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

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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

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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.

I read older poems I’ve written and try to find myself in them. They feel vaguely foreign, memories of writing faded and far away. It makes me feel strange to read them, making me wonder about the intersection of heart and mind and truth and imagination when we write.

What motivated those words and ideas? Why communicate them? Why write them down? Did the ideas exist before I wrote them? Or did they come into being only through my writing–meaning they would not have existed if I never wrote them at all?

Is what we create something that remains a part of us? An articulation of the heart and mind upon a page? Or is what we’ve created separate from us, an unowned thing the moment we set down our ideas and move them from brain to heart to public view?

And what does it mean when the words come more easily than others? Are the ones that come fast, with seemingly little effort, more true than the ones born from hard-pressed work, the result of blood, sweat and tears? How do we measure the ache to articulate ourselves even when we worry we have nothing really to say?

Sometimes the words for me come easily. But this usually happens when I am writing regularly, my mind sharpened and ready to articulate ideas. And this past week, I didn’t push myself to write creatively. No journal entries. No poetry. I did write to complete assignments–emails and social media posts. But I didn’t do the deeper work of checking my heart and giving it voice. Did it have something to say and I missed it? Will I forever be missing a part of me because I didn’t honor the ever-present opportunity to dig deeper into who I am and what God has for me? After all, can’t writing that taps into the deepest places in us be a form of prayer?

I think there is value in the struggle of writing, especially when it is hard. Writing that prompts contemplation leads us to a deeper discovery of our selves. How you feel matters. What you think matters. There is so much we miss when we go from one moment to the next, day after day, week after week, without pausing and considering how what we feel and think leads to our actions, things we take for granted unless we live with intention and purpose each day.

It sounds strange, I know, but when I sat down today and opened a notebook I had not written in for a whole week, I felt like I had missed something. For a whole week, I didn’t pause and stop to listen to what my heart had to say. I wonder what it felt? I wonder what I could have learned?

We have much to discover in the search for true words. Let’s keep leaning in, full of wonder and expectation, knowing that what we have to say–even to just ourselves–is worth listening to. Writing is one of the tools of self-awareness, opening us up to deeper healing. It matters.

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For the Loop Poetry Project this week, write a poem that reflects an exploration of your heart–a deeper awareness birthed from the processing of your feelings. What has happened to you this week that has caused you to feel emotion? Return to that moment. Enter into it again and examine it. Go deeper. Pause and feel the emotions that surface. Describe the realization that comes from the examination of how and why you have thought and felt the way you did. And if you can’t figure out why you feel or think the way you do, write about that–the confusion, the lack of clarity, the mystery you long (or don’t long) to uncover.

Share your poem here, in the comments below, or in the private Facebook group, Loop Poetry Project. I can’t wait to learn what you think about this topic and what your experience was like diving in!

*You can read my poem below, as well as the prayer I felt moved to pray in response to it.

love,

jennifer

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The Convincing

There are parts of me I want to keep separate
from every person in the world

—let them remain
untouchable, perhaps,

though not preserved in a false state
with no need to be improved.

It feels less complicated somehow
to let selfishness do its work:

pull the parts away, discourage joining
(where they may enjoy cohabitation)

even if this means convincing
myself over and over that

I don’t need you; being alone
is the first thing I never need to die.

Father, rid me of this attitude of self-preservation. Rid me of this lie that I must self-focus in order to survive. It has been my idol since I was a child. Take it now. You are my protector, not me. You have made me more capable of love–of loving people–than I have let myself realize. I want to enter into the new place of trusting You more than myself. Release me from my self-prison. I step out now, throwing away the key.

I always told you I would catch you. And I catch the whole world. It is trembling now.

I confess, Lord, I fear speaking, writing, like my words aren’t going to help.

That is easy to believe. It is harder to believe your actions can help–and easier to believe that it is better to protect yourself and not try to change.

How do I need to change? How does this world need to change? What is broken, God, from your perspective? For I read the news: I am listening and watching–my feet walking, my voice speaking–in protest with brothers and sisters who call for justice, for change, for a different way of living in the world. I know I have much to understand–that I will not fully understand. But I believe you have given each of us what we need to love one another. You have given each of us the capacity to look at the body of the church and love it for all its members, and not pursue sameness.

