unpracticed

what is the gesture of a woman's hand covering her mouth?

what is the gesture of a woman's hand covering her mouth with eyes wide open?

-Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

i haven't been speaking. i have been afraid, doubting. that my words don't matter. that i am wrong. that people {i love} will criticize, ostracize. that i should just forget it. that learning to write and make art and be present are selfish, and i have two babies and a man that need me. need my time and attention. and there isn't enough of it.

at least not if i want to get any sleep.

i cannot do what I want, because I am doing what i must. 

Must I forever walk away from what is real and true and hard? 

When it comes to words, rather than using our own voice, 

authentic and unpracticed, 

we steal someone else's to shield our fear. 

 (also from When Women Were Birds)

a superiorly ironic quote, yet it was what finally propelled me into acting. into sharing my writing again in this space. i think it was how she paired the adjectives "authentic and unpracticed". that sometimes the unpracticed can be the most authentic. i am taking this amazing, life-changing ecourse on story and its telling. and since the day it started, i have not composed a single blog post. (what i have posted in that time were prewritten poems or just my list of #dobravethings on saturdays) 

because the current state of my "voice" is: unsure. 

not just unsure of how to tell the story, but i still find myself in the throes of how to live the story.

and if i am so unsuccessful at stepping into freedom, leaning into the light, 

how can i believe i have anything to offer anyone? 

but maybe what needs to be offered is me. right now. on this blogspot altar. maybe me - in process and all - is where i am supposed to be. and where i am supposed to invite you into.

so come in. have your third cup of coffee with me, too much sugar and all, and let's talk.

in which it terrifies me that people i know read this blog

i ran into a friend this afternoon.  she has been a friend for almost ten years now, and walked so much of life with us. we were in a small "life group" together, meeting almost every week, for like 6 years. we have known some of the same struggles and joys, she was someone who listened and really heard my heart in those dark years. someone who longs for the deeper heart journey with me, for real community. someone who continues to be present in our lives as we move forward in our journeys.

so we happened upon each other and she joined us for lunch. halfway through, she mentioned that she had been reading my blog, and something to the effect that it was good - not to be afraid - that it was things my readers needed to hear, wade through, be aware of in themselves, take stock.

and me? i had been standoffish, avoiding eye contact, being much afraid. it was in the midst of a high-stress moment (my son spilling his milkshake sample for the 37th time, while i'm trying to clean it up, and jason is calling from across the restaurant "do you have the coupon??", and i was searching and not finding, and i knew this meal was less of a success to him because nothing was free... so many little things adding up). she had to step into my way to maneuver me into a hug as i was passing by, barely aware of anyone around me. i wasn't being brave, and i knew it.

so when she brought up my blog, i tried to thank her for her kind words, but what i felt was my old security blanket of shame. it's four days into the year, and already i've forgotten my name??

it is way easier to post these braveries, and send them out into the vast unknown, knowing that those who read it will accept it (& me) or not, but that it doesn't really matter. i want to encourage people in their journey, help them see love and light when i can, let them know they're not alone, put my heart out there... but if real people - or rather, my people - are reading it, it is incredibly more vulnerable.

i posted my first time on this blog New Year's Eve. i was brave for a moment, long enough to hit the "publish" button, but upon awakening, i found my heart yearning for affirmation.  for someone to tell me that i really am being brave, and not just crazy. so... i wake up on New Year's to discover that I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS LOOKED AT MY BLOG (and my husband, whom i forced to read it ;). why could that be?? oh wait. because i was too afraid to "share" it on facebook. agh. this is gonna be a long journey, folks!

so then i shared it. and then my dad shared it to his page {tremble}, and printed out my art and put it up on their fridge. and friends commented and affirmed...

and THEN i remembered that it doesn't matter if people accept me or not. i am loved. i am acceptable. other people do not define me. and God knows i'm putting my heart out there and longing for truth and beauty. so even if no one ever comments again (or worse, if they do!), i am okay. i'll keep being brave because i am safely tucked away in his heart.

