Importance

I have a small book of things I want to do with my future children. Important things that I got to experience and so I know and remember their tastes, or those that I didn't and I can't wait to discover alongside my own littles. 

Things that will mean something and things that will create a more magical childhood. 

But in the back of that book, I've also slipped some letters. Words of encouragement for my sons. Sage pieces for my daughters. Things I wish I'd known when I was a child. There are also letters to my husband. Because I believe that when you begin a family, you create something, and you get to decide how it is made, how to cultivate it, what is necessary. There are things I will not fold on concerning my future children. There are things I want to instill in all of them, and I want my husband right beside me as I do it. 

I want it to be an us thing. 

A we thing. 

A together thing. 

And this is one. 

I don't just want to preach this to my daughters. I want to live it out, and I want to marry a man who will illustrate it with a ferocity only matched by me. 

This is important to me. 

"I don't want my daughter to grow up in a world where she has to constantly wonder if she's beautiful enough. I want my daughter to grow up in a world where she constantly wonders why beauty is the most important thing for a woman to possess. Why is it greater and more valuable than qualities and characteristics like humility, kindness, gentleness, encouragement, a wild heart, a fierce spirit, strong shoulders, bravery, ingenuity, compassion, wisdom, intelligence, curiosity, and a life for Christ?
I want that to be the question of her existence, the one she presses towards daily to prove wrong.
Why does it matter most?
I want my daughter to hear words out of my mouth like, "You are smart. You are generous. You are selfless. You are capable. You can learn this. You can discover that. You can do it. You are courageous. You are plenty and abundant. You are cherished. You are incredible. You are Christ-like." And when someone looks at her and says to her, "You are beautiful," I want her to turn to them and tell them that that will not woo her, it will not win her heart, it will not rest in her bones with the weight that other words might.
She doesn't need to know if she's beautiful or not.
She needs to know if you noticed that she can climb mountains. If you saw that she can dance for hours on end because her legs have strength. If you understand that she not only recites poetry, but hears it thrumming through her blood daily. If you place worth on the fact that she is practical and able. She needs to know if you will ask her about Neruda and Dickens and Tolstoy. If you will reach your arms around her waist when she is ninety. If you can tell by that twinkle in her eye that she knows some of the answers before you, and if you're okay with that. She needs to know what your price is. And if it's only how she looks and who she is, rather than who she can be and what she does, then you are not the man for her.
She needs to know if you care that she is more than.
I want my daughters to view the world differently. Not by way of a rose-colored lens of beauty, but with all the greys and blues and smaller colors that we often forget. I want them to question everything in balance with what is around them and their abilities.
I want my daughters to feel eternity on their backs and an endlessness that brings hope, the weight of glory with insistence.
I do not want to subject my daughters to the cage of being beautiful, the confines of loveliness. I want them to have more.
I want them to be more."

A book of flowers

Apparently, I am frustrated. I swear that I'm trying really hard not to be. But still. I noticed it last night as I laid on my bedroom floor and painted abstract florals and a few valentines. My hands had been shaking, but they stopped halfway through, and I noticed my shoulders loosening and a load falling off.
This quarter has been a very difficult one.
In a way, I feel like I'm only making it through because of John Keats and C. S. Lewis and tea. Literally, I make enough tea to share with a table-full of people every morning, and I drink it. All by myself. Because no one (aside from the lovely A) is here and no one has come here.

I miss my family.

I think you should all know, there is a context to this. As I expressed above, this term is a beast. I have yet to find any work. I've been comparing myself far too much again. They cut a bunch of programs at my school. Doubt is my constant companion. And thus far this year — but really, it's only February — I have had four sets of friends get engaged.

I really miss my family.

I was remembering last night, whilst mixing up some pale pink and peach because I don't have those colors of gouache. I remembered that when I was really little, my mom used to wash my hair over the stainless steel sink in our kitchen. Light and suds would spill everywhere, and the water was always just warm enough. Then she would trim my split ends and we would scatter them off the porch in the backyard for the birds to use in their nests. 
I had forgotten about that.

The truth is, I want a family. That has become painfully obvious to me. My heart has been thrumming full of the reasons I chose to go to school in the first place, and honestly? Many of them had to do with my children. How I wanted my children to be able to come to me ask me about the color of Neptune and how to use a microscope and what Shakespeare really meant, and I would have some of those answers for them. I have always wanted that for them.
But a family is not an option right now. That is not on my horizon. As far as I can tell, there's not even any broad shoulders and strong forearms reaching for me yet. Nothing, no one, not at all. I just stand alone in my kitchen and make butter and chocolate cake and read about Christopher Robin and listen to La Traviata on repeat and wonder about what to do after next year.

And so, I miss my family.

