watched his quiet gentleness and strength as he spoke to Jesus, and I saw Jesus’s delight in being near him, and the respect Jesus had for him as Joseph spoke to him and ate with him and walked with him and taught him everything he ever knew.

He did not call attention to himself. He did not seek acclaim. There was so much he did not know or understand–so many reasons for him to feel unqualified and insecure and unprepared and ill-equipped to do what God invited him to do. And yet he chose to love his God. And he chose to trust in him. And he chose to be faithful even when his parenting God as a human made no sense. And he chose to believe God was good and would fulfill every promise. And he chose to make one decision after another to live like he believed it.

I am drawn to Joseph for his complete surrender, over and over, to God’s strength and goodness. I am drawn to his obedience. I am drawn to his quietness, his selflessness, his confidence in being loved. I am drawn to his way of living without needing to be in the limelight. I am drawn to his daily choice of living in the freedom of God’s mystery–of facing each day with resolve and trust that everything, with God, is always okay.

God is using other people to teach me, guide me, invite me into deeper trust and love for him. And right now, in Joseph, God is rescuing me again. In Joseph, I am learning how to follow God without needing anyone else’s validation. I am learning how to love in the quiet. I am learning how to accept trials as life and look to God for hope and navigation. I am learning how to be okay with being me, full of imperfections and problems. I am learning how to live a life that gives God glory and doesn’t seek it for myself.

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For the Loop Poetry Project this week, consider pondering, right now, what you are learning. About God. About yourself. About the world. About who you really are.

Who is teaching this to you? What struggles are you facing as you let go of the false things you had believed and reach for something true and new?

Share your poem here, as a comment and/or with the lovely women in the Loop Poetry Project community. Join by clicking here. I look forward to reading your poems!

Merry Christmas, dear friends. May you hear and receive God’s whispers of hope and love and joy–for you, and for all that He is, and for all the good that He is going to do.

With love and hope,

Jennifer

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Journey

The walk through desert
was many miles,
each step a day,
and my legs ached
from the weight
of my body,
all the dreams of you
a manifestation
I could see and touch
(if only in my
imagination) for
you were real to
me, a child to father
before I was a father,
and I had to trust
what I knew but did
not understand: you
were carrying me
even now my child
who loved, so loved,
the world.

I had not given her my attention before. Not like this. A fifteen-year-old girl. With plans. With dreams. With expectations for what her future would hold. Marriage. Motherhood. Caring for a home. Working alongside her community. A loyal daughter. A loving wife. A trusted friend.

She was someone to be counted on, a person whose word was her word, a person whose actions reflected her good heart. I began to imagine what it would be like to have conversations with her.

So I ask God to direct my imagination so I can speak with Mary. I want to talk with her, ask her–sister to sister, woman to woman, mother to mother: What was it like to say yes to God? What was it like to let your whole world turn sideways? What was it like to carry the Son of God in your womb?

That week, I let God help me imagine what it might have been like to be Mary, carrying Jesus in my womb, the feeling of his body inside mine as he shifted inside me. I have been pregnant five times and given birth three, and I know the miracle of life inside me, the strange and wonderful feeling of movement, a heart beating inside my body that is not my own.

And Mary, at age fifteen, carried inside her the Savior of the World. What was that like? What was it like to say yes, again and again–through public scorn, through the long journey on a donkey to Nazareth, through childbirth in a cave on the ground, through the depending on God for miracle after miracle to come true?

I talked to God about this–trying to process what seems so amazing and wonderful and crazy. How did Mary do all these things, God?

My delight was in her. I filled her. Her heart rejoiced. That made me glad. I gave her wisdom–wisdom that comes not from seeing with her eyes but with her heart. Yes, she was blessed–the world forever blessed by her obedience. And she felt my favor and my love. I never left her.

I have much goodness to be born in each person who wants it. The vulnerable see me, feel my strength, and live in them. They are made content and satisfied by my love. It only grows and never leaves. My love is for you and will never leave you, if you want me in you now and forevermore.

So each of us, Father, is invited to carry within us–and birth–the light of the world. How beautiful and incredible it is that Jesus left your side to be so, so vulnerable–born as a baby from the womb of a fifteen-year-old girl! In my imagination, I see you looking at earth, the three of you–Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit–and how you made that decision to bring Jesus down due to the root of discord–hatred, evil, pain. So many people felt unloved, removed from you, thinking they are alone.

Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, as you watched Gabriel ask Mary to agree to carry the Son of God in her womb, did you know she would say yes? Were you excited? Jesus, what was that like for you? (Please tell me in a context that I can understand.)

Imagine giving your whole self to another and they don’t know you fully and yet they love you anyway. Because they want to love you, they decide to love you and trust you. You would be so grateful, yes?

So you were grateful that Mary said yes?

I am grateful for everything my Father has made. I love that I got to go down to earth and be born as a human. I am grateful for being born in my mother’s womb, to share that experience with you. Threre is nothing I cannot relate to or understand.

And Mary said yes to being your mom….so you felt loved by her, loved from the beginning.

Yes, I am love, and I have always been loved. By my Father. And by Mary. My mother loved me before I was born and my Father has always loved me.

So Mary saying “yes” to you was personal, not transactional. God’s love was in her, making her capable of saying yes and fully loving you. That is so beautiful and wonderful.

Yes, it is so good to be loved.

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For the Loop Poetry Project, consider an experience you’ve had with intimacy–or vulnerability. How have you willingly chosen to let down your guard and trust, even though it was uncomfortable and you had no control? Perhaps you want to write from the perspective of another person’s point of view, using either first person, where you imagine you are that person, or third person, where you are an observer of the scene. Maybe you want to imagine you are Mary, or even Jesus, as a child. How do you define vulnerability? What story does your heart want to tell?

I am so honored you are here, reading this now, and I look forward to connecting with you! Please leave a comment below sharing your thoughts about this conversation with the Father and Jesus about Mary–and/or share your poem on vulnerability or intimacy. I can’t wait to read it! You can also share your poem with the gentle community of poets over in the private group Loop Poetry Project. Join here.

Love,

Jennifer

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Breath

The little boy presses up on me
his hot body and breath what
I want to feel in the room
with chairs stacked too close
together as she reads poetry
from the front platform,

her hair wild and red and
covering her eyes like she is
embarrassed for us to hear
her words and I wonder
if I should care too

but the hot breath of sweet
air from the little boy’s mouth
distracts me as it would
any mother so really I
never hear her anyway.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Justin gave me warning: Hell week was going to be tough. And I’m not talking about the hell week of college–that week before finals when you attempt to study like mad and, at midnight, press your face as far as you can against the screen of your window and participate in a quasi-cathartic collective scream with thousands of other freaking-out college kids. No, this hell week was going to be different. Hell week for the St. Ignatius exercises is a week of imagining yourself in hell, with all the smells and sounds and textures and torture that come with being completely removed from the presence of God.

Not fun. That’s for sure. I was frightened. I shed lots of tears. But my experience of hell, in my imagination, was so different than I expected.

When approaching this exercise, I tried to not let my mind, with its pre-formed opinions about hell–with its fire and screams all around–to shape the experience. And what surprised me about hell was the flat-out dullness of everything. No color. No texture. Everything gray and parched and cracked. No water. No sky. Nothing to see on the horizon. Nothing to see in any direction, actually. Just absence. Void.

It was agony. Rather than experiencing the heat of countless pits of fire, and joining in with what I assumed would be insufferable screams of torture all around me, I was horrified by this: God was nowhere; nobody was with me; I was completely, utterly alone.

Hell’s torture was in its emptiness–its complete absence of beauty and variety. No color. No light. No variation. No wind or rain. No seasons. No nature. All was the same. The ground parched, completely dry and gray and cracked. All hope gone. No solace or comfort of any kind. No company. No life. No music or birds or wind blowing tree branches filled with green leaves. No sweet fragrance with bright flowers. Nothing.

In hell, there was no learning. No smells of good food. No laughter. No music. No celebration or hugs or stories. No connection or contact. No people. All goodness absent. (For goodness can only exist where God is. And God–Love–was not present in hell.

Hell was a void. Everything dead. And while I saw no one around me–could hear no life around me, just utter silence–I couldn’t help wondering about other people in hell being in this same state of tormented deadness. I know this is morbid, but I wondered if the sounds of tortured screams from other people in hell–if I could hear them, anyone at all–would actually be gruesomely comforting; then I would not feel so much alone.

In hell, there was no rescue. No one was coming. And there was no coming home. In hell, God was not my Father; I hadn’t let him be one. I had rejected being parented. I had rejected being loved.

When I ask God what He can tell me about Hell, He says a few things. And over the week, we went back and forth: me asking him questions, him answering:

Father, Jesus, tell me more; show me more.

I am love. Hell is the absence of love.

So earth can be a place to experience hell? What is hell on earth?

It is discord. It is lack of peace. It is selfishness. It is striving. It is angst and desolation, a complete absence of hope. I am not there.

Is hell anywhere where you are not? When I choose to ignore you, reject you–be unkind and selfish and envious–am I experiencing glimpses of hell? And does this hell feed on itself–evil producing evil, when all is cut off from you?

Yes, but you are not cut off from me.

But I do cut myself off from you often. Help me to feel the separation from you when I sin. Make me feel repulsed by it. Help me to run away from it and, instead, run to you.

Hell is a turning inward instead of turning to me.

I confess I do that so often. Help me to look to you and to your abundance. I can imagine the gnashing of teeth. Come, Jesus. Fill me. I give you my heart–and all of its selfishness to you. Purify me.

Little children, come to me.

Father, hell scares me. I deserve to be there. But I don’t want to be there. I do not want to be away from you. But even here, while I live, I separate myself from you due to my sin. But I can turn back to you. Help me to keep my gaze on you, my heart turned to you.

My child, feel the depth of my love for you. Live in that love.

Father, is there remorse in hell? Do people know why they are there, and that they didn’t have to be there if they only loved Jesus? Do they exist with that awareness of it, or is it–for all of us–too great to comprehend all of our sin? Is man incapable of bearing it, so you protect us from it-? Except it hell, we must bear it?

To bear one’s sin is torture. Man is not equipped for it.

So, in hell, sin, to its fullest extent, is realized? How can you bear the entire world’s sin? Did you take the sin of the people who rejected you? Do you only take the sin of people who love you? Do you let people choose whether or not you take their sin away?

With my Son, I take away all sin. But the rejection of him/me means sin remains.

Would there be no hell if everyone loved you? For then all sin would be eliminated? And can people change their minds?

They would be choosing only for lack of punishment, not for love of me. And that is not love. Avoidance of pain is not love. Love can be painful. Love is sacrifice. Love is not just for personal gain. Choosing death for the sake of another (as my Son did)–their life, their hope, their joy–is love.

Amen.

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For the Loop Poetry Project this week, consider writing a poem on life without God. Let your heart partner with his. What does he want to show you and share with you? What are your questions? Where does your imagination go? How do you experience his goodness, his comfort, in the midst of desolation and pain? Or, as we approach this season of celebration and thanksgiving, what does it look like for you to go deeper into his presence?

Share your poem below–or don’t write a poem at all and just share your thoughts. You can also join the beautiful and brave women over at Loop Poetry Project who share their poetry in this private space. I am excited to connect with you!

