TransforMarriage - Reflections after 13 lucky years

Transformation lives everywhere.  But it's coziest place where it kicks up it's feet and is most at home just might be marriage.

Marriage is like a mirror that we look into and see all of our beauty and all of our disgusting. Once we look, we must decide: will we fully live in the beauty and fully die to the nasty? Or will we be unable to own either? Or own one and not the other? 

There is nothing like another human - another mind, body and soul - that is able to more powerfully, beautifully, annoyingly reflect back all of who we are. 

My relationship with Jake reflects back to me that I am full of energy and creativity and joy and freedom. Gosh, I love when he celebrates that! It also reflects back to me that I have no idea how to trust and want control, am prideful yet insecure, unthoughtful, selfish, manipulative...you get it.

Marriage showed me I had absolutely no idea who I really was. It also showed me it could help me become who I really am. For a long miserable while I remained in denial and provided my own answers via blame and other incredibly logical excuses. Through counseling I got to STEP 1: Acknowledgement. But that's never quite enough, is it. Thankfully, STEP 2 was in hot pursuit. Surrender. 

Finally, grace broke me to heal me. STEP 2 is the one that rises up, trips you, and lands you flat on your face. In fact, I'm still breaking and still healing. Parts of me are still dying so that they can start living. Through marriage I have become and am still becoming someone new. The real me. 

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger?" Maybe. But how about, "What finally kills you makes you better?" Or, I wish "you-er" was a word because that's what I'm trying to say. The YOU that was perfectly and purposefully designed and created and given life. Everything else can die.

C.S. Lewis says, "We do not know more resurrections than we do in our Christian experience day by day because of the deaths we refuse to die." We just celebrated one Resurrection...how about a few more this year?

Don't forget, marriage isn't just about us. It was given to us as a gift that symbolizes another relationship. We actually can understand and know Jesus more intimately through the day-to-day ins and outs of our marriage relationship.

When we say "I do" we also are committing to "I die."  But we can only do this because there is Another who fully committed to both of those before us. 

I wrote this song about marriage and transformation and everything that happens because our Great Lover said "I do." 

I Do

Verse 1

Doors flung open into my prison cell

There stands my Jesus holding the key

All the bars were lies and accusations chains

There can be union now that you’re free

Verse 2

Doors flung open into this heart of stone

I feel love’s power change it to flesh

All my hidden lies exchanged for the truth of God

All of my prisoner’s clothes exchanged for a dress

Chorus

“I do.” Jesus says, “I do.”

I take old and make it new

I replace all lies with what is true

“I do.”

Verse 3

Doors flung open into the house of God

Lamb at the Altar now standing as Groom

Tears of joy flowing where blood once ran

Glory of his Bride fills the whole room

Chorus

“I do.” Jesus says, “I do.”

I take old and make it new

Pour my blood of this Covenant over you

“I do.”

Verse 4

Doors flung open into the heart of God

He joins my hand with Faithful and True

So who takes this bride to be his very own

I hear my Savior say

I do

Chorus:

“I do.” Jesus says, “I do.”

I take old and make it new

Now I lift the veil between me and you

“I do.”

Let the doors fling open. Walk down the aisle to new life. 

Midnight Glory

"...for the sun stopped shining."  Luke 23:45

I saw the top two inches of the canvas peeking out behind an old trunk piled with books. My friend Melissa found a bunch of antique jewelry at an estate sale. Her text read, “Come fast.” So I did. I found a few unique pieces of jewelry, but I kept eyeing the canvas. Finally, I pulled out the dusty 3x4 foot painting stroked with dull but somewhat whimsical flowers.

And THEN every estate sale junkie’s favorite phrase ran across the canvas. ”I have POTENTIAL.” I agreed wholeheartedly and told her I would introduce her to an artist who could help her discover it.

I brought the painting to Kelly Van Dyke, one of my dearest friends who has a wonderful eye for making old art new. I gave her vague direction (something about yellow and how it’s my favorite color) because I don’t like to influence (i.e. disrupt) the creative process of artists I trust.

A few days later, she texted back and said, “It took a bit of a different turn than primarily yellow…I added a lot of black.”

Hmmmm. Really? Black?? 

She sent me a picture and I ADORED it  – immeasurably more than a painting of yellow flowers.