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body–whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free–and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

1 Corinthians 12:12-27

The body has hated itself, detested itself, believed parts of its self are worth less. Not all parts have been honored. Not all parts have been loved. Not all parts have been deemed valuable and worthy of equitable treatment. How have I done this, Father? How have I deemed parts of the body less honorable, less good, less important–and hated the very body you’ve given?

You have not seen it. You have largely ignored it. You have been blind and deaf to the cries of parts of the body while you have honored and heard other parts. You hear the rumbling of some body parts but not others. There are parts of the body that are neglected, indispensable to me, the Father of the body, and the body has hated itself but not wanted to admit it. It has turned in on itself while not wanting to see what it was doing, wanting to remain blind, wanting to remain broken, convincing itself that broken is not broken. It is crippled and ailing, reeking of disease and pain, and trying to get used to hobbling, limping, tender with bruises and missing its parts that are not valued or wanted.

I confess, Father, my blindness: I have torn out my eyes. I have torn out my ears. I have torn out my heart. I have said I listen but I have been selective in what I hear. I have seen, but I have been squinting into darkness, not wanting to use your light to help me see clearly.

When one part of the body is hurt and suffering, the entire body is hurt and suffering. And yet I have settled for the body being maimed and broken, like that is just the way the body is. But a broken, crippled, ailing body is not what you dreamed. When you laid down your life, you gave your whole life. A body needs all of itself to be whole, and yet the body detests itself when parts of itself are not honored. It is not whole. It is a body that hatest itself. And that is not the body you gave when you dreamed up the world.

Show me more what you see now. Let me see with you eyes. Let me hear with your ears. In the ways I am blind give me new eyes. In the ways I am deaf unplug my ears. In the ways my heart is hardened, break it open, massage it, soften it and bring it back to life. Heal all parts of the body, Lord. Make this body whole.

Let the parts of the body rise up now, filled with your love and wisdom. Let the body surrender itself completely to you, trusting you to direct where it goes, how it feels, how it loves itself so it can love other parts of the body. May we love the part of the body we each uniquely are, pursuing healing and wholeness, with a willingness to be soft and surrendered, malleable and willing to change.

Let us ask ourselves these questions, Lord…

First questions:

• How am I unwilling to change?
• What part of the body am I–and how do I value and not value it, as a part of the whole?
• How do I detest my own role in the body?
• How do I neglect the pursuit of my own wholeness–and how does this contribute to the body not being restored?

Father, I recognize there are parts of the body that may struggle to be whole. They struggle, more than other parts of the body, to be healthy and strong. But you love each part of the body equally, and you want no part of the body to be hurting.

• What is my role in helping the other parts of the body be healthy, vibrant, robust–filled with light and joy and hope?

You show Me, Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, how I am unfit to help make any other part of the body whole without my own part of the body being whole first. A crippled body part will struggle in vain to help another part of the body that is hurting. And yet each part of the body is made to be healthy, a contributing member of the body as a whole.

• So, what step do you want me to take to be healthy and love others in the unique way you’ve called me to love?

Second questions:

• What role does my repentance have in my loving other parts of the body?
• Of what do I need to repent? How do I need to confess?
• What do you see in my heart that I don’t? How am I blind? How am I deaf?
• How am I hurting myself by not pursuing your healing? How am I hurting others?
• How am I indifferent to the hurt around me? How am I aloof? How am I selfish?
• How am I forgetting who you are–how you are love; how you fight for justice; how you invite me to participate with you in loving the body to the full life you have always meant for it to have?

Father, you are good. I can trust you. What else do you have to say? What other questions should I ask? What more do you have?

See me holding the world. See me holding my children. See me in the rocking and the trembling, the pain and the crying out. I am here. I am not leaving. I am justice. I am strength. I am hope. I am what is missing and what is available. I am love. I am love. I am love. This body is beautiful, and it can be repaired. Do your part. Let me show you how to love. Let me show you what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it smells like–how to hold it in your hands. I am mercy. I bring mercy. I bring healing. I will flood the earth with my love. I am flooding it. Do you see it? Will you help me love and love and love?

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For the Loop Poetry Project prompt this week, write a lament, a prayer, a confession, a song, a promise, a dream. Let your heart speak for the body. Trust its words. Find language that is true.

bless you, sisters,

jennifer

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Exit

It is a monster in the dark places
we think we don’t go
but we live there, don’t we

the bones of our flesh
rotting until we turn,
light on our faces,

and leave (our crouched posture
ready to spring and creep
in shadows of decay)

and take one step forward
toward what is strange
and must be good:

a broad open space without
walls and lack and
competition for love.