Love,

Jennifer

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Flailing / the Sheep’s Gate

I stand at the gate
watching you
wondering what you see
and imagine all sorts
of possible calamities
but not really
I actually don’t like
to imagine them
but I wonder
what you imagine
when the world you love
is motherless,
its arms stretching up
to be carried,
nestled deep and safe,
and it refuses to see
you standing there,
its mother who aches
to pick up its child
blind and flailing
desperate to be loved.

Here is the blank page, Father, where I need you to come and write on me.

Let there be no boundaries here for the love you want to show me–wrapping me up like the girl I am, transcribing the Word of Life on my heart, holding me in your words, the Life of the words that makes me sing.

Let me let go of all expectations today. Let me hang loose, feeling no weight on me.  You carried my cross–I can hardly believe it. And you forgive me when I think, in my pride, my vanity, that I can come close to shouldering any of the weight–or that what you did, to begin with, wasn’t enough.

Here I am, Father, palms up, heart open, asking you to cleanse me again.  Slow me down to see you–trusting you more than myself, your heart more than mine.  I surrender.  Let me do nothing out of vain conceit but be filled with you, loving as you loved. Lay me down, Lord.  Forgive me for any focus on myself.

I am that girl who you see in your painting, your vision more beautiful than I can ever see.  Let me shed these scales that blind me to your glory, your humility, your walk through the streets as the people spat on you and called you names.  Lord of the Most High, forgive me for my self-centeredness.  You have forgiven me for my darkness.  Let me walk with You, carrying my cross. Take me out of the crowd.

You remind me to stay here, bring your beauty here–with you in me–into the swarms of darkness. My God, your tears ran down when the agony of my sin tore you from Your Father–all to bring me back, deliver me to Him, in your arms.  You bore me, rescued me, delivered me to the hands of the One who made me.  I am yours.

And so I trust you; help me to trust you more, surrendering to the joy of  loving with a heart that is not my own  Take me fully, this blank page, and continue to work out the plan for me as you see me: holy, treasured, a delight, formed from the tree you’ve planted,  grounded, your fullness in me.

Write.

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For the Loop Poetry Project this week, please join me in writing a poem inspired by an attitude of self-forgetfulness. Spend some time with God and ask Him to create within you a space of emptiness so that He can fill it. What will he take away? What will he give? What will your imagination show you as you spend this time with him, trusting that he will lead you somewhere new–maybe a place (emotionally) you’ve never been before.

Share your poem as a comment below or with the kind community of women interested in pursuing poetry for the sake of personal wholeness. I can’t wait to read your words.

Love to you,

Jennifer

---

Clear Path

There is no risk. I follow you
through thickets that scratch my face
and tear my clothes. Not sure
where I am or what road
leads up or down

and I am not afraid.
Nothing harms me
though I am powerless

on my own. You hedge
fingers, heart, mind, toes so

courageous does not
describe who I am.
Just finally

weak, small,
indefatigable.
Touch me and
I am no longer here.

I had heard God tell me to go deeper. I had heard him say this for years. I believed him; at least I believed in the value of the idea. But what I didn’t know is what it meant, not really. And I also didn’t know that the outcome of going deeper is an experience, an inhabitance of a place that has always been within me. A place real. A place tangible. But a place not so easily explained with words.

I will try.

So here is some context.

After my abortion when I was sixteen, the day I told my parents I was going to the mall in Sacramento to return gifts I received for Christmas, I continued to have sex; I continued to have physical relationships with guys. I was not upset about my decision to have the abortion. I did not regret what I had done. Rather, I buried the experience inside me, separated it from myself. And I continued with the behaviors I had convinced myself long ago were essential to survival: physical affection from boys (aka, for me, love).

Two decades after the abortion the facade began to crack a little. It started with self-contempt. And then sadness. And then anger. Confusion took a turn. And then shame. And then regret. And then pain. For the first time in twenty years, I was getting glimpses of what I had done. What I had really done: I had killed a child; I deserved death; I had rejected what He gave.

I let myself feel pieces of the pain. And I let God love me so it wouldn’t swallow me whole.

For ten years, off and on, God and I would speak about it. (This is when I first began to hear his voice.) He offered forgiveness. He offered healing. I let community speak truth to me. I let friends who knew and loved God to sit with me, listen to his voice with me. I flew to another state with Justin and we participated in a day of prayer with an older couple who loved God and knew that, in Jesus, there is always deeper healing of the heart, if we want it. I went through two rounds of psychotherapy. I spoke about what I had done with groups of women at my church; I shared it with friends. Two weeks ago I finally told the truth to my youngest child, my fourteen-year-old daughter. (The story of my abortion has been on my blog for nine years now; I had to trust God to protect my children from learning the truth about me until he let me know it was time for them to hear it.) For the past ten, now twelve, years God has led me to be open about who I am without him–so I can point to him, so I can show others his love and his glory.

But with God, and healing, there is always more.

This past week, when God was saying again, “Go deeper,” I didn’t know what He meant. “Go deeper” felt full of mystery. But I said yes. And this past week, as I sat in his presence in the mornings, I tried not to think too much. I tried not to to figure things out. I sat before him–he was sitting across from me–and I trusted that he was going to lead me in an experience where his invitation to “go deeper” was going to make sense.

And then Jesus came into the space, and this is some of what he said.

When you have wanted to be separate from me, when you have felt alone and caught in sin, you let shame trick you that you would not survive if sin was admitted, confronted. So you denied sin; you denied it existed, and your life became a covering of lies. And you didn’t let me in or even yourself in to love what was always meant to be loved: you.

Your body is meant to be shown love. It is not made to be hated. You hate the sin–and the sin is separate from yourself. It is not who you are. That is why confessing sin–acknowledging it–is so good and powerful. You acknowledge that I can deal with it, that my love is more powerful than sin, and sin can no longer control you. It does not have the power you think it has.

Love is powerful. It destroys sin. But more sin does not destroy sin. So without love, sin remains. And it causes more sin, and your heart grows weary with it. So you are discouraged and hide from yourself–who you see yourself to be: (1) a person capable of sin, (2) one who sins, without God, and (3) a person who is dearly loved and who can live fearless, blameless and pure in the eyes of God because of my covering of love over your whole life–your mind, your body, your heart, your soul.

And I began to realize how my body has memory. After years of healing–namely my mind and my heart–my body still housed residue from my sin. Our bodies, temples of God, carry in them wounds, scars, from when we separate ourselves from God. The body remembers how the heart attaches to sin, and this was a part of God’s invitation for me to “go deeper.” My heart and my mind and my body were in a fractured state. God is always trying to make us whole. To “go deeper” means to say yes, we want to heal.

And Jesus continued,

Remember the angels–and how, in heaven, some broke apart from God in their hearts, and so God, our Father, removed them physically from his presence? And Eve and Adam too broke apart from God in their hearts and had to be removed physically from God’s presence? The heart and the body are connected. They affect one another. How the heart feels, the body responds accordingly. And how the body feels must be managed by the heart. You must give both to the Father–and to me–for complete healing.

And I let Jesus touch my womb. I asked him to heal the trauma it remembers. I asked him to cleanse my body completely, inside and out–all the memories that the body has harbored, to wipe them clean.

And I heard the Father,

My child, be a child again. Be pure again. Be mine again. Be whole again. Your heart has been fractured. I bring you back to yourself, back to me.

And God pulled me out, separating me from the memories. And I stand with him, looking at myself. And I tell him this:

I stand with you, and I am separate from the memories now. I wear the white dress you place on me. I am pure and redeemed and whole and healed. I am brought back to myself because of your love, because you want me whole and not broken apart in many pieces. Thank you, Father, Jesus.

Amen.

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Would you like to join me in writing a poem about memories your body harbors? Let’s do that for the Loop Poetry Project prompt this week. What memory of joy or peace, trauma or hardship, is tucked deep within you? What does your body remember that your heart and your mind do not? Can you explain that in a poem? Will you let your body speak now? What words does it want to tell you it feels–to help your mind to know and your heart to understand?

Please share your poem below, and/or with the lovely community of beautiful, brave women in this space here.

From this one true heart,

Jennifer

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When You Were Five Years Old

How can I still feel attached
to you. Your hand runs time
backward and I stay to hold you.
Sweetness folded into
where I’ve always kept
music and smells and memories.
All that has made me.
And I want to thank you for
my heart now shaped
into something beautiful.
Your small hand clasped
in mine. We walk together
where I will always see.

My phone vibrates on the table near my bed, and  I grab it quickly and shut it off. It’s one of those misty California Bay Area mornings–gray blanket thrown gently across quiet sky. Everything feels quiet. I picture God tucking me in still, even as I stretch my arms, rising slowly out of bed.

I know every creak in the beams of this old bungalow, 100 years old. So, my steps into the kitchen are careful, ginger. The rest of the house still sleeps. The stillness is tangible–so amazing and beautiful and rare I can hardly believe it. I coax my noisy, excited dog out the back door and sit on the couch in the family room, right off the kitchen. This is sacred.

Oh, God, thank you.

I sit for a while, breathing in the beauty of this space–and then I lie down on the couch. Oh, I want to drink in this stillness. I want to wrap myself up in this quiet. This is no small thing.

For each of us, our time with God looks different–and different situations call for different experiences with Him, too. This moment–in the stillness? It was one I didn’t want to forget. So I grabbed my notebook and a pen from the kitchen cabinet–and I wrote.

How rare and precious it is, this quiet, this time with you. I love my family around me, and I would be sad to be alone for days. But periods of quiet, of complete silence, when things, even the air around me, feels completely still? I am grateful. And I want to stay.

I have trouble desiring to hear you, Father, in the noise. It is not that I think you can’t speak to me in loud cacophony. But I am so easily distracted by sound around me. I know, this morning–the stillness–drew me to you. You can use anything–and you desire everything to draw me to you. I wonder what atmosphere you like to inhabit most? What is your favorite place to be, Father? You must enjoy it all. Or, are there places or situations you don’t like?

In the margin of the paper, I write a little heart–to remind me, when I read this page again, where I wrote down my words–and what I heard God say back:

I don’t like distraction. I like focus and intentionality. I like rest and play and laughter. I like stillness, too.

I fill every space, child. Look what and where I inhabit. Practice turning, so your mind, so distracted, can fix itself on where I am. And your heart awakes. It knows what it wants and needs.

Within you, seek the quiet space, wherever you are. I love noise and music. I love the joyful calling of voices. I love praise.

You are most yourself and at peace in the inhabitance of praise.

In noise and in quiet, I can be present in all things. But it is the turning towards me, in all situations, which lets your mind be focused on me–so your heart and mind cannot help but praise. And in praise you are not distracted and you are most yourself. And when you are most yourself, you are free; you abide in freedom. And that freedom is my love.

It is no surprise that we crave things that feel scarce. And quiet, for many of us, can be one of those things. For me, quiet happens–but rarely. I fight for it during the day. I go to the studio in the backyard, where there is a big couch and my writing desk pushed right up against Justin’s. There’s a big windowed door that stretches across to the patio and there are tiny lights strung across the ceiling beams. This converted garage is one of the sanctuaries He’s given us, and we use it as a place of escape from noise–even as it doubles as a mini-gym and occasional video game haven, too, with our exercise equipment near the door.

And almost every day in the still, still quiet of early morning, I practice listening.

