Broken Birdsong

I reached towards heaven To cover Your eyes Ever since I was seen I've wanted to hide And ever since I hid I've wished they would see -- Beggars, saints and scholars -- And deem me worthy Camouflaged, I lay there Begging for notice In shame, doubt and fear To be seen like this To be caught in my sin Exposed as myself Naked broken poser No doll on a shelf Look away, look away Away from me, Lord Yet You don't shift Your gaze You don't say a word I realize it was You - That it was Your sight That I tried to remove Yet craved morn and night Put my roots in darkness Ran rather than fight As if this was progress I was made for the light Look away, look away Away from me, Lord Yet You don't shift Your gaze You don't say a word I dare look up again You're somehow nearer Your love won't look away It's ne'er been clearer Where are my accusers? Where are my idols? All of them were scattered And here I stand, w...

When the muse strikes May these hands of mine Ne'er be found idle Nor waiting for lightning When a song moves my soul May I not let it slip Moving on to another Who might treasure it When my heart gives a stammer As if catching its breath May I still myself enough To explore the cause May I embrace confusion Until it becomes clarity May I never neglect the wonder Never forget its origin May I always pause when The light invades my skin May I always exhale Then begin once again May the wind of change No longer be my enemy But rather, a strange partner In a brand new dance May I sink beneath the waves Only to emerge again, new May the broken and tainted Become a stained glass window May I let the light shine through it

(image found on Pinterest) I have always been the one to hold back. I've been scared. I've seldom thought myself good enough. I haven't had the nerve to commit. I am the girl that suffered intense joint pain through most of my childhood. I have often wondered what my body was even capable of. I doubted it was anything significant. I didn't take advanced math in high school, because I never thought I would amount to anything that would require a degree. I didn't touch a guitar for years, because I thought my fingers incapable of applying so much concentrated pressure. I have balked in the face of auditions & applications. I have looked at a person & deemed them above me. I've pruned my expectations time & time again; cut down my dreams until they looked realistic & acceptable. I have given up when I should have kept on fighting. It turns out, a lot of things are closer to my grasp than I first thought. I have discov...

Your love, has met me where I am You see, where Your chosen bride has been You know, just how far I ran Yet You come, and You choose me once again You have not forsaken me Your love has not rejected me You are always here with me You pursue me when I flee No, You have not forsaken me Your blood, has washed my sin-stained hands Your grace, gave Your bride a thousandth chance You breathe, and a flame begins to dance Purify, my love in Your romance You have not forsaken me Your love has not rejected me You are always here with me You pursue me when I flee No, You have not forsaken me Oh, how I've longed For the fullness You provide Lord, I have searched You alone can satisfy Oh, how I've wandered Now I'm coming back to You Meet me here, Jesus Do what only You can do Oh, I'm coming back to You I'm coming back Oh, You never left me Though I left a thousand times Oh, You are steady You have never left my side You hav...

Jesus, Jesus. I am coming to You. Straight to You. I'm not waiting til I get my act together, I'm not lining up my ducks I'm just running. I'm running broken. With my idols, my ideals, my illusions. My addictions, my confusion, my obsessions. With my anger, my distraction, my repression. I'm coming towards You, knowing I cannot shake these off & bind them without You. I'm coming sick with grief I thought I should have overcome months ago. I come because I know now that no one else will do, no one else could save me. I was waiting for a savior on a white horse, & it's You. It has always been You. So here I am, here I've come, & this is what it's come to. My stomach is turning as I reflect on the mess I've made, & the ways I've tried to clean it up. I confess, & I leave my hands open. They're bloody & stained, full of lies. I thought I could bury this; cover it all up with the rig...

It was getting late ... My body was limbered, but weary. I could smell the oils I had rubbed on my aching feet with a prayer that I would get rest. I had stayed up far too late the night previous, & I'd let my thoughts reign free. Never a good life choice. Things seemed so out of control, & I felt isolated. There are nights where just going to bed is something I'm not sure I'm brave enough to do. It requires that I turn the lights out. That I lay next to my thoughts & I face them alone. These are lies, but a friend once told me that nighttime always exacerbates things, & it seems like it seldom exacerbates truth. Especially when you haven't been entertaining truthful thoughts all day. Let me speak this out: muffling the negative thoughts & the lies is not renouncing them, & it's not speaking truth. Non-thought still lets the wound fester. We cannot afford to merely stifle our pain. Now that I have gotten that out...

I take a deep breath & turn to whitespace. I have been practicing this all day. I don't know quite how to tackle these online courses, & I've decided that maybe that's okay. I've decided to let go of this nagging feeling that I'm not working hard enough or long enough. I'm on week two of 45+ hour work weeks, while taking four credits in my "spare time." Spare time. As in, when most people sleep. On my break. In the car. While children nap. I've studied on my laptop, on my phone, with my books, with my notebooks, reciting to friends, making up study cards ... It's week two. I looked down at the end of week one, & I realized that I had read two weeks' worth of material in my one class. & it still hadn't felt like enough. That's when it dawned on me: maybe my perception is vastly off. Here's the thing. The textbooks aren't meant to be read like a novel & then memorized like Scripture. ...