It was when I confessed what I had done–and what I do–that I began to know Jesus for the first time. Growing up learning about him was one thing. Seeing his face? Hearing his voice? Feeling the Spirit’s heat burning from my insides?

Confessing to Jesus what I was loving more than him–in this case, my pride–led me to experiencing God rather than looking at him from a distance. Confession was letting God create space in my heart so I could experience Jesus living in me.

When we stuff down our sin, refuse to confess our sin to God, we say yes to pride. We say yes to our desire for independence and self-sufficiency. We say yes to everything our culture tells us is perfectly good, an example of strength and success: work hard; keep your head down and try harder when you fail; don’t let on you’re weak and you can’t get the job done on you’re own; don’t let anyone see you when you’re down.

You know who we’re listening to when we ignore God’s voice and respond to all the other voices that boom much louder, don’t you?

Oh, Jesus, I pray now that you silence the voice of the enemy right now. For everyone reading these words right now, silence his voice; make his whispers unable to be heard by our hearts. Let us hear just your voice. Let us recognize you and say yes to you, with wide-open hearts.

We shout to that distant God up there, somewhere in heaven, “I’m good! I’ve got this covered. No room for you!” And we remain feeling alone. And God keeps feeling distant. And we work harder to live our lives well, whatever that really means.

To do this, to say yes to the Holy Spirit filling us, to say yes to Jesus living in us, we must confess all the ways we are trying to live without God, all the things we’ve kept hidden, all the things we’ve tried to fix in ourselves, on our own, all the things of which we are ashamed, all the things we’d much rather forget than ever, ever address.

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help (Hebrews 4:16, MSG).

It was in college when I–a lonely, overwhelmed transfer student in a new, big school–that I first confessed my sins to Jesus. I was tired of keeping secrets, tired of pretending to have it all together; tired of praying to a God that felt so very far away and not at all like a God who was with me, in me, wanting to whisper love to my heart.

For me, there was a particular secret that I was working hard to hide from everyone. And Jesus was asking me to give it up.

And some of you here, reading? I know you have secrets too. You have things to confess, ways that you’ve been trying to fix yourself, things that happened in the past (whether the past could have been years ago or just a few minutes ago) of which you are ashamed.

If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God (1 John 1:9).

Can you give it up now? Whether this is the first time you’ve confessed your heart to God, or if this is your thousandth, can we do this together, kneeling together before our God and asking him to show us what it is that we’ve been keeping from him?

Go to a quiet place and close your eyes. Ask him to search your heart, to put his hand on the one place in your heart right now he would like to claim. What moment still feels heavy? What situation have you been trying to fix? What memory still haunts you? What burden are you carrying, this moment, that brings you to tears? In what area are you trying to be strong, on your own? What relationship is causing you pain?

Now, here’s an extra challenge–and you don’t need to do this at all. But, if you feel your heart beating fast and your chest all hot and you are feeling like you want to step forward even more, trusting Jesus in community around you, would you be bold enough to type up the confession, on the blog’s comments page, right here?

Or, if that feels like just too much–and I love that a lot of you do this–would you feel like typing up the confession and sending it just to me? Because then we can pray for each other and for God’s continued protection of us and our hearts as we confess. It can be a beautiful yet vulnerable place when we confess to our God. We are letting go of the old self and asking him to bring more of his new life in us.

Now, if you do this, there will be opposition. Those other whispers we talked about earlier? Yes, well, Satan is not going to want to have you confess a thing. And if you do, he isn’t going to want you to feel good about it. He is going to want you to feel alone and crummy and afraid and doubtful it was ever a good idea in the first place.

So, together, let’s do the opposite of what we’ve been doing before.

Let’s not hide. Let’s speak aloud our confessions to our God and imagine we are here, in a circle together, doing it together before our God. I know I would be emboldened by your confession. I would be reassured. I would see Jesus in you when you went ahead, saying yes to Him and no to the whispers of the enemy who are telling you to do exactly the opposite.

So, how about it, sister?

Are you with me?

