Asleep in the Garden

How do I tell a story I don't understand

How do I grasp at a shadow

I know why they slept

Because I can't even think of you with the lights on

I want to paint buildings with the sight of you

I want to stand naked in store fronts so people can say - I see God in you

And when people see that we are beautiful

I want to be rubber to your glue so every praise would bounce off of me and stick to you

But I can barely think of you with the lights on

So I know why they slept

Because naked is not beautiful in storefronts

And different is just undesirable

Words of praise feel so rare some days that I can't help but steal them from you

You who have seen this world

Came into it curled in a fetal position in your mother's womb

Spent months building rivers of blood

Just to kneel in the shadow of Calvary

Vulnerable You might be brave

but vulnerable Me

How do I tell a story I don't understand

How do I grasp at a shadow - tie it to a tent stake and make room for the world under it

How do I dare ask for words that would reveal your reality

when I'm not really sure I want to see me in the light of you

In the light of truth

Because sometimes I still doubt its up to you

Your purity

Your vulnerability

Your unmasked humanity leaves me stunned, breathless

Courageous and ageless

Born of place less than perfect

But you are perfect

How do I tell what I don't understand

How do I grasp at a shadow

I am a modern-day Pharisee

and you stand there feeding me upside-down stories of revolutionary reality

Soaking the ground of Gethsemane

Why would you kneel for me

offer to heal me

come into this world and even be for me

My mouth has been sewn shut out of envy

Jealous of the one and only man who was his own savior

I don't want you to see me, to free me, to leave me

open to this new life

because I am not worthy

So I carry this envy

And I try every day on my own to save me

But you - you sweat blood for me

How do I tell what I don't understand

How do I grasp at a shadow

So how do I dare ask for words

that would reveal your reality

when I'm not really sure I want to see me in the light of you

In the light of truth

Because sometimes

I doubt if its up to you

Thirsting

I have been hung dry
Wrung out by sweat-soaked parade palms

I am cracked canvas of creation
Raped of resource, of consequence, of circumstance

I am but a memory of ancient waterways
I float, flakes of white ash in the wind
Burned up, burnt out
Blazing remains of apathy

ignorance

arrogance

Fleeting fancies of fire bugs

I am the long black train crossing heroin tracks
I am the twisted spine riding sweatshop backs
I am thirsty

I am the empty shell of man-hurled mortar rounds
I am the piercing smell of mass grave undergrounds
I am thirsty

I am the spaces within skin-lined sidewalks
Flash bulb imprint on a black and white portrait
Low hanging fruit of a Polish prisoner camp
A face forgotten

I am the sun-soaked pavement under whittled down stiletto heels
Stuck to a concrete corner
Lap dancing for dogs

I am the dehydrated souls of children sold across borders
Stolen childhoods, hung to wither in back pages of magazines

I am dry
I am deeply dry

Desperate for a day of harvest, for a reaping of the vineyard
I thirst for the wine of foot-crushed grapes
For the stain on a new community
Forged not in blood but in Living Water

I am the Living Water
And I am so thirsty

Alexandra

Sitting in our makeshift studio space She was contestant number four
Taking camera in hand I asked the question I had asked all afternoon
How does Jesus change your life?

Squirming and squinting
She shifted her small third-grade frame from one bony hip to the other
‘Well…’ she said ‘…well…’

It shames me to say I was counting each second
Waiting for the next oh-so-cute, incoherent comments
Of a child raised on vacation bible school and a cartoon version of Jesus

‘Well I was sick when I was a teeny, tiny baby
I was what you call a pre-eeemie…’

As she squealed forth ramblings of her parents’ plans
Regurgitated memories that weren’t her own
I contorted my face into bland curiosity
And began to long for the moment I could press the red button again
Until I could check off my list
The tiny blond whose face was more braces and glasses than skin
Edit her down to a sound-byte
Of ‘Jesus loves me’ and of ‘this I know’
Slap on the big screen an image of childish ignorance
Bask in the glow of high-def purity
To fulfill some fantasy
That we
Have the gift of laughing maturity
In my flawed perception of what she could, should and would be
I hoped at most for a small bit of quotable clarity
Is it too much to ask that you just say ‘God loves me’
And let us move on

