Like a Child

Late at night ponderings in Bellingham Thursday Aug 6th 2009…
Notes on several major run-in’s with beauty that actually deeply matters to me…

It’s been months since I’ve said anything to the general world about my state, and tonight I feel like I finally have a few slightly organized thoughts to express what it is that I would like to say so here goes, my friends who care to know what I think…

There’s been enough pain in the last few months to start to really “juice” me, and or bring out the gold, and the draus (love that part, hey?) the lovely, and the things that make me really humanly alive.

The most recent pain in my chest was the loss of my childhood friend Elisa, I have sat in on many family conversations, and even sat with her–alone in a room just us–for a couple hours while she danced before the throne, and I marveled that she was really gone, just a shell before me of what once was so bouncy and brimming with, “come on breezy let’s laugh, dance, and make otherwise total fools of ourselves together…” the kind of person you usually only meet once in a lifetime…

I have been thinking so much about what it is that needs to be aloud to SING in my life. Often being raised in an incredibly whole (relatively speaking)—(go! mom n’ dad almost 30 years) Family, with really deep values…It becomes really easy and almost “simpler” to become the“DON’T PEOPLE” we emphasize among many things, “guard you heart” and “cover your eyes” and I am passionate about those things, to the core. But often MY battle is the opposite. Now hear me out, don’t worry, I’m not becoming a stripper and I am not going to make out with the first guy I meet tomorrow morning! But–as such a protected and preserved “princess” of sorts, the truth of who I am–a reckless lover, abandoned worshiper, and previously named “freedom song” …is easily lost in the search for decorum, maturity, grace, discretion, guardedness, quietness, wisdom even– which are all qualities I deeply aspire to possess! But ah, the fight for me is thus, to know and live in a place where I am dead set on the HIGHEST and the best choice before me. Business or eternal relevance? Desire to please or conviction to tell the truth? Want to enjoy pleasure or give a little breath of it to those with none? No time for the present? Or no time LIKE it? I have had at least 5 important conversations lately with others along my way who have encouraged and challenged my posture on these issues of my heart’s urgent desire for intimate impact and vital meaning in all my fleeting moments laid out…and of all my conversations nothing drove it home more, than time spent around two different family sets of 3 children. One set contains two rambunctious, darling, dreaming boys, and my precious first baby niece–and the other is two more rambunctious brilliant boys with another coming to make it a delightful three! I love talking about “trust always, then bleed if it burns you to do it…” “Live now, not later” “Just jump” (thanks for jumping with me my Jonathan, wow 65 feet rocks! Holli, get in gear for the parachutes!) and even “what if you just totally hide away Breez, like a mysterious romantic whisper…and hold it all in–how DARING is that?” Thanks right on Daddy…YET nothing–no nothing, stirs TRUTH for me the way these little lovers do, by just “being” who they really are. Breanna Noel, the “realer than real actress”, becomes a total fraud around this kind of beautiful blatancy! From a sideways look of suspicion (which also doubles for flirting) upon meeting a new strange adult, to the ease of sharing my lap with two or three piled together for inclusion’s sake–or to the whales of injustice when “Zay-MINE!!!” is released because, “belong” doesn’t mean anything yet to the younger…and ahh to the wonder at a baby, which is still fresh 3months later, with each supposed “gentle” caress and kiss which usually (if un-supervised) becomes an accidental cry fest of suffocation. But what love is more real than the kind that is so consuming…he has to touch her, and kiss her, and totally lay on her frame to proclaim to the world, “this thing that I have just seen causes me to feel so totally immersed with excitement that I just have to show her by laying myself out (literally) to express my awe and fascination!? ” Poor Ayanna bears the brunt of this love and may sometimes need protective intervention—but she knows, and she always will know, her brothers are passionate about her!! They see color, shape, beauty or life in any way remotely appealing— and all out bellows are released proclaiming their inner experience, “Plane!! boat!! SKY! Helio-cop-kter!! Blue, green, red!!! BABY!!!!” and if I have any sense I will cry out with them, “Yes!! Wondrous and totally LIVING child! Life IS beautiful, GOD is LOVE! and All of it is WORTH it all!!” and I would jump into deep black waters just to feel the wet, and find the prize. I would climb to the top to see if there’s a bottom on the other side. I would run and look around the corner when I hear the sound, the sound of something “other than”. I would be like this little child. I would join their ranks, and believe in more than what I see with my naked and tired eyes. I wouldn’t worry about tomorrow, I would just be checking the boundaries and limits on what I can do today! I wouldn’t look to see if my smile or my cry was accepted by the surrounding audience, I would simply smile and wail. Yes, wisdom. Yes, heart guard. Yes, modest discretion. Lord have mercy on this daughter where I lack it all! But oh for the depths and heights, oh for the FULL!!! I live for this. And I can’t wait to be a mom, bound to truth everyday, like it or not! (Song, Alyssa, Ariel, Emily, Amber, and all–you are so daunting beautiful daring–brave!!!) I DO wait patiently and happily (I have a few more things to do first…) but certainly NOT passively!! I drink deeply of the stuff that Elisa knew of, and Jesus created at that wedding in Cana, not the temporal wine of drunkenness, but Life by the spirit-to the full, that blows me wherever it pleases, and here I am found–yes bleeding, yes hurting, yes crying, but all for joy, ALL for the Joy set before me.

So friends, this is my commitment and conclusion: I will not stop twirling everyday, especially if it’s raining. If you offer me a precipice to jump off into water depths of grace I WILL DIVE. I will always stop and ask the elderly woman, “what wisdom for today?” I will not stop striking up a conversation with the med-tech, or the grocery clerk, or the hard core dirty junkie who needs 5 bucks for the bus (they do sometimes you know!) or even a light for his cigarette, the homeless blue-eyed photographer, or the single mom expecting number 2, or especially and most dearly importantly of all…the precious little child who offers me the world of wisdom and truth with one look, cry, laugh, dance, kiss, or one “i love you” effortlessly given…This is no sacrifice, this is my life poured out for someone else–if only I were truly that noble–that alive and SPENT. That would be a life worth living, and paying full price for. I want to pay it, I desire to give it, I will not repent of my desperate desire to gain it. The world can keep it’s fear and hidden-ness in wealth and false comfort, I’ll take the blade, the rain, and the storm full in the face to feel his smile just for a moment upon my naked love. Besides, He sleeps in the belly of the boat in perfect peace, because he holds the pen to this love story’s end. And I–even I– get to say a verse.

Heart Naked. Eyes Open.
Always,

Breanna Noel
Breez

Ps~Thank you Gabriel, Issac, and baby Levi…and Levi, Zay and Ayanna, and the parental units
thereof, more “ministry” happens through your tiny “olive shoots” than your lifetime of comprehension will ever grasp!!!

A few related Scriptures that I loosely reference above and yet meditate on…
Matt 26:6-13 Abandon
John 3;8 Breez of the spirit
Ps 147:18 Just a stirred up breez…
John 2 Water into wine
Philippians 2 What it looks like to live it…
Heb 2:14-20 price of freedom…
Matt 11:25 to little ones revealed…
Matt 18;1-9 more children…
Matt 25:31-45 Least of these
Matt 24:36-50 Maybe it IS my last day…
Hebrew 12:1-4 Joy set before him…