i don’t know

i can’t believe
my hand fits perfect on her face

she shakes to sleep most nights
body too full of memories
to drift off easy

and i can’t believe the
God of the universe
meant this unrest for His daughter
for Her daughter

i can’t believe He died on a cross
God and king and servant of us all
Mother of us all
the hands that set the stars in the sky
nailed to a tree of their own design

i can’t even believe my body birthed
babies and i have held them in my arms
bathed fresh in my own blood

i don’t know what i believe
all the time anymore
it’s not all worked out and that
used to terrify me

not having it all worked out
is deadly when you grow up
in a haze of trauma

my wife though
shaky nights and all
steadies me
she teaches me
the safety in i don’t know
she utters it all the time
words like honey
slow and steady
full of grace

i don’t know
she says
and nothing fractures
nothing breaks
no one laughs
or uses it to harm us

i don’t know
this unknowable God
creator of earth and sky
nails in his hands
weeping for me
hundreds of years before
i was born
bathed in blood
just the same as everyone
wrapped in cloth at his death
same as his birth

He is Jesus
God and King
Servant of us all
Setter of stars
Maker of the universe
Mother to me
Father too i suppose

i don’t know
and that is more than okay
my life doesn’t depend on me
having it all figured out
and neither does yours

and yet so many people
have nailed this love
to the cross of knowing
believing it is wrong
casting us like stones
at their own glass houses

i don’t know
how anyone could say
they don’t see
the healing in this
the resurrection power of the cross
in our lives
look how our heads bow
when we hold each other
isn’t that a prayer

still her face fits
in my hand and we stand
at the edge of these oceans
our feet washed in the tide
believing with everything in us
we are Loved
by the one who made time
and sent a baby to rescue us
die and save us all from death
tell me what is believable
or knowable about that

maybe we can rest in that
maybe she can rest in that
sweet love of mine one day
or night drift off to dream
not a shake in her bones
a cradle of grace made of
i don’t knows
holding us both
and we can breathe deep knowing
the God who made us perfectly
Rose for us and the mystery
of that all is enough
to wonder in all our days

-A

today.

One year. It feels like yesterday in a lot of ways, and it also feels like forever…like we are finally living the life I think we were always meant to live. I can’t remember a time I didn’t love her.

I haven’t been able to come up with adequate words for much of this Love, which is frustrating because I have words for just about everything. I thought that by now I’d have at least sorted through this day one year ago well enough to describe what it felt like to fall in love in a doorway in an instant with somebody I’d known for a decade. But here we are, and I’m still just as awestruck and wordless as I was then…maybe moreso. The magic and wonder of just getting to wake up together nearly does me in every single morning.

One thing I do know for sure is that I’m better because of her in so many ways. There have been hard days for sure, and there has been more heartbreak than either of us imagined there would be. For me (and I think she would agree), this has been a year of so much healing. Some of it happened easily and some of it was more like intense physical therapy, but my heart is so much more whole today than it was a year ago. Even knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t change a thing about the past year.

Thanks for loving me, Amber.  There’s no place I’d rather be than with you and nobody I’d rather share this crazy life with. I’ll take every hard thing, every tear that’s fallen and more, if it means we get to live this life together. I’d choose this (and you) over and over again. (Also, we take a lot of selfies.)
xoxo, k

She is the sweetest thing that I know
You should see the way she holds me when the lights go low
Shakes my soul like a pot hole, every time
Took my heart upon a one way trip
Guess she went wandering off with it
Unlike most women I know
This one will bring it back whole
Daisies, daisies perched upon your forehead
Oh my baby, lately I know

That every night I’ll kiss you you’ll say in my ear
Oh we’re in love aren’t we?
Hands in your hair, fingers and thumbs baby
I feel safe when you’re holding me near
Love the way that you conquer your fear
You know hearts don’t break around here
Oh yeah yeah yeah , yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah

She is the river flow in Orwell
And tin wind chimes used for doorbells
Fields and trees and her smell, fill my lungs
Spent my summer time beside her
And the rest of the year the same
She is the flint that sparks the lighter
And the fuel that will hold the flame
Oh roses roses laid upon your bed spread
Oh my, hold this, oh this, I know

That every night I’ll kiss you you’ll say in my ear
Oh we’re in love aren’t we?
Hands in your hair, fingers and thumbs baby
I feel safe when you’re holding me near
Love the way that you conquer your fear
You know hearts don’t break around here
Oh yeah yeah yeah

Well I found love in the inside
The arms of a woman I know
She is the lighthouse in the night that will safely guide me home
And I’m not scared of passing over
Or the thought of growing old
‘Cause from now until I go

Every night I’ll kiss you you’ll say in my ear
Oh we’re in love aren’t we?
Hands in your hair, fingers and thumbs baby
I feel safe when you’re holding me near
Love the way that you conquer your fear
You know hearts don’t break around here
Oh yeah yeah

almost a year

Tomorrow marks one year since I fell in love with this face on a beach in North Carolina. And it feels like a lifetime and it feels like no time at all. It feels like there aren’t enough words for how much I love her, not enough thank yous for all she’s done. It feels like my heart is healing like I never knew it could, like I’m washed clean wave after wave when she looks at me, like her hands are the only hands I’ve ever known. It feels like she’s been my wife forever, like she’s been mine forever. Like warm sun on a cold day and summer rain and a soft powdery snow.

