Like Wild Horses Running
Rachel Selph sent us these reflections while listening to 'Desire Like Dynamite' at her home in Madrid, Spain last month. We posted an excerpt a week or so before the album came out, but this is an example of so many parallels within our stories that I wanted to share the whole piece with you.
You can visit Rachel's blog here www.pilgrimpassions.blogspot.com/
I had a child and her spirit was like wild horses running Unbridled and free, she was not the same as me, her engine gunning Make what you will or what you won’t You may play a part As the leaf bends and leans toward the light Oh the heart takes what it wants…like dynamite. Those who have ears, as the smoke it clears will see things as they are to bend the will, you first must change the heart…
“Dynamite” Sandra McCracken
My daughter lost her first tooth this week. It is a small thing, but like packing away the pants that no longer reach the ankles of her lean lanky frame, it is another reminder that the days that seem to trickle past are actually a rushing stream of time that I cannot hold back. She still believes in Santa and the Elf on the Shelf, adores a pony named Buttercup, and wants to be a fairy when she grows up, but these days too will soon pass.
Her current intense passions are for horses, a vanilla flavored cracker, or wearing her favorite new pink“puffy vest.” She also possesses an unexplainable ability to extend a spirit of invitation to others. Recently, I watched a petite, fearful, curly-haired Spanish friend cling to her as they walked, arm in arm, to the bearded King to request Christmas gifts at the school program.
Whether she is sitting on the shoulders of the trainer at our gym helping demonstrate the stretching positions and giving high-fives, asking the elderly Chinese woman in the corner of the restaurant about how she is carefully forming the balls of dough in her frail hands, or chattering away with people on the metro about any number of things, she has the ability to welcome people into conversation, community, and brief moments of joyful contentment.
The shadowy side of this spirit is apparent to us as well. Her passions, when selfish, overflow into manipulation, tears, conflict, and sadly, my frustration, impatience, and more conflict. Her openness toward life and people at times can make the hair on the back of my neck stand up as I fear those who would not protect her innocence or treasure this gift. I feel the heaviness of the necessity to steward this brief time in her life and the influence I possess in it.
I have listened to many stories, while drinking coffee or leaning over the kitchen counter, of women’s lives that bear scars from their own desires unbridled or their unique personal gifts devalued. Many a strong willed woman has confessed to a friend, herself, or perhaps only to God, that the sheer force of her desire for acceptance, companionship, approval, achievement, or power has lead her down a path littered with regret, bitterness, and emptiness. I have also known stories of dreams and desire that, when revealed, were quenched and disdained resulting in the same despondency.
As a mother I hold a strange and wonderful role wherein I must act as a steady guide that communicates affirmation and freedom to my daughter's unique and powerfully inviting spirit, as well as caution and grim warning for a heart that selfishly runs wild without self-control or sacrificial love. I daily realize that I cannot control her world or her heart. No amount of preparing meals, orchestrating schedules, selecting friends, or providing the “right” opportunities and education will create a girl, or woman for that matter, of strength and character. I can only play a part, but with that part, I hope to influence her heart. I hope that I can hold out to her the beauty and desirability of health for the sake of service, time management for the sake of kindness and stewardship, education for the sake of apprehending eternal and lasting knowledge, friendship for the joy the comes only by sharing life, community for its potency to carve humility in the hard places of the soul, and nature for its exquisite stamp of the Creator . . . just to consider a few.
Ultimately, I pray that God will captive her heart with His very own beauty and that when the smoke clears, her heart and all of its stunning force will direct her life toward all that flourishes.
Rachel Selph, Madrid, Spain.
