Brielle: Making Space and New Stories

🌿 A triple ping sounds as I’m savoring the day’s first cup of vanilla flavored coffee and the shaded, early morning coolness of our covered patio. Just out there “being” before the heat rolls back. 

Opening the incoming text, I see a line of photos from my daughter, Jillian. Her first official mother-daughter date with her “new” two-year-old, Brielle—officially adopted just yesterday. 

🌿 As I gaze upon the two images of head-to-head silly faces and, the last one, a happy little pixie-girl… I get hit with all the feels. Leaky eyes and a pressing on my heart. 

It’s not like I haven’t received a few photos like this over the past year, but they were never labeled: mother-daughter. They’re the same kind of goofy-faced-girls selfies she used to send with her firstborn, Cadence—and knowing that first girl will soon turn fourteen brought its own wave of sentiment. And it’s all punching new love-and-wonder corners into my mama-gramma heart. 

🌿 Life is so wonder-full and fragile. That a little life can be plucked out of brokenness and planted into a path of redemption moves me to tears. Tears for what was shattered and for these sweet and silly glimpses of hope for a mended future. 

Our hearts have poured love for Brielle since our first FaceTime. And we’ve known she would likely one day be ours. But there is a reality of this grafting-in that takes time to settle, unpack… make a home. I can feel my heart opening that new space for her today. A real and forever space. A stretching that recognizes the broken-world labor pains that brought her to us, as well as the endless power of God to bring life and healing to her precious heart and soul… to her story… to all our broken stories. 

🌿 And for this little one, He has chosen to set her into our family’s story… into my story… knowing we will not be perfect, but that she can grow alongside us. We will make room for her days of joy and of struggle and show her that this is the way of life on earth. Weeds and blooms and making space for each other—together. Letting our stories breathe in the arms of the One who writes and tends and holds us close on quiet, patio mornings where new pictures ping through and new chapters begin. 

#motherdaughter #stories #newstories #adoption #fosteradopt #realLife #redeemingLife #familyLife #newLife #lifewithBrielle

Mining the Dark

A gifted teacher, friend, and fellow Hope*writer, Mara Eller, (@mara.eller) recently posted about being willing to look into the darkness of our lives as a source for deep creativity. She closed with: 

"God invites each one of us to join in the eternal dance of transformation—of creation—and we have powerful tools at our fingertips, whether with paint or flowers or food or words. 

So the question becomes, are you brave enough to venture into the dark? 

I cannot wait to see what you create."

It is true that creatives often delve into struggle, their own and that if others, to bring the truth of both pain and redemption.

In my own journey, having finally dared to acknowledge hints of light after a relentlessly bleak season, I flipped her question and responded:

“The question used to be: am I brave enough to come out of the dark?

After flinching at relentless life for so long, it's been a struggle to dare to hope that light or joy could be trusted. To risk disappointment. To grind through to caring enough to reach for anything good. To try my voice again.

I've been willing to hold space for myself in the dark. To not look away or hurry. Right now others are calling out the new light they see in me and I'm leaning into that one day at a time—God's deep, healing, creative work on the inside—to inform new courage.

So, am I brave enough to mine what the dark taught me? To believe that it's wrought anything good? And to believe that I can paint with words in a way that speaks presence, compassion, hope, and redemption into another's darkness?”

Where are you in the journey, fellow creatives? Fellow travelers?

We can respond to hard events and seasons by running or by turning to face them—to receive them—being present to our own pain and acknowledging the need for comfort, help, and rest. For time to breathe, understand, and grow up, up, up through the crust of the crushing. Our hearts expanded in true empathy. 

We can be the ones who don’t rush in to save or paste a platitude for the sake of our own comfort. But can instead linger, unafraid to sit with another’s lament, to listen deeply, to use words sparingly . . . so sparingly. To know what will be balm, and if we don’t, to gently ask or perhaps, bravely, say nothing at all.

And if we fashion stories, poems, paintings, songs . . . ?

With broken, gentle, weathered hands, we can touch souls with prayers of color, texture and melody, with light, allegory and humor. We can remind the weary that both joy and sorrow are the way of all travelers, but the joy . . . oh, the joy!

We hold God's creative grace, a life-gift to be shared. 

Oh, that we would bravely dig deep of our sufferings, where the seeds of our redemption awaited their spring, and now testify to tenacious life and hope, scarred and beautiful.