It has been a week of high and low stories. Trace got accepted to ACU with a sweet scholarship to boot. Our precious friend Julie went to be with Jesus way too suddenly. And a few close seconds on either extremes. The good, the bad all intermingled together like a funky sweet and sour tasting stew. My heart woke up feeling tired and confused.

It’s times like these where the introvert half of myself steps up to be boss and clears a quiet day to remind me of the truth that beauty lives in the middle of mess. Yes ma’am it does.

I snapped this picture last weekend of my niece Everly while she sat on my lap in the middle of a delightful meal at Cane Russo with family circling the table. There were plates with pizza sauce everywhere, noisy little brother running wild around us all and messy beautiful oozing out the atmosphere.

Beauty and mess mingles into an actually delicious stew.

I have to stop every so often and  intentionally pour reminders of this truth into my heart with words. (It helps to have Agnes Obel’s Chord Left playing on Spotify)

Words have power. Power to remind us that there is so little we have control over. Actually, after a week of study on words, I remind myself that my heart is truly the only thing in which I have 100% control. So I am headed toward stories that speak truth and allow some time for my heart to right itself, in order to deal with the current messy and beautiful stories.

Like a hunger that needs filling, I need some stories. Ones outside my own.  I am craving words on paper to read and get lost in.

I heard recently the suggestion that instead of seeking beauty on pinterest or instagram, pick up a book of poetry instead. I used to do that more often. Poetry has a way of echoing with power, words that heal and articulate thoughts unspoken. Here are a few friends that wait for me:

But we all know the best poetry of all is found right here:

Words speak life into situations where we have reason to rejoice. Words speak life into hearts that need a way to full on grieve and lament.

Words like these…for me and for Julie. The messy beautiful of hard eucharisteo. It preaches and teaches and sets our hearts right.

May your heart be speechless
At the sight of the truth
Of all belief had hoped,
Your heart breathless
In the light and lightness
Where each and everything
Is at last its true self.
John O’Donohue “For the Dying” in To Bless the Space Between Us