But she
Had a story to tell
And in a room filled to the brim with my own high-minded ignorance
I almost missed her resurrection truth

‘When I was a teeny, tiny baby
I was what you call a pre-eeemie…
So how Jesus changed my liii-ife is…
He spared my life
He made me live’

In her small, tiny voice she declared the Gospel truth
‘He made me live'

In my premature, immature understanding of a God
Who looks like me
Talks like me
Who perceives, believes, and intercedes like me

I guess I am what you call a preemie
Bumping up against a glass partition
Fists clenched in empty air
On display for a world of disconnected observers
Unable to tell my own story
Lacking the language to shock my heart back into rhythm
I have grown small
Blind to the reality of my own resurrection

So God…
I come
Needs unspoken
Heart broken open
Looking for a childlike clarity
To stand tall, rooted in faithful frailty
To complete that which was started
In me, by You

In the name
Of Alexandra Vallieu
I proclaim:
I was a preemie
And how Jesus changed my life is
He spared my life
He made me live

Moments.

I have had my moments—
Moments before the rain falls
With the door swung open
Sounds of far-off wind chimes and rustling leaves through the screen
Deep within that place and those moments
I can hear the whispers of ideas that I want to take to the world
Just whispers
Creatively, musically spun together
so that if I were to listen a little more carefully
it might really change me

But clouds always gather again
Tree-leaves and wind chimes are silenced by sounding distractions
That turn my head ever so slightly
until I’ve all but lost those soft, soul-murmurs
left with the fleeting sensation I brushed up against
something
important

So these are moments I’m searching for – these missing moments
Melodies you can’t get out of your head
A taste you can’t quite name
which lies so ironically on the tip of your tongue
A face in a crowd that looks just like someone you’re so sure you should know
Or have known and maybe don’t know anymore
And isn’t it sad that you just can’t quite remember

These are my missing moments

Some are gentle and peaceful
Bright white like the color of dandelion seeds
after they’ve turned all fluffy and soft

A moment like this seems to linger and settle
and fill my mind with such peace
that all the sounds in the world melt together
As if they’d been crafted by God and by hand for that one moment alone

Others are like memories
Darkly deep yellow like the walls of my mother’s kitchen
Inspired by paintings of Tuscan sunsets
and Spanish pottery
and African tea-trays
Surfaces colored by ancient brushstrokes in swirling, wandering
patterns of age

Many times my moments are mistaken
for things quite ordinary
Perhaps that’s why so often they stay just out of reach
Away from my critical, cynical world
My mistook, mistreated moments are wise and crafty
and they know me well

So today as I type with my eyes closed and the door open
I work at letting go
Peeling away the fear and rejection
so that my moments will know me when they see me
recognize me as the one they belong with
Because there are moments—
faithful, Spirit-brushing moments meant just for each of us

Filling the spaces
The cracks within us
in such a way that no room is left for doubt
There is Truth in the center of our moments
Glimpses of a creator-God
who has weaved us and wrapped us around those Spirit-pieces
Of a father-God who smells of earth and rain
who has given us life in such a way that we are not just of Him
but also within Him
Of a mother-God who has brushed the insides of our souls
with a color uniquely our own

We have stood and stumbled and sprinted in these bodies
and She has held open Her arms
Wrapping tightly with a love both fierce and faithful
Waiting for those moments to rise and be recognized

And to all my missing moments – I apologize
I’d forgotten you aren’t really mine
that you don’t belong to me
And I’m sorry I left
that I turned you away
but so grateful you stayed
I may lose you again or misplace you,
but I have seen you and heard your truth,
and I will keep looking

Be faithful moments
Be kind and merciful and forgiving
Be growing
moments of greatness
so that I am filled with only these moments

Thank you for dreams and words and this life
Thank you for graceful whispers of truth
and thank you for love

And may you—
may you find in this place a new moment
A new taste
A new face
A new sweet-sounding melody
dripping with peace and harmony and justice

And trust this
Because you don’t
want to miss
your moment

Summer.

