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Virginia is a fine land. Everyone knows I’m captived by my homeland.

This weekend was a sort of pilgrammage. The pilgrimmage where you don’t go far, but are intentional with every step. We soaked up the city for its gifts, and wandered to the country for her breath, nostalgia and whims. The thing about Virginia is that there is so much progress- the new brewery, the farmer’s markets, the brunch destinations. But there is also so much old- preserved anachronisms for our modern life- by way of music and food and pace of life. So either way you go, you know you are within something bigger than the present. Something illuminated by the past, something pushing towards the future. As a (hopefully contributing, if not just participating) member of this geographical community, I am always pleased to find myself within such meaning. To continue a legacy that has continued to sustain itself, and to be part of the birth of a fruit still unknown. It is my constant joy in this town.

Then we stopped by my Mother’s house on the way home from the Wine Country. But that’s another story for another time on a whole other sort of legacy and collision of future and present and past…

How To Win A Culture War And Lose A Generation →

I don’t normally post links to other people’s pieces (of a stirring opinion, at least), but for many reasons, I feel that this needs to be shared. One, because I love Thought Catalog. Two, because I deeply respect Rachel Held Evans, and the pinch she gives to stagnation of the religio and ideological type. And three, because the point here isn’t who is right and who is wrong, but of peace and love, my dear brothers and sisters. A message to be heard, digested, dialogued, shared- indeed.

“My generation is tired of the culture wars. 

We are tired of fighting, tired of vain efforts to advance the Kingdom through politics and power, tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of being known for what we are against, not what we are for.

We are ready to start washing feet instead of waging war.”

the thinnest of places

Yesterday at church we talked about thin places. I hear that these are the places where heaven and earth are the closest they can possibly be in this physical life; where the separation between spirit and body, between what came down and what is here, is thin.

And of course, I think about how we get there, and how we are tuned and prepared to recognize an experience as such. And it’s fitting, because my holy thin places, the moments of connection and a-ha! and understanding, the moments of that divine perspective, where hope is real- they are very literally when I am in the smallest of places- the narrow alleys between the rock and the hard place; the tiny channel between doing what is right, and doing what feels okay; pushed against a wall, barely moving, a very small place indeed.

In my life that has turned to upheaval in change and transition over the past few months, i look to the tiny places and unfurl my wrists. prayers before bed, coffee in silence, a 6:30am alarm that reads, His promises are new every morning. and i feel a presence that is not myself, reminding me that in the thin spaces of life, comes the heavenly curtain down down down, closer and closer, a ribbon between us.

He is near, He is near.

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A couple of hours before I wed my man, I walked out back at my parent’s house and snipped a few dogwood branches. I wanted to lose the veil at some point after the ceremony, and to replace it with something fitting, something natural and something very Virginia. So, dogwood flowers.

Two hours later and I’m driving to the church with my parents, watching my dogwood flowers wilt and wither at my feet. I didn’t really care that the flowers wouldn’t make it to the reception (I had plenty of hearty baby’s breath in my bouquet that would work), but the flower’s delicateness struck me in my state.

Occasionally, I am that dogwood. I put on a white dress and walk down an aisle. I bake a decent pie, wear some makeup that works, and welcome my man with a soft warmth. But most of my life, I am whiskey. I am a cursin’ too much with a flask in my pocket, type-of-gal. I am more rough & tumble, more independent & pig-headed. And my white dress gets muddy and my pie’s rhubarb bubbles up and out of the pan, making a mess of my fingers and my oven.

I am both of these things, I am all of these things. And so, herein lies the rub for Southern woman: that the two exist together. This is the land of duality, a land of whiskey & dogwoods. A strength and also a grace. We are walking contradictions. Steel Magnolias, if you will (and hopefully you will, because, well, hello childhood! hello life!).

It is all too easy to fall prey to the comparisons of a woman who has a clear alignment with one or the other. She seems like she knows more of who she is, she lives perfectly within her self. And where I feel like my line between strength and delicacy is a hazy tide of recession and procession, I have begun to accept this as living perfectly within my self. It is more nuanced and more complex, and yes maybe more ironic, more difficult to understand. But I have friends and family and a man who take me for both. And I will do the same for them.

I’m just glad I have a place- a place that encompasses faith, geography, community, land- that understands me. God bless the South, her whiskey and her dogwoods.

"I want to stop crime, but I want to stop it the only way it will ever be stopped, and that’s changing the human heart."

Chuck Colson, 1931-2012

Mr. Colson passed away this weekend, and with it, we have lost a great. When my heart was first pulled by the strings of criminal (in)justice, I turned to many resources only to find that Chuck Colson had already been there. He blazed every trail, wrote every word. Of course, I like to think that we would have been friends- swapping philosophies on reducing recidivism and restorative justice initiatives- but since we weren’t I’ll take him as a mentor. His life was full- difficult, sometimes painful, but full. I think we all have something to glean from him here in this space where he once was.