We need to do whatever it takes–and it will be different for each of us–to practice listening to God’s voice in our hearts. And as we listen, we are filled with praise. And when we praise, our hearts are turned to God. And we are most ourselves. And we are free.

The Father’s words encourage me to fight for whatever it is that will help me turn to him. He says, “In noise and in quiet, I can be present in all things.” But it is my choice, as his daughter, to practice turning.

 I want more of that. How about you? How do you practice turning towards God? And will you join me in writing a poem, this week, in response to that time with Him? Or, write a poem about whatever is on your heart this day?

This is no small thing. Pause. Listen. Quiet your mind. Go deeper, to that deeper place within you. What words describe that place? What words give voice to how you feel? What you are seeing? What is He speaking within you? What is birthed from the quiet inside you, or in spite of it?

Share your poem below, as a comment, or with the lovely community over at Loop Poetry Project. Join here.

Love,

Jennifer

It can start with a simple yes. A willingness. A bend of the head. Or knee. It definitely starts with a melting. A softening. It starts with loosening the grip. A slow fall. A slipping into waves. A recognition that the depths are near but not discovered. An allowance of yes and yes and yes. Let it all happen. Let what needs to fold out–out of you–as you are folded open, be wide wide wide.

I am not superstitious. But careful. When there is a journey. A message to read. A relaxing into water crashing, crashing me under. Where I need to be. Where I belong. (I want to belong.)

And I look at my sin. Feel it and not feel it. Observe it from afar, like a scientist, an observer. And then move around in it, let it sit on top of me, smother me for a bit, and then feel my lungs expand as it is lifted and I breathe again. I didn’t know I was holding my breath–that under its weight I could never breathe.

Let it happen. Let it happen. Let the sin cover you and feel it released. Look at it, its insides and outsides, its toxicity and vomiting of noise and torture. It wants to hold you, wrap you up and strangle you, press you from the inside out so you are disorientated, unwired. Make you lose what was yours in the beginning. Before you were born. Before it slunk in, wrapped itself around the inside part of you and squeezed, squeezed, squeezed.

And you can stand. In the looking and the feeling. You can withstand the pain because it isn’t you anymore. You can feel, the weight of it, if you want to. It is good to feel it sometimes. To remember what you are capable of. Always. Right now.

And you notice that the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair came behind him, not before. She was behind, behind, behind. Because she saw herself and knew who she was. She broke. Wide open. Tears spilling. It is good to know who you are, with, and without God.

I have spent this last week looking, again, at my sin. For me, the theme of almost all of my sin is deceit. I have covered and hid and disguised and run away and ignored and pretended. I have not wanted to look at it. I have wanted to believe I am enough without God.

Rather than being defined by our sin and our shame, we can look at it separate from ourselves. Jesus sees the sin. And yet He loves us. The Pharisees saw sin and judged people as unfit to be loved. It is good to feel the weight of our sin, to feel its consequences, to feel this sting, this pain, and not run away. But we can only do this–have the fortitude and strength to stand before it–if we let ourselves be loved. I have stood in front of my sin (I have asked God to show the specific occasions of sin to me, though I know there is more for me to see), and I have let myself feel the separation from God because of it. It is a wild experience–and not easy, not fun. But beautiful. Because it is only through the recognition of my sin that I can begin to grasp, a little more deeply, the vast love of God.

For the Loop Poetry Project this week, will you join me in choosing a very specific moment you sinned–or maybe an ongoing sinful situation you participated in–and documenting it through a poem? I believe there is fruit for us in looking at the sin objectively, as well as emotionally. Describe the situation through image and detail. Delve into the emotions you are feeling–either at the time or even now, as you write. Take any vantage point you want, including writing in the third-person if you want; it might help you write if you feel a bit removed from the scene. Or you can write from the first-person point of view and let yourself go back to that moment, feeling and remembering and accessing the deeper places in your heart.

I am praying for you now as you write, as you trust, as you surrender, as you ask for His help. Jesus will navigate you. Trust that He has good for you now. And healing. And new life. And hope.

With much love and gratitude,

Jennifer

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Hot Tamales

The wood slats of the chair push into the small of my back. I creep my fingers between the top of my desk in the back of the room, my fingertips memorizing a small box’s smoothness. It’s full of hot tamales I begged my mom to buy for me yesterday when we went to the store. The classroom has a hot-kid smell that fills the still air. The kids around me are bent over their desks, their pencils copying down spelling words on beige brown paper, not the good kind with clear blue lines and crisp whiteness, the kind with holes for binder rings, but the kind that is cheap and thin and tears easily with the rub of an eraser after you’ve made a mistake. You have to be careful. I watch Mrs. Lasley at her desk, cat-eye glasses pointed down as she grades papers, stapling a sticker in the top left corner for assignments deserving praise. We put them in our sticker boxes inside our desks. Scratch-n-sniff. Puffy. Fuzzy. Smooth. Shiny-metallic with glitter. I like them all. With both hands hidden, I punch a hole in the box with a pencil—it isn’t easy—and I wrap one finger and one thumb around one of the candies, caressing a single red pill before I bend my head and open my mouth and quickly pop it inside. It is chewy, stickier than I was prepared for. I can’t swallow it quickly. I must chew it, the stickiness gluing to my molars and the cinnamon burning my tongue. I imagine I am a dragon breathing fire from my nose. I am not relaxed. And then Mrs. Lasley, from her desk, speaks my name. She calls it out in the middle of the quiet and everyone looks up, curious and searching. Are you eating? Her eyes are on me. She is kind, the teacher I love. I tell her no. My face burning now. And she doesn’t press me. But her eyes penetrate me, seeing through me, seeing who I am. She believes I tell the truth or wants me to think I think she does. And I die a bit right then. Even now the effort to not lie to you is exhausting.

I have the teenagers go downtown to grab a sandwich, and I sit in the house alone for a whole half hour, liberated of earbuds that I sometimes use to manage the bursts of cacophony when they’re here. I light a candle, the last bit of “Illinois,” a scent curiously determined by a company called “Homesick,” my bare feet up on the couch. I am set now.

This is a moment of decision–a decision processed in front of you, with these words, and not shared only after distillation. I know what I want to say, and I am in the process, with you, in discovering it.

Here is the day in my life where I write, or endeavor to write, without self-consciousness. Without guardedness. Without second-guessing. What if I wrote, I wonder, from a place of feeling enough and good, free and wild? What if, instead of thinking through how this piece of writing will be received before I share it, I just trust the words that want to come, listen to the deeper beating of this one heart?

I think that would be today. So I begin here, with hope, for I have spent the past week thinking about my life without God. (Now, that’s a surprising juxtaposition, I know.) Specifically, I have been considering how, if I were Eve (and I am) I would do the exact same thing as she did: let myself be deceived because I believe I want more than what I have. Like more is good for me, like the more I have isn’t enough.

I’ve lived most of my life that way–which, is, really, not really living. And if I had done this exercise of writing these words a week prior, or a week prior to that–contemplating my shame and confusion at being separated from God due to my sin–I would have surely self-destructed, disintegrated into self-pity and the condemnation that comes from not loving who I am, wishing I were something more.

But, while I let myself feel the shame and confusion that comes from imagining the first sin of the angels, and then Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden–contemplating the sin legacy I’ve inherited–I also ground myself in God’s love. This allows me to feel the desolation of sin and then, the consolation of God’s love. How else could I continue to stand?

For it is a fight, isn’t it, to be loved? It is a fight to keep believing you are loved. It is a miraculous Christmas morning kind of gift, the kind when you don’t catch your parents in the middle of the night on Christmas eve putting together the Barbie motor home, sticking on the tiny stickers to make mirrors and bookshelves. It is the kind of gift that surprises you with its goodness because you realize how much you don’t deserve it but you accept it all the same. Because you are desperate for it, in the best possible way.

I am realizing the deliciousness of desperation. It is so good to be desperate to be loved. To picture yourself without God. To imagine the legacy of the first sin–the angels at war, given full ability to choose God’s love or not, and some saying heck, no.

That is the legacy I live, and the legacy of Eve–my sister who was given everything, all of God’s companionship–authority to rule a kingdom, make decisions, be free and cared for and then listen to the lies of Satan that told her: she needed more.

I can believe that so often–that I need more. The kind of more that makes me feel powerful. The kind of more that makes me feel indestructible, immutable, unable to be damaged or hurt. It is lonely here, I have learned, to ache for validation, to look everywhere, in the form of relationships and recognition and acclaim to try to prove one silly point: I am not quite as broken as I feel I am. When, actually, being broken is just the best place to be.

And I say yes to it–from my couch in my living room, alone and quiet for exactly twenty minutes until the house is rumbling again and the dog continues its rolling snore at my feet. And I notice the sparkle of noontime, the light on the flowers, the absence of smoke in the sky, the texture of the scraggly beard of the guy on the sidewalk, he and his dog on a suburban-style adventure this propitious October day.

I am a disaster without God, and I love that I need him the way I do. It is not a weakness; it is not a flaw that needs to be corrected. He lets me choose Him. And in that freedom, I take a step, this moment, in appreciating the legacy of love. Yours and mine.

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For the Loop Poetry Project, write a poem that responds to your contemplation of Eve. Consider what she was given, who she was. Let your imagination show you, in visuals, the Garden of Eden. What was it like there? How did Eve feel before or during or after the fall? How are you like her or not like her? How are you letting yourself be loved right now, in this moment? Is that love enough? Is it lacking? What is your heart longing to speak? Please share your poem here, in the comments below, or with the lovely community of Loop Poetry Project.

With expectation,

Jennifer

We can be blind to what we’re attached to–the ideas and beliefs that direct our decisions. But I am realizing that God will use anything for his purposes. There are no limitations for him. Which means, what I have labeled as good or bad, better or worse, may not be the way God sees at all.

I have been conditioned, for instance, to believe that a long life is better than a short life; wealth is better than poverty; health is better than sickness; success is better than failure. But are they? Are all of these demarcations so black and white?

I am learning I have a small, limited outlook on the world, viewing hardship and trials as bad, things to be avoided. But what if I, instead, have an outlook that is indifferent to the world’s definitions and labels? Won’t this indifference free me to have a mindset that is expansive–more open to how God moves and sees?

I admit my prayers are largely shaped by a mindset that is bound by what the world tells me is valuable. Pain is bad. Illness is bad. Failure is bad. Poverty is bad. And on one level, of course, these are not conditions that we might readily seek to achieve.

But if I have my mind and heart turned to God–trusting that he can use everything that he has created for his purposes–and his purposes are always good–who am I to say that what I’ve long defined as hardship isn’t, ultimately, what will be perfect and exactly what I need?

My hard and fast rules on what is good and what is bad have warped my vision and made me see small. While I believe there is good in the world–and there is evil–I want to believe that God can expand my mind and heart so I can see more like him. After all, I am capable: I am the daughter he has created me to be.

Over the last month, as I have spent time digging deeper into my story, asking God to guide me to look at moments in my past–even memories long forgotten–or ones, even, that I never, without God’s eyes, could ever truly see. I see a lot of hard stuff: a lot of pain; a lot of sadness and disappointment; and I see a lot of love and joy too. Rather than labeling the parts of my story as good and bad–what if I left the labels up to God?

How would he define my story? What does he see?

So if my insecurities and shame have caused deep fear and pain, does God label those things as bad? Of the choices in my life that I deem my biggest mistakes and regrets–the things that I wish I never did–does God shake his head and decide I am worth less now and am more difficult for him to love?