I really want to go home. I thought I would before spring break, but now the roads are an utter mess, and there's really no chance of that happening. Now I'll just have to bide my time and paint more small illustrations and prints. Now I will have to be alone for awhile longer.
I am actually learning to appreciate that, being alone. I know it doesn't seem like it, but I am.
There is something sacred and gorgeous about knowing yourself so well from your experiences of solitude and quiet breathing.
I have had many of those as of late. And so many magical memories that have been keeping me awake.

I started a book. It is full of good, lovely things I will do with my daughters and sons. Maybe you will read it someday. Or maybe you will see it.
I have hope for the latter one.

Where my heart is

Aside from celebrating the Carpenter's first coming to our earth, my favorite thing about Christmas is being home.

I like being home.

I like hiking through our pacific northwest forest and chopping our tree down. I like laying in front of the wood-burning fireplace and reading Oswald Chambers. I like waking up and passing gifts into the open hands of my sisters + my brother. I like knitting with my mother. I like shooting pop cans down in the backyard and working in the shop with my dad. I like sharing tea at the table. I like the big Italian meal. I like the candles burning each night. I like the hidden stashes of chocolate. I like the cold nip in the air even when we don't get snow, because our noses get red anyway. I like the old books, everywhere, piled in piles that I may never find possible of accumulating for many more years to come. I like the china cabinet, just the fact that there is a china cabinet. I like my hens. I like the stain all over my hands because that is the one place I break the rules, I stain without gloves. I like our trees. I like the mountains.
I like it here.
I didn't used to, but now I do. This place grew into me, the marrow of my bones. And maybe it's just the people here and my family here and everyone here or maybe this is just a season that will be over in a year or so, but I'll admit it. I like the familiar. I like my hometown. I like my home. Call me a fool for the years I wasted griping when I could have been loving, but the solid truth of the matter is, hearts are fickle and mine is utterly so.
This place is where I've made my best discoveries.
And while it's true that I'm off having adventures elsewhere now, it is also true that I always want to come home for the holidays.

I am just a small person. I always will be.

Like Him

I went to see my niece this past week. Just for a little while, and I brought along a pink chair for her. Giving is becoming one of my favorite things. I think it is a quality that became more prevalent + apparent in me when I became an aunt. I love it.

We had some hard discussions and lively debates while I visited my family and friends and held that little baby I adore. I was teary-eyed for an entire night, and I promise you, you would have been afraid of the way I sobbed and prayed in the car on the drive back. I was a mess. I even had to stop and buy red gladiolus because I knew I wouldn't make it home so heartbroken without flowers.
I never really loved people. I was never really compassionate.
But these days God has been ever so subtly + tenderly showing me that I am becoming more so. I am learning to love people. It was so evident to me as I wept over the depravity of the human mind and how inconsequential we make such heart-wrenching things to be.
We are such wretched creatures.

Can I confess to you now? Please let me.

My greatest fear at the moment, is that someone—anyone—I know will die without Jesus. And they will do it on purpose. They will slap His hand away.

I am terrified of that.
Because this is the sweetest + most gorgeous thing that ever happened to me. This is bliss. This is a silver lining. This is joy. This is true redemption. This is forgiveness.
Knowing Jesus is heaven on earth, and quite literally.
I cannot imagine how the brief things of this life can compare to the eternal promises that my carpenter has made to me. And I don't understand. I really don't. I tried so very hard as I prayed for hours about it yesterday. But the truth of the matter is, I will never 'get it.' I will never see it any other way. Because I've tasted Him + His promises. I've seen His work and His blessings. I've felt His presence. And nothing even comes close.
Everything else is dirt.

I just want to give everyone what I have. I whispered that in a choked voice as I drove yesterday. And I really do. I really do want to give people what I have. What I have is beautiful. What I have is eternity in a handful. What I have is light and light and light. What I have is never-ending + ever-present.
What I have is a Savior.
That is perhaps the most beautiful thing about Christianity. You are saved. Rescued. Cherished. Loved. Freed. Liberated. You had a gun to your head, pressed cold and hard and with steady hands, deserving of it too, and then He was there. He stepped forward and knelt down in front of you and placed the barrel against his own temple and then he pulled the trigger. He saved you. He spared you. He forgave you.

He already took the bullet for you.

The greatest giver is the Christ. Let me be more like Him.

I am working on some small things, letters actually, and I hope to share them with you soon. But it is because of how God is delicately and persistently capturing my heart daily that I feel the need to share with you some of my thoughts before I can put them in the form I really wish them to be in.  In other words, I'm impatient, so please be longsuffering if my posts these days are erratic + incoherent. My mind is a mess. And you will have something that flows and is beautiful and substantial soon. Cross my heart.