a full circle

The quote says I am the result of the love of thousands, but today I am only thinking of one. My grandmother was a varied and contradictory woman. Born to a single mother in the twenties, and orphaned at a young age, she lived a life entirely different. She cobbled together her own identity from the strange start the universe gave her and built up a family of her own - each of us fierce, faulty, and deeply rooted in our own strength - that is her legacy. A family of women who know themselves and their place in the world around them - a sisterhood between my cousins and I, my aunts, my mother - that is her legacy. She spent her later years in ministry, studying truth and loving deeply broken souls into a place of peace and healing. We are truth seekers and peace bringers in this family. We each have dark and twisty places and love all the deeper because of them - that is her legacy. 

We are all of us who we are - healers and helpers and ministers and mothers, bold truth tellers and warriors in prayer because of her personhood and influence. We are all of us who we are - scarred and broken and depressive and brooding. 

Both bitter and healing. Her name was Rosemary. 

water like mud

Sometimes the days feel so heavy. Thick. I imagine waking up in the morning and slicing through the hours to come with grace and ease. Anticipating the turbulence and currents and obstacles and moving to adapt and using their momentum to soar. A bird. A fish. Moving free and unhindered through my life. 

When a small sticky child has wrapped themselves around my ankles and I almost drop the warm milk that's been left all morning on the counter onto the head of her sister, running too fast, frantic, about to trip on the rug and I know that I cannot move to stop it, and I am annoyed that she is running again, and whining again, and hungry again, and sick again, and needs me again and I resent her tears because I want to be the one crying...well that is the opposite of soaring with lightness and ease. And that is how it goes. And that is this life. And even so, it is grace.