I dreamt we found each other in the dark.
Taking small, reserved steps, I heard the crumbling of soft leaves under my bare feet. [Read more…] about What is Possible for Body and Beautiful?- Part 2
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On Vogue and Sanctification
My Vogue came in the mail on Tuesday. It is a grandiose salute to all things style, and the fact that it’s the 125th Anniversary Collector’s Edition makes it special — heavy and thick, full of photos imbued with colors and patterns that capture the reader’s attention with every turn of the page. I look at some of these models and think they are alluring, but mostly skinny. Like scary skinny.
As the “Thou shalt not judge” voice confronts my thoughts, I realize why I battle with the images in my fashion magazine. It is impossible to separate ourselves from our bodies? [Read more…] about On Vogue and Sanctification
Dear Mrs. Swift,
Dear Mrs. Swift,
I have been thinking a lot about you this last week. I am one of many who have followed numerous updates detailing your daughter’s recent legal battle. I am a mother of five young sons and do not have daughters of my own. And still I have pondered what it must be like for you, her mother, to hurt for her and empathize with her and stand strong behind her in the face of a very public court case detailing sexual assault.
As do many mothers who stand alongside me in this journey of raising children, I applaud you for being the kind of woman who has made herself available to walk intimately with her daughter. [Read more…] about Dear Mrs. Swift,
My Girls Gonna Run This Town Tonight
I was in need of jamming to a little Jay-Z in the middle of my tired hump day routine, so with the kids down for summer pseudo-quiet time, I reached for my headphones, stretched out on my side of the bed, and indulged.
I journaled this: “Do you feel the pulse of the sound? The rhythm that compels you to nod your head and maybe even tap your foot to the bass? “Who’s Gonna Run This Town Tonight?” There are beats that literally force our bodies to do a little bounce, and the consistency of the vibrations move us. We can stand two-legged, bone-tired, in front of an overflowing sink full of dishes, and the right song can prompt our bodies into motion. Today, Beyoncé’s man has the power to change my disposition from powerless to powerful. Bored to interested. Awake to the world that is swirling around me.”
Awake. Alert. Ready for Action. [Read more…] about My Girls Gonna Run This Town Tonight
Rocky Roads
This bus is very much like the one we loaded on our way to a remote Honduran village, the summer of 1994. No wonder the ride was scary.
The open air bus slung us left and right, and we pushed hard down on the flats of our feet to steady ourselves. Gravel roads, rutted and bumpy, bounced us up and down. As I gripped the nearest railing, we seemingly leaned out over the mountain’s edge, the bus careening around sharp corners. [Read more…] about Rocky Roads
Suddenly Everywhere
Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs
Ice-capped 14ers stretch across the Colorado skylines, commanding my respect and wonder. Their peaks tippy toe to touch the lowest cloud cover, seemingly meeting the heavens. These mountains stand upright and proud, unmoved by time.
Toward the end of hiking the Rockies yesterday, my legs felt heavier with each forward movement. Whistling twenty mile per hour winds pushed against my every step as I ascended the last two hundred feet of the nearby peak that provides a panoramic view of the Continental Divide. These beautiful landscapes, emblematic of my beautiful Creator, challenge me to consider loss in a new way.
Along the trails that I have meandered this weekend, signposts remind me to walk along the pathways in order to help protect and preserve the historical ground I am treading. And I go along with the instructions because I want to do my part in preserving what is beautiful. It is so rare that we experience beauty in its original form.
But when we do see it — in the midst of tree lined mountain-scapes or clear as glass water trickling down red rock formations or in the smile that grows with our children as they age from one to twelve to seventeen, we want to take note and memorialize the moment. We want hold on and keep the most beautiful moments somewhere in our heart’s memory, forever.
But beauty cannot live without sacrifice coming before it.
When I think of how we, as mothers, have chosen to give up our own bodies to feed soft-cheeked newborns in the quiet, dark hours and how we have acquiesced for generations to the stretching wide of our hips and our wills so that babies growing into children might lunge forward, beyond all the safe places we’ve created, I begin to grasp, maybe just a little, why beauty and loss live so closely together.
Why when my plate feels too full, my heart screams empty.
Why when my friend needs help, my helplessness leads me to listen because I have no words.
Why when someone is suddenly gone, they are suddenly everywhere.