UNGUARDED [turning to me]

Sometimes I choose the seat at the far side of the room. It’s the opposite of being aloof. It’s the whole of me attempting to manage the overwhelm that comes from taking everything in.

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PRELUDE:
There are moments when you meet yourself again —
not in a mirror, but in a memory.
A sentence, a scent, a line you once wrote in faith
and now live with your whole body.

I found her again —
the woman who wrote Unguarded.
I recognized the shape of her hope,
the tremor of her voice,
the way she carried both fire and fear in the same trembling hands.

She still lives in me.
But I am not just her anymore.

Back then, I believed surrender was something you did once —
a holy moment, sealed.
Now I know surrender is a rhythm,
a returning.
It’s not a posture you hold but a pulse you learn to follow.

When I read her words —
about the warrior rising,
about the lover beneath the armor,
about the child chasing fireflies —
I want to gather her close and whisper,
you were right, but there’s more.

Holiness is not about winning the battle;
it’s about remembering you were never meant to live in one.
The body teaches this first.
It grows weary of defense,
tired of the tension between power and peace.
It longs to rest again in the safety of its Maker’s hands.

I see it now — the miracle of being both breakable and beloved.
How vulnerability was never my weakness,
it was my way home.

We spend years mistaking vigilance for virtue.
We guard so fiercely against pain
that we close the gates to joy.
But the wisdom of years, of loss, of healing and unhealing,
is this: the unguarded heart is the most protected of all.

The one who lays down the armor
is not giving up; she is giving in —
to grace, to peace, to the gentle knowing
that to be held is better than to win.

And so I lift my arms again —
not as a warrior in defense,
but as a woman in devotion.
This, too, is strength.
This, too, is belief.
This is me, still saying yes.

For the Reader:
In returning to Unguarded, I wanted to share the lines that still speak most deeply to me —
the ones that call me to listen again, to soften again, to believe again.
You’ll find them set in italics below.

—

This is the moment in the journey when two sides of me split—when my right hand has a story to tell different from the left. One moment I am powerless, invincible the next.

My recent life is proof that it's possible to live within the boundaries of a fortress constructed to defend the still recognizable parts of myself. The relentless poking and prodding. Fingers pricked to draw just a little more blood. How strange and miraculous that our bodies are designed to be vulnerable, information-giving. So counter to the hearts we strive fiercely to protect.

With one hand, I cling to the child who danced with cattle in a Kansas field. I am the little girl who chased fireflies deep into the sticky Midwest night. I see her running toward her mama wearing summer cotton and a giant half-moon smile.

That blissful little girl followed me into womanhood, though lately I search for her, long for the spirit that ran headlong into the arms of the ones she loved.

With the other hand I wield a sharpened sword. Infusions. Injections. CT scans. The child has become defender, in rabid opposition of so many offenses, mostly the ones I allow upon myself.

I feel the warrior rising within me. She is vivid contrast to the lover I’ve always been. I carry the burden of her armor. Feel the tightening of iron to skin. She is strategy overamplified. She is the opposite of spontaneity’s friend.

In control. Protective. Calculating with what she gives out and lets in.

And then I raise both hands to my Creator and the reconciliation of the two sides begins—
my arms open wide, above my head,
an unanticipated surrender,
to Him and to who I really am—
Arms crossed exemplifies human posture.
Arms wide open, the essence of holiness.

Guard your heart was never meant to be a chronic disposition of disconnection, but a call to the preservation of peace, joy, love embedded within—so that what is seen and experienced in us, invites others to move in close and ask the deeper questions,

“How do you do this?” “How do you make it through?”

What I go through is only valuable and useful if it edifies and encourages you.

Therefore, be encouraged.

This is the part when I remind myself that it was a child [a baby!] and not an armor-clad warrior who came to save me, who reached down to save the world.

Unguarded. Not the posture of a fool but one who is open to the wisdom of the Universe. Invited in. Infused in every cell.

NOTES:
Being a warrior of any kind is impossible to perpetually maintain.
There is a time to remove the armor, piece by piece, and sit in the nakedness of who we are.
I have revered for as long as I can remember the great warriors in history and the ones present throughout my own life.
But no warrior wears his/her armor all of the time.
For me, the danger comes when I begin to define myself as “Warrior” [the noun] instead of a necessary verb during difficult seasons.
In fact, if you ask me, I will tell you that my greatest desire is to be less like the warrior and more like a Child of God.
In the end, the power, the marvel, the miracle, is not that I reach up but that He reaches down.

Image: There are moments when the body preaches what words cannot.Standing before the cold, unguarded and unashamed, I remembered that the truest protection has never been my armor, but my openness.
Winter teaches what wholeness requires:
to be fully exposed and still alive in it, to trust that warmth comes from within, to believe that even in the freezing silence,
life is still moving underneath.
This was not defiance. It was devotion.
A quiet return to the posture that began it all —
arms open, heart uncovered,
facing what is,
and still saying yes.