How do my labels on my life–and on the world–cause me to misinterpret what is true? How does my limited view of the world–what I define as good and bad–cloud my vision, making me miss the redemption and glory he brings in the midst of pain and grief?

What if I am missing God’s wide-open, anything-is-possible outlook? And what would happen if I adopted it? What if I adopted a new way to see? And then, rather than the world’s definitions of a life’s success and failure, I let God’s view of love define what is good? Can I let nothing else–but God’s love–matter at all?

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Join me in exploring the idea of labels on our life–how our rules and perceptions about good and bad might interference with our experiencing God’s more open definition of love. Consider writing a poem as an instrument for this exploration and self-expression.

What, to you, feels black and white? What is your definition of good and bad? How has God, in your life, redefined and redeemed what previously felt like something bad, something to regret and feel shame? How might you consider God’s not ascribing to the world’s strict lines of value and demarcation, and, rather, want to help us break those rules wide open and live in a world that is less ours and more his own?

Please let me know your thoughts–and write your poem below (or here). I can’t wait.

Bless you, brave one,

Jennifer

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Tethered

Who can say a dream is weightless,
without cost and measure,
a disturbance of time—
not actualized in action,
a belief that you are held by
a single thread
of fragmentary imagination,
and pulling will amount to
breaking what could never stretch.
But this is no fragile dream,
an occasion to tiptoe and
tread with bare feet.
No, it is a time to push
out of the shadows
of daydream and seize
the dragon’s throat:
I will slay him now.
Watch this.
You ready?

There it is, the hollow emptiness of silence. The slight sliding of your hand as pen scratches across a lined journal page. The pressure in your throat as you whisper silent pleas at God. Prayer can mean talking to God and then feeling only a cathartic release. You pray with expectation that God is present, but in a distant-sort-of-way. To a Lord who feels, maybe,  intimidating, and a little aloof, a Lord who turns towards you because it is his duty to turn, not because he wants to.

I get it.

Praying can feel like a mighty lonely thing then. A desperate, sad affair. Because if we feel God is distant from us, but we pray anyway, it is because we are at the end of our rope and don’t know what else to do. We are in a fix; we are messed up; we need help and a sovereign Lord who will care. And we read in the Bible that he cares, he loves, he sacrifices, he is completely all-in in his love for us. But it can still feel like he is a God that stays on the pages in our Bible when we pray, when we are on our knees in our living room, when we are at the kitchen sink crying those help me prayers.

No matter how earnestly, in prayer, we choose our words; no matter how often we read the Bible; no matter how many songs we sing in worship or how dutifully we complete our homework for Bible study, God feels far away when we don’t hear him answer back when we pray.

The book of Hebrews teaches us of the faith of the persecuted, the hungry, the tired, the weak. It teaches us of the perseverance of faith, of continuing to pursue God and believe in his goodness and his presence even when it cannot be tangibly or even, readily, seen. Abel, Abraham, Enoch, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses . . . they all continued to have faith even though they, “commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11: 39-40).

Further on in Hebrews we are reminded of the One who founds and perfects our faith. We learn that following God—believing he is with us and he loves us–is a decision. And with that decision is a desire to lay aside the sin that prevents us from living, praying, in faith.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2).

And this gets me thinking: I wonder if confessing our sin precipitates the transformation of prayer life. I wonder if surrendering our sin, in faith, to God, is necessary for prayer to stop being static, rote, impersonal. I wonder if this is how prayer changes from talking to God to listening for him. I wonder if this is how prayer changes to conversation? After all, he is the Word come down.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).

The continually laying down our sin, letting our old self die, is neither fun nor easy.  I know. But when I slow down and I get quiet. When I think about God and how I want to be more like Him, I want to confess the ways I have loved other things more than him. And when I confess, I am thinking about him, and when I think about him, I think about his demeanor and his face. I think about his character and his love. I think about how he wants to be with me, despite all that I’ve done. And that makes me want to be with him more, which prompts me to want to spend time with him and listen, and expect, because he loves me, he wants to speak.

And sometimes God’s speaking is not in words. And sometimes God’s speaking is not even a whisper I sense inside me. Sometimes his words to me–his voice–is his presence: his eyes, his arms spread out to greet me, his extended hand, his walking beside me, his catching each tear and staying with me, no matter what.

A conversation with God can be an unspoken one, for his words are more than words. They are life and light. They are beginning. The word is God (John 1:1).

So, how do we converse with God? How do we not?

His whispers to you, his presence with you, his ongoing conversation with you are ones he wants you never, ever, to forget. Are you excited to listen?

Do you think of prayer as a conversation? When you have prayed lately, has God felt close or far away?

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For Loop Poetry Project, consider writing a poem on the topic of distance–distance in the physical sense or the emotional kind. Consider the topic of boundaries you place around people or ideas–borders and walls or wide-open spaces and possibilities. How do your expectations for a deeper relationship with God affect your relationships and your dreams? How do you view the world–and yourself and others–when you have a mindset of optimism and hope or one of pessimism and doubt? Or, what is it like to have both?

Share your poem below, in the comments. I can’t wait to read your words! And/or share it with the kind group of sister poets at Loop Poetry Project who are writing to heal. We would love to see you over there!

Love,

Jennifer

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The Rebuilding

Who is to say how tall
the walls will be
when they crumble
around you, a steep
crashing until the sky shouts
them down. A desolate
promise to rebuild
the ruins of you until
light blankets every crumb,
every torn place pulled
from the wreckage.
You have the tools.
Pull yourself up now.

I didn’t know it was true. For me. For my mind and heart and story. I didn’t know what it felt like to experience a new outlook, to receive a different lens for the same life I’ve always lived.

Two weeks ago, I spent an hour a day letting God direct my attention to my past, to my childhood. I sat at his feet and surrendered, the best I could, my mind and heart. I gave him my imagination, and He showed me images of experiences I had forgotten. He put me back into the story of my childhood–after I was born, when I was born, and before I was born.

It was learning God’s delight in my existence before I was given to my parents, placed in my mother’s womb, that changed how I view my life. It underscores the way I see my past and present–and my ideas for my future, too.

I didn’t know I was so loved. I didn’t know so much joy could be had over me. Can you let yourself imagine the raucous party in heaven–wild and beautiful–over the truth of you? Do you want to?

And then last week, I let God guide me through memories of my twenties. Because of my new sense of belonging–and belovedness–I approached the exercises with God with optimism and curiosity. Rather than assuming God was going to point me to memories of my failures and regrets, (which was my usual way of viewing the world) I was delighted when He showed me blessing after blessing–in moments I had not celebrated as good before.

There is good here, in our stories. There is good here, in our disappointments and mistakes. There is good here, in our trust in God to show us how He views us, how He loves us, how He redeems everything and has loved–and never stopped loving us–from the beginning. And God’s definition of the beginning, of course, is so much different than our own.

Will you join me? Will you grab God’s hand and spend time allowing him to guide you through your past? Even if you have spent time doing this with him before?

Even after I have spent hours and hours, over the years, inviting God into my imagination and heart–into the deep places in me I thought were better to keep hidden–I have found that continued surrender of our ideas about who we are, what we think, and what we are convinced we have figured out will always lead to deeper intimacy with God.

I want that more than anything else.

So, this week, as I ask him to guide me through memories of the rest of my life so far, I expect a few things will happen: I will feel safe; I will be held; I will fall even more deeply in love with the one who knows and loves me most. And it will be good.

For the Loop Poetry Project this week, will you write a poem that speaks to your journey with your past? How do you feel about looking back at moments in your life? Will you express it?

Or, will you describe a moment from your life that has changed you? A pivotal memory? A turn?

Let your heart wander around for a bit in this landscape of your past–a past that might feel both old and new, or familiar and completely unfamiliar too.

Will you let God guide you? Will you let him navigate you through memory’s terrain? It will be good, though it will likely not be easy. And I pray Jesus’ protection over you as you say yes to this invitation. There is good here. That is the promise.

And please, when you have written your poem down, will you share it in the comments below? And will you join us in the Loop Poetry Project group, a space for women to share poetry that expresses the deepest places of their hearts?

Say yes.

Honored to share this space with you,

Jennifer

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Ache

(a response to Mary Oliver in her poem, “Messenger”)

You tell me my work in the world is gratitude
a bowing, a pointing to the sky
and noticing its blue
or the soft coat of a dog
or the timeless song of my children’s laughter
even as it fades

from memory, and you tell me to touch this heart’s ache
as it struggles to feel
enough joy, enough pain, and wonder
as this world remembers when it was new and good
and beautiful.

And I disagree.
For my work is more than gratitude. It is remembering
his arms around me
and the celebration of birth and love and all things
good and pure.

And where home is—my work is remembering home and aching
for it to come again, back to me.

Before the bad air from the California wildfires changed how we spend time outdoors, I would run the uphill course from my house toward downtown.  Running is not as easy as it used to be–when high school and college races kept me busy every week. And doing a workout inspired by an app on my phone can feel a lot less daunting than suffering the aching hips and the weight of my body, sluggish and heavy, trying to defeat gravity one step at a time.

Running, for me, can be hard. And inconvenient. And–when I’m not yet in shape–painful. But I feel like myself when I do it–like the girl in her dad’s orchard, running between the almond trees, like the woman who wants to listen for God’s voice and have it propel each move she makes.

What we choose to do with our time reveals to us more than just what we love and what we hate to do. What we choose to do with our moments, our days, indicates our response to God’s blueprint when He made us–our living out who we are, who God made us to be. When we say yes to do the things we are made to do, things we do that bring us joy and help us feel the joy of God, in us, we are making the choice to be ourselves.

Why do we spend so much of our days, our weeks, our years, desiring to be anything–or anyone–different?

This is something I continue to think about over the years: what it might mean to more intentionally seek to be only myself. How do I choose to do only things that make me feel the most myself? How do I say no to the temptation to strive to be anything or anyone else? 

I consider God whispers to my heart: how can I be more myself–just myself, perfectly myself–in every choice I make, in each decision that comes, in how I use my time?

What do you do to feel most like yourself?

I realize how tired I am trying to be someone other than whom I’ve been created to be: envy and insecurity sneaks in like gray fog curling quietly around my heart. There are so many moments I have trouble seeing, I have trouble feeling free. When Paul urges the Galatians to stand up for the freedom they have already been given, in Christ, I realize how often I let myself feel just the opposite of free.

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you (Galatians 5:1, MSG).

This has been my harness for much of my life: I look at what I don’t have rather than what I have. I look at what I am bad at rather than what I am good at and what I love to do. When we wish we were more organized, more creative, more productive, more talented, more intelligent (and on and on), we’re blind to who we really are. We’re blind to what Christ wants to show us; we’re deaf to God’s whispers to our hearts.

The biggest problem with feeling insecure about ourselves is the very focus on ourselves and our own deficiencies. (What a waste of time! What a waste of a life! What a waste of freedom!) The point of our lives isn’t to focus on how we need to improve. The point of our life is to love Jesus with our whole heart–and to love others, too.

And because we have Jesus right here, we have nothing in the way of living the free life of being ourselves, with Jesus, right now. Can I believe this? Can I choose to focus on who I am in Christ rather than the lies of what I am not?

Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him (2 Corinthians 3:18, MSG).

Christ’s freedom, in our lives, is wasted, when we don’t live, fully, as the person God created us to be.

We are only free, we are only experiencing Christ’s freedom, when we love Christ and the Holy Spirit in us is the voice we listen to above all other voices. The voice telling us we should feel anxious, afraid, nervous, envious, greedy, lustful, impatient, critical, judgmental, unkind is the voice that needs to be silenced in our lives. Only Jesus–only choosing to love Him and let Him show us who we are in Him–will take our eyes off the imperfections in ourselves and focus on the perfection of Him. And His perfection and goodness will inspire us to live the freedom that is always there for us to experience and live.

I think I’m going to keep thinking about this–but do more than just think about it, too. But first, I want to think about my God and how He loves me. I know He is going to help me, with everything I am, to love Him back. He tells me I have what it takes. And then freedom, I bet, is going to be pretty amazing.

You have what it takes, too. So do something today that makes you feel like yourself–no one else. Because there are freedom and joy and a whole lot of good stuff coming our way–that’s right here. Sister, let’s not miss it.

What is one thing that makes you feel like you? What is that one thing you can do today?

And will you join me for the Loop Poetry Project this week? How about we write a poem that speaks to the investigation of our identity: a poem that explores when we feel most free, most ourselves, most unencumbered, most true. Or, of course, write a poem that explores the opposite. When do you feel most trapped, most broken, most despised, most sad?

It is an honor to read your words. Please consider sharing your poem in the comments below–or with the kind community of Loop Poetry Project. Join here.

Love,

Jennifer

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To Love Oneself

I go to find you in the depths of me
as if that is a place to go

while I examine all the moments
of my life as if they are puzzle pieces

cut jaggedly from the whole, belonging unsure.
I want to cup the pieces in one hand,

run a finger over the rough edges,
sing lullabies to smooth their irregular shapes.

Maybe here we find home.
Maybe here we learn to be kind.

I sit in near darkness at noon. Outside is an orange sherbert sky. We go outside mid-morning to take photos. To remember the strangeness that we hope isn’t a new normal. To record the upside down. To note the unbelievable: it feels like the sun didn’t rise.

Friends implore social media to pray: “We are evacuating, but we’re okay.” “John got up at 3 am to drive to the house to dig trenches around the property, hoping the ditches will deter the flames from reaching the house.” “Pray for my parent’s home. They are safe, but the fire is really close now.”

I join with my friends in praying. For the wildfires to subside. For protection and peace. For hope and light to fill our hearts. For a cure for Covid. For my heart to stay connected to Jesus. For help for the hurting and the broken, the weary and the lonely. For our voices to cry out to the One who loves us. For God, our hope, to be our protection in this desperate season.

Jesus, keep our eyes on you.

I once learned from the wise and kind John Eldrege how “Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord, she said, and never do anything you know is wrong. Follow this and you’ll be fine.”

You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.

I want to feel fine. I want to feel whole. I want to feel loved. I want to feel safe. I want to feel desired. I want to feel joy. I want to feel hope. I want to feel peace. I want to feel inspired. I want to feel encouraged. I want to feel confident. I want to feel solid. I want to feel known. I want to feel God in me.

So I look for wisdom from sages who love Jesus, and I take steps to do what they did. Adoring Jesus. Adoring God. Surrendering to him my mind, my imagination, my heart and letting God lead. Not writing anything down for 45 minutes so I am not distracted by handwriting or incoherent thoughts or trying to get details down. 45 minutes of focusing my attention on God and on Jesus: eyes closed, heart open, instrumental music often playing in my ears so I can block out noises around me. Then 15 minutes of conversing first with God and then with Jesus–and writing it down.

Because I want to feel fine.

For the Loop Poetry Project this week, consider writing a poem only after spending time in meditation first. It doesn’t have to be for 45 or 60 minutes. But consider writing from an unrushed state, after having spent a period of time surrendering to God your heart–giving him your full attention. The poem doesn’t have to be one of adoration. (Although, of course, it can!) But let your heart lead you. Find words for ideas that come after spending time with God. You might write about a memory, or an imaginative scene. You might write about an emotion or a specific observation or a problem or a hurt or a dream. You might write about a conversation–or your feelings about love or death or orange sky.

Write a poem about feeling or not feeing fine.

I can’t wait to read it. In addition to sharing your poem as a comment below, you can also share it with the community at Loop Poetry Project, a private Facebook group for women writing for personal wholeness. (It’s a very caring and kind group.)

Much love to you, beautiful friends,

Jennifer

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How Beautiful It is

When the girls and boys in drama class gather
around each other in groups of five and three
they are not pretending to be kind
like they know how to make love look
authentic better than we do
and I am mesmerized by their care
for one another, as well as their
jocularity and their
comfortableness with quiet,
the choice to not speak a word
or paint their hair red or yellow or purple
or sing loud broadway tunes
or reach their arms around one another
when they are sad and cry
and I wonder
if I grasped this freedom when
I was younger if I would not
observe love from afar but dance around it
and let it swallow me whole
even while I melt with angst
and beg you to accept me just as I am
right now,
how beautiful it is to be loved.

Father, empty me of myself.  I want to hear Your voice.

Father, empty me of myself, I want to love with Your heart.  I want nothing to get in the way.

Father, empty me of myself.  Let me forget me–to love like You love.

In the slowing, let me seek You.  In the memory of children’s voices, hugs and conflicts, laughter and tears, let me find You.

Show me what it means to serve.

Father, hide me from the enemy and keep my heart pure.  Search me to discern what in me pulls away from You.

Let nothing come between us, Father.  Let Your Spirit be my breath, my beating heart, my mind.  Let every thought be Yours.

There is freedom in deciding whether or not to be my own.  There is freedom in belonging to You.  There is freedom in being seen and known and pursued and adored.

I know who I am in You.  I know what I love.  You battled those fears that kept me from discovering my heart — the passions for exploring mountains and hearts, listening and writing, soaking in quiet and moving fast, in sacred song.

I hear Your voice breathing life.  I see Your hands touching my heart.  I behold Your beauty singing majesty and grace.

You cannot be contained, yet You reach down and hold me, Your Spirit lifting me.  I am a new creation.

In the sacrifice, in the love that is love, the old falls away.  I behold newness. I walk in newness.  I will look up and rejoice for the new works You are doing.  I will claim the gifts You bring.

In Your eyes I am cleansed.  You wash away my sin and draw me to You. You do not repay me according to my choices of selfishness.  You do not give me what I deserve.

You restore in me a new heart, a life that sings of joy and promise.

No matter where I am, You are there.  No matter how far away from You I feel, Your eyes never leave me.

How great is Your love Father, that each child, each work of Your hands is glorious and perfectly made!

I will seek You and I will find You.  I will listen for You and I will hear.  I will believe and walk in Your ways, with Your guidance and love in me.

I do not go alone.  My heart is protected, shielded inside Your love.  I am the beloved child who is gathered up and shown how to love with a love that reaches beyond understanding.

Your kingdom lives in me.  You give me life.  All glory, all praise, all love comes from You.

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Friends, I continue to pray and ask God for his perspective on significant moments in my life, moments that have shaped me. There are lots of positive and negative turns in any person’s story, yes? A few years ago a group of friends and I spent a few weeks using Donald Miller’s Storyline as a tool to go deeper into our stories. One particular exercise challenged us to create a story map of our lives, a timeline of significant events we’ve experienced–moments that shaped us in either a positive or negative way.

After we were finished with our life timelines, we spent time with God and asked Him to show us His perspective on each of those moments. For the positive turns in our life story, what did He have to say? For the negative turns, what new perspective did He have for us to see? The exercise was challenging and life-giving, requiring self-awareness, honesty, and a sincere pursuit of God. He wants to redeem every part of our stories. He is not holding out on you.

Flash forward to last week. I am returning to the moments of my story that have shaped me and asking God which ones He wants me to revisit. Specifically, I am asking Him to lead me toward memories that require deeper understanding and healing. And when He does, I ask Him to give me a verse from Scripture to further solidify the new work He is doing in my story, in me.

For the moment outside the grocery store when I was five and I believed the lie that my voice is nothing and I am not enough, He spoke John 10:27: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”

For the moment, on Sunday, when my oldest son walked away from us and down the street to begin his new life as a freshman in college and I ached with sadness and joy for the end of a chapter I loved, He spoke Ezekiel 11:19: “And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

And for the moment of my decision to have an abortion, in high school, He spoke Romans 8:6 and 8:15: “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace…For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as [daughters] by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!'”

What moments will God have you revisit? What words of Life will He speak to you?

With these longer journaling sessions in the morning, I have written less poetry but many, many prayers. I believe that the poetry is going to come. And I am excited for what deeper healing will come from it, too.

So, while I don’t have a traditional poetry prompt for you this week, I invite you to continue to dive deep into specific moments of your story. Let God lead you to a moment, and then through that moment. Let Him navigate you through the details. There are things you don’t remember that He will show you. There are misconceptions you’ve had that He wants to straighten out. And then ask Holy Spirit for a verse for each of those moments.

God wants to redeem every part of you, every moment of your story. Will you let Him? The results will be life-changing. I know it.

Will you tell me how it is going? Or share verses He has spoken over you? Or share any poetry born from these experiences with Him?

I can’t wait to read lines of His life in you.

Love,

Jennifer

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Refuse to be Sentimental

dear heart
don’t run; stand here

like I taught you

The morning air is heavy, smoke from the recent wildfires clouding the sky gray. Light feels eerie, hard-fought. And I take a few swift steps to the studio behind our house. Here, through computer screen, I will resume meetings with Father Chi.

I struggle with connecting to Skype and am ten minutes late. Father Chi is beaming when I finally join, ebullient and forgiving. “Ha, ha, Jennifer, it is so wonderful to see your face again!” Love is so powerful. I am immediately at ease.

“How are you? How have you been since we last met?”

And I tell him about my heart–how these months of sheltering in place have challenged me to stay connected with God. With rhythms disrupted–and me feeling a bit discombobulated most of the time–I have struggled to create (write poetry) with God. I have also struggled to engage with God for concentrated periods of time that does not involve work or ways that He calls me to lean in and engage with others and love.

It was time to take a step toward Him, whether I felt equipped to do it or not.

I told Father Chi, “Last week I started spending concentrated time with God again. I started going out to the studio in the morning (it has been weeks since I had done this) and simply focused my attention on Him. For an hour I talked to Him, listened for Him, imagined Him. I let my mind and my heart wander where He led me. It was so good!”

I continued, “There was no crisis to precipitate this interaction. I was just not feeling true, free, surrendered, or energized. I felt like I was asleep to God, and I needed Him to wake me up.”

We need more of Him. Always. And He always has more to give.

After Labor Day, I will begin meeting with Father Chi once a week to participate in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius, a series of prayers, meditations, and contemplative practices designed for the deepening of union with God. I am eager to begin.

Father Chi and I used to meet twice a month last year. We stopped meeting face to face in March when the local Jesuit retreat center shut down. We both thought we would surely be meeting face to face in the fall. (How long could this shelter in place last anyway?) So we paused our meetings in the spring. But as August was coming to a close, meeting remotely sounded better than not meeting at all. And, even meeting through a screen, where we can see one another’s whole face, might even be better than being ten feet apart, in a small room, with just eyes connecting above a hot mask.

