It’s My Birthday!!

Which is a pretty big deal.. Mainly because I have felt as if these past two years have been about survival. And before 2020, I wasn’t the “survivor”. I was the eternal optimist who like many, had experienced difficulty but never a breaking. A crushing. A slamming halt. A vanishing. A losing. An actual valley where the light of tomorrow didn’t rise the very next morning. If anything, the light had burned down to a flickering wick while the winds raved and the dark was weighted.

Where I was the ash, a blackened dusting.

And the Good Shepherd I had grown accustomed to: out of sight and nearly out of mind. And maybe that was a problem? I won’t know on this side of heaven but it was a different kind of time.

And although that light flickered it never truly went out. “Night cannot whisper away what was said in the Light…” And that Good Shepherd? He wasn’t as far as I thought. He was separating the light from the dark, farming the valley.

Turning that ash to soil, burying and rebuilding, planting seeds of new and old. And while I am new Here, my Good Shepherd is not. He has “gone before (me) to level the mountains”.

It is Here, in the wild, in the foreign, that I launched Live UnLeeshed. Where freedom has a sound, a voice, a rhythm. And today in the presence of my Good Shepherd and you, I freely make these commitments to me:

• Alicia, I will show up for you. 
• Alicia, I will push you out into the unknown, to do things you’ve never done before with a God that’s done everything. 
• Alicia, today will always count, no more tomorrow. 
• Alicia, I will take continued pride in all you have done and will do. 
• Alicia, you will thrive. Surviving is not enough. It’s time to ask, 880 specifics.
• Alicia, no fear but peace. 
• Alicia, you will not settle.
• Alicia, you will rest and wait, listen and act, plan and execute. 
• Alicia, you will shine. 
• Alicia, you will make mistakes along the way and those will be lessons. You can do anything you set your mind to. 
• And girl, you’ll Wear Your Things.

Alicia, do you accept this covenant?

I do.

Happy Birthday!

-Leesh <3