Today, I'm submitting. I've got four poems I've written over the past five years; they've been read and reread, punctuated and edited, spell checked and rhythm checked, read out loud--to the fan whirling around me here this morning, and they have been silenced.

I've hoarded these poems, poems no longer mine, and for that, I'm sorry. I've been selfish, greedy, timid, and fearful. I've failed to realize, these poems no longer belong to me, now written, to the best of my ability and heart, they belong to you.

I know they are ready for you. A long line of goosepimples ran up my arm when I read them, this morning, knowing, finally a call has come to submit them. They are necessary and fit; they have voices others need to hear, and this is the place to put them--a place where the right people will read them, understand them, give them life beyond me. A place to share them with you.

But, this is hard, hard work for me.

I'm looking around my bedroom, trying to find a clear spot in this room, to fix my eyes, ground myself, and know that I have the courage to speak my poems out into the world. I hoard my words. I eat them, swallow them, choke on them, spit them out into the palms of my hands, only to find a way to rub them back into my brown skin.

I have to live with them. My words. I have to gather them up in herds, corral them back into the gate of my teeth, and let them race down the dry dirt road of my throat, down to roam the green pastures of my heart. There is space there. In my heart. I've found a place that boasts rolling clover hills, with a constant loop of cumulus clouds bouncing and frolicking against a magenta-blue sky. Every now and again, yellow balloons turn out to really be the sun, and it rains deep red rain drops. I visit, wafting in on clouds, looking down on my words, grazing on the hills like lazy cows, and watching me like nosey llamas. Some poems are wild, chicken-like, they run and run, sometimes lifting for a few feet to fly, coming down just as fast, entertaining the other words out to pasture, and me.

If I leave my words in the pasture of my heart, I can go in, as needed, and hug them, allow them to hug me, we can soothe and pet each other where we hurt. No one has denied us anything. No one has denied us. No one has said my hills grow the wrong clovers, my cows too fat, my llama's too curious, my chickens too wild. No one has pulled me off the cloud, where I sit, even when it rains red.

It's hard for me to travel there, to that inner pasture, with you, with others. You can't step on a clover, I'll quickly chide you. You may not see the magenta in the blue, I fear. You may laugh at my yellow balloon, or worse, never see it.

You are complicated to me, and my words, those poems I've fed, raised, from a slight syllable, a stir of a feeling into something I hope you can see, those poems are really portraits of me. And I, I've learned through a long childhood to hoard myself.

I'm never sure if I can trust anyone with what grows in the pastures of my heart. Even the most tenacious weeds are delicate, there.

The most vulnerable thing I'm learning, the most damned and painful thing is, I'm not hoarding poems, I'm hoarding me, from all that heals and all that needs healing.

Let's pause for a minute.

Consider, over and over and over, even as I write, you read, the most beautiful, extraordinary person is being birthed. And again. And again. The world over. Just this past person, has never and will never be birthed again. And again, again, the world over.

I've never ever seen a snowflake, but I've heard no two are ever the same. Each time I sit with that idea, my heart swells and my thoughts of me shrink and expand at the same time. I am a snowflake, living for a short while. I've got one shot to let someone see how beautifully I was created before I'm gone.

Now, the more I fall in love with God, the more I fall in love with me. But, this is not the greatest love, as Whitney sung, because I don't believe love of self is the greatest love of all. In fact, I know it isn't.

The love of self helped me hoard my poems from you. The love of self kept me fearful. The love of self made me selfish and not selfless. The love of self strangled me, cut the dirt road of my throat off, so those poems grazing in the pastures of my heart, never got through the fence of my teeth. The love of self made me a perfectionist, made me insecure, and kept me feeling inadequate.

I know, it's getting confusing, because I just said I'm falling in love with me, and I also said I loved myself. Let me clarify. I'm falling in love with God's work of art--me. Before, I thought myself my own work of art, my own fancy-worded self. Before, I was fancy--I'd created my poems. I'd woven together my words. I'd quilted my life into something beautiful. I'd, I'd, I'd...I'd created. I was the fancy poet.

When it was me, creating, I worried about you. What you would see, or not see. What you would reject, or accept. What you would place value on, or devalue. What you would praise, or tease.

I got it all wrong. It isn't about me. I'm not fancy. I've done nothing, alone. I've served as the vehicle for something far greater, far powerful, far more creative than me. I'm just a fleeting snowflake, soon to melt. I'm just a brown girl, a beautifully created brown girl, carrying a pasture of words in her heart from God. I am not the fancy creator, I am the fancy creation.

