“For now, I’ll bring what I can to my own four walls. I recognize the purpose, the promise of this: a church is made by its space, by its practices.”

I’m thinking about how early the spring flower buds rise up from the grass; just barely on winter’s heels. How uncomfortable, how cold the soil must be, still half-frosted, when the roots start to take shape.

My love lives in my cheeks – gives me away by the first smile. all the lines from years spent laughing, warm with extra freckles in the summer; a poker face that doesn’t keep once my knees fold.

I don’t want to be a saint, I want a love I don’t fight alone to keep.

I know I could be an astronomer of this swooning.

If every feeling comes like a wave, I try to decide what kind of coastline I’ll become.

I’m choosing to believe things are getting better again. The give and take of joy, remembering a few days of ache does not mean forever.

Meet me where happiness doesn’t feel like a false spring.

Your anger, your sorrow, your fear, are okay to feel through, no matter how big it feels now.

I’ll craft a haven that that cradles every joy and sorrow, but doesn’t hold them to keep.

This does not have to be a hard life to love. There is not enough time to let it stray too far from my hands.

I never lose pieces of me, I just gain new understanding.

I’d get lost in this green, ferns leaning against the trees, soil stuck to my feet, never dream of finding my way back again.

There will be a time where this hurts less and it will not mean it didn’t matter. It means that in the face of feeling something precious slip in my hands, I will always find a way back to myself.

Some mornings, I like to live like a secret; wake as quietly as I can, slip out of bed without so much as a wrinkle.

How radiant you are, waiting by the window, watching for the sun to grant you more time to dance beneath it. You’ve let yourself dream again. Even if its in bites, even if it’s in a different voice than it used to be.

I descend into an unopened sky, the ocean floor, the final embrace of a graveyard. Find your fill of me before my blue pales like a sour moon.