[gallery link="file" columns="5"] Our words, breath within us, hang heavy holding all reality the day can contain. We speak. It is so and it will be. It being reality, our activity and transitioning possibility. All hinged upon our words spoken and planted in our lives. Fruit of our words sprouting from heart. Make no small mistake, we are not Creator. We are architects reading the plans and blue prints, the details of how to put together pieces trusting the plan and scheme makes sense.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. (Proverbs 18:21, ESV)
Our lives agree with our speech, the very words spoken from our heart both out loud and public and whispering within. We agree. We confess and so we become. The authority of our words shapes life. Once believing unreservedly, wildly and free, our dreams and expectations soared to no ceiling. The vocabulary of heroes not tied down this small over-earthed life. As child, we could fly. Now adult, it is easier to walk. And so do our dreams and speech. Life does give way to responsibility in the time between child and adult, but the words do not need changing. They must not. Or they must be found and rediscovered.
As a parent, I am building the infrastructure within the hearts of my daughters. So crucial are the words I try to protect and plant. They are fighting gravity. We all are, really. Speak responsively reacting to what we see or release words that we know to be true. That is the fight against gravity. We bruise and spill and break forgetting words that stretch us out beyond the surface of life small and calculable. Our words shrink and so does our heart. And so does our day.
Emily is an artist. She’s seven years old now and always has been from the first moment a crayon lifted within her hand creating out of her heart on paper. It is beautiful. Her hands move freely to the size of her heart and words. When I ask if she can draw a particular thing a simple reply reveals it. “Sure.” Emily will be an artist as long as she wants to be. When lines created by her hand look crooked and imperfect and when she no longer thinks so, gravity will be pulling heavy. Whether or not Emily continues to be an artist is not what I’m fighting for. The choice of her words and the fact that she believes them for anything in her life both now and forever is.
We are all artists once believing hidden beneath the rubble of life piled high. We forget when we bruise dismissing words dripping life only as stuff of children and toys. Let our words hold life that rightly defy the gravity of smaller.