fragile beauty

the fear that drives New Year's Resolutions

doodled a "cover" for my 2013 art journal

i am not enough. 
and i'm too much.

these fears run deep, probably deeper than most, and are really the undercurrent of so many of the other fears. because if i believed i was enough, right now, my spirit and his, intertwined in this moment... i could take a deep breath {breath...} and live free and love well. my sons have the mother they need. my husband has the wife designed for him. my artistic desire and abilities are exactly where they are meant to be right now in this moment.

i wouldn't be overwhelmed with feelings of failure and needing to figure it all out... making resolutions that i know i'll never be able to keep up with. i'd be risking, pulling down walls, brick by brick with my bare hands. getting cut and bruised, but really breathing and living free. 

so, while my initial "list" included SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound - thank you, nursing school) of moving toward health (and i do still want to cook and eat healthy and exercise and floss and dance and play with my boys), my recovering-perfectionist nature starts condemning me as soon as i "break" one of these. ope, drank a soda AND didn't floss that night. you're hopeless. or, you can do better - work harder! but i'm SO OVER those traps. the striving and the chains to expectations (my own and others'). 

so instead, i started something like a bucket list. just a bunch of dream-brave-heart-sometimes-silly things that make me feel like i'm living again... just the beginnings of a list, always open to modification...

because, really, what's the point of "being healthy" when you're not even really living?

did you see i already crossed off #15? try a top knot 1.1.13

on being afraid of my own name

sitting in a room warm with the bodies of four hundred women, and so afraid that i'd be the only one. the one who didn't "get a name". petitioning jesus for a glimpse of our true identity, we were asking him to bestow new names. his pet names for us, if you will. they gave us a little rock to write it on, and we waited.

{pause.} i will be the first one to be incredulous about this. always the skeptic, i doubt and doubt and doubt. doubt he is there, doubt he is speaking, doubt he loves me like they say, doubt myself in my  ability to hear and understand the workings of my own soul and his voice in me. and i doubt the authority of others speaking, too. i am not the one to get caught up in bieber fever or celebrity or televangelists or sensationalists. so when i find myself at a conference where it seems the God of the universe is actually speaking to MY HEART, i listen. lay aside my fears. hope a little.

hope with me? {end pause.}

so i wait, only a moment, and i hear him say BRAVEHEART. i immediately reject this because, well, that's a boy name.  i must've heard him wrong. made it up 'cause that's what i wanted him to say... (oh, wait...) i started writing "names" i knew to be true of me because of previous revelation, his word, other books that spoke... "my beloved", "bride", "beauty"... after the session, i was asked if he'd given me a name, and i said, "not really...?" at which point a woman looked deeply into me and said she saw "sapphire", with a description of the stone's beauty and its gold settings and all things that shine... i took it as mystery, and left that cold colorado morning with a little awe, a little confusion, a little disappointment that i hadn't heard directly from his heart. (wha...?)

it took almost two years before i decided to accept this name as my own. and many more months before i could tell anyone about it (as in, right now). afraid it sounded unbiblical, or at least unorthodox... afraid of sounding pretentious... afraid.

braveheart, afraid. this is less of a contradiction than it seems, as has been often observed.

        "I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not
          he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." - Nelson Mandela

        "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part
          coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave." - Mark Twain

so, although i assented to the name theoretically, i have not been living it. i am so bound by fear. so many fears. last night, i started listing them and my fingers flew until i drifted off to dreamland. SO. MANY. i am Much Afraid. but that's not what he says. and he's usually always true.

this has been surfacing more and more as i see fear affecting my relationships, my parenting, my work, my art, my relationship with God... he whispers, and i say "but i'm so afraid". tears fall, but i don't move past it, breaking down walls, finding the beauty, truth, and goodness on the other side...
especially this month, as i've been a part of The Art Journaler community advent experience, art journaling consistently for the first time, it's come out. i've seen the fear for what it is, and accepted the call to bravery...

so my One Word for the year is BRAVE. living out my truly bestowed identity. trusting and hoping, and all manner of brave things.

hello, 2013, i am braveheart.