I’ll go first (and here is the confession from that day in college):

Father, I confess I love myself more than I love most anyone else–and not in a good way–not that good kind of love, that true love you speak of when you say we can only love other people as much as we love ourselves. You see, I actually don’t like myself very much most of the time–and in my feelings of ineptitude, I focus a lot on me, on self-preservation, thinking I am the one who has to stand in the gap of what I think I need and what I think I want. For I forget who you are. I forget you are love. I forget you are everything. I forget I am your daughter. I forget I am your heir. I forget you have given me everything. I forget I am with you now, seated with you, made to rule and reign. I forget I need you more than anything else. I forget I have everything I need to live a life of love and truth and hope and joy. Please forgive me. Take this heart of mine–the ways it is hard–and soften it. Bring peace where I am anxious. Bring light to this dark. I love you. I love you. I love you. Because you love me. You love me. You love me. Thank you. I am in your arms now. Help me to stay here–where I belong, where I truly want to be. In your name, Jesus, Amen.

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For the Loop Poetry Project this week, consider relating an incident of confession–and try to focus on something you’ve personally experienced that you haven’t previously put into words. This poem doesn’t have to be in the same vein as a confession of sin, but it can be if you feel like that is where the poem wants to go.

As you write, dig into the experience so that it feels like you are reliving it, even as you search for words. For instance, share a memory, and then explore it on a deeper level so that by the end of the poem you are realizing a truth previously hidden from you. Or, perhaps, write as if you are telling a confession to yourself.

By the end of your writing the poem, you want to be feeling a different emotion or having a different opinion than you did at the beginning of writing it. Take yourself on a journey. Honor the direction the words invite you to take. Notice the twists and turns, the surprises. And then take note of what has happened within you by the time the poem says it is finished…and you have arrived. What has happened–what is happening–within you now?

Consider sharing your poems below and/or on social media using the hashtag #looppoetryproject. Or share your experience writing this week. You can also join in on the fun as part of the private Facebook group. My poem is below.

love,

jennifer

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Everything in the Beginning

We lived in an apartment built for two,
a little box we filled with a wooden chest
my grandparents crafted with their hands,
two blue metal folding chairs, and a
kitchen clock we hung too high on the wall.
We ate boxed pasta with lots of salt—
and in the fall you made apple cider
in our kitchen with a pair of cut up
pantyhose pulled from an egg-shaped
plastic container we bought from the
tiny corner supermarket with sticky jars
and dusty shelves.
Your dad visited us once but no friends
and my parents never came either,
to watch us build a life across the country
and over two thousand miles from home.
We liked believing we could fill up
every space within each other so there
was never lack while there was always
—a wishing for more.

A friend reminds me how gratitude is an act of defiance–wielding a sword against the struggles of this world. She searches for beauty, knowing she will find it if she searches for it with God’s heart, eyes focused on Him.

And then another friend, one who lives across the waters from me, speaks how gratitude is what pulls us out from a posture of survival and to one of joy. It is where we see Jesus’ face.

I need to remember these things.

Yet it is difficult for me to see what He sees–and be grateful for it–when I cling to insecurities and fears. Below are words I wrote a few years ago. They are ones I needed to read again today. I am eager to hear how you are this day, and how He is reaching for you, too.

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How a friend’s simple observation leads to healing and truth

“You have to confess it. You have to say the lie aloud. You have to throw it to the throne of Jesus. You have to reject it even if you still believe the lie.”

My friend looks me straight in the eye, and I hold her gaze for a half-second before staring at my mug, wishing I were small enough to hide under the table. Now what? I think she’s right.

I know I had better not stall.

When you recognize a lie as a lie, even if you can’t imagine no longer believing the lie, throw it up to heaven.

Renounce it. Reject it.

Jesus knows the way out. His desire is to save us from separation from the Father. And God sent Jesus to die and take on every single one of our sins so Jesus could lead the way out of whatever you are facing.

He can reveal to our hearts the lies we believe that separate us from the Father. He can reveal to our hearts the twisted truths we believe about ourselves. And here was mine: I don’t want you to like me for who I am. I want you to like me for what I do. And my fingers pause now, as I write this. For it is hard, isn’t it, to say the lie out loud? It is hard, isn’t it, to be vulnerable? It is hard, isn’t it, not to wonder, what will she think of me, now?

So I cling tight to Him, rereading His love letter to us about truth, the truth of us:

The truth of you cannot be articulated in just words. The truth of you is a name and not a name. The truth of you is more than a description of personality, a page of characteristics, a list of mannerisms and popular expressions.

