Yakima, here we come!

     We're heading to Yakima, Washington with our church this afternoon to help New Life Hispanic Ministries with some mission work. We've been preparing for a while and can't wait to get there and meet the others who have been doing the same. The teens have been working so hard, it's exciting to finally see them in action.
     We'd appreciate your prayers for fruitfulness, safety and  fellowship. Here's to pouring yourself out for Jesus and letting Him fill you back up!

Cleaving and Magical Naps

For those of you who have been married any length of time, you know it's not always easy, but tenacity often pays off in a myriad of ways. Not always, but often. 

Chris and I married right out of high school, like most kids that age in love, unable to tear ourselves apart from each other, our emotions ran high and we thought only of the other almost all of the time. 

But, the union of two people with a creative bent and a stubborn streak doesn't exactly make for wedded bliss. Yet for all those times when we have been to the depths of despair with each other or because of each other, there are just as many, if not more times we hit the heights of glory.

We've had a volatile and passionate romance, that often threatened to destroy us. 

Passion, Expectations, Disappointment, Harm, Forgiveness, Love. Passion, Expectations, Disappointment, Harm, Forgiveness, Love. Passion, Expectations, Disappointment, Harm, Forgiveness, Love.
  
Each time growing deeper and more real.Sometimes, not always, the person who has hurt you the most can learn to be the best wound licker.

I will not deny the strange sort of apron string that is involved in the miracle of us. The recognition of a spirit, not our broken and marred souls desperate to fill the cracks, but a spirit, ancient, and whole, and deep, creating, threading and weaving all the while setting us free. . .

Here is one poem and one set of lyrics where Chris, my husband, is the YOU in the poem.

Cleaving

I knew

when suddenly,

I felt

I  had missed something:

The way your eyes opened so big and closed so soft

          before you fell asleep in someone’s arms

The nuzzle of my skin 

          in your warm baby neck

 The indescribable urge

          to kiss your pudgy toddler hands

The light hitting your linen-lined face

          alerting you to Saturday morning cartoons.

The knowledge of every scar on your body

 The lean of your arm on the bus ride home

after marching at half time─

Consuming.

As we spoke,

I was instantly jealous that I could not be your first date,

But I daydreamed about it anyway

I wish I could have known you always

Instead, my life tumbled into yours,

And we fumbled into this love.

Innocently, our flesh called out,

Wickedly we replied.

But it has been new, and new, and new again.

I could never deny that you belonged to me-

Never.

            You─ born of your mother’s womb,

recovered with my own.

Synapse

Magical naps snap you in t(w)o

A room with a view of who you are

Questions roll around in your head lying in our bed

When you’re whispered into being

Once a blind mess, now seeing

The truth in the trees--

so you don’t have to guess

      The answer to you is me.

Holding unsteady electricity, connectivity

Readies you to enter me

And you do 

with complicated simplicity

And the sky lights blue like incandescent trees, 

growing roots up and out, gushing fruit.

Supernatural, no doubt.

You lie deep in the lines of your smile

I steep in the crease of your brow

Your veins pull in the scent of my skin

Always (k)new the taste of you

Makes a map for me to sink into a room with a view

of who I am

Get set, don’t forget

      The answer to me is you.

Holding unsteady electricity, connectivity

Readies you to enter me

And you do 

with complicated simplicity

And the sky lights blue like incandescent trees, 

growing roots up and out, gushing fruit.

Supernatural, no doubt.

Dreamgirl

On Thursday, November 7th, 2007, four days after my husband, Chris said he was considering divorcing me, I rolled over in bed and wrote this in a spiral. I didn't have my glasses on and I couldn't see, but when faced with ultimate rejection, it felt like licking some wounds was in order, blind and naked didn't get in the way. 

.

After a year of trying to convince some friends of the myth of the dream girl-- that eventually, after a true relationship began, the dream girl image would be dashed and reality would set in--I got an inkling. 

Fearful as I was to believe in the possibility of  someone who would utterly delight in my existence, flaws and all, the idea took root, a latent seed planted long ago.

So, needless to say, Chris is not the You in this poem, but he has since adamantly revised his opinion about my Dreamgirl status. And God, well, maybe He is the only one who can truly feel this way about me, or anyone for that matter, I don't know. 

I did learn how to bask in glimpses of glory, a piece at a time or a whole bunch at once and I am grateful for that.

Did you know me when my

eyes were fireworks,

When my hair fell in triangles across my forehead,

my mouth open wide and loud?

You hold your hand out

I put my heart in it

You don’t make it beat but it finds your pulse,

Matches your rhythm.

Not for you

because of you.

If mine hurries ahead some days

You never say too fast, too fast

If mine can’t keep up, you never say too slow, too slow.

You listen to it. You like it.

You shape me into a continent,

not to conquer, but to tend.

You run your hands through me, plant treasures

I find a piece at a time, and I grow.

Not for you

because of you.

I grow flowers, turquoise, blood red,

sturdy pedals like Ferris wheels,

all color and light and never-named.

Why name them? you ask. Let them be.

You form me into a wide-open sea.

Swim in me, drink and eat of me.

You are filled, but I am not empty.

Giving is good and easy.

Not for you

because of you.

I build waves of power

And foam that wash over you

Soaking into each pore and crevice

You lick my salt from your lips

In time I am ready to be sky.

Clouds like dandelions float in me

silk spider webs thread through blue

gold is pouring and pouring.

Not for you

because of you.

I fold open, spread smooth and clear

And envelope your brown skin

plunging into your gasps

filling your lungs with me

And you,

You never try to contain me.

Why would you?  You breathe me out

and bask in the flow.

You, who

even if I were flower pot on your window sill,

or a ribbon of water bubbling in your back yard

or a patch of sky outside your jail cell

You’d water me, grin at my growing,

You’d cup your hand, dip into me and drink.

You’d grasp the bars and breathe me in deep.

Because you,

You always knew

I was your dreamgirl.