Shannon Smith

Who Said You Could Not Swim In the Rain? I used to hear a voice quiet, stern, woven into childhood rules and trembling edges of fear. Don’t go out there Don’t step to far. Don’t swim in the rain. They said the sky would break open, that the deep would swallow me whole, that storms were places you watched but never entered. And I believed them. Because little hearts do. And all those nights the dream returned, again and again; where I dove beneath the surface only to find the water thick and...

Luke 2:12- “This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger.” I come like a baby small, meek, gentle as the first breath of dawn. Everyone wants Me to arrive so big, thundering, blazing, with the weight of the world in My hands. But that is not My way. The fullness of who I am has always begun in littleness, Love bending low, revealing Ourselves not in the loud, but in the rest; In the stillness of a manger. I am like Child. This is the mystery that...

I stood at the window, looking out into the cove. a quiet place of beauty, a thin place, where heaven brushed the edges of the earth, and my heart grew still. Gentle waves kissed the rocks, dolphins danced in circles, and for a moment it felt complete. this wonder, this nearness…. But past it all, past what my eyes could hold, a voice rose soft as the tide: There is so much more. I saw something I had not seen before, a widening beyond the cove, a vastness calling me past the familiar. The...