Somewhere stuck between the line bordering
faith and reality,
there is a girl.

A girl to whom
there is no such thing
as five thirty in the morning.
There are only beginnings,
fresh grass, and
mugs of hot chocolate.
She doesn’t seem to know
what it means to drag your feet
or to
lifelessly slide your toothbrush’s bristles
against the cracks and crevices of your teeth,
wishing you were already at the end of the day
when it had only just begun.

To her,
every printed word is spoken.
She can hear the pages breathe and her heart sings whenever
another character enters,
because for her it means
one more person
to love
which is something
she never seems to run out of.

It is why her eyes dance
and roses grow ‘round her face,
it is why gladness
pours out from her fingers as they
glide across ivory keys,
it is why she sprinkles her words with salt,
why she refuses to let her city on a hill grow dim,
why she believes that death
is a new beginning,
why her hope never wavers,
why she won’t stop giving and
giving and
giving.

Her faith shakes mountains, but sometimes,
only the mountains know it because she
gets frustrated, too.
I’m here to tell her that she
may not see it now,
but the seeds have been growing in places
she didn’t think possible.

So continue to plant them
with thrill and with wonder,
as you live each day like
it was the first.
Don’t stop the water’s flow,
and soon you will find yourself
laughing at Doubt’s face,
I don’t think you’ve ever seen
Doubt’s face.

You’ve been alive
for three hundred
and sixty five days more,
but if growing up means
losing the fireworks in your eyes
and the beautiful thoughts
that sprout from your mind
then,
I beg of you,

don’t.

Beloved,
lay down your arms, and
come run back into Mine instead.
There is no need for you
to fight this battle on your own, when
I’m here, and

I love you.

Before the kingdoms and golden cities,
before the earthquakes and the hailstorms,
before the stars knew their hymns
and the planets their dance,
I loved you.

Beloved,
I made you
to love you.

Let that sink in and resonate in your heart
like a steady, low drum.
I made you
to love you.
I made you
to love you.
I made you
to love you,
because

What good is the universe
in all its splendor and colors
to which names have not yet been given,
what good are the heavens and the seas,
the skyscraping mountains and lowest valleys,
what good is anything in all creation that was and will be
if you
are not there
for Me
to love?

So I formed you.
I patterned your image after Mine,
I took dust and spoke life
to create a beautiful, beautiful you, and the
reason you love is because
I first loved you.
Love is what stitched you together, beloved,
and that Love
runs deeper than any ocean or river, because even
on that worst day,
the day you fell,
the day you told me that
My love wasn’t good enough
that I
wasn’t good enough,
I loved you.
I never left your side even
when you were in sun scorched lands
and your hands
were bleeding from the fruitless labor of
trying to get
to where I am,
you never had to earn my affection or my
consideration, I was
thinking of you
the entire
time, because for Me,
Heaven
wouldn’t be heaven
without you in it.

So I came.
I pursued you
even if it meant watching My beloved
scream false accusations and spitting lies
at My face
even if it meant having nails and thorns
driven into My flesh
even if it meant facing death, but
I overcame it
for you
I took the blame
for you
I carried all the crosses you have and will ever carry
for you
I tore the veil and shook the earth
for you, because I
love
you.

Beloved,
My love
is stronger
than anything
you will ever encounter, and
this is the same Love that
courses through your veins, and so the same
strength that enables you
to receive power
to receive healing
to receive victory in My name.

Beloved,
fear not.

Don’t call me that.

You--

Don’t deserve anything.
Are worthless.
Impure.
Weak.
Everything I put my hand to is kissed by death,
I was meant for no more but failure.
I can’t do anything.
I can’t do.
I can’t.
I--

Lies.
I crucified all that.
You are--

still the same and always will be!
Despite what You did
I keep going back
back
back
My love for You is like
the morning mist,
like flowers that soon wither,
like shores that always,
no matter how strong the tide,
push the waves away,
and I am ashamed.
I am only man.

And I am God.

But—

I am God.

But—

I am God.

Beloved,
take life and death
angels and demons
the present and the future
the highest of heights and the darkest of depths
take every power and everything else you could possibly imagine,
and they still wouldn’t be
even close to a fraction enough to separating you
from My love.

You are right.
You don’t deserve it,
but I love you anyway.
Since the beginning of time,
all you’ve done is pursue everyone and
everything else but Me,
but I love you anyway.
You’ve done nothing but fall short,
but My love carries you past that, beloved.
You are Mine.
Let Me be yours.

You are Mine. I am Yours.
I am yours. You are mine.
You are chosen. I am chosen.
You are My child. I am Your child.
I will never leave you. You will never leave me.
My love for you knows no end. Your love for me knows no end.
Heaven and earth will pass away but, Heaven and earth will pass away but,
I will stay the same. You will stay the same.

Beloved,
why
are you so
afraid?

I’m not anymore.

I have overcome. You have overcome.
You have overcome. I have overcome.
The war has already been won. The war has already been won.