There’s something you must remember: you must live your truth. You must live, with determination and might, your truth. You must know who you are designed to be . . . if you want freedom, if you want liberation from lies, if you want joy.

So I open my hands and close my eyes and lower my head. Once God presses in, shows us glimpses of our pain, our sorrow, and/or damage we cause when we believe lies about ourselves and about Him, we must run to Him. We must renounce the lie causing the whole darn mess. 

“Jesus, I confess I want to be liked for what I do. I confess I care more about what people think about what I do rather than who You think I am. I want You, Father, to love me for what I do! I confess I don’t want you to love me for who I am! I repent, and I reject this lie. I reject the lie that my value comes from doing rather than being. I reject the lie and I break the agreement I’ve made with the enemy that my value does not come from being a daughter of God. I give this lie to you, and cast it on the throne of Jesus.”

How observation + imagination can lead to action

And I stayed there. It was too good to not stay, this daughter He made, at Jesus’ feet. And Jesus offered me his hand, and He took me where He always takes me, in the garden, by the river, through the path where the green grass tickles my legs and flowers perfume the air. I can feel the perfume now on my skin.

We walk up, up the hill, the grass blades leaning over the path so I can’t see the ground, can’t see where my bare feet fall. I see Jesus ahead of me, His looking back at me, smiling. He knows I love this, this walking through beauty, with water rushing fast, to my left, and sunlight shining bright through arches of trees. He knows I will love where we are going.

He leads me to the top of the hill where the waterfall is thundering, and He knows I want to jump. I want to jump right in. The water isn’t cold and the sun is warm on my cheek. And I turn my face up, and I am in God’s house and I am with my King and I am safe and I doing what I am made to do and where I am made to be.

And then I am alone. I am in a meadow, my back pressed into the soft earth. I lay in the flowers, eyes closed, the sun a blanket on my skin. Then the earth trembles beneath me. The soft ground shakes. I must rise. In front of me runs a giant white steed. It is huge and powerful and beautiful. Its eyes flash, and it whinnies as it stops right before me, its hooves stomping into soft earth. I want to ride it. I want to jump on and go, even though I’ve only galloped on a horse once, in my whole life.

But I can’t.

Suddenly I am not in the meadow but in a dark, shadowy place where there are walls and I am standing, cold, alone. My hair is tangled and my clothes are dirty and tattered. Shredded pieces of linen, a grungy robe, filthy and brown, hangs from my shoulders. I lower my head, hands open at my sides.

Then, there are hands lifting each piece of clothing off of me. They were so heavy. I had no idea how heavy each piece was, as it hung on my tired frame. I then feel hands around my ankles, and strong fingers unfastening shackles around my bare feet, shackles I had never seen, attached to chains I never knew I wore.

And I am in the meadow once more. I am wearing a long gown and my hair is loose and clean, the sun shining bright and the air perfumed with light as it falls like love upon blooming flowers. I am on the steed. And I am wearing armor now, and I have a sword in my hand. This. This is the daughter He sees. This is the daughter I am. This is the daughter He calls me to be, the one who is free because she is willing to fight. The one who is dirty and broken and vulnerable and alone when she strives to be what she wants to create herself to be. The one who is actually beautiful and true when she lets herself know freedom, when she lives out the truth of the identity her Father sees.

It’s time to ride, wind in our hair

You, my daughter, are made to be strong, with Me. You, my daughter, are made to do things I’ve prepared, just for you. You, my daughter, are made to go forward, not back. And to go forward, you must fight and break the agreements you’ve made with the enemy. You must know I have come to claim you, the daughter I made. You must know your life has been paid for. You must know you are free. 

And sometimes, with my truth in your heart, you must reject lies about who I am. You must do this. Don’t wait. Do it right now. This it what it means to fight—for freedom from lies. It is rejecting lies and surrendering to Me. It is fighting for your identity, the one the prince of this world wants to take from you.

So, when you are weary, when the world presses in, remember I am here with you. Know I am the warrior who never sleeps. Know I rescue and ask you to trust Me more than anything else. That is how you fight. That is how you know who you are. That is how you are set free.

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Write it now

For the Loop Poetry Project this week, you are invited to take a simple reality–a Zoom call with a friend, a cup of hot coffee, a child’s cry, a pile of books on the table, a bag of groceries, a walk through your neighborhood, a rustle of tree branches in wind, anything you see or hear or remember or feel–and let it become a trigger, a launching place, a beginning of something more. For instance, the experience with God in prayer that I just shared came about because of repentance, which was prompted by a conversation with two friends. And the poem below called “Lullaby” I wrote this week in anticipation of a morning run. The recognition, or honoring, of one observation, leads to another.

