Dear tiny Bud,

Dear tiny bud,

     it is not yet spring and yet you have been trying to pull open the little bell that is still closed around it's fragrance. Stop doing that. You will open in time. it is not yet time. I have appointed a time. Just because the spring has not yet arrived and laid it's song in you, just because it is not warm enough yet for your branch which I have placed you on to nourish and move you to be more to be open and different then you are does not mean there is a problem with your bud. It is not yet spring. You will open i the spring. You are a garden locked up, and I cannot wait to show you what will happen when you are awakened. Be still, tiny bud. Be still. Be as you are. Do not fear. Do not worry. You are beautiful, and small, and a tiny tiny thing. I have big hands. I can whisper to tree. I am the tree. I have planted the roots. I am the soil. 

 I saw a caterpillar once that looked very much like you and it has turned into a small cocoon. I heard him grieving his form, all shriveled and gel-like. He had heard the powerful voice of relatives that had told tales of becoming something else beyond the cocoon, so loud and beautiful in their wings. You have seen them yourself, vibrant and vast and in flight. but the caterpillar had never felt the wind in it's wings and never looked in a mirror and seen himself so beautiful and ... so at times, just some days, some seasons, it was very hard to believe it would ever happen. Do not fear. Do not worry. You have not been given fear and worry. Your Father knows what you need even before you say the words. Be still, and know, the Gardener is near you tiny bud. Be a bud. Be a bud. Wait. Shh.

  The Gardener

Brookey I miss you!

I have just wept after reading Brooke

OH, Wisconsin.

the house has been swept clean (Charla) and my house feels a little empty

unsettled, timid as I put myself into God and say this is my only hope

(really)

I have this new weakness I feel something i haven't ever felt

knowing that soon, I too will have to put things in boxes like Brooke has, and whether it be down the street or Grandville or Byron or timbuktu

Marcy reminds me after reading Brooke like I just have

Jesus is home

and I have had to put myself in boxes and put myself away sometimes trying to hush the lingering old ways of me and yet love myself because it is God who has made me

and who I am now is not myself but HIM

I can try, only try

as He knits me into Him.

and it's timid feeling, this resting in something I cannot see

and yet something I want to grow in

I feel like small child who is now discovering windows and summer

and the sun above the roof

I have begun to learn that I can lift my head into it's beating rays

because I have no fear no shame no stepping back

no more tears except for Him

and I can look dead on in my timid childlike way

with strength, discipline and love

I can make decisions with my hand in His hand

and He may giggle and move me somewhere else instead

I can only try

we can only try

and we will make mistakes

but His great love, 

oh His great great love

covers all

and looks at us in great great joy

smiling

(I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go

I will councel you with my eye upon you - Ps 32)

(I woke to,

I know your frame, I am intimately acquainted with all of your ways

I know the way you are, the way you are supposed to be

I have written every single one of your days. - Ps 139)

wc

the pigment was everywhere

the pants the yellow shirt the un-dry soil I had made to come alive on Arches paper

it was dripping on the hardwood soil

and I was thinking of Jesus

as he was painting Him as himself with piercings in his ears instead of His hands His wrists

and I felt too quiet about it

i don't know am I doing it right?

I'm trying and His spirit rests in me and I believe in Him

and I will fight with his hands as my hands as if they cannot move without Him

until I have become like clay I dont want to be like anything but clay in His hands

I dont want to fight it anymore and try to fit myself into something I have created

and then I will be like myself

so much less like myself then when I st

arted

and more like Him and His version of me

and then I will be like myself

Abba

Abba

Abba

Father

I cannot do it as an orphan anymore

cannot

I wrap my arms around your neck and weep

while you collect the wet of my face in a precious bottle and then you feed me

heavenly food of your words and my identity

(I am worth it, you say, I am)

and I kiss you and see again how lovely you are

I don't want to forget again.

ever.

and you have set my feet again on earth next 

to the peed on, abused, scared, beaten, scarred, ones in the world who have been taught they cannot (they cant without you and we can scream it at them but they have to taste it and so we make gourmet words, meals, prayers of simplicity and cups of coffee and zucchini bread at 11 pm and they begin to taste it) 

you have asked us to kiss them feed them free them

and it's simple really really simple

(God protects the simplehearted. - psalm 116:6)

teach

us

to

love

the

broken

the 

enemies

the 

loves 

of our hearts

like 

this