To glimpse new light

arching

over just-born day

is to witness

resurrection.

Today’s dawn

breathes life into

yesterday’s 

small deaths.

Day rolls out

of the tomb

awakened, alive,

and I stand here

trailing graveclothes.

March wind comes early

this year, sweeping across

the field, around the corners

of the house,

rustling dead leaves

as it goes.

We pull on boots and

run outside, into muddy

March’s gusty embrace,

our own cluttered hearts

swept clean by

spring wind.

One cold Sunday morning last February, I found myself flat on my back, body tensed on a metal, paper-covered table in a St. Louis tattoo studio. I  clung to my brother’s giant hand, breathing deep and calm. The words that Laura, the tattoo artist, had just proclaimed rang in my ears: “The more tense you are, the harder I have to press the needle.” So as she etched the one slow word into the tender skin of my forearm, I flashed to the posture I had found myself in 12 years earlier when I gave birth to my first child. Intentional relaxation through pain. Calm body, relaxed muscles, despite burning pain. Visualizing beauty as I lay there, verging on tears.

In the months (and if I’m honest, years) leading up to that February morning, I found myself questioning:  “Should I ink this word onto my arm, needle-hot? Is this really ‘me’? Aren’t I already marked?”

We are all invisibly inked; this word is already written on our skin, hearts, foreheads. We are marked people. Wherever we wander, no matter how far away, the truth of our identity is written all over us. We were born Beloved. 

But it is the one thing I keep forgetting. I forget, and forget, and act like I am anything other than beloved. What I knew that cold, sunshiny morning, finally, was that I want never to forget. I knew the answer to my inner questions was YES! I wanted to be marked with my true name, inked visibly, unforgettably, like He was, our beloved names stamped into His flesh. 

So there I was on the table, word freshly inked on my forearm. I slowly sat up and took my first look. It looked familiar, the invisible made visible. My brother smiled at me, squeezed my hand.

It took me several weeks to get back to normal. The ritual of scarring the word into my skin shook something loose in me, unexpected and relieving. I found myself talking with my children and anyone else who would listen, about their belovedness.

One year later, and I confess to you: I STILL FORGET. I still forget and live by the names that the world gives me. But in the dark moments, even wearing long sleeves, I can look down and see the tendril of ink threading out toward my wrist, whispering my true name. 

On a day when

the dog runs away,

the check bounces,

the van ends up in the ditch,

we sit around the tilting table,

wrapped by gratitude for safety,

love settling over us all

like the softest fog.

Well past midnight, cold blue moon floating in the brand-new year’s dark sky, I tuck the older kids into bed with a kiss, whispering “Happy New Year.” One, who has faced new, painful struggles this past year, asks, wistfully, “Will 2018 be better?” My best answer, which I know won’t soothe: “If you make it better, love; it’s in your hands.” “Well, I guess it won’t be, then,” is the reply. My heart stops a second.

Hands, I think, and am moved by the sudden impulse to lay hands on the soft heads of my children for spontaneous New Year’s blessings. I summon up the powers of motherhood, speak soft and deliberate, “Above all things, may you know deep in your bones that you are Beloved,” among other, more specific incantations spoken over sleepy faces that night, as 2018 dawned. A whispered, “Thank you” followed me, lodging somewhere deep in my heart, as I quietly shut the bedroom door.

I rise to meet this blessing, too. It bubbles out of every corner of this past year, past personal failure, past the other shoe dropping, and the other one, and the other one. The life-giving truth is this: just as I am, I am Beloved. The God of the galaxies names me Beloved. Not when I get it right as a mother or teacher or wife. Right now, a beautiful mess.

Living into the truth of this name is the work of my lifetime, the quest of my heart, and the ministry of every day, as I learn what it means to LIVE beloved. Which means living into my whole authentic self. Accepting and believing in the way God is making me into more of myself. Sitting with the pain of the world, or the pain of my children, or my own pain, and not being undone.

The midnight moment of blessing will fade into dream-memory for my children, but my wish for them will never wilt. Let them always feel the weight of my hands on their heads, the truth of their Belovedness trickling through the skin of their scalps into skull, burrowing deep into pre-frontal cortexes, into wherever-it-is that the soul lives..

No New Year’s resolutions for me. Just living Beloved, day by day.

Little poet,

you say a whole poem

in one breath!

You are alive to Beauty,

and all the inhabitants of the universe

crowd around you,

waving,

raising their hands,

jumping up and down,

showing off,

each wanting to be

the next beautiful thing

you notice

with your shining eyes.

 

 

“So,” she asks from behind the steering wheel, after listening to me unload my worries for a few minutes, “what can you learn about yourself as you look back at the first few months of the school year?” I think on this for a few moments, seatbelt feeling uncomfortably tight, and what comes is: surrender. I can learn surrender (again). Surrender to the impossible dual role of mother and homeschool teacher. Surrender to this work and all its inevitable interruptions as sacred, to these days as God’s, to the slow process of building cathedrals out of children, and to making space for accepting and embracing the life I have, the children I have, the family I have, the mundane holy of each day.

Today, let me keep this holy work front and center.

Thank you for God,

Thank you for Jesus.

Please help God to be

a good guy.