Sometimes life moves so fast, and I can’t slow it. And my life holds no margins, and I am racing.
So behind, and the day’s just started.
It feels painful discipline, but I sit on the couch, and I breathe to slow it.
I breathe to slow it.
Mind whirs and heart races, but breathing begins the slow.
Windows frame tree branch silhouettes against sky that begins to fill with light — it is filling — and I look at the dark and light and how beautiful they are, side by side.
How this dark makes the light lighter.
In my neighborhood, on my street, on this coast, bands of dripping color embrace rooftops, treetops, this sky, and the sun begins its rise.
It is so juicy, and I am tasting the slow, knowing this abiding love and its be still, be still.
Prayers whisper wrap me, calm me.
Let go and stop the race and be held by these swaths of sherbet and jewel-colored fabric, these love arms. Receive this sky dripping nectar.
I’m singing fill me, still me, hold me.
I’m singing with the sky.
This piece is a free-writing exercise for a Tuesday feature called “Just Write,” hosted on The Extraordinary Ordinary. I participate on Tuesdays whenever the mood strikes.
Connecting through the power of stories written, spoken and lived
![Sometimes nothing says it quite like the way of a child. Before the rest of the house wakes, I read the account of Easter morning in the Jesus Storybook Bible: "And it seemed to [Mary Magdalene] that morning, as she ran, almost as if the whole world was singing for joy-- the trees, tiny sounds in the grass, the birds...her heart." The tomb is empty. Jesus is alive, and so are we. And it is new. Once again. Yes, it is always new...He is risen indeed!](https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s320x320/e35/17934124_1877271335863004_8139172358331039744_n.jpg "Sometimes nothing says it quite like the way of a child. Before the rest of the house wakes, I read the account of Easter morning in the Jesus Storybook Bible: \"And it seemed to [Mary Magdalene] that morning, as she ran, almost as if the whole world was singing for joy-- the trees, tiny sounds in the grass, the birds...her heart.\" The tomb is empty. Jesus is alive, and so are we. And it is new. Once again. Yes, it is always new...He is risen indeed!")
so beautiful ashley. an exquisitely expressed picture of an experience so human, so very relatable. (i really love the reminder of breath. it was the first thing we did when entering this world. breathe!! and it is still the intentional breath that can quiet and calm the anxious heart. perhaps it is that God is in that breath?)
Thank you, Mama. I think you are so right about God being in the breath. Someone out there could help me with this, but I remember learning one time that some translations of the name Holy Spirit are from the very same root as breath. I love that. As you say, God breathed life, and we breathe to receive it. Ahhh.
Another of your beautiful narratives. I am always stirred by your facility to engage us in thought and contemplation.
Thank you, Papa. Nature sure does that to/for me.
Good post. I learn something totally new and challenging on websites I stumbleupon everyday.
It will always be interesting to read content from
other writers and practice something from their sites.