So I am praying for our prisons, our prisoners, our victims, and all the villages damaged and scarred by criminality. I believe that crime is a break in the ties of a community, from which demands for healing and restoration arise reluctantly, and slow slow slowly. Chuck Colson knew the way to this place of hope, I pray this country is able to follow.

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Marriage has started well. The strangest and yet most natural progression I’ve taken in my life. I keep telling everyone who asks (from my very limited time as a married woman), there is so much newness and yet at the same time, its me and its him. Its not like a shoe that does not fit. It is the product of trust and expectation and history, so it feels organic, albeit also ordained. There is a new sweetness and nearness, but it comes among the normalcy.

So the beginning of our wedded lifetime has begun much like our dating life: with wine and music and reading aloud. With conversations about things that matter, and quiet when enough has been said.  

One day on our honeymoon we watched Down From the Mountain and drank whiskey in the middle of the afternoon. And I kept thinking, surely this will be a good life.

So with the mixing of our things and the mixing of space, with the joining of families and the loss of a name, this new life starts.

Because its that time…I need to post this.

It’s rare to find a song so perfect about marriage. And while I may not relate to the part of this song about “the first time I met [him] I said I’d marry [him]”- no, that took about a decade- but everything else, yes, everything else.

Winning me because he let me be. Trusting a man who makes his words true. Being young and yet assured. And a last, lasting love.

Yes, all of this.

           Take my love, take my time. Tell your love she’s dear.

           Tell her you will marry her, and she will say ‘I’m here.’

April and On

I am looking forward to April 1st. Spring, summer, and the start of a new family.

I am looking forward to rhythms and routines, habits to make, and habits to break. I am looking forward to a new morning coffee ritual, and a new side of the bed.

Because March 31st is happening for April 1st and all the days that follow. March 31st is the joyful welcome, the giving, the blessing, and the sending.

And in the wake of the transition and craze of the past few months, I have been compiling a list of To-Do’s for after the I-Do’s. I add items day by day, so we will have our hands full. I am so excited. I think he is too.

1. Learn to Pickle

2. Two words: Family Band.

3. Ride our bikes more

4. Cook with the season, source from the region

5. Camp more

6. Spend more nights in, windows open, neighbors over, records spinnin’

7. Master a go-to pie crust

8. Finish some of the books that are calling to me from the shelf

9. …. what else? Everything.

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I am increasingly humbled by the talent of my friends. In a world where every next college graduate is a burgeoning photographer, Kate Magee Joyce is the real deal. Also, she’s not afraid to get her boots muddy. Literally, she stood in mud for half of our shots.

An artist in the truest sense of the word, Kate translated our vision- simple and uncomplicated- through her lens. It is overwhelming to think that Chris and I will have these forever. He, my farmer man, and me, his bluegrass girl- forever and ever, amen.

another feminine failure

For a long while, I was not friends with many girls. I was the one that hid behind the “I am just better friends with guys,” phrase. My primary reason for this was probably a combination of intimidation and jealousy of other girls. Obviously, I mistakenly thought, that no boy would ever see me if I hung out with other girls, especially really pretty ones.

So for years, I shirked friendships with girls thinking they were some threat to my potential, and hopefully flourishing romantic life (which in the end is all about my insecurity and nothing about the boys or the girls or anyone else, sigh).

And then I realized: it doesn’t matter. In a cosmic sense, he was made to be with me, not some other her. His personality and character reflect my personality and character. He respects me. I respect him. He thinks I am grand. And, well, I reciprocate. He sees me in the room, while all the other faces and places blur. And I am taken, to have and to hold, as one girl amidst a sea of them.

—

Not until years later, when life hits at the place where you actually need people- because life is hard and rent is due and your health insurance isn’t covering all of your problems, and food is expensive, and a real relationship is difficult work, and my car is broken again, and my boss is a wack job, and I’m trying and I’m trying and I’m still feeling lonely and tired and so tired, and because life is hard- did I see that I was a selfish selfish fool. And that I had been missing so much for so long.

Over the past few years, in this hard, nay realistic, place of life, I see my relationships with other females as exactly as they should be: utterly unparalleled and vitally necessary. They are my lifeblood and my encouragement. They are my understanding and my nearness. These women fight for my upcoming marriage, and fight for my heart and peace. They pour my wine, and listen to me cry. They carry the burden of life upon their backs with grace and beauty.

Women have the distinct ability to carry life within their bones- all of it held together and warmed and fostered. There is a wholeness to women that brings the tragedy and comfort of life together in a glorious unity- a gentleness and a mountain-movin’ strength.

And I am glad I didn’t hide forever in my fears and insecurities. I am a better person- fiance, sister, daughter, friend- because of it. Because I am not alone in this womanhood journey, and my dear friends, they are a little less alone too.