4 guests, all girls.

From the very moment air first filled their lungs and released vulnerably, admittedly I knew fully well the expression 'in over my head'.  I held each of them with measured caution as if they could break too easily, but with an intrinsic familiarity I stood awed and somehow presently aware they were of me.  Bone of my bone.  Tethered by blood and strands that make us who we are. The joke common, ‘When will you have another?’  The boy.  That was their question.  We were done.  Complete.  And we had our fill.  Three little princesses distinct and beautiful.  The want of a boy shallow compared to another child.  If we ever had decided on another child, God would again have had opportunity.  Whatever granted would have been fully embraced, the responsibility fully accepted.  Still, it felt a bit peculiar to have all three children be daughters.

As a father to daughters, I pray often, as often as I think to.  There are so many questions, countless unknowns and variety of ways in which we do not connect.  I try as best as I can to empathize with them in tears that seem insignificant to me.  I don’t always get it.  They don’t always get me.  But we are here together figuring out life, piecing together the day now and ahead and loving each other deeper with each step.  Clothes don’t necessarily need to match, sometimes a fight is in order to right a wrong and feelings do get shrugged off as mushy when the air hangs too heavy.  You’d swear I’m raising boys, but I’m not.  I’m grooming little girls to hold strong the name that will forever be within them.  Not my name for the sake of my pride or my legacy, but theirs.  Ethos.  The essence of who we are now in this moment, who I am in their little opening lives, that is what I passionately desire to hold strongly within them.  Forever, they will bear the scar of death.  Once a wound open, now evidence of pain soothed and wounds healed by life.  A loss unbearable in my thinking.  The nights come when tears do fall pouring from their hearts wishing for life different, their mother’s death to be reversed somehow.  They do feel lost and unsure at times.  I can tell it in their eyes.  Gazing off only half alert, they step back into memory or sideways to fantasy.  But in this moment, they are found by me found by grace.  They are mine.  My responsibility to teach, show, lead and guide them to Him.  Them being mine does not leave me as sole voice in their lives.  There are others, women in particular, whose perspective and insight I value and admire.  And so, I want my girls to hear from them of struggles, insecurities and strengths from the hearts of women conspiring against issues weighing many down.

This week I will feature four such posts.  All will be guest posts written by women as a sort of open letter to young girls growing and struggling to find path in today’s culture.    Four friends sharing from their lives.  I am ever so thankful.

And with each post, I will add a bit of information about each.  I’d encourage you to read each day and then visit the guest poster’s website for more amazing perspective.

As a preview, three websites are listed below.  The fourth guest is a surprise:) felicitywhite.com || meshalimitchellphoto.com
 || sincerelyrachelchristine.com

things she wants to say.

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It's in the remembering that we live braver, hungrier and more convinced of hope and grace and beauty swallowing.

I have noticed small bright pink post it notes lying around in the same spot.  At first glance, I paid little attention, but a stack began forming messy demanding better attention.  For days I moved right passed the tiny little heap until my walking by caused a couple pieces to stir and drift off the counter top onto the wooden floor.  I have a tendency to sort of stack papers.  It’s my way of cleaning the kitchen or anything actually.  My process is quite simplistic.  Dispose of as much as possible as often as possible.  I tolerate clutter in a compartmentalizing sort of way.  Or maybe it’s procrastination.  The latter is honest response.  Compartmentalizing simply sounds more together, in control and sophisticated.  As a telling side note, procrastination is mode of operation for me.  It is a chronic characteristic I am working out of my life.  There simply is not enough room in the life of a single parent for much procrastination.  Bright pink landing on wooden floor.  The contrast unmistakeable in both size and color.  Leaning over to reach the few fallen, I could see that each brightly colored little piece of paper held scribbled words, messages deep and searching.

A daughter wandering through day, lost in thought and dream of a life different, the undisturbed continuing of the life she knew.  Sometimes dishonest with her smile bright and affectionate, hiding when she hurts or needs or wants but thankfully, bleeding out words that grab to find home in her heart wishing to grow only darker and deep.

“I wish I could tell her all the things I’m doing.” “She’d smile real big and be hugely proud of you, sweetie.”

Still reforming and in the piecing back together in beautiful miracle the life so disturbed by one quick blow, we wade through the unknown and questions lingering.  The trust that weans in days lasting too long makes us stronger together.

One easy to recognize evidence of her heart once devastated now growing stronger in the day to day is her courageous heart.  She’s braver in the bleeding, risking for reward and foregoing shadows.  On the basketball court for the first time, lined wood giving direction to game and position, the sound of soles shuffling, a ball bouncing, hands raised, the game still so foreign to her, I saw her heart laid bare.  She positioned herself vulnerable in front of yelling parents and strange onlookers for shared experience and enjoyment of game and friends.  In the confusion of plays and rules and game, she jumped right in determined to know and participate.  For her, it’s discovery, of who she is undeniably and deeply wound within the DNA.  It is also an aim at who she wants to be and is traveling toward.  All in the game, in the experience, she’s finding and becoming.  My heart soars quietly sitting in the stands each time.  Camera clicking.  Recording her evolution.