As they knocked down walls and tore up floors
and swung that ball and chain on the crane through the sky,
I wonder if they knew.

Evidence of ways and days gone by;
of sitting around the breakfast table eating ice-cream covered pancakes.

Do they remember the spot on the concrete floor
behind the laundry room door
where my baby brother cracked open his head
and stained the floor red?

Did they know that I learned how to shuffle cards on that worn down table with the swinging lazy-susan in the center?
When they trampled the brush
did they reach down and touch the drift wood creations that littered the landscape there?
Did they know I served tea to my favorite teddy bear on the ground
by that worn down, beat down, old blue picnic table?

And as they carved out a space for the memories they'd make
did they notice the names that lined the walls?
Cousins B.J. and Danny, Betsy, Aunt Nancy
Patty, Mark's mom, her brothers Bill and Tom
Her sister, my brother, his father, her mother
Chiseled through years of fireside fears and tantrum-throwing toddler tears.


As they knocked down walls and tore up floors
and swung that ball and chain on the crane through the sky,
I wonder if they knew.

Call

from webster's dictionary: for everyday use in home, school and office

call; a verb
to call out to someone
like waters flowing out over rock
your voice is both
natural and deafening
a ringing rhythm that both floats the boat
and drags me under

call; a verb
to name or designate
why me
what could there possibly be that you see
inside this worn down, misused body
that would deserve to called by your name
i have distrusted
dodged
denied
until all that comes out are complaints of time gone by
and again i beg you why

call; a verb
to pay a short visit
enter in fear
the wall that blocks out the most basic of thought
left in creative drought
living out the very life i want to run from
when the motion stops and silence sets in
words of past accusations thrown around in the laughing way of casual pain
she never finishes anything
what if its true and even you can't heal that in me

call; a verb
to demand payment
love undeserved
so huge i drown in it
every wrong written down would fill the book
your heart bleeds for me

call; a verb
to demand the opponent show his cards
if the world were to see all these pieces of me
what would be left
words once were mine and now i am writing a legacy of silence
even i can't speak out the truth that you give me
it sits in my heart undisclosed
chips unplayed
bets unraised
circling the table

Call; a noun
definition unknown

Wanting.

You know what I want?
I want family.
I mean a big family.
I want a ‘talking over each other at the dinner table’ kind of family;
a ‘hair pulling cause you looked at me funny,
but I’d still kick the ass of any little kid that messed with you on the playground’
kind of family.
I want a home and a house and a life where God is known by name and love is lived out loud.

And even when you laugh at me because I want more kids than I can count on one hand,
I hold tight to my dream.
And I outright reject the thought that this is too idealistic because some sense of societal norm makes it so.

Still, another year has passed by without the whisper of a turning page
and I am almost ‘at that age’ as they say,
so for now I still wait.

It just seems like so much of my life is spent waiting
and wasting away
on the next job or next man or next plan for my life
which is happening still in the midst of it all
but I –
I crave the brink.

Makes me think:
But what of right now?

I was once told that before you’re an us, you’re a one.
And I shouldn’t squander one bit of my time.
Because soon enough I would be entwined with ours and not just mine.
So I guess I’ll be selfish with time;
trying to be a little more slow
and grow
and come to know God as only I can right now.
Truths I find? Those are mine alone,
between this one single young female and her God.

So just as God loves me
whom He dreamed up and designed
before I ever saw life in this time,
I will keep my own dreams of love and life and family.
And I will keep waiting.
Waiting with thankfulness that God will guide and protect my heart.

I can make this vow,
this vow, right now:
I am His and He is mine—
for life’s best and its worst;
when I fall and when I rise up.
In moments of richness and times of such deep soul poverty.
Until my death and through all things.

I make this one vow,
this vow, right now:
I will live and love.
And I'll wait.

Although—
it doesn't mean I wouldn't date.