He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
says Isaiah*, and later Christ in the Gospels*.
The words unravel and re-weave this anointing of my flesh,
the very calling of my spirit. I know deep and hard this work and this purpose.
I write to proclaim release to the captives.
I write, as Christ lives, to provide for those who grieve
in Zion
It is my longing to tell you, with all of my breath every
day and forever, to take heart dear friend and receive the crown of beauty.
Throw open your arms and soar a while in your own sweet release, because I have
known it, because it is magnificent.
But I forget, daily, to breathe in and receive. I forget to
slow the thundering hooves and linger in my freedom long enough to proclaim it.
I wash laundry and file papers and shepherd babies and my fingers don't find
the keyboard. I make phone calls and wonder where the days go and when I will
find the time to proclaim release when I'm jailing my very self with too
much of the wrong kind of work and sit behind the bars of self-doubt to mold a
casing around my tender heart with the liar's black clay.
I am mentally and spiritually aware that to abide is
not merely to obey or to exist. This awareness, though, comes up shy of
internal some days and days turn into weeks as days are wont to do.
And so I make the paper remember for the words to instruct
when the brain forgets. I make the schedule to cradle a cushion to abide, a
daily space for the fingers to find the keyboard: first, time to read and sit and pray and receive, then 4 hours a day of
like-it-or-not writing time, beginning tomorrow. No excuses. No escape.
Because,
I am a writer before I am a housekeeper.
I am a writer before I am a chef.
I am a writer before I am an interior designer, a patio
sweeper, a phone app dawdler, a grocery shopper, an iced-tea guzzler.
I am a writer before I am a Facebook junkee, a Twitter
checker, a Pinterest surfer.
And? I am a mother before I am a writer. A wife, a daughter,
a friend. So I puzzle the things together and remember them all as gifts.
I must first breathe in my freedom and break through with
release. First, I dance, radiant, with my flowering crown of beauty.
First?
Abide.
Then?
Proclaim.
Bestow.
And Write.
Will you join me, too, in this?
Abide, dear friend. Live in creativity. Live in amazement.
Live in love. And let the rest all fall away.
And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love,
you'll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of
Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the
depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
-Ephesians
3:14-19
*Isaiah 61:1-3, Luke 4:16-21