One day Elizabeth Marie will look long behind her and gaze upon a field of flowers in the wake of her pursuit.  In ways out of my reach, she is cutting a path for us all, not around, but straight through heart and mire and questions with unfitting answers.  Their hearts remain resilient even in the distance and miles away from that life.  Just last night, we talked about her notes and basketball.  She smiled honestly in the sadness revisited.  But together we left it again coming and going as visitors both stronger.

“Nothing will ever replace her.  The thought of losing mommy will always cause sadness, but both the memories and the life we live will always be brighter.  Promise.”

what makes love live.

“Well, do you love her?”   Quiet. Blank stare. Long.

His look part anger, part remembering, part brokenness.  I had no wise words to offer greater than the realization settling back into his world.  Something blocked it all, what he once loved so much in his own way, her.  Little things had been building.  Arguments kept, offenses recorded in their minds, every identified wrong used as weapons to cut.  They were both injured and now insecure, quick to cut and easily run.  What brought them back each time?  Love and all that had been invested.  Life together.  Imperfect indeed and sometimes twisted, but not easily dying either.  And there he sat in love.

This could be anyone’s story.  It is one, but also the story of many.

Relationships crumble when scores are kept left to be settled one day, lurking in every wrong and hurt and offense.  What once was so beautiful and full and giving, now a pit sinking and a hole keeping.  Two people convinced things have irreparably changed live in a dead love.

Deepening relationships meaningful and lasting are complicated always.  Two individuals whose lives are colliding and merging in hopes of achieving the greatest sense of belonging and being hinges on giving.  Giving stands in direct contrast to getting.  One cannot get love no matter how persistent the attempt and/or pursuit.  You can’t make someone love you lastingly.  They choose.  You choose.  That’s how love works.  Just because you buy her flowers today does not mean she’ll love you tomorrow, or even later that evening.  She will undoubtedly enjoy the flowers, attention, effort and maybe even creative detail, but that’s like, not love.  Too many of us buy flowers but do not give love.  There’s a bit of truth and good perception to the argument that Valentine’s day is merely a consumer driven industry, a golden opportunity for businesses to capitalize on people trying to buy love, but only the smallest bit of truth and good perception.  The ones holding tight fisted and defiantly to this argument defending their lack of romantic effort on this day to a somehow believed track record of loving their wives in the everyday typically seems to boil down to tightening a screw here and there, taking out the trash most nights, keeping a good roof overhead and so on.

Love is about more than doing.  It is giving in every chance and never noticing who gave last.  Love is blind in this regard.  It has to be.  The moment you start keeping notice and record of who gave last, your hand empties held out waiting to receive.  Love withers.  Wilting in the waiting.

Some of the best advice I ever did receive in regard to relationships succeeding, Be quick to forgive, and forget.  Hurts are sticky and offenses are clingy.  Allow them room in your heart and love will be strangled to a death.  Forgiveness is what makes love live.

Forgiveness is typically defined as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution.

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.  Love doesn't strut, doesn't have a swelled head, doesn't force itself on others, isn't always "me first," doesn't fly off the handle, doesn't keep score of the sins of others, doesn't revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.  Love never dies.  (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, The Message)

one word. what is it?

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] One word, singular and bare, complete and roaming still, shadow cast deeply, widely into future sleeping.  A word, one, that stands tall and soars at its mention and holds hope, fear and all forgetting.  Cutting honest through cluttered thoughts and old vocabulary not aging well.

Manna ...what is it?

If you had one word ...only one, to speak defining love to her, to him, to them all over again, what would it be?  No explanations, just one word to say it all.  What is it?  No ornate words fluffing flat folded hearts, but one cutting straight to her heart releasing love new, holding strongly and true.

Where is it?

Is it gone, lost in shuffle, let go of during the thinness of life together, bruised in traded blows?  Or forgotten?  Or mistaken for smiles only?

Love is work always of the most beautiful and worthwhile kind.  Like a garden springing abundant, teeming life and fragrance captivating, love is made strong in the dirt where eyes can see no beauty.  It never just happens.  Love is made.

Be it a name or a place, a memory, quality or symbol catching, there is one word that finds them all.  One word synonymous with love that is more precise, calls it common and undoes those four letters, l-o-v-e, as generic, misstated and overused.

Find that word.  Work for its discovery, not for a day or a moment manufactured romantically, but a connection far deeper than the life we see and know.

One word precise and exact for love. What is it?

Your word.  One. What. is. it?

love in words.

hearts collidebruise | bend | break | bellow to be free to know at the edge holding hands finger in knuckle lost in grasp feet planted dirty want. to give. scenes and history blurred into one beautiful mystery escaping love is a weight heavy for one held easy by two a euphoric finding grandest completion mess of years compounding erased with glances belonging held by stronger than wanting desire longing to be found to be loosed to be free

“Take away love, and our earth is a tomb.” Robert Browning

the discipline of love.

