There is a fire in my belly, a flicker of undoing that makes me feel put back together, alive. The pain wakes me up, and I want to live that way: wide-eyed, aching, here.
(but also: I so want to live okay and complacent and happy.)
I crave peace and I know that peace exists in the dust and breath of my own home first. How do I balance the desire to change the world with the duty of my own? How do I level my desire for a life laced with story and change and movement with the way I am wired to retreat and wonder and wrestle?
This month I listened to the story of a beautiful baby boy, birthed and buried, perfectly whole at twenty three weeks. Gorgeous and worthy of life.
This month I listened to the story of a beautiful young girl, pregnant and pressured, a babe herself with a babe inside. Gorgeous and worthy of life.
I want to be a vessel of stories that need to be heard, a conduit – carrying these desperate and stunning stories to ears that need to hear and give and awaken. I am neither the story or the Savior.
I just want to be a stream.
What does a stream need to survive: a set beginning? A clear end? A thousand mile markers, a million cheerleaders? A straight and predictable path? Or does it simply need to rest in the rythyms: to provide and disrupt and make smooth, weathering storms and stillness the same.
A stream doesn’t worry if it is too still, too tangled, too tired, too loud. It doesn’t fret about whether it is moving in the most beautiful way or clearing the most productive path. It simply carries what is needed to where it is needed, calm and strong and sure.
It does not think about capacity, efficiency, perfection, but instead realizes that if it is too full or too frenzied: it will crush and burst and destroy.
I get one life and there are babies being torn from their mother’s bellies, children running from their only homes, moms unable to supply milk needed for their fresh and hungry babes. And here I sit, far from those injustices, but with a mama’s heart beating steadily in my own ribs.
We are all in this together.
I am with you.
I am for you.
What can I carry?
Where is it needed?
Okay, I’ll go.
Okay.
Calm and strong and sure.
Or mostly anyway.
hilary penz | 