I feel like a writer this morning. Messy bun, morning sun coming in through the window, coffee by my side, wearing my Townes Van Zandt shirt. I’ve got my old journal open before me and I’m reading pages from last year where I spilled my passion for writing, telling Jesus how I wanted to be a writer more than anything. Today, the skin feels a little more comfortable. I feel like a writer. I never take pictures of myself, but I wanted to remember this moment. This feeling I have curled up in my blue reading chair in my home, the house where I wanted to write my life away. I wanted to remember this moment where my sweet dog Daisy is playing intently with her toy and I am makeup-less, sleepy and free, writing new words and rereading old ones and feeling fiercely like Lauren. More than anything, I just want to walk boldly in the purpose God has given me. I have felt so purposeless this last week, letting go of so much of what I love. But it’s taken that stripping, that removal, to get settled back in my bones. Me, free, capturing remnants of my wandering soul and putting them on a page like fireflies in a jar. I read the words of Whitman, “From this hour I ordain myself loosed from limits and imaginary lines… divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.” Maybe this past week, this past year, as hard it has been, has simply been a divesting. A shedding of the holds, the limits, the lines, all the things I’ve used to define myself as anything other than simply God’s beloved. I am God’s beloved. I am God’s beloved. Free.