“Love is friendship set on fire.”Jeremy Taylor

“Does everyone leave?”

My daughter, aged young, eyes wide observing, told me stories about friends’ families broken or breaking.  There was a curiosity in her asking.  A wondering of love building expectations to be held in her heart for now and ahead.  My hands clinched the steering wheel a bit stronger, and I sat a little stiffer in hearing her say of her friend believing her mom would probably return in a couple days.

“She said probably in a couple days her mom will be back.” “Do you think so, Dad?” “Does everyone leave?”

Our hearts diseased with self, infected with independence roam to be satisfied.  The satisfaction, we call love, our hearts happy and served and content in the shallow.  The deep undisturbed.  Years together do not equal love.  Close but not connected, no matter how long, is like neighbors under one roof with the option of moving never officially dismissed.  Love is not found in a bar or a car.  I heard that somewhere when I was young, and it’s actually great advice.  A precise uncovering of love truer than we are led to know.  We find love not where we look, but in the exact spot we allow ourselves to be found.  To be found can be quite troubling when we are too busy searching and grabbing and keeping for ourselves happiness.  So we synonymously connect sex to love and cheapen the chance, run eventually and our hearts shut a bit tighter.  Our hearts are not conditioned to love, but we want it.  Happy.  Everyone wants happy and that proves problematic.  The divide ever widening between wanting love and actually getting there.  Instead, love is romanticized and bludgeoned to an unrecoverable end with thoughts of smiles and sex and white picket fences forever.  What few know and fewer find is that work is required.  Love is discovered in death.  It takes a strong discipline to die enough for room to be made in your heart for another and you in theirs.  Both forever and lasting.

That’s the stuff of true romance.  Not trouncing lightly on rose pedals and lying easy under an always clear sky, but cutting through brush losing the path in steps, crossing rushing rivers in storming skies and forging up slippery slopes.  Love is discovery and adventure.  Love is sweat and swearing while you reach to pull out of moments when you only want to slide back into selfish alone.  Sitting at the dinner table colder than happy, ready to run, pushing out your clinched fist to open your hand to hold the hand known by your heart and wearing your symbol given on a much sunnier day, and allowing the moment to pass without words but together, there in the moment that is love, too.  That is right where love deepens and soars both at the same time.  In the discipline, love is truly found. “No, not everyone leaves.  But I want you to know that relationships are tough.  They take work and are not always easy but always worth it.  Always.”

Love is found in the giving not receiving.  It is in the receiving that you hold it as love holds a heart that was once two now lost singularly.

worry and the waste.

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"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.  ...And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life ...or a single cubit to his stature?” Matthew 6:25-27

Falling in and out of several dreams does not make for restful sleep.  Somehow in the flash of dreams and characters and unfitting scenes, all of the fabricated and half truths melted into one shifting timeline moments before my alarm sounded.  A house never visited nestled in country quiet, dark and bare... a crumbling staircase, the first starting nine feet off the ground... the new tattoo on my arm, a symbol and reminder of hope and perseverance, skin tattered and worn... a cousin with a different face, a friend familiar I’ve never known, a plot undiscoverable, I’m just running somewhere either to or from, chasing or escaping, but definitely running.  I’m breathing heavy, eyes closed, in another world where things may be more actual than when I wake eyes opened.  I woke tired.  And worried.

There’s plenty in life that does not make complete sense to me in the current.  Much to leave to worry and thieving nights.  Distance, that is what we worry about.  Where our feet stand and where we should be or want to be or need to be, that is the distance.  The money we have and the money we need gives room for more worry about our job and our future and our family and our happiness, our goals and expectations.  And then worry really opens the box.

What about us, who we really are?  Am I enough?  The weight and value of my existence, do they matter?  Do I matter?

Worry is a descending staircase unending into the darkness of doubt.  The more worry, the less faith.  Moments wasted.  Worry the culprit.  We, the worrier, not the lifeless activity of worrying, but our engagement and giving in to it.  In worry we waste minutes, hours, whole days and weeks.  All moments given us to live and discover, to succeed and fail and succeed, to make a path and leave a mark on the years and patch of earth we dwell.

With ease we run in circles carving deeper lines of worry about everything and anything, our faith diminishing while life keeps a straight line.

Life is filled with unresolve, unfigurable, breaks and pauses and yet to be determined occasions.  There is so much to worry about especially when we must wait, cannot see or even imagine an outcome better than worse.  But there is faith and trust and living with eyes closed.

Morning begins me already sunk deep in worry.  How are the kids, really?  Will we be happy finally?  Will I get from here to there and set my feet literal in dreams hanging still?  All answers ringing maybe.  None more valuable than the life added in moments and occasions.  Detached from the answers or resolve is hope full in each day dark and light, heavy and whole.  Make no mistake, each day a gift given to be opened and lived.  The next another gift all of its own to be opened and lived after in the moment given.

And so with this new day, I let go of yesterday clinging stinking of both what is and what is no more and I clinch what is given.  As many times necessary, I repeat this action.  In my life, it happens to be necessary very much and often.