I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.
C.S. Lewis

...

I bought plum blossoms

more for the name

than for the color;

I buy lipstick that way, too.

In other words,

if it sounds like a poem,

I’ll take it.

— Dorothea Grossman, “Untitled”

dandelions.

you stand in the middle of the kitchen

because your mother said it was easier,

said it was lighter without the weight of

a braid thick as the bread your

grandma used to knead back and forth

on her wooden table. your grandpa

made that table when your mother

still ran around in long

hair tangled with weeds she still

believed were flowers. there

were five chairs then, she tells you they

were crooked.

misshapen like the scar on your arm

from falling off the willow the

seventh summer you lived. the branches

pulled the sky to the earth,

dirt cracked your wrist, but

you were lucky. you were lucky,

your daddy said

to only have the breath stolen from

your lungs for a moment. that

moment of grasping for

air never left you, still, and

you

stand in the middle of the kitchen

crying as, in one snip, the past your

waist strands of your hair swish.

near your bare feet and she's wrong

it's not

lighter.

you finger the sudden cut and peek

in the chipped mirror, you look older.

and now

it's too late to pretend you won't

ever grow up, too

late to still call dandelions

flowers.

if there were words.

Be Good To You

Be yourself, truthfully

Accept yourself, gratefully

Value yourself, joyfully

Forgive yourself, completely

Treat yourself, generously

Balance yourself, harmoniously

Bless yourself, abundantly

Trust yourself, wholeheartedly

Empower yourself, prayerfully

Give yourself, enthusiastically

Express yourself, radiantly

-Tracey Steffy

learning to do just that.

photo from last summer by the always talented and ever dear & lovely allix.

coffee shop.

I am alone but not lonely. tell me,
how can i be? i am a part
of the passing glances of strangers, grabbing
coffee cups in four sizes for fifty eight
kinds of heartbreak, (number three:
a sun setting suddenly on familiar
red wind fields come autumn, the
same, every year, the difference, every year.
number eighteen and a half: the first laugh of your baby,
the last word before a goodbye. inexplicably
intertwined with how your face feels creases)
every hello, i manage to slip
my hand into, i find a way to whisper
my name into lapses of conversation, if
only to say, "I am
here."
the door opens and closes for people,
friends, lovers, strangers, all
saying good day, and i am somewhere
no where, now here, a part
of the dust in the air from
boots treading dirty roads, a single
fluttering breath in these
minute exchanges meaning
everything and yet nothing at once.
this, you spill accidentally, not unlike,
the stains leaving rings in your journal,
still bitter when the smell leaves your
fingers. i stay long
after the doors have shut, and always
choose the oldest leather chair
to unravel my worries into, spilling
them alongside sips of
a lattee foamed with milk. is
there anything lovelier? my name is written
in sharpie on the side. i read between
the lines of every letter and write
a poem for each barista that
scribbles the h in my name with a swoop,
for the ones who scrawl the letters tightly,
a love song. there are white pages
before me bound in the third journal
i've used in two years. look, do you see the
blue sky, washed clean after rain?
outside. if you wait, it will ring gold and
how can i (you) be lonely, when you
sit next to a window?

justified freely.

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." - Romans 3:23-24

He gives freely that which we could never earn nor deserve.
Not because we are good or righteous in and of ourselves.
But because He is good and righteous -- and we are His.

Hallelujah.

an empty net.

when you're seven you
spend a week fishing for
crayfish in the harbor.
it's the promise of boiling them
later, in butter that keeps
you lying on the hot wood
of the dock. "I got one!" your
cousins cry and you jump
from your stomach, breaking
the rule of not-running near
the boats just this once, to see.
in bare feet, you're more likely to catch
splinters than your net a
swimmer, but you keep scooping
the mesh in and out of the
murky water. the day slips
past, darting from the sun's travel
like the minnows hiding in
the shadows and you spend half
of it trying to avoid tripping
the rest of the cabiners. they go out to
catch a fish perpetually growing
from spinning lines, a story
more tangled than the poles sitting
on the side of grandma's cabin.
when you're seven you eat crayfish with
your fingers and collect
freckles like lucky stones from
sprawling in the sun all day, and
promise yourself each summer
will stay the same.

the brothers.

"We need the iron qualities that go with true manhood. We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done." - Theodore Roosevelt

listen carefully.

have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?
or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends?
or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked,
or the hush of a country road at night,
or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak,
or, most beautiful of all,
the moment after the door closes
and you’re alone in the whole house?
each one is different, you know,
and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.
- norton juster

...

is there anything
that sits better
on your skin than
the feeling after
a good run?
it's contradictory
to what vogue
says, yes, but
i alway feel
beautiful after
finishing one.

and even now.

the morning air barely crept from the
dew and i thought, how early it
must be, little did i know what a
secret pleasure to be awake
before the rest of the world decides dreaming
is not enough.

i slipped from my house
and forgot to leave a note,
i forgot to say where i was going,
because when you are young
enough to forget, you are young enough
to not worry about leaving.

we went for a walk,
together and i was happy, maybe
more so than i can remember.
one foot in front of the
other, and deep breaths in summer
woods, my grandparents and
i.

once, i drank ginger ale
and i accidentally sliced my finger on the tab,
it was just a small cut barely worth
mentioning, but
i cried as my grandma and
aunt and i, crammed into
the bathroom to get the antiseptics
and i cried as they dabbed
it on my finger.

it shouldn't have happened
but that does little to change
things, besides, i was a big girl,
even then.

now i find myself
watching the sunset and watching the sunrise
almost simultaneously.
now i find myself crying
over spilled milk more than
i should and do you know,
i can't drink
ginger ale without tasting the
sky from that afternoon.

i remember the trees
spread their green canopy
blocking out the sky and my
feet were dirty from running
barefoot all summer.

and even now,
i still love
long walks by myself more
than i should.

/// ABUNDANTLY FREE

"Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth." - Ephesians 1:7 MSG