So, what do you think? Will you trust your mind, your heart, your imagination to lead you to a new place? Will you try to put to words how one observation or thought you have can build until it becomes something else?

Don’t worry about perfection or getting it “right.” Write what is true. Write what your mind sees. Write what your heart is speaking. Always. See what happens after that.

And, of course, consider sharing your poem here, in the comments below–and/or with the lovely community of kind and brave poets in the Loop Poetry Project on Facebook. Join here.

With much love and excitement for what comes next,

jennifer

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Lullaby

I will hear you in crackled pebbles
underfoot as I run
on empty streets and watch
the sky turn
cotton candy pink and tangerine

or in memory: of photos I didn’t take
on my child’s first day of school
and you exhale whispers,
it is okay,

or in music: of this fan now whirling
in a garage filled with books
of stories I want to read

and then your humming
the tune you sang when I
was born and you
say, this one is your song.

There are days when words are hard to find. We search for them in books, where they huddle together, mute and coy, asking us what we want of them this day. When we struggle to gather them up, recalcitrant circus performers unwilling to perform tricks, put on a show, we take a peek around the less obvious places, the tender places that still hurt from rough exchanges with people, or ourselves. What is it we are feeling, thinking now, we wonder? And how do we articulate it? And why do we want to?

There is so much effort, isn’t there, in saying this is what I think, this is what I feel. We wonder if the words we pull from those deep places within us are true, if they can be trusted. Is what I am saying accurate? What story am I telling? What is the line between fiction and nonfiction? True and make-believe?

The process of writing what we see, what we know, what we feel, what we believe, develops creativity. We do our best–sometimes using fiction–to tell a story our heart has always known as true. And this process develops self-awareness. Sometimes we have no idea what it is we want to say–or we are convinced there is truly nothing we want to say. Yet the process of using language to create–give voice to an emotion, give sound and sight to an observation–activates our mind and heart. It wakes us from our slumber, our passivity. It helps us notice subtle beauty as well as concealed terrors–all the things that make up our lives.

Don’t we want to live fully awake–have muscles developed that give claim to what is happening around us, to us, within us? Putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, lifts us from apathy into action, submission to assertiveness. Friend, it is time to wake up.

If you have never written as a way to process your feelings, or better understand your actions, today is the day to start. Living more attentive to your feelings helps you access your heart, which is the beginning of healing, the invitation for God to come on in.

So for the prompt today for Loop Poetry Project, begin with where you are or where you’re not, with what you know or what you don’t know. Write about what is making you think, what is making you wonder, what is making you worry, what is making you dream.

There is no wrong or right, no letter grade or gold star. Only possibility. Only adventure. Only trial and error. Only hope and good things ahead.

Tell me your experience with writing. Do you write regularly? Is it something you enjoy? Is this experiment something new that you are willing to try?

If you decide to dive in (yay!), consider sharing your writing with the Loop Poetry Project community. You can do this here, in a comment below, or in the project’s Facebook group. (Click here to join.) If you share your writing on social media, make sure to use #looppoetryproject as your hashtag so we can find you!

Happy writing and seeing what unfolds!

love,

jennifer

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At the Party

Unmoved
I stand on the periphery
of feeling
I am somebody
who knows the rules
of small talk
to feel connection (to connect)
and move with
the current of people
mingling
enduring judgment:
Am I beautiful?
Interesting?
Will I make you laugh?

In my dreams
my worst nightmare
is being frozen
in one spot
my mind hating
my body’s refusal
to flow confidently,
mold itself into the
the shape of the room
cause a riot,
laugh so loud people
will turn and stare
—in a good way

and I can watch
myself swimming
in circles,
the water heavy
against my legs,
my arms,
every limb
(I am in both places now)
watching, wishing,
imagining, belonging
and hating myself
as I care.

Even before the pandemic kept us sheltering in place, I could forget that any regular, normal day, was not so ordinary. All night I rested, slept long and hard and awoke. To this day. To this moment.

A miracle.

I awake too many days taking for granted the moment of right now. We have so many descriptions of time. We talk about how it marches or it flies. We describe how it drags or runs away.

