5 minute Friday: on She.

Time to write for five, unedited minutes. Purely from the heart, fast off the keyboard words that come to mind when you hear one word.

The word today is: SHE.

I know so many. I have a community of them, surrounding me with their stories and songs and passions. They ignite the fibres of my heart that I didn’t know existed, but that catch aflame easily, for they are ready, dry.

She catches babies in the dark, works long hours, and comes home to tend to her garden, to paint, to kiss her husband on the lips. She brings life into the world, fights for it, makes a living for her family doing it. 

She runs for hope, she runs until she cries and sweats and puts her hands on her knees, bent over, breathing deep, breathing deeper. She runs for a cure, for a cause, heart pounding wildly in surrender, but longing for breakthrough.

She struggles through the grief of losing her child, born still into this world, never having the chance to hold her baby with breath in his lungs and color in his cheeks. 

She is laughter and light, a mother of many. She teaches them, sings to them, bakes bread with them. She picks the kale from her garden, dries plums from her tree, bathes a nation before her head hits the pillow at night.

She leaves her warm bed at night, leaves her sleeping children, and watches the child of someone else crown, captures their first wince as newborn skin hits air. She takes their photos, she makes art of this handiwork, meets the newest members of this city before we’ve had our morning coffees.

She sings when no one is looking, although the pain in her body is wicked, is tormenting, she longs for a cure, but she never curses the God who made her. She loves her husband, she presses on, her soul awakened to an everlasting love, to a love that never fails.

She feeds her babies, breastfeeds with dignity and grace, unflinching when someone glares her way. She nurtures her babies the way she wants to, she carries them against her chest, sweat trickling down her back from carrying the extra weight of a child.

She doesn’t give up, she keeps pushing through the silence, pushes love into the home that doesn’t feel like a home, doesn’t look the way she thought it would be. She serves and she carries and she loves.

She is mighty and she is fierce, and she keeps pressing on in faith, although she’s already lost a child to this disease. But she doesn’t give up hope. She is made to be a mama, and her bones are filled with courage. For her, this motherhood journey is hard, it is hard. But the God in her is strong, so she opens her arms wide and receives, calls forth the wild, unrelenting love of the King and walks in peace.

She waits in hope for the promises. She keeps her head held high. 

She inspires.