“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

Paying the price for believing there is a God

Living as if God exists even when your soul is empty

Bearing the name Godwrestler, which is won in pain and wounding

Being a wild child

Being for the other even when they blank out your face and see you

through scratched glass

Learning to breathe in community without holding your breath

Learning to embrace because it “makes us want to be ourselves – it

brings the moon through the roof and softens coarse laughter in the

hallway.”

(From a poem by Deborah Woodward)

Learning to not fight or fear the women of venom who would drink

your blood so as to drain your passion

Learning to acknowledge that sometimes you compare yourself to

other women through the eyes of men, which always results in vanity or self-contempt or hatred of the other

Learning to not be defensive as it is the dress of paranoia

Learning to wrestle with people’s souls, not their tongues

Learning to distribute love freely, instead of allotting it in dribbles

Learning to say you’re beautiful – damn it (from a song by Bette Midler)

Learning to cry . . . beautifully (from a poem by Iris Gribble-Neal)

Embracing your madness

Embracing the angels in men, instead of cursing their devils

Holding hope high in one hand and tightening the other about

Hashem’s hand even when he distances himself, keeps his mask about him, plays his godly games, blackens the windowpane, capsizes you in his stiffened winds

Knowing you are a woman of Proverbs 31 within your singleness

Freedom

Pitter patter go my leaking thoughts

Some run up the stairs

Some run down the stairs

Some climb into the attic to play with the cobwebs

Some fall down into the basement only to be ingested by creepy crawlers

Some just plop down on the floor and stay plopped

Pitter patter go my

shovel of prayers

I ask are those thoughts

worth rounding up

I lament their choices

Mind, mind, go away, come again another day.

Spirit, spirit, rise and play – stay with me all this day.

Trinity, Trinity, Godhead all three

Count me in to be fully free

Shakespeare chanted -

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble

I chant fire, fire burn and burn

Until my mindful thoughts spin and churn

Into your burning hands

into your fiery plans

To heal and mend and then

worship you only in spirit and truth -

Insomnia sucks. 

Especially and specifically when there exists absolutely no good reason. I had not eaten chocolate at all – chocolate indulgence past 4PM or 5PM spells doomsday night for me.

In fact I had not eaten anything that day except nutrition, definitely long gone from my tummy.

I spiritually sniffed the atmosphere. Nada.

God, you got something you wanna say to me. Silence.

Hmmm.

Movie time.

Then, just maybe then, my emptyhanded writing gig slid into my frontal lobe or perhaps stood up in my spirit, since silence reigned around me in the literal deadness of night. Those words from God’s mouth through another that once upon a snow Thursday night tiptoed in –

When are you going to start writing? 

You write a little poetry. 

But you are a creative writer. 

You are a story teller.”

Aghhh – I’ve tried and tried with some reward. Yet I slow down or halt. No excitement. Becomes a whatever attitude. Yet you know I irrevocably love to write. I toss words on the page daily. Yet not for the eyes of others.

I’m not interested in magazines or journals or books or money. However, I desire to support myself on more than $20 or less a day. I want to make You proud of me. I want to obey You. I want to give You much much much honor. I want to be creative.

So in the midst of twinkling stars and burning eyes, I just might have heard God say, “Anya, take your vision boards and write about them. What they mean to you? Could mean to others.”

This walk about with God occurred about 12 hours ago. And now…I announce prophetic vision board named “Ridiculously reliable.”

That’s me – in the middle – laughing my fool head off at the absurdity of riding a merry-go-round horse in the ocean. But I’m laughing. Who cares about absurdity? Absurdity can mean I’m alive.

The words “ridiculously reliable” are Me. Those words could mean my first and last name. No shame, but have lent me shame. They would also be called false guilt. I’ve raced my marathon of THAT absurdity into the dry ground. Be gone in Jesus’ name and don’t forget to bow to Him on your way out.

More importantly as I assembled this vision board, I know God told me He is the one who is “ridiculously reliable.” Clap clap. Take if off of me. I know that I know that I know You will always jump through hoops for me even when I turn a blind eye to all sides of You.

“Obsessively through” defines me heartedly as well. To the tune of judging others if this obsessiveness does not have your warm hand about my steady eddy responsible nature. I depend on You to obsess about me. The definition cracks me up – obsession is a state in which someone thinks about someone or something constantly or frequently especially in a way that is not normal. Of course You God are so not normal – that would be SO boring.

“the difference between off the beaten path and no path at all” – I am privileged to write the definition myself.

Recently I felt shamed AGAIN for my lifestyle – what appears one way, but actually is another way in His eyes. Yet my eyes were jerked off His face. I squandered into pity party with ugly dishes and sour pastries.

Slap slap – pick that perky head of yours up, Anya. You’re not slovenly or pasty tempered. Your off the beaten path looks like “no path” but but but it’s because “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." 

Henry David Thoreau

I saw my childhood fluttering on the clothesline waving to the

          the barn treasuring my imagination and

the porch that treasured my dolls.

    The leaning corncrib fed the crabapple tree and dying elm, 

  as I climbed the trees outside the tumbled down fence.

When they tired of life, 

                    I crept close to the twin pine trees in the front yard who taught me about flying.

I sought the memory of pouring out milk in the driveway 

               from my second-grade hatred of it.

The neighborhood ponies watched 

              as my father spanked my winter-clad bottom, then

 snickered as they saw my tiny smile behind faked tears.

I strolled under my childhood skies 

              laughing at the joke yet to be told.

The washed-up schoolhouse beyond the tracks 

                    sought for lost attention 

through harboring a home for the babysitter.

     As an older sister 

           I pushed my baby brother in his carriage 

                from that schoolhouse over 

the tracks racing across the highway 

                   to deposit him safely on my high bed.

Yet he rolled off scaring me for life 

                  that I shortened his now 5’6” frame.

The river looked for me to ride my bike past 

    its wandering notions.  

             It enjoyed the multiple times 

our school bus as good as backed into it.

           The rusty playground set became a viewing ground 

                   for our cocker spaniel’s golden still body, 

subsequent to her trial and error 

            of scooting across that durn highway.

My sister cried.  

    I just viewed.

My brothers dropped hammers on each other’s heads 

               and stabbed the other’s chest with pitchforks and 

     occasionally smashed windowpanes in anger.

             They drag raced their tractors down one lane roads ready to aim their bb guns at innocent sparrows 

              that God counted 

as they blemished the sacred ground.

The sparking of the match simmered life in the cigarette 

   laid carelessly on his delicate lips, 

which she outlined with 

    phantom fingers of her fire.

Leaning into stone he and the cigarette flashed

   upholding exasperated virtues.

Darkness lightened his face with the lofty words

 spreading his artistic fingers, while

She pranced like a young colt beating her hooves

  primitively upon his dancing mind.

I laughed with God today.

    I said, “Thank you.”

He said, “Thank you for thanking me.”

    I said, “No, thank you for thanking me for thanking you!”

And then I laughed!

    I have never laughed with God before.

It was a bit strange.

    But it happened so spontaneously

that it was real.

    Why have I never laughed with

Him before?

    Because I did not think He had

a sense of humor?

    Most definitely,

I have conjectured such.

    I think my image of God

         never changes

               from days of past.

He always is the kind stern master.

        Which means?

He is interested in me

          for functional reasons.

I will get past that image.

     I have reached a crux where it is jostle ahead

or

       become stale bread.

-MHGS days