I wake and the words are there, hanging in the dark, filling the liminal space between rest and rise. I etch them out, fragments and syllables, hovering above the pages they will soon be apart of. But here in the bleak morning light, they sit, unfinished and raw, in the corners of my mind, or slips of paper, or typed into a note on my phone. 

Sometimes they come in a flood, sometimes a trickle. Scraps, really. Never linear. More like a web of puzzle pieces to sort and fit together, as though I’m an old woman humming a melody I’ve long forgotten and am trying to recall the words. But in the end, these things seem to write themselves. It is as if my hands and my mind are simply the vessels through which the truths are birthed into the world. They really don’t come from me, but they are somehow apart of me. Part of my experiences, part of what I take in each day. But it’s the Spirit who does the work. He transforms the mundane into crystalized thought, and floats it back to me as a blessing, little particles of words that transcend the physical, the visual, or the material. When they are put together, the words become a mosaic of past and present, and they illumine the future in a way I never predict, a perspective only time itself can offer.

When I began this blog, it was a space in which to therapeutically process the journey of my life as a young mother. But as I have grown and years have passed, I re-read my former work and realize that these pieces are not just a collection of memories, not a museum of days gone by. They are an anthology of prophecies that speak the same truth now as they did the day they were formed and pressed out. 

Because a prophecy is not a prediction; not a tawdy, fortune-telling crystal that sees mystically into the future. Prophecies are always a gift, a different way of encountering reality, of looking at the world, and offering wisdom about the trajectory that lies ahead.

The Family Prophecies are a collection of pieces inspired by and written for each member of my family. It’s a way of speaking truth over them, calling out the best things God has created within them, and prayerfully releasing hopes over their futures. I don’t pretend to know what will happen next. I simply trust in the loyal love and promises of the God of my family, the God I serve myself. He has orchestrated and designed a tapestry of faithfulness that I pray will live on to the generations that follow me. 

And so The Family Prophecies: an anthology of poems and prayers, ballads and blessings to tell our stories then, and now, and not yet.

I never planned to write these. The words just came.