Let's pause again.

God has no backup for me. No second chances, no 'in case' Ki. There is no Plan B for me. The world has one shot at this beautiful, masterful work of art we call Kiandra. I'm God's one shot of my work being done. If I cop out, we all loose me.

I get to feeling really small when I think about that. If there is no replacement for me, my work is big, full, long, and hard. All the time, I have to be and give me. No off days. I have no time and no right to hoard me. Even more, no 'Plan B' for me means it isn't about me, it's about everything I give myself to. More specifically, it is about serving others for God.

And today, I'm learning, it's about my service. Me doing the work God has called me to do, God has gifted me to do. We are all gifted to serve, and all of us are created masterfully, intricately, like a snowflake, to serve and give, to be a light in the world.

Hoarding our gifts, talents withholds light from the world. Our gifts, our talents are not ours, they don't belong to us. We are made to use them, serve the world with them. When we consider that, consider our lives, talents, work as a gift to us to pass on to others, we see ourselves as the vehicle, the canvas, the soil from which greater things grow. It's no longer about personal rejection, personal fear, feelings of inadequacy, it's about doing our own work and living in the truth of how and why we were created.

We move away from selfishness, self-love, self-perseverance, and towards selflessness, love of others, and service to others. The greatest love is not self-love, self-love doesn't heal us, fulfill us, sustain us, or nurture us.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

— Matthew 22:37-39 (HCSB)

What if writing, painting, creating, and putting it out into the world for others to enjoy, for others to learn and experience something new, for others' enlightenment, what if that was love. What if being vulnerable, courageous, brave enough to share our inner pastures was service and worship and praise? What if writing the poems, painting the pictures, sculpting the vases, baking the cakes, building the houses, what if it all that is God's hands working in you, and your willingness, to create, to share and give those things you do with your hands, your mind, what if always, when you are doing that, you are praising God. You are worshipping. You are acknowledging His holiness, His greatness as it lives in you. What if your poem, your painting, your house, your cake is love?

It can be.

E is a wonderful, gifted accountant. He is blessed to understand numbers and budgets in a way that strikes me as masterful. He's so astute and remarkable in his discerning way of understanding how to use money. But, I didn't always understand or appreciate it. There was a time I wished him creative, like me. I looked for hobbies for him. Woodworking? Photography? Writing? I tried to give him qualities like me, qualities I could understand. I believed his life must be painful, without creating, without using his hands. I felt terrible that I was having the time of my life painting, quilting, writing, gardening, doing whatever I could do to keep my hands busy creating while he was budgeting. Surely, I thought, he has to be sore about that. He has to secretly resent me for creating art while he creates budgets.

You see, my hands ache if I don't create. My soul is uneasy and I feel sick, malaise, melancholy if I am not creating.

But E, E is not equipped like me. He was made an accountant, and everyday he does his work. He loves his work like I love mine. He feels the same fulfillment when he balances a budget I feel when I write a poem, weave a tapestry, quilt a blanket, or bake a cake. He enjoys budgeting like I enjoy gardening.

We all have purpose. We all have talents, gifts, and abilities that speak to our purposes. Some of our purposes, talents align with other's gifts. Some of us have few gifts, others many, but none of our talents, gifts, abilities, or purposes are greater than another's. They are all equal and meant to serve the same God, and humanity.

For me, writing and creating means doing the work I'm called to do. I have a deep belief that God calls each of us, if we are receptive to Him, to do His work. I don't know why He's given me the poems He's given me, but I know that He's given them to me, and they are not mine. When I write, and now, submit my work, I no longer see it as my hard work, my struggle, I see it as worship, and serving.

Worship and praise is acknowledging, dwelling, and reacting to the holiness of God. It is centering ourselves on His glory and responding in praise to all He is. When we worship God we magnify Him, honor Him.

When we use our gifts to fulfill His will, we honor and praise Him. We acknowledge that we are not fancy, He is. We are not the artists, the accountants, the poets, but He is, and He does His work in and through us. We serve Him, and others, not ourselves.

So today, I submit. I serve, I create, I do as called. And in doing, I find, I fall more in love with God, and loose sight of me as anything but His beautiful creation. I write, create to praise Him. I honor myself, my gifts not because I am fancy, but as an act of praise and worship of Him and His holiness, creativeness, and power.

May you find peace and faith to be the light you've been called to be.

Deep and Full Blessings to You,

Ki

The Work of Submitting: Writing from Faith

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