“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”
C. S. Lewis

...

...It’s as if I’ve built up this wall to keep everyone out and to hide behind. For the sake of safety and security, long years of building a fortress around myself to keep everyone out.  
But I’ve trapped myself as well.
No one can get in, but I can’t get out, either.
I’ve been alone with myself for so long that I can't stand it, but so closed up that everything beyond that wall fills me with fear. I know that it is time- this wall needs to be torn down and done away with. So I begin wildly beating the walls and pulling down bricks.
My hands are bleeding raw and the process of breaking free...is excruciating.
 
I have to get out no matter what the cost.

And I cough, pulling bricks out as decade-old mortar crumbles over my dusty hands, throwing them away- all of these pieces that make up my prison. They lay in a pile behind me splashed with the blood from my frantic hands.

Finally I collapse- I need a break from attacking these bricks.
I lay in the dust and cough as it settles and swirls, coating my sweaty face. But then...when the chalky grey is done dancing in the air, I taste the sweetest oxygen seeping through the compromised wall.

I sit up.

There is a breeze blowing through, I can feel the outside and for the first time I don’t fear it, I’m eager for it- so eager.

That openness, wide and terrifying and shakingly huge- I want it so badly.

The honesty.

So once again wild with desperation, I continue the task in front of me- determined that there will not be a single brick left in its place. Looking forward to dancing in that openness, free of walls and masked insecurity.

I will be free.

Adventure.

unfurl my sails
shake out their dust
too-eager canvas
fuels wanderlust

hoist the mast high
feel the wind surge
reel in your anchor
let the ship diverge

the fear of being free
of holding nothing back
oft times keeps me from going
off the beaten track

i am not running away
just running for the sake of feeling the wind
i am not lost nor am i astray
just running so restlessly after Him

as swimming in deep salty waters
overcome in tumultuous ocean
so His love drowns my fear,
His grace moves me on,
and His mercy gives this ship motion

Chasing leafy winds...

He clutches the bundle of colorful leaves all gold and red. 
He laughs, not a care in the world besides catching all of them as he chases the wind
laughter bursts out in wide happy peals.
“Get them, get them!”
I urge him on, smiling.
“Dawww, darn it.” he says in his four-year old lisp.
He can’t run fast enough to catch the leaves in mid-air.
I try to encourage him-
“You have to be faster, the leaves are so quick!
but don’t worry, the wind is always around.
More leaves will fall...”
I look around and breathe in the brilliance
the colours that hide all year and then are revealed
when the chlorophyll fades away.
“God’s always around too.” I think,
remembering how I chase him like a child,
eager to touch the wind, grasp it.
And though I never will,
I run all the same after an ungraspable God-
the kind of Creator that you cannot fit into a box.
And the swirling leaves and the blessings 
are the evidence of the wind,
the shadow of Jehovah as he passes by,
giving me something to run after.
Greyson and I walk home and he picks up big yellow leaves,
gasping each time he finds a prettier one.
And of course, each one is more stunning than the last.
“Oh, Esther- look!” he holds up a bright scarlet leaf.
His big blue eyes make me ache,
because I long to be like a child 
and wonder the way that I used to.
Why does the world make us so unresponsive to glory?

So today, as we walked home with an ever-growing bouquet of that glory, I resolved to be enraptured, to live with eyes that see beyond the surface image of life and let myself be filled with wonder. Child-like wonder. 
 


Lord, I want to see.

Soul-Quenched.

As water roaring from a rock,
from the rock that is higher than I
nourishment flows never ceasing
a river of holy communion.

O my soul, come to the water
bathe thyself in grace.
immerse yourself in his goodness
drench your dry thirst, drink in His love.

Saturation of all of my senses,
I am satisfied in you.
The absolute end of a search,
the resolution, the consummation...
The Omega.

Hallelujah, praise God;
He has saved my soul and enlarged my heart.
Do you thirst, does this life leave you parched and dry?
Do you hunger, your soul a moaning cry?
Come to the water. Eat of the bread of life.

Yahweh; holy, exquisite, passionate, eternal, just, compassionate, merciful, patient, jealous, steadfast, impossibly huge, awe-inducing, fierce... {to name a few of the attributes of an indescribable God.}

1“Come, all you who are thirsty,
   come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
   come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
   without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
   and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
   and you will delight in the richest of fare.
3 Give ear and come to me;
   listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
   my faithful love promised to David.”
{Isaiah 55}