Broken Birdsong

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...

It's easy to feel incredibly mundane. Do you ever have those days where it just feels like your life is just one painful black streak on the massive canvas of humanity? [I admit, my analogies are odd.] I can't sleep tonight. My head hurts, my tummy hurts, & the thought of my alarm clock hurts, but my eyes are wide & bright, as if my mental exhaustion from the day means Nothing to them. I move my laptop & myself to my bed, in futile hopes that I'll wake up to find I was lulled to sleep by words. Fun Fact: this has Never happened. Mundane restlessness. Mundane solutions. I remember when I used to be the girl that turned her bed into a canvas when she couldn't rest. I would artfully spread notebooks, sketchbooks, brushes, pencils, pens, tea mugs, & odd bits of information across my bed, taking a picture of the beautiful mess after diving in. I listened to a song tonight about a girl losing a version of herself. "She used to be mine....