UNGUARDED

Sometimes I choose the seat at the far side of the room. It’s the opposite of being aloof. It’s the whole of me attempting to manage the overwhelm that comes from taking everything in.

This is the moment in the journey when two sides of me split—when my right hand has a story to tell different from the left. One moment I am powerless, invincible the next.

My recent life is proof that it's possible to live within the boundaries of a fortress constructed to defend the still recognizable parts of myself. The relentless poking and prodding. Fingers pricked to draw just a little more blood. How strange and miraculous that our bodies are designed to be vulnerable, information-giving. So counter to the hearts we strive fiercely to protect.

With one hand, I cling to the child who danced with cattle in a Kansas field. I am the little girl who chased fireflies deep into the sticky Midwest night. I see her running toward her mama wearing summer cotton and a giant half-moon smile.

That blissful little girl followed me into womanhood, though lately I search for her, long for the spirit that ran headlong into the arms of the ones she loved.

With the other hand I wield a sharpened sword. Infusions. Injections. CT scans. The child has become defender, in rabid opposition of so many offenses, mostly the ones I allow upon myself.

I feel the warrior rising within me. She is vivid contrast to the lover I’ve always been. I carry the burden of her armor. Feel the tightening of iron to skin. She is strategy overamplified. She is the opposite of spontaneity’s friend.

In control. Protective. Calculating with what she gives out and lets in.

And then I raise both hands to my Creator and the reconciliation of the two sides begins—
my arms open wide, above my head,
an unanticipated surrender,
to Him and to who I really am—
Arms crossed exemplifies human posture.
Arms wide open, the essence of holiness.

Guard your heart was never meant to be a chronic disposition of disconnection, but a call to the preservation of peace, joy, love embedded within— So that what is seen and experienced in us, invites others to move in close and ask the deeper questions,

“How do you do this?” “How do you make it through?”

What I go through is only valuable and useful if it edifies and encourages you.

Therefore, be encouraged.

This is the part when I remind myself that it was a child [a baby!] and not an armor-clad warrior who came to save me, who reached down to save the world.

Unguarded. Not the posture of a fool but one who is open to the wisdom of the Universe. Invited in. Infused in every cell. In everything you battle against remember, the real battle is in the mind.

NOTES:Being a warrior of any kind is impossible to perpetually maintain.There is a time to remove the armor, piece by piece, and sit in the nakedness of who we are.I have revered for as long as I can remember the great warriors in history and the ones present throughout my own life.But no warrior wears his/her armor all of the time.For me the danger comes when I begin to define myself as “Warrior,” [the noun] instead of a necessary verb during difficult seasons.In fact, if you ask me, I will tell you that my greatest desire is to be less like the warrior and more like a Child of God. In the end, the power, the marvel, the miracle, is not that I reach up but that He reaches down.