I loved it so much I told Kelly we must name her. She asked her 7-year-old son Atticus who replied, “Garden of Flower.” She asked her husband Zach who suggested “Purple Summer” – the last song in Spring Awakening. I read the lyrics and loved it. That was that.

The day I picked up the painting, I hung it on the wall and was sitting just staring at her altogether newness. I’d even turned her on her side from landscape to portrait – which every artist knows changes everything. But the BLACK! Not the yellow, the black was bringing every other color to life. Beautiful, whimsical, mysterious life. Still staring. 

And then she sort of started talking to me...or maybe it was closer to singing. I'm not sure. It's really my first experience with this sort of thing.  At first I was taken aback and then...it struck me. Isn’t that what we all do when we are transformed? Don’t we come alive?! So I kept my gaze on her, but turned my ear a little closer to listen.

Apparently her real name is Midnight Glory…not Purple Summer. And this is what she said:

Midnight Glory

Acknowledge the lie to uncover the truth

Reach wisdom’s age to understand youth

The harder the battle, sweeter victory won

The darker the shadow, the brighter the sun

Glory is hidden in a palette of light

But is fully expressed on the canvas of night.

The great pain of labor, the euphoria of birth

Losing your life to know your full worth

In depths of pain we grasp our true health

In poorest of spirit we hold our great wealth

Glory is hidden amidst noonday light

But is fully expressed in the middle of night

You must know your past to know what’s ahead

Let go of control to know daily bread

An unspeakable joy that can drip through tears

An omnipotent God who can ease our fears

Glory is hidden when surrounded by light

But is fully expressed when surrendered to night

To move with great power, sit still at the throne

You’re not fully loved until you’re fully known

Only the broken can uncover what’s whole

Only the lost can discover their soul

Glory is hidden in the pretense of light

But is fully expressed in the presence of night.

To bond with freedom, you must break each chain

To breathe in spring’s flowers, they must drink the rain

When darkness surrounds you, light will guide your feet

When bitterness drowns you, forgiveness is sweet

Glory is hidden when we run in our light 
But is fully expressed as we walk through the night.

So embrace the bleakest, the blackest of hours

And know in your weakest, the greatest of Powers

Will bring you His Light, of the heavenly kind

That illuminates heart, where there’s only been mind

Glory is hidden in a palette of light

But is fully expressed on the canvas of night.

Thank you Midnight Glory. I have this feeling you were trying to express it more beautifully...but I hear you, girl. The brightest and greatest glory ever to grace this earth came in the blackest of night. Death continues to bring life.

Surrender to the darker palette. Allow transformation. Trust the Artist. Come alive. 

I told Kelly she really should paint more often. 

It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Luke 23:44-45

Transformation - the heart of Dora Mae Jewelry

Befores turning to Afters…

Old being made New…

Broken becoming Whole…

Death giving birth to Life…

This single yet multifaceted idea energizes me every single multifaceted day. 

It obviously applies to my jewelry design – taking old things with outdated purpose and inspiring them to become current creations with new and beautiful identity! (Around here, we call this transforMAEtion).

It applies to my curb appeal projects – taking old, disintegrated and dying landscapes and creating new living spaces that beckon living beings to come and sit, play or breathe in the scented Designer flowers!

It applies to a dark and dusty 1970’s kitchen transforming on a dime into a modern, light-filled space filled with symbolic art and not-quite gourmet cuisine! (Maybe food will be my next frontier for transformation!)

But as I’ve experienced it, the most beautiful transformations in the above applications coincide with the most profound transformations occurring in my soul.  I create the most new and beautiful things on the outside when God is creating something new in my deepest parts.  What’s truly visionary is first truly personal.

I believe we love befores and afters so much because they are knitted into the fabric of our innermost beings. Our hearts cry out for the after even before we are willing to let go of the before. We long for healing even before we’re willing to admit that we’re broken. We can envision Life long before we have decided to embrace the death that must precede it.

Caterpillars, please don’t try to become better, more beautiful caterpillars. Climb into the dark cocoon and die to all of your old-ness. Emerge into new life as entirely new and beautiful creations! And let all of that newness inspire you to spread and multiply that new Life and healing into the world around you through whatever creative means you’ve been given by our Creator.

May Dora Mae Jewelry, or any of my creative endeavors, continue to reflect the re-creation within my soul. And may it inspire you to press into the excruciatingly beautiful process of transformation…not just so that your life looks new and beautiful…but so that every expression of your life reflects Life Himself.