It feels like home and all the love we ever needed. Now, a year later, even more than it did in that moment.

I think if you’d told either of us that all the love we felt in the beginning was a tiny little seed we’d have called you crazy because it felt as big as the ocean we were standing in front of.

But it’s true, every morning I wake up to her sleepy face I’m filled with more gratefulness and wonder. And every time she looks at me I feel a little bit closer to heaven, a little bit closer to the God who made us and gave us to each other. I guess that’s what love’s supposed to do, and maybe I always knew that but gosh it’s never been like this.

I whisper it at night not nearly often enough, it’s worth shouting from the rooftops for sure but, “thank you God that we get to love each other this way”. Amen.
xoxo, k

wordless wednesday

these days

Almost a year after she opened the door, and the days have settled into a routine…wake up, go to work, get kids to school, afternoon time with the babies, lunch and naps, kids come home from school, homework, dinner, kitchen dancing, bedtime…it’s predictable, but somehow it still manages to take my breath away at least three times a day. There is comfort and safety in the routine, and I think we both needed that more than we knew. And then there’s this amazing space for all the wonder that we would ever find each other in this big, wide world.

When she looks at me like this, I know that Jesus loves us…that all that mysterious grace and mercy and forgiveness are real, hearts can heal, and this love is everything we ever dreamed love could be.

xoxo, k

undone

all the things today
and she’s a little undone
holding it together
is her strength
but she’s learning
to fall apart a little
fall into me and this and us
and i
think there’s more strength
in that undoing
than in all the holding it together
she’s ever done
and i love her more
than i’ve ever loved anyone
more
than anyone’s ever loved her
most
undo everything else
this is right

-A

yesterdays

these days haven’t been the easiest,
full of all the hard things
stacking up – one on top of another –
until the stack is so high
and so heavy
it starts to feel suffocating,
like even taking a breath
is too much to ask.

but then
you take my face in your hands
and kiss my forehead
and remind me,
“we’re okay.”
and there is space,
(and grace)
to come undone a little
(or maybe a lot).
to breathe deep
and be held
in the knowing
and the seeing
and the staying.

nobody’s leaving,
and i’ve never believed that more
than when your hands
cradle my face
and wipe away my tears,
each touch reminding me
that all the hard todays
will soon be yesterdays,
and they don’t have to be
lonely or scary or too much
ever again.

xoxo, k

sanctuary

when God formed me
in my mother’s womb She knew
that my heart would fall
for a heart like Hers
that i would crave the warmth
and safety of a woman’s arms

not by accident but by design
that the curve of our hips match
and we fit all the ways
not some afterthought that
she’ll never hurt me like he did
and i’ll never let anyone hurt her again

so if you believe the God that
set the stars in the sky
is all knowing and all powerful
don’t tell me this wasn’t
Their plan all along
that i would bear these babies
and run to someone who knew
the weight of all the world
on her shoulders too

someone who knew well
the job of tending wounds
who knew too well the wounds i had
carried her own matching scars
fought the same shame and won

tell me the Love we have
the Love so many of us have
is wrong and i’ll call you a liar
a heretic because
Jesus didn’t die on a cross
for you to stand in the way
of my healing or anyone else’s

church

-A

this week in pictures

Because it’s the weekend, and we’re adult-ing and mom-ing so hard I don’t have any words. But this life is so, so good.

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magic.

I’d known Kara for ten years, just as a friend of a friend. If you’d asked me where she lived I wouldn’t have been able to name the state, let alone the city.

And then one rainy April afternoon after we’d fallen in love and I was visiting Lexington, we sat in her car taking turns with the aux cable, sharing favorite songs by obscure bands and stealing kisses at red lights. She played a song by Delta Rae and I wracked my brain trying to think of the little band they reminded me of that I’d heard play at a local club a few months before. We moved on to some Parker Milsap or Grace Potter tune, but it bugged me that I couldn’t remember the band and share it with her.

Later that night, as I ran to my connecting flight in the Charlotte airport, one of my go-to playlists in my earbuds, the song I couldn’t remember played — “Lexington” by Alpha Rev. I cried then at the crazy wonder and grace and mercy of all this Love.

And if you’re wondering if I cried again when Kara handed me the album on vinyl a couple of months ago, the answer is yes.

I cry every time I think about that moment running through an airport in the midst of all the madness of falling in love and changing our whole lives for This. Every time I think about being dropped a little line from God, that yes indeed this was right and what She/He wanted for us, what She was saying, “Yes” to in all kinds of ways every time we asked.

I never expected to fall for this woman, or for this city, so fast and so hard. But here we are, and God it’s the best thing.

Magic.

-A