Hi, I’m Em.
If I’m honest, which I attempt to always be, I would happily, and selfishly, keep myself tucked away behind the screen, writing books and poetry, speaking and praying to God and never having to surface any of this vulnerable, tender heart of mine to the world. I struggle with sharing myself and yet, it is through me I share His glory. I am just a story that He has woven together where I am redeemed through His love and mystery time and time again. Never knowing exactly why.
After years of being on the path of seeking and discovery, dying back to the old, and revealing my true self many times; turning graveyards into gardens by allowing God deeper into the all the dark spaces I have refused to turn the lights on, I am here and I have arrived. Willingly, yes. Scared, of course. My fears attempting to keep me small, to run and hide from exposure, on high.
Faith and hope, although used as a hallmark greeting card of whimsical dreams, is more like dirt on the knees, wiping the blood off your face, standing up in the arena time and time again, even when your knees are shaking, you’re crying out, and taking another step when all you want to do is collapse, hide, run and be anywhere other than the moment we are in, is more of the type of faith we walk in when we have committed our hearts to the altar of transformation.
The desire to keep my most cherished moments with God, the wisdom and lessons He has taught me nestled in, close to my heart and between only us where I can protect them, is a real need and preference. Yet, the deeper that I journey with God and discover the true me, the one that is free, knows and feels His love penetrating my heart, pulsating throughout my blood and bones, I realize more and more life is not about me anymore. Funny the duality that lives in that one. Don’t get me wrong, I had to come to know myself first, to know my heart, the human and spiritual one, and the boundaries I needed before I could take this journey towards boundlessness and allow love to guide me. I had to cultivate the practice of being in His love, and allowing myself to receive it, before I could really tell if I was in service to it. And, despite becoming very self aware, and loving myself wholesomely through the eyes of Christ, I have come to know that all the beauty, and space he’s cultivated within me, belongs to Him. All the observations, interactions and life moving in and through me, Him. I am nothing but an observer. A witness. A scribe to the love, truth and beauty that exists in and all around us when we slow down and tune in.
When we devote our life to being in practice of love and truth, giving ourselves over to it willingly, becomes the way.
So, I am here to say:
I am not a guru.
I am not a chosen person.
I am not a bible junkie Christian who clings to scripture like it’s a weapon or remedy to an unhealed and un-grieved heart — nor am I a new age spiritual but not religious type either that doesn’t see the value and power in scripture as a guide to our greatest becoming.
I don’t know anything, other than what my experiences have shown me.
Things I do know:
I know how tender a heart feels when it breaks into a million pieces, never knowing how it possibly could be mended.
I know how overwhelming it can feel to wake up every day like weight of the world is on your shoulders and not knowing exactly how to give that over to God.
I know death, pain and suffering intimately. I have helped many people, including children, transition through the most excruciating moments and help their families attempt to find moments of peace in situations that simply just don’t make sense to our human mind.
I know how hard it is to surrender control, to loosen the grip and give over the reins and actually let yourself live the life that God wants you to live, and not what your pride thinks you must live.
I know how hard it is to allow good things, including heart filling, soul nourishing love into our life when all we have known is conditional and transactional “love” that has kept us bound to the pain of our past.
I know that in the darkest of days, when I was in the messiest, broken, most desperate and unhealed version of myself on an existential edge where all I could see was the death of my choices all around me, that it was God’s reach that saved me, not my own strength or understanding. God’s love breathed life back into me when there was no other remedy, despite my historic resourcefulness.
So, who am I?
I am still figuring that out.
I think God only can reveal so much to us at once because our tender minds and hearts couldn’t possibly handle the magnitude of knowing all at once. Trust me, I tried and it almost toppled me. Like a child, we love and protect them by preserving their innocence for as long as possible, and God does the same for us. There’s beauty in not knowing; it’s experiencing.
