TOTHEUNTAMEDHEART.

Maybe all we need is words. No fancy fonts, bolds, italics. Just words that read like chicken scratch on a grocery list. Words that don’t need capitalized or punctualized to make an appearance. Bland as ever: eggs, milk, flour, sugar. Bold as ever: here is my uncivilized love, my untamed heart. Read it for what it is.

Oftentimes we have this song in our hearts, words still formless in the midst of ungripped feelings. We want people to understand & we yearn to be expressed to the fullest, head to toe. So we sing & we slur & we dress & we make faces & we write, all the while, arms cupped at chest height, praying for a kind audience. & yet, we try so hard with complimenting shirts, duck face selfies, & big, fancy words. That sometimes, this thing that originated as a feeling, came out resulting like a game of telephone. Tweeked.

So my words have been as inconsistent as a cloudy sky, landing in cycles of plenty & dry seasons. & when I saw the open invitation to participate in October’s blogging challenge, to write every day, I knew what it was that I needed to open myself up to. I knew where I needed to be gutted.

Writing is one of the few things that I feel passionate about. Writing & the Lord. Those are my unseen, but felt passions. & it’s ironic because as stirred as my soul is in search for words, it takes me forever to sit down with pen & paper. I’m not much for follow through. In respect to the written portion of my life, this is completely the result of the planner in me not having the perfect words before I sit down, the devil on my shoulder screaming how childish & wasteful my words are, & the nightmare I’d like to refer to as the perfect word length (of which I have not mastered). It all keeps me from the quietness of my words slipping through my fingers, sorting through webs of people, places, & things. Reverberating through scars & stories.

So I’ll write & be real as real could be & not count a hundred word post as failure. Because maybe all we need is one word to move us & shine grace onto our day. Maybe we need a quick love letter to remind us that these words have bits & pieces of you in them, too. That my shoulder is here, the Holy Spirit is within you, God is faithful & Jesus still reigns supreme. Maybe we just need a reminder that we’re not alone, we have our team.

This is about coming home. Coming back to the heart, the purest, most lovely of beings pumping blood through those fingers & toes & taking credit for all sorts of love. It’s time to come home, love. Back to the raw & the natural. Back to uncivilized & undistorted. Back to the you-est you & the me-est me, where we all decide that we don’t have to like every part of you to treat you like a human being. If you’ll step out with me & let me squeeze those cheeks behind that mask, if you’ll sing in the car at that stoplight & walk slower than slow in the pouring rain, if you’ll hug yourself with the same aggression of which you’d hug Katy Perry, I vow to love you. Nothing less.

Let’s walk each other home, love. I want to hear your song.