Sometimes I look skyward and want it to be full of lovely things. Sometimes I’m afraid to look, afraid to find loneliness. Twelve times a year I look into the night and find darkness where light once was. It’s called the new moon, but it took time for me to accept darkness as newness. It railed against my common parlance, my standards of acceptance.

Then someone said, “Woman. Moon. Beauty.” And I began to understand what the sky had been whispering to me all along, but that I had feared.

The way the moon cycles, the way woman cycles. The way the moon hides, the way we hide. The way we grow full and pregnant with babies, ideas, and gifts we must bring into the world…though it cost us, though it stretches us to our limits, though it takes us into darkness.

Have you thought of it? The way we shine, the way we diminish and find quiet places to restore, replenish, and find our way to give ourselves away again. Woman. Moon. Beauty.
We don’t always find beautiful places to restore though do we? The thought of some of my quiet places over the years make me laugh out loud. Some seasons, it meant a few un-interrupted minutes. Others, I would take naps in the backseat of my minivan. Still others, I just flat out zoned in the middle of it all.

Disengagement happens, whether we choose to celebrate it once-a-week, once-a-month, or never — thinking we can ignore it. Yet, this is how we work. So why not celebrate it?

I can tell you why I didn’t. A question would always nag. Was I being selfish? I had chosen to be a mother, a role where I had literally given my body over for others to be housed within, nourished from, shepherded by. I had agreed for my very smile to be the meaning of sunrise to six. whole. people. Where is there room for me to contemplate the moon in that? I felt wrong.

I had chosen covenant, a promise to my husband, my beloved, to belong, to seek another’s good above my own. “I am my beloveds and he is mine.” But I think that’s where this seed must have started cracking open in the dark…

And I lay down
My life for thee
In love we are free

-Josh Garrels, Heaven’s Knife

Love makes free people. Yes, I was bound. I was bound to be free. I was bound in order to know how to bring freedom. Yes, I was, and am, to die to myself. Die in order to live, in order to be able to give, life.

So, is it selfish to know my design? Woman. Moon. Beauty. Is it selfish to lay down my life like Yeshua (Jesus) did to know resurrection like he did? Of course not. But this is not our common parlance, this does not meet our standards of acceptance. No, we are harsh, demanding more than even our Creator does of us. And then we are wrong, and say that is His design.

Is it?

Is it Creator’s way, who gave us six days to work and a seventh to rest? Is it Yeshua  calling us selfish? Yeshua who went away from the people to rest and pray? Or is it pride, tradition, and conditioning that whispers the guilt trip?

Is laying down my life in love actually in any contrast to modeling the shepherding of my own soul, spirit, mind, or body? NO.

It takes humility to acknowledge need within. It takes humility to hold more than one way of thinking in tension with another. It takes humility to cease from measurable, tangible, daily work and enter into the mysterious darkness, a quiet place, to face what seems to be a lonely sky, to ask questions and to listen for answers we don’t yet know.

She who humbles herself will be scooped up in tenderness. She who lays down her life in recognition of her design, not her own ideas, will learn of resurrection — will be able to give resurrection. She who is bound by love is free. Woman. Moon. Beauty.

Love,
Raynna


Hello! I’m glad you are here. Subscribe to stay connected? I’ll send you my poem, Bound by Light, to say welcome and thank you.

My name is Raynna Myers, I’m an author, photographer, homeschooling mom to six children, and a wife of 19 years, creating to be the life-giver I was created to be, in the image of my Creator. This is where I share as I learn, because we need each other.


Special thanks to Jennifer Myers for allowing me to use these images from our recent photo shoot. Isn’t she lovely?