Maybe you can relate, but I never quite find myself fitting in; I am somewhere always in-between. In transition, in process, in discovery. I yearned to fit in, but the years of abandoning my true self for belonging ultimately caught up. I am, however, simply, utterly and most beautifully and devastatingly human. And because of that, I am a follower of Christ. That I do know. And as I come more into the understanding of my unique path, and how He has made me, I don’t think I’ll ever really “fit” in if I am attempting to live true to the only me that God made. I could be wrong, but just like a tree in the forest, although they share similarities with one another, no tree is the same. And that’s the beauty in God’s design and creation. He is that big. He is that wise. He is that powerful. He is that creative.
All I know at this time is that I have said yes to this wild journey with God and letting him show me more. Both the light and the dark, He continues to transform me, despite my yearning for permanency. And yet, that’s the reality of living a human life is that we all change and grow, whether we are conscious and intentional in it or not — whether we choose to bring more life, more love into our hearts and recreate that through our lives as the years go on, or allow death and fear to dictate our destiny.
I am here to simply remind you of the beauty that exists beyond the fear, beyond the pain — in the deepest pockets of your heart of hearts.
I am aware that you will project onto me thinking you know me, but I will happily remind you over and over again that I am nothing other than a human trying to figure this all out too. How to work with the mess of our hearts and minds in a chaotic world, and how to create a life of beauty not dependent upon false identities and idols that give us a sense of certainty in an uncertain world. We’re all in this together, yet uniquely too.
My only desire is to help you remember the wisdom that lives within you; that underneath the more tender parts of our hearts that we’re protecting, lives and breathes the most magnificent compass you could ever follow. Although it can be challenging at times in a world that craves certainty and protection, it’s when we go towards the things that scare us the most, we make the decision to be with life in the wonderful symphony of uncertainty and allow it to teach us, that we end up discovering the truest, most resilient version of ourselves. We see God’s love for us in our most simple design, beyond the identities. As we begin to discover who we are under all the layers of masks that we’ve cultivated from years of being told who we thought we need to be, lives the version of ourselves who is yearning to come forward and live life wholeheartedly. Stripping away these masks is no easy feat though. It takes time, attention and intention — it takes periods of healing, growth and being open to transformation as slow burn or as quick as it comes to you when it finally arrives. It takes prayer, community, isolation and even seasons where you feel completely lost and directionless. For me, it took looking death in the face, heartbreak, physical pain, grief, failure, and surrendering everything I “knew” over while clawing my way through the darkness; coming up only for air to then place my heart upon His altar to be remade time and time again. And, in the depths of darkness, I came to know ease, peace, grace and a love that holds me so deep that I could never earn. A love that wove me back together and became the living heartbeat, and the pulse for my life.
We are often in an unseen battle for our hearts. And what I’ve come to know is that God doesn’t pull us out of the furnace — He gets into the fires with us. We must go into the shadows if we want to discover the true light. We must embrace the flame if we desire the warmth within it.
Jesus isn’t an idol — he is a prototype, an invitation to a great life beyond what we can conceptualize. He is what is available to us if we are willing and prepared to die a thousand deaths to our false selves and become reborn again in His light. If you feel helpless, broken-hearted, disconnected, yearning and longing for the day things change and make sense, my hope for you is that my words remind you of what He promises when you’ve forgotten. That you find the simple joys in the most mundane places; that you see there’s beauty in all of it if you look close enough, especially in the seasons in-between. His love and grace is sufficient in all cases; it is the prerequisite to any action taking.
The truth is, I never knew I’d become an Author. I never knew I’d become a follower of Christ. I never wanted the life, the gifts and the path He chose for me. Why: because I didn’t feel worthy of it. Any of it. It also went against who I thought I needed to be to earn my way into love in this world. Everything He has given me, I couldn’t have done myself, so while there is beauty in that, receiving His love so deeply and tenderly, I also know that our world heals when we individually heal. That our hearts orientation is what gives Him the access to being on Earth. We are a vehicle and vessel for all His good to flow from. May we live a life from more love, not less. From love, and not for love.
I hope that by sharing what has helped me through the darkest of nights and finding the steadiness of his love in the wildest of storms, we can do just that.
With love,