I twist my own fingers, & warm them - like a pianist preparing to perform her own concerto. A little like that, but smaller. My cup of caffeine is cold & almost empty, as the morning wanes. A morning of waiting. Stillness, in its least filling form. I quietly resolve to wait with better purpose than I normally do. I am a waiter. A right-on-timer. If you tell me I need to be ready for something by 8a.m., I will try to wake up two hours before then, & be ready by 7:45. When the clock reads 7:56, I will already assume you are late, & might have died, until I stop & Read that aforementioned clock. It's a little psychotic, the way I wait. It's a panicky wait. Eyes on the door, as if my very life depended on it. Hands clutching the phone in case they contact me & it's desperate. My idea of desperate has become wildly skewed. "Desperate" is 5 minutes late, or worse, a cancellation. If I'm really feeling like taking ...

I am discovering this, that the Lord works in the trenches of the  misunderstood & lowly. That He will let something fall to guide our gazes. In the tragedy, the uncertainty, & even just the disappointment, He is waiting. That He longs to meet us in the midst of our cancelled plans. That He wants to hear our song, even when we have no voice left, no words left. Maybe that, after all, is when we need to sing the most. He is waiting when all of our best-laid plans come to nothing. When we don't have it in us to perform. When we feel like the best we have to offer still isn't good enough. I have discovered that He meets us There. In our heavy sighs. In our runny noses. In our anguished cries. I also suppose this: that those sounds might as well be a welcome banner for how much He feels at home among them. Maybe it's time to stop waiting until we can give Him "our best," & just give Him our now. Scarred & scrappy as it may be. ...

Well, I didn't actually go anywhere. I seldom go anywhere. I'm back on a laptop of my own, & I dare suspect you'll be hearing from me a little more consistently. It's not like my life is getting any less crazy, but having a device that I can type prettily on (& speedily on) in my own space, at any time, denotes consistency. So, YAY! - you get to hear from me more. & to whomever it is applicable, I'm so sorry. This post is a little more of an update than my usual almost-prose. It's a year of many transitions for me - which is normal for my age, I suppose - so I can guarantee that there will be more update-y posts in the future. Bear with me as I go through this journey, okay? For starters, you may have already heard, or have seen the pretty link at the bottom of my blog page, but some dear people & I have started a collaborative Etsy shop: Son of Uri Studios . I am the token sketch artist, & you can find my section, Designs by L...

I don't know where to begin today, or where to go ... I only know that these fingers must click along a keyboard again, & in a way, I must sing my song. I think about those words now ... singing my own song. Once upon a time, that meant something different for me; it meant an actual song. I'm actually in a season right now where I am coming to grips with the fact that I'm maybe actually more of a poet than a songwriter, & maybe just maybe I should accept that, & live like that. I'm not talking about a song I wrote, or "my jam." The idea of my song is so much more than that. It's the idea that there are words that I need to remember always. Words that dear friends sing over me, & that my Lord has sung over me from the start. Today, I really need to hear my song. I need Truth sung over me. I need to remember what I always forget. I need to feel the closeness of someone holding my hand & knowing my hurt, & pouring hope ...

Today, we wear our most ridiculous socks, in honor of the most ridiculously wonderful humans. It's World Down Syndrome Day. I feel weepy as I think this through. I love that I get to do this one small, wild thing to bring awareness to something that has such a huge hold on my heart. If I'm honest, I do this in support of one boy in particular. His name is Michael, & he has more love in his teeny body than anyone I've ever met. He's done more for me than I could ever do for him. He reflects Jesus a lot that way. He gave me my dream. I looked at him, & I knew what I wanted to do with my life. He & I, we both know the sound of voices telling us what we can't do; what we probably will never be able to do. My voices are mostly in my own head, though. I never saw myself overcoming the hurdles set before me. I never saw myself being healed from Lyme disease. He gave me hope, even while I still battled it. His story was one of my first glimpses of...

I have been silent for far too long, & this is mostly due to my distaste for blogging from my phone. I'll explain. Old Bessie, my laptop, is on her last leg. She's overheating every time I turn her on (an action that now takes 15+ minutes). Her webpages aren't loading. She's whirring & whining, & it makes my heart hurt just to look at her. So, yes, technically, I could blog from my phone, but I really prefer writing on computers, because I am a perfectionist, & I like to know that the format I write this in is the format it stays in. OCD, I know. So here I am, putting off the inevitable laptop purchase, & typing on a borrowed computer in my fringe hours. Forgive me, friend. Last time we talked , I was doing some big-time processing, & -- I'm sure you could tell -- sorely in need of balance. I've come a long way. Nothing is wasted in the Kingdom of God. I love that. He took that burdened girl who was mourning the loss of he...