This is going to be so good.

In preparation for meeting together, Father Chi asked me to create a spiritual timeline of my life–asking God to help me remember pivotal moments of my life that shaped me–and then asking Him for his interpretation of them.

“Be open about the time,” he said. “You might spend as long as a few days on one event in your timeline. Others, you might spend shorter.”

This sounds good to me–an opportunity to let God speak to me about identity and healing, false narratives and new stories He wants to rewrite.

Would you like to join me?

For Loop Poetry Project–for the next two weeks–let’s dive deep into our stories with God. Let’s spend time with Him. Let’s ask Him questions about moments in our lives. Let’s remember as much as we can and write it down. Then let’s ask God for his interpretation of those events. What does He see? What does He want us to know that is different than our singular perspectives?

Tell me what you think about this idea in the comments below. And also consider sharing a poem about one of these life events. Don’t worry too much about writing chronologically. Start at any moment in your life. What does your heart want you to notice right now? How is God drawing you toward Him? What about your story can be viewed differently than you ever have before?

Praying for His goodness to guide you and His love to fill you as you listen and write.

Much love,

Jennifer

---

To Now See

The narratives we tell ourselves as children give us
nightmares or sing us to sleep.
And I see you
wild innocent thing
who believes meekness
is gold and dreads what
in you
people see.

So listen
hear me now
there is no shame
in mistakes

to break open
parts of you
most desperate,
hungry

(I accept you)

okay.

Father, years ago, I asked You this question: Why do I resist change? Why do I resist becoming more like You? I had been confronted by a friend who nudged me toward surrender, who encouraged me to trust in You more.

And I didn’t want to hear it.

Father, you know I dread being told that I need to change. I dread being told I should go to You and ask you what you think. I resist not because I don’t think it is a good idea. Rather, it’s because I fear, in surrender, I am messing up somehow.

And I don’t like to mess up.

And I don’t like being told what to do.

And I especially don’t like someone telling me I am messing up and I need to surrender something in me. Rather than listen to what they have to say, I I want to deny I am doing anything wrong. Instead, I want them to change to accommodate me.

Ugh. Even when I am hard-hearted, You love me. Oh, You are so amazing.

In the garden of Gethsemane your Jesus bowed and surrendered. He modeled complete trust in you, complete surrender to you. Jesus shows what it means to love you. What it means to be your child. What it means to know you are here and you are listening and you want to know how we feel about things.

I know this: my rebellion stems from the same pride that Satan had when he rose against You and wanted to be better than You, thinking his way was best. He didn’t want to get any closer to You; he wanted to remove himself from your presence because he didn’t like being told what to do and he believed he was smarter and more beautiful and wiser than You.

And I am doing the same thing as Satan did when I turn away from wise counsel and I use harsh, rash, unkind words in an attempt to fend off the person who loves me and believes, for me, it is good to pursue change?

Father, here is my confession then: I am the rebellious daughter who wants to come home. I am the prodigal, the one You love and think is beautiful, the prideful girl who needs to fall, who needs to get low.

Take me like this, will you? Your will not mine be done?

---

And in his presence, I am before him, on the ground, a heap of rags in a background of turquoise and shadows. He stands before me, a Father who faces his daughter and knows that sometimes it isn’t words she needs to hear.

Sometimes, she needs to be allowed to cry at his feet, to be given permission to let her tears fall over him. She is unworthy, and she is loved. She is broken, and she is mended. She needs to pour out her heart to the One who knows her and adores her, despite her wretchedness. For she is loved by the One who loves. And she is remembering who she is.

He bends low to touch her face, reaches his hand underneath her chin. She knows He is asking her, with his movement, to raise her head, to look up. So she does.

She does.

She does.

---

For the Loop Poetry Project prompt this week, you are invited to do simply this: write a poem from your heart–your heart in its beauty and its wretchedness, in its sorrow and its confidence.

Use story. Use description. Use images. Use metaphor. Do whatever you need to do to speak what it is saying. This is what we need, as poets, to write again and again and again.

Much love to you,

Jennifer

---

6:30 Saturday morning

I held his body when
he tried to stand
plant one foot then the other
like he was brave,
like he knew.
Seventeen years later he
soft steps into the bedroom
to borrow a helmet, sunglasses, pads
and I rise
the deep intertwined to deep.
I hover around the kitchen
while he scrambles eggs
and sits to eat,
washes his dishes
returns the pan clean to the cupboard
like it was always there.
I follow.
Until he steps out,
the mountain bike on top his car,
to drive past the front window
where I stand.
I watch his location on my phone
the first two minutes
and I fold inward.

You are always welcome here.

There is so much we don’t understand. Even while mystery propels us to control and corral, get a hold of and comprehend, part of us wants to tame mystery’s wildness, or chastise it like it’s a child prone to talk back and disobey.

For we are scared of it. But maybe we love it a bit too?

We might want mystery’s wildness, but we don’t want it too wild–we prefer it a bit tame, at least so we can grasp a bit of it, something to work out and consume for ourselves.

This morning I reread Walt Whitman’s “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life.” I am obsessed with these lines: “I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can,/ Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me,/ Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.” With these words, I contemplate my smallness, my limited comprehension of my existence, and my choice to stay quiet or rise up, and sing.

The wild mystery of this world, fraught with trouble and beauty–and too big for us to understand–can make us feel vulnerable and weak. Do we dare take the risk of participating in it? Assume our place, open our mouths, join in with the wildness and sing?

But perhaps there is a new question we should be asking: how can we dare not sing?

What questions are you asking now? What is it you don’t understand? What are you pondering and wondering? What is your role in this vast, incomprehensible creation? How can you dare not let your song sing?

Grab a piece of paper and spend a few minutes writing down your thoughts on the idea of mystery–something in your life that causes you to wonder, to imagine, to dream, to get frustrated about, to feel angry or disappointed or elated or sad. Pick a focus on one thing that befuddles you–be it a relationship (a family member, a spouse, a person at work), a situation you have witnessed from up close or from afar. Give it details. Context. Description. Now distill these thoughts into a draft of a poem. Share it below.

Let us hear you sing.

Another place to share your poem is with the community of Loop Poetry Project (a private Facebook group for women who are writing poetry to pursue personal wholeness).

After you have written your poem, return to it–read it aloud and ask God what He thinks about it. What insight does He have to share with you? (Do you feel His delight?)

I am so excited to read your poems.

love,

jennifer

---

Reverie

All day this day she bends, knees pressed into mud,
she dips her hands, cupping them like a bowl,
and pulls the water to her mouth
the rolling ocean within her

until she is small, submerged beneath sunlight,
gold ribbons wide as the sun,
and lets the waves pull her further,

their voices like children’s laughter in bustling, noisy rooms.

We ask for the breeze to blow. Or the sun to shine. We ask for the flowers to bloom. Or the news to be good just one time.

We carry much–expectations and hopes, dreams and desires. Or we don’t, because disappointment, time and again, has taught us to not count on good things anymore. Not for us, anyway.

Fear can make any dream feel impossible to achieve. So taking one small step toward the dream feels useless, a waste of time. We are scared of the blow to our hearts if we fail one more time.

Believing in other people’s goodness is no easy task either. Not when they hurt us. Or we hurt them. And we struggle to pick ourselves up again. Try again. One more time.

But here is where we turn: if there is an ache in your heart, let yourself feel it. Articulate it. Let it tell you a story. Let it grab hold of your hand and point you the way toward understanding the deeper places that hurt.

What has disappointed you this week? What did you run towards with your hurt?

Will you write about that now? Find a few sentences that uncover the deeper truth within you you would otherwise never know?

And then, don’t stop there. After you have written down the disappointment–you’ve claimed it and tried to understand it–take one more step now. Offer these words of disappointment to God. What does He have to say about them? What is He speaking back to you?

Consider sharing your poem below. Or share it on social media using the hashtag #looppoetryproject.

Let your heart rise now. We are leaning in close. Longing to hear from you.

love,

jennifer

---

The Reconsidering

for J.O.

Describe it, the sound of a voice
cracking, a soul trembling
over the phone when it is just us two,
your voice and mine connecting
and we rely upon words to
heal, bring solace, offer a story to
make sense of what?
the reason why we choose
to protect ourselves from each other
at all cost and then feel the tearing open—
our tearing open,
self-preservation a thing of the past because
we don’t know how to do it now,
preserve what once was,
for there is sometimes (never)
a going back to what once was
only letting shame kill
its children and regret
bury its dead
and letting pain billow
in undulations
(keep feeling don’t stop feeling)
until it strengthens us
and we are not what we once were,
look, look, at the fire burning now.

This is the place where He meets us. This home. Within walls and without walls. Where we suffer together and alone. With people and without.

A sanctuary. A prison. A refuge. A catastrophe.

A place of connection. A place of isolation. A place of community. A place of loneliness.

Nine years ago, my eldest son asked why our house is so small, why we don’t have a big yard.

We had just spent the previous evening with our friends who live in the hills on a large piece of property outside of town. While the parents chatted, the six kids got to climb trees, race mountain bikes across the large back and front lawns while playing hide-and-go-seek, and plan spy missions in the huge oak tree over the vegetable garden, where the zip line was going to connect with the tree house to be built soon. We spent summer afternoons swimming here, jumping on the trampoline, helping feed the chickens, and playing with their adorable dog–which reminded my three kids each time how much they wished they had a dog, and why don’t we have one, too? (Well, we did get one the next year.)

When my son asked me that question, we stood in the dining room, in the middle of our old house, the room that speaks of over 90 years of meals, of conversations of multi-generations with the light spilling through the two windows on the side.  The floors creak in a few places here, and this is where I don’t tread in the early mornings when I fear to wake up the house and disturb the quiet.  But I love the ache of this wood floor, the unspoken stories of the feet that have tread over these beams.  There is a history here that my family gets to step into and live and breathe–God’s plan unfolding to us over these now 13 years we’ve been here, our youngest a baby.  This is the house where God came for this family, and we will remember.

When my  husband and I first got married, we got our living situation all wrong.  We had spent years living in city apartments on the East Coast, and so when we moved back home, to California, we were eager to live in a house.  The problem was that housing rents were sky high; but, in our determination to not live in an apartment, we paid a lot of money in rent to live in a real house, with unshared walls, and we did that for three years.  A lot of money was poured down the drain, and, with us feeling new to the area, not a lot of people came over.  Crazy.  Soon it was time to move on.

When our first baby arrived, we finally got some sense and decided we had better start being more responsible with our money, more frugal, and we moved into a 900 square foot cottage for a year, and then a condo in our sleepy little downtown–three kids on the top floor.  Soon, for the sake of our neighbors below —  and because we were bursting at the seams — we knew it was time to try and look again.  And that is when God showed us our home.

Due to the high prices of houses in the California Bay Area, we didn’t know if we were going to be able to stay here, despite Justin’s job making it necessary, then,  for us to stay.  It was years of planning — hoping — yet knowing our hearts needed to stay present, wherever we were, with Him, the provider of all. And then, on the way home from a visit with our realtor to another house that we could possibly afford but would need to spend tons of time and effort to fix up, God brought us home.

Our realtor had a surprise for us, he said.  Just when we thought we were heading back to his office, he pulled into the driveway of a gray arts-and-crafts bungalow that I had seen listed six months ago but was not even close to our price range.  A house forgotten. 