We want to seize time. We want to rustle it; be the boss of it. We watch it. We regret it. We chase it. We rebel against it.

I want to mark time as holy, as sacred. I want to worry less about what I do with my time and enjoy more the moments, one by one, I get to live with God.

Holy Spirit, come. Show me how you are in this moment. Right now. With me.

It can take stopping, pausing, recognizing our breathing, even–in, out–to see a hint of the miracle.

It can take looking–determined faith that if we search hard enough for God we will see Him; we will hear Him; we will know more of what it means to have Him.

For if we want Him; we have Him.

And in this moment, as I type these words. My eyes are not on the keyboard, but looking out, past plates of glass to see tiny sparkles flit about near the stone bench in our yard, little bugs dancing above water droplets on green grass.

And I see, but I stop looking out, and I look in, my heart hungry to be filled.

Pull me in, Father. Pull us in, deeper still.

Will you join me in writing about the miracle of this day–or the mess of this day (both?)–this moment you are in right now? It doesn’t have to be pretty–and your mood doesn’t need to be upbeat. (See my poem, which describes my bad mood, below.)

Avoid saccharine. Rather, speak to the place where you are. The good and the hard. The frustrating and the wonderful. If the moment feels like a mess, show that. If the moment is stunning in its beauty and hope, relate that too.

Share your poem with us here, in the private Loop Poetry Project group, or in the comment section below. I can’t wait to read your mess and miracles, friends.

love,

jennifer

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while I shelter in place

they are banging next door
with drills and hammers,
taking apart the house
a few feet from my own.
The noise unnerves me,
making me anxious,
mean.

I want to run away from everyone
as if I could
as if I could flee not just the cacophony next door
but all noise, your voice too.

I search for silence in the deep place
that usually settles me,
draws me toward calm in storm and
I can’t find it,
the drilling reverberating through me
and I fear all sound is too loud:
music and laughter,
outside concerts and children bouncing
basketballs and playing in the street.

I fear I’ve changed—your absence
filling me these two months and
I am less tolerant, less patient:

your face mask covering your
nose and mouth so only your eyes show.

Where is humanity in the absence of your smile?
Distressed heart—why is all noise a threat?
Has the sickness spread not wider but
deeper now, into the quiet place
that taught me you were my friend?

I walk empty streets a few blocks from my home to sit on a funny wooden bench tilted back and shaped like a barrel at my daughter’s school. The seat is angled so my feet dangle off the ground. It makes me feel small, younger than I feel most days. The bench is in a garden recently weeded of tall bushes of lavender and mint that were growing out of control. It is calm here. Quiet. I swing my feet.

The sun is warm on my skin, the air a blanket of fragrance the breeze breathes this way and that. I let it cover me, drape over my shoulders and face and neck. I imagine the scents of heaven–of flowers and water and earth and rock. A biting sweetness. A fragrance of a million colors, a million voices composing one song.

My heart knows this song. And in this extravagance of beauty–of light and color and spring–I feel my heart pose a question: What if, right now, I lack nothing and live as if I believe it?

What if we lived believing we have everything we need? Even in our pain. Even in our discomfort. What if our view of our present circumstances, no matter what those circumstances are, has the power to propel us toward hope rather than despair?

The mindset of lack is dangerous. It produces fear, and it keeps the focus on ourselves rather than on what is true.

What is it we believe we lack? Personality? Beauty? Peace? Money? Good health? Fresh air? Love? Friendship? Joy?

When I remember that Jesus never felt fear–His trust and hope were completely in His Father–I remember He also never felt lack. God held nothing from Him. All His love. All His power. All His hope. All His joy. And Jesus knew it.

What I forget, by my attitude of wanting to trust in my own strength rather than in God, is that through the gift of Holy Spirit, God gives us these things too. In Him, we lack nothing.

Jesus prays, in the presence of the disciples:

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. 

John 17:20-22

Living with an attitude of lack produces fear. Living with an attitude of love produces fruit we are desperate for: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

Here are questions I want to ask myself: Is my mindset one of lack or of plenty? Do I believe I have everything I need, despite my circumstances? Even if there are things that bring me sorrow? Even if there are things I wish were different? What do I believe I lack when things feel like they are not going my way? Do I believe God is holding out on me? Do I believe He isn’t enough?

Share a few words, in the comments below, describing your thoughts about the mindsets of lack or of love. And consider joining the kind poets of the Loop Poetry Project community this week and write a poem on one of these mindsets.