I love you. I love You.
I love you. I love You.
I love you. *I love You.

do not let the
      scorching and searing
                                    the
      burning and blistering


                      the
           slow sawing and
                      the
           bough breaking

          
                      turn your roots
                
                                   upward,
away from the
                                   waters.

Have you seen this girl?
Description?
Here.

She
is an acid-wash-jeans-and-
black-boots-wearing,
leather-bracelets-with-­flannel-flying kind of girl,
the kind of girl who would rather speak
only if spoken to,
because she prefers to tell her stories through
tubes of watercolors and reluctant poetry,
and her look,
she’s heard this a lot of times, can be quite the
back-off-you-don’t-want-to-mess-with-me kind, but
once you’ve jumped that hurdle, the rest comes easy.

Gold
must be stuck in between her teeth,
because every word she says is wrapped in wisdom
******* together with strings of grace, and
sprinkled with good intentions for good
measure
the length of her hair
and you will find that there are still
so much more stories woven
into the strands, you
will see galaxies in her eyes
paintings on her lips
and there are flowers blooming on the tips of her fingers,
try telling her this.
She will blush,
or she will laugh, and you will wonder
if the broken pieces of mirror on the floor
were really just an accident.

But roses have thorns, too.
Some days are thunderstorms,
and there are times when
lightning does strike the same place twice,
and she’s had a lot of those days.
Maybe she’s gotten used to
having her hands burnt from
trying to heal the earth where
it was struck, and
despite the countless times she’s
tried to wash her hands,
she still can’t get rid of the smell.
One day she’ll see that there
is new skin growing from her old wounds.

Other days her lines
just won’t draw straight,
and the blues and yellows
seem to have confused themselves
for greens and reds, and she
forgets that she is being shaped
by someone else, that
she is a work in progress
and that her cracks are being mended,
being molded,
she only has to allow it
to begin.
She’s been building walls,
but it’s time
to tear them
down.

When you see this girl,
tell her not to be so ******* herself.
Tell her
that she is more loved
than she thinks she is,
that inside her coals
are diamonds
tell her to stop worrying
to stop thinking that she
doesn’t deserve anything, well,
she doesn’t, but
remind her of grace.
Remind her that she
is worth dying for, that
even before she was formed, blood
was spilled so that one day
she’d learn how to smile,
how to cross canyons
on an invisible tightrope,
how to hope.
Tell her not to forget that.

So, have you
seen this girl?

Description?

Here.

Take a good,
long look



in the mirror.

It starts
with a warmth, like
fingers spreading thick in my belly
slowly making its way up, up, up
tickling my throat and
warming every inch of this body until
there’s nothing I can do to stop
my lips from parting
my hands from raising
my feet from dancing

How beautiful You are.

Joy.
I feel it radiate, it seems to
vibrate from a well that’s deeper
than I’ve ever known
leaving me without words
and when I find them, they
dance.
The words
dance.
And I feel fire.
My heart swells,
and my bones breathe.
So this
is what it means
to be in love.
And I am so
in love.

How beautiful You are.

Here
I
am.
Walls torn down
pride crumbling
dry and broken
but I know
You’ll still draw me in, so here
I am
standing stunned at…
How do I begin to describe You?
You
whose lips burst forth light
and carved out mountains with precision
set the earth’s cornerstone in position
shut snowstorms in their storehouses
fastened galaxies in their places
You who
breathed out
morning stars.

How beautiful You are.

The sun sets, sinking
in colors of warm honey and
tangerine
I feel You smiling down
on me, and You whisper,
“Child, this one’s for you.”

How beautiful You are.

And my mind just can’t wrap itself around You
and how You
command the clouds to roll like the sea
guiding lightning as it strikes soft earth
and how You
are so much bigger
than I could ever understand
but still are mindful
of man, how
great You are in
perfect faithfulness.

There is no end
to Your love, and if I
were to live and die
a thousand times, and if
the heavens fell
and the seas swallowed up the earth
and the sun stopped rising in the east
and the birds ceased their morning songs
still Your love would
endure
And Your grace
which goes beyond my shame,
I’ve run out of similes and metaphors
to describe how vast
and amazing is this grace
You have that never seems to
run dry no matter how far I run
no matter how hard I fall
no matter how stone-like my heart’s become
Your grace carries me
telling me I’m still Yours.
And I
am forever Yours.

How beautiful You are.

Savior,
Your heart bled at the sight of us
longing for a way to close the gap
millenniums of our pitiful good works
couldn’t close.
Merciful,
in promising to never again
wipe out the face of the earth despite our
stubborn souls sinning the same sins,
saying sorry while we slipped
blood money into our back pockets, we
don’t
deserve
anything.
Yet You
gave
Your
everything.

Overcomer,
Death itself couldn’t keep You prisoner
I still can’t imagine how
Someone like You would
willingly lay His life down
for someone
like me, and I fall to my knees
remembering how
on the cross You
crucified my sins
in the grave You
buried my past
at last
we are free
we are redeemed
we are Your children,
chosen and forgiven
waiting until You
come again.

And if I come to You
before You come to me
and I’ll be running
finally
straight into Your arms,
I don’t know if I’ll even have the
breath to say,

“How beautiful
You are.”