With hearts beating fast, my husband and I walked onto the porch, one step in the door, and locked eyes. We didn’t have to say a word.  This was our house.  This was what He was giving.  And with each new step in, we felt His hand guiding us, His joy, His child-heart’s delight, in showing us the details only He knew we would love.

The story of how the house sat here, with no offers, for six months, weeds growing in the yard, when there were no problems in the fine print of any of the inspections, flummoxed the neighbors, who didn’t like a house sitting on their street for so long without being sold.  The price jumped down after a few months, then again, and then it went off the market for a while and was bought by the company of the previous owners, who then began to mow the lawn, made the inside look cute, and lowered the price once again.  And when it came on the market again, after sitting for months and the price being lowered to a crazy number, God grabbed our realtor’s hand and drove us to the driveway of our house. We were home.  This was the house He gave.  We didn’t have to see the whole house to know His heart.

This is God’s house.  This is the house He gave and for which we are so thankful. And we try to hold it loosely, like He asks us to hold our hearts loosely with Him, and offer them up.  It is our house for His children, for His children to be let in.

And they came in clusters on Monday mornings to gather, and they came as a circle on Tuesday afternoons to pray. They came with toothbrushes for sleep-overs and pink swirly skirts for fairy parties and torn-knee jeans for play dates after school.  They came as couples to gather in the studio in the back on Thursday nights; they came in small groups on Friday and Saturday night for dinner and gathered around the table.  We opened the door to be fed by Him.  This is His house He gave for us to give.

And so I stood there, in the room He built, and I told our son it is not yet time for us to move.  I sympathized with this boy with energy bursting, his 9-year old body wanting greater freedom to move, to make long arches with a football, to build a tree house to climb up into, read in and dream.  And I reminded him of the story of this house, the house God gave, and how we may never move, we may never have a big yard (although it was impossible to convince him we might never have a dog), and that is good.  We are blessed. He is good.  And we remind him of Kuffa and Kahlid, the boys we stay connected to in Ethiopia, and Troy in Chinle, Arizona, and Javier and and Andrew from Mexico, of the children God loves and provides for–and how He gave us this home to serve, to love, to worship Him with what He has given, with what He continues to give.

And now, during this pandemic, with just the five of us (and the dog) within these four walls for many months, I ask God to continue to define Home. In the struggles and joys of being together. In the desire, sometimes, to also be apart. And almost all my writing, my poems, have been written here. A grounding place to ask God what He is doing, what I pray He still does in my heart.

We’ve talked about home as a topic for poetry. But let’s do it again. As a topic, it will feel different now. Because you are different now.

Perhaps revisit what you wrote a month or so ago, at the beginning of your sheltering in place. Consider what new thoughts and feeling you have about being home. Describe your house or your home. Share how you are being stretched or frustrated, how you are growing or you feel stuck. Tell a story about what home used to be like and what is it like now. Let yourself go deeper, surprising yourself with a new realization about yourself or how you think about home.

When you have written your poem, share it as a comment below and/or share it on social media using the hashtag #looppoetryproject. Invite us into something new. We can’t wait to read what you discover.

With love,

jennifer

---

To Build a House that Stands

I want to make sense of what doesn’t
as if,
if I let my mind roam
around for a bit,
cling to its collecting of all the forgotten things

they will matter—
I will make them matter.
I am desperate to make them matter.

As if fragments of mental pictures
depend on me to sort them,
make sense of chaos

and I can’t

always make it work.
And this is the moment

when all falls away,
when I mourn the death of possibility
when we all belonged:

working together to create a home.

Our moods are ones we tend to ignore. Or at least pay little attention to. We might nod to them briefly. Say a quick hello and back away, nervous about the power they have to claim the outcome of our day.

But to ignore them is to ignore the deeper places within us aching to speak.

I imagine there is an emotion you have felt this day that is uncomfortable–a little unpleasing to you–a feeling you wish were a bit different, a feeling you wish would listen to reason, chill out for a while, be calm and relaxed in a corner of the room: be good; don’t cause a stir. Or maybe you wish it speak up, be brave enough to stand up and have its say.

Whatever the emotion is that you’re feeling, don’t ignore it. Attend to it. Let it do what it needs to do. Feel it. Let it speak.

I invite you to pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and acknowledge what it is you actually feel. For from that place of feeling is a deeper place of truth. And your heart is desperate for this truth to come to the surface.

Will you help it?

Will you let it be discovered?

And then, with that feeling you feel, will you do one thing more? Will you write it down? Will you give the feeling shape? A name? A posture?

How does it look when it is sitting there, looking at you from across the room? Are its legs crossed? Is it jiggling its ankle with an impatient up and down bop of the foot? Is its brow furrowed? Its palms clenched? Or is it relaxed, tilting back a bit, even slouching as if in a cozy reading chair?

Don’t worry about trying to make sense of the feeling right now. Just address it. Name it. Be gentle with it–after all, you don’t want to frighten it away. You want it to stay awhile, get used to you, take off its coat and have something to eat. You want to have a conversation with this feeling; but first, begin with just sitting with it, getting comfortable with it (and having it get comfortable with you) just by endeavoring to share space in the same room.

After an awkward pause of silence or two, consider taking some notes. Try to get it talking and then write down what it says. Jot down everything you hear. Ask it where it came from, what it thinks about how this day is going, and what its plans are next.

Finally, as it starts to loosen up a bit, getting comfortable and trusting that you won’t hurt it further by your inquiries (it is imperative that it knows you are harmless–that each question you ask is for a good purpose that will benefit both of you in the long run) ask it for its permission to tell its story. And here is where you get to steer the car a bit: write down a few sentences that reveal the personality of this feeling–its hopes and dreams, its desires and fears. Get it all down. Don’t leave a thing out.

And then take a good hard look at what you’ve written.

What do you think about it?

And would you ever want to try to shape it into a poem? Share yours with the Loop Poetry Project this week. Write it as a comment below, on social media using the hashtag #looppoetryproject, or in the private Facebook group here.

love,

jennifer

---

The Fine Line Between Melodrama and Disorientation

Sorrow tells me I will not find myself,
recover the place within me that knew
the ease of things,
the trill of birds calling one to another,
exploding hope and promise,
while my knee aches
from overuse, I think,
and I hear the broken wall clock’s
minute-hand swing down to five-thirty
every six minutes while
my phone’s time reads phantom numbers
in the dark, and I wish I
were bike riding with you
in Amsterdam—or in Brugge when
we rode outside the city to Damme and back,
through countryside of sweet green and windmills
and a bicyclist hit a woman walking,
or she had a stroke,
and people stopped to help her,
frail and disoriented, move off the path,
and we went as far as the path would let us,
one destination to another,
to accept going nowhere as a place
we no longer refuse to go.

The photo albums lay stacked on the floor–a tall pile of brown leather between couch and wall, an impossible and inconvenient location over which somebody in the house was going to trip any moment.

This pile had my daughter’s name written all over it.

I was about to ask her to put them back on the shelf when I decided to look at them first. This particular pile of albums commemorates family adventures backpacking in national parks, including Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Zion, Grand Tetons, Wrangell-St. Elias, and Kenai Fjords, beginning when our youngest was four–and I poured over them, marveling at the kids’ small sizes and dirty but smiling faces.

I remember the feeling of most of these places–the challenges both physical and emotional: Will we get to the campsite before dark? Will we have enough water? How far can we ration the skittles (aka “power pills”) to motivate them one-half hour more? The packing in was always hard. Heavy loads. Long hikes. But lots of stories and singing and pondering the beauty all around.

Looking at myself in the photos always confuses me. I wonder who she is, how she did what she did. She looks happy in the photos–always smiling or doing something that looks like a lot of fun (holding a little girl’s hand, jumping off rocks into an icy lake, walking through paths of wildflowers, climbing narrow paths to mountaintops). It is easy to romanticize everything I see, especially since the photos in the album are the happy memories, the joy-filled moments, the unique and fleeting adventures I hope to never take for granted again.

Our hearts ache a bit, don’t they, when we look at photos of ourselves, or of people we love? Happy or sad memories. Moments we wish we could live again, even if for just a few minutes. Or moments we wish never happened at all.

One of the traps I fall into is assuming that the past is always better than the present. Or, conversely, that the next day is always going to be better than the one before. The present always feels like a bit of a mess–and it is. I just forget that the mess is actually okay. After all, I am here, in this moment, because the past and the future were/will be beautiful messes too.

Let me attempt to describe it this way:

It will break you
wide open
the beginning of things
made new

the birds lifting their voices
in your backyard
like they do in Austria
and Mexico and Africa.

All the beginnings
starting over every morning:
so wildly beautiful

this oration,
this second chance.

---

For the Loop Poetry Project this week, consider what happens within you (what thoughts or emotions rise) upon self-reflection. Do you enjoy returning to memories? Which ones? Which ones do you not enjoy reflecting upon? Which ones cause a deep disturbance in your soul?

Write a poem that is born from deeper thinking about yourself–who you feel you are now and who you believe you once were. Or, write a poem that reveals deeper reflection on a simple observation: take an observation and explore it more deeply. What is going on below the surface of your feelings and your thoughts?

You have a lot to feel. You have a lot to say. We can’t wait to read what that is.

Please share your poem below, in the comments, or share it on social media using the hashtag #looppoetryproject. You might also want to join the private Facebook group for women who want to pursue wholeness through writing poetry together. It would be wonderful to connect with you there.

Excited to hear from you,

Jennifer

There were trees uprooted next to the freeway. Mounds of dirt clod clumps clinging to thick roots sticking up, awkward, misplaced.

I wanted to get a better look at them, but I was driving on California Interstate 5 to Los Angeles. Husband and kids and bags and I journeying to friends who said, please come. It was overcast, gray sky low, arms stretching out in embrace.

If I was in the passenger seat, I’d have taken a photo. Or, I would have grabbed words and tried to work out what it was that was making my heart feel so tight in my chest when I looked out. Gnarled empty limbs, cement brown, so undignified, trunks sprawled, broken and exposed, on their sides.

I am familiar with almond trees–as a farmer’s daughter who watched her dad bend low, dirt crusted in lines of tanned skin, watching and listening to the voice of trees. I know the sharp edges of older bark as it breaks off in clumps, and the smooth, knotted roughness of young bark layered on new green. I know the smell of wet earth and the miracle of paper-thin nonpareil shells the dogs crack open and eat from the ground.

These trees were planted once. They were seeds once. They were shoots laid in dirt brown and hard, softened by drinks of water, aerated by steel spikes pulled by tractors, and visited by furry gray-brown squirrels and jackrabbits that scamper and scurry to limb upon limb or underground.

Hands planted each shoot into the ground. And the shoots grew and limbs stretched, quiet and strong, sprouting green leaves and white blossoms, and then nuts with green velvet shells before the hulls hardened and opened wide. Downy against thumb or cheek as you rub them close.

The day the bulldozers ripped roots straight out, one by one, row after row–violent, sure–was not a decision made quickly. It was not a decision that was easy. It was not a decision that was fun.

But it was necessary, whether due to lack of water, or money. Or maybe the orchard changed hands.

I hope new trees are planted soon. I hope these old trees, their roots so wrongly bent in weird angles outside the land where they belong, are replaced with new, young shoots. I pray their lineage continues, the life of the seeds giving birth to trees, with limbs pruned and the trees growing tall, before being pulled out of the ground.