Share a story, flesh out a conviction. Use images to describe your mindset of lack versus a mindset of abundance. Talk about fear, worry, anxiety. Have a conversation with your heart and share it here. Listen close–praying for deeper awareness of your convictions as you write.

And then share your poem here, below, or in the Loop Poetry Project private Facebook group, or on social media, using the hashtag #looppoetryproject. I can’t wait to read what you write!

joining with you in hope,

jennifer

*Here is a great resource you might want to check out: an on-line class I am taking with friends, taught by Jan Johnson, on ‘Living Without Lack.” A lot of my thoughts here were inspired by Johnson’s teaching–combined with the conversations about lack and fear that I’ve been having on Zoom, with dear friends!

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The window is open, and cool air blows through the room. The street is silent except for birds chirping. I will miss this the most, maybe, when quarantine ends. The stillness outside, even when the inside of my home thunders many moments: heavy feet of teenagers as they work through their day.

Days fold in, one after another. A stack of moments in this small home. I remember they are sacred. Few things of importance get cataloged on a calendar anymore

So much happens within walls. Life outside walls–but inside walls too. The push and pull of loving people. The trusting that good is here, in the uncertainty, in the mess, in the hard.

And with that trust comes love, which is seldom easy. And always a choice. What choice am I making this day? And the next?

I like to think about what will mark these strange days in quarantine. A year from now, or maybe a few months, will I look back on this time and be happy for my resilience? Will I be able to recognize this gift of trying to create space for my heart?

It is often said, when writers are talking about writing, that writing “saved” them. “Journaling saved me,” is a popular phrase. Getting down our thoughts into words on a page helps us take a look at our feelings. We can look at these feelings (and the circumstances that caused them in the first place) with a little more detachment and objectivity. This, in turn, can help us to engage our hearts, our emotions, our opinions–a step that, if we take it again and again, can help us attend to any wounds that we need to heal.

For me, writing poetry has been a special kind of writing that has encouraged introspection, self-awareness, and whole-hearted living. Through writing poetry I imagine possibilities beyond my circumstances. I do this just as I am especially cognizant of the circumstances I am experiencing right now.

Writing poetry grounds me in the present and opens me up to things that might be. Sometimes I write about things I can see with my eyes–the furling of an oak leaf, the sound of my daughter singing in her room–but I also write about things I can see only with my mind. Words become tools to describe images I see in my imagination. Poetry, in essence, is allowing my heart to dream.

I write poetry and my mind leaps into scenes far wilder and unmuted than my present reality. And it makes my senses more attuned to my days, especially these days–these days when I am aware of potential walls (physical and emotional) of confinement. I write poetry to help me refuse to let walls confine me, heeding my heart’s desire to leap and run and live in a reality that feels just as true as the one I can now touch and hear and see.

Through writing poetry during this quarantine, I am learning to celebrate how beautifully small I am. It is delicious perfection to be held in God’s hand and live in heightened awareness of all that I can’t (but used to wish I could) control.

I write these words in my journal:

What a delight it is to be small / and yet capable of all things beautiful and good./ This is strength, this is freedom, this is joy.

For the Loop Poetry Project this week, you are invited to write about your strength and/or your smallness, your lack of control and/or your freedom, your resiliency and/or your weakness. Let the poem go in any direction it wants to go. Maybe begin with a question that the rest of the poem seeks to answer. Maybe begin with an observation of external circumstances–specific details of a setting (an empty street, coffee brewing on the kitchen counter, a pile of shoes by the door)–and document a story as it unfolds. Maybe close your eyes and let your imagination direct you: find words to describe the visuals your imagination shows.

There is treasure in this process. Enjoy it. Be curious. Expect wonder. Brace for surprise.

As always, please share! What a delight it is to read your beautiful poems. Remember that what we do here is encourage one another in the writing process, not the writing product. While we seek to write what is true–what our hearts are most trying to say to us–we must not be discouraged by our expectation of the finished poem. There is discovery here for you. Dig deep. Trust that the right words do come. Linger over sound. Consider meaning of each word. Enjoy the magic of not knowing what to say–and seeing what happens when you write down words anyway.

That is the good stuff. There is always beauty that follows.

You can share your poems below, as a comment on this post or in the Loop Poetry Project Facebook group. I am so excited to connect with you through your writing!

from this one true heart,

jennifer