Death didn’t look beautiful from this angle as I sped by, one of thousands of cars on a January Saturday afternoon. It didn’t look poetic or kind. It didn’t look hope-filled or cause for any celebration.

My hands clutched the steering wheel and I memorized the scene, the uprooted orchards, the story of men and of women and of dreams and of life coming so miraculously from hard ground.

I remembered my mom’s words to me on the phone the day before. The almonds will be in bloom soon. Just a few more weeks and the blossoms will be on the branches. The trees my father planted.

And yet I saw only uprooted trees, disaster, disorder, disappointment. And I knew the trees my father planted were scheduled to be pulled up soon, too.

The word for almond in Hebrew, is shakeid, the root of the word meaning to watch or to awake. Jeremiah, when he is asked by God what he sees, looks and says “I see an almond branch.” And I think about Jeremiah looking for what God wanted him to see, and how Jeremiah did see, and how what Jeremiah saw was something of so much beauty.

Father, show us what to watch for. Ask us what we see.

How will we answer? What is before us? What is in front of us? How do we see it? What is God asking us to see?

Jeremiah saw an almond branch, a branch of beauty, a branch also decorating the Lamp stand of the Tabernacle, in Exodus.

It was less than a minute and I had driven past the orchard. I was aware, as I looked, that it was a memory I wanted to keep. I knew that I would want to record it.

Aren’t we stirred, both, by beauty and beauty absent?

And in that moment I felt tears fall; I realized I was struggling to see beauty and hope when before me was disorder and chaos and death.

Let us watch with clear eyes, with open hearts. Let us remember there is always newness, always beauty, with God, even when things feel completely bleak.

And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see an almond branch.” Then the LORD said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it (Jeremiah 1: 11-12).

Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, whatever situation we now face, I pray, sister, we ask for help in being watchful, in being observant, in desiring to see with clear, open eyes, what lies before us, yes–the miracle in the death, the life awaiting awakening, the word of God He is asking us to see, live out, believe.

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For Loop Poetry Project, write a poem on an experience with change. Consider your present circumstances: what is different than what it was before? How can you bring to life your observations of these changes? Will you focus on the facts–the details of change that comes with time? Or will it be more of a rumination of the heart?

Some ideas to consider: how has your body changed, and how do you feel about that? What about your relationships? The environment? Your home? Your attitudes and/or opinions? Your interests and affinities? Your desires and questions about the world?

Share your poem below or on social media using the hashtag #looppoetryproject so we can find you. You can also share your poem in the private Facebook group, Loop Poetry Project, a supportive community of women pursuing heart wholeness through writing poetry. (Pursuing what is true, not perfection.)

love,

jennifer

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To Be Taught

How is it that raindrops on windshields
and empty bleachers signal sadness,
memories of people in their youth
or old age congregating as if they
are known and understood,
inhabiting their moments fully
grounded in their feelings,
experiencing the living of smiling
and talking, crying and dancing,
without circumspection or analysis
or wistfulness or regret.
How can living be so easy
(breathing taken for granted)
an attitude undignified and wildly beautiful
in its freedom to be what it is
and not second-guess its meaning
or one’s role in it, a bold wild dance
of living loved and knowing it
so that each step is perfectly sure
and unparalleled in grace,
the way our eyes meet
and you teach me all these things
without saying a word.

We got tested for the Corona-19 virus on Friday. Three of the five of us–with the other two going in soon. And now we await results.

We were exposed to it by a friend on my birthday, and this Wednesday will be the 14th day of our quarantine. This dear friend, though, a single dad of four children, has been in the hospital for nine days. He is stable now. But we continue to lift up our hands and pray.

Sometimes the most difficult first step in surrendering fear to God is recognizing we are afraid. Satan doesn’t want us to recognize our fear. He doesn’t want us to name what it is that makes us anxious, desperate, stressed. Here is our habit: We let fear dictate our actions, our decisions, our rhythm of life.

What does a life of fear look like? Well, it can look a lot like believing lies:

We can fear we will not be loved unless we perform and earn validation from people outside our family. So we work hard and stay up late and choose opportunities to prove ourselves while neglecting what God puts in front of us to do and ignoring whom God puts in front of us to love.

We can fear we will fail at the task God has given us to do. So we have a history of spending time doing other things–maybe even good things–that are in our comfort zones. Things to make us feel good about ourselves, where we can rely upon our own strengths, have control and predict the outcome.

We can fear vulnerability. So we hide and shade the truth. We fear we will be loved less–or outright rejected–or filled with shame if we reveal the deepest secrets of our hearts.

What are your fears? What does your life look like because of these fears? What are the outcomes?

No matter what we fear, this is what we need to remember:

Jesus already granted us salvation. Jesus already came for us, restored us to Himself, took all sin, all fear, and invited us into His fullness. We are reconciled to Him. All God’s wrath and judgment already came and was laid on Christ.

“For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”

romans 6:10

Jesus’ death only needed to happen once. His sacrifice, once, was enough.

When we fear, when we feel overwhelmed and distressed, let’s remember the coming of our Lord, the sacrifice and rising of Christ. While nothing can separate us from the love of God, fear can get in the way of our living in the fullness of God’s love–the fullness He bought for us with His death, the fullness we are practicing living in, each day.

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”

John 4:18

As sisters of Christ, daughters of God, we have been given everything we need to live fully. We lack nothing. Nothing.

Our fear reveals how much we are a work in progress. While perfectly designed, we are still being perfected. Our trials, our suffering in this life are opportunities for us to move in the opposite spirit of fear, move in the opposite spirit of anxiety and desperation. We are desperate for Christ, yes–but we are even more desperate to choose Christ.

With each step we take this day, we choose Christ or we choose fear. When we choose Christ, we choose perfect love, which “casts out fear.”

I know what it is like to live from a place of fear. I know what that burden feels like–the heaviness, the walls pressing in. I know what it looks like to work hard to either ignore the fear, or to fix the problem you think is causing it in the first place.

But here is what is causing it. We are filled with fear, no matter the circumstance, because we are not trusting our whole self to God. His perfect love casts out all fear. He is enough. He is big enough. He is good.

Father, you have already come. You have already bestowed to us your fullness, and we ache to receive it. We ache to realize it even more. We want all that You have for us, and we surrender to You our fear, our doubts, our striving. We claim your perfect love. We claim it as enough. Continue to perfect us. Let us see You more clearly. Let us live in the fullness of You, in the fullness of your perfect love. Let us make all choices, this day, from that place, from the heart of knowing who and whose we are.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

For the Loop Poetry Project this week, write a poem about fear. Perhaps you’d want to personify Fear so that it feels like someone with whom you’d have a conversation or see walking down the street of your neighborhood or experience living in your house. How would it walk? What would it say? What room would it inhabit? How would you feel about it being there? Comfortable? Angry? Resigned?

Or maybe write a poem that tells a story about a personal experience with fear–the story of your life or an isolated moment. In this case you might consider using language that brings the fear to life, helping us, as readers, feel it with you, through details of sight, touch, sound, and smell.

Most importantly, listen to your heart. When you consider the concept of fear, what do you most want to say? Then play around with how you will communicate your heart’s message. Give it voice. Don’t hold back. Be the author of the fear, not the other way around.

Then consider sharing your poem here, in the comments, or on social media, using the hashtag #looppoetryproject so we can find you. I would also love to see you over at this community’s private Facebook group. If you haven’t joined yet, you need to know it is a lovely and encouraging place, full of kind and brave women who weekly share their hearts upon the page.

I look forward to hearing from you!

love,

jennifer

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Mania

In dreams I am running and
barely moving,
like there is no pay off in effort
and yet

I only push harder
when it seems I am going
nowhere
rather than—

well, it never occurs to me
to stop.

How can I tell her:
slowing might be okay,
I mean, you are
moving slowly anyway.

She cannot imagine
not choosing suffering
if there is a chance
she might escape

the feeling that
she will fail.

I rose early on my birthday last week, stepping outside into air cool and quiet. All was still. No breeze rustling the bamboo fronds. No birds bouncing from branches. No squirrels catapulting from the highest tree limbs to the wooden fence and back up to the studio roof.

I live my days sensitive to time–perplexed by the way it can stretch out, one long moment after another, and how, also, it can dart and weave and feel like pinpricks of reality, barely realized, scarcely seen, unnoticed before it disappears.

I have lived the habit of missing time.

But not today.

The day of my birthday is usually when I am most sensitive to time–more than in December, that time of reflection and planning for the new year. Or even on my children’s birthdays, although their aging always feels like a mind-bender to me. How did you change from cuddly baby to squirmy toddler to this independent teenager who is about to leave home? Rather than being grateful for the years of living, the miracle of these years, I have often spent my birthday hyper-aware of all the time that has passed, as if it had escaped me somehow and I failed at slowing it and corraling it back.

But on my birthday last week, at the moment I stepped out the door into the crisp morning air, I realized that my perception of time was different. Rather than feeling anxious that another year of my life had passed, I felt waves of gratitude for the miracle of my life at all.

How blessed am I to have lived this long? How blessed am I to live in a world of water and air, flowers and mountains, art and song? How blessed am I to experience adventure and imagination, where anything is possible, where people are wildly complicated and captivatingly imperfect and shine with stunning beauty like the sun?

What a miracle to awake to light each day and the darkness each night. What a miracle to get to think and dream, accept challenges and work problems. What a miracle to get to mess up and try again and forgive and love even when it hurts and feels impossible. What a miracle to experience the aging of a body and a beating of a heart both held in the gaze of God?

I am loved. You are loved. Dearly, dearly loved.

There is nothing to fear this day in the ticking of a clock, the weakening of a body. Wistfulness and regret is not for us. Not this day.

Look up. Look up. Look at how long you have lived! All of life is set before you. Never-ending. Beautiful and full of possibilities. Even in the hardship. Even in the challenge. Even in the unknowing. There is good here. Right now. And more good is yet to come.

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For the Loop Poetry Project this week, write a poem about your relationship with time–what you think about it, how you approach it. Perhaps you would want to consider having a conversation with Time, as if it were a person. Or perhaps you’d like to tell a story about it–or show, through figurative language, how time can be manipulated or how it manipulates you.

How does time motivate you? Or drain you? How does time frustrate you or inspire you? What stories can time tell you? What wisdom has time given you? What trials and struggles? What glories and gifts?

Share your poem here, in the comments below, or on social media, using the hashtag #looppoetryproject. If you haven’t yet joined the Loop Poetry Project private group on Facebook, I encourage you to check it out–a community of kind and encouraging women who believe that writing can be a tool for self-awareness–and poetry is a form of writing that lends itself to an even deeper study and healing of the heart.

with love, from this one true heart,

jennifer

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Time Rising

I am aware it is my birthday
and look for everything
around me to speak,
the stillness of morning
when all is possible,
everything in front of me
never behind
when the sun rises slowly,
offering light kissing branches
and rooftops and bird wings
and the wind holds it breath
so that time is expectant and holy
and I am okay with its shifting—
the way forty-eight years feels
more compact than
one long song stretched
through innumerable choices to
see a moment
for what it is and yet
can never understand:
love standing in one place and
in all places at once
so I am consistently held
and I am not afraid
to be overwhelmed by
all that is possible
and perfect and true.