Standing at the edge, road opening ahead, ready to leap into whatever this new week carries.
Good morning, beautiful souls. ☀️ It's Friday, and we made it to the edge — and this one feels lighter than it has in a while, even wrapped around grief and memory both. Only one candle called to me this morning: orange, for road opening. It blends the drive of red with the intellect of yellow, and it's the candle of new opportunity, cleared creative blocks, and the confidence to walk through a door that just opened. That's exactly where I'm standing today.
🕯️ The Candle Is Lit
Just one candle this morning, carrying the whole week inside it:
🌊 What The Moonstone Stirred
Working Moonstone this week — the last stone in the original ten — pulled something up I wasn't expecting: the creek, summers with my cousins, water up to our chins and not a worry between us. All but one of them have crossed over now, and there are days it's hard being the one left holding the memory of all of it.
But the mediumship work I did this week put something steady under that ache. They're not gone — just on the other side of a thin place, closer than the grief wants me to believe. Moonstone sits right on that membrane between worlds, and this week it did exactly what it's supposed to do: it let me feel them instead of just missing them.
🕊️ What No Longer Serves
This week also showed me, plainly, who and what no longer carries weight in my life. Not people I've stopped caring about — just people and patterns that don't need to sit at the center of my attention anymore. That's a different kind of release than anger. It's quieter. It's just... right-sizing.
I got a small, funny confirmation of that shift this week too. A dear friend bought me a Ninja coffee maker for Christmas a couple of years back, and I made him take it right back — it was too expensive, and neither of us could really afford it at the time. This week, that same coffee maker showed up again, as a gift. My cheap Walmart coffee maker makes the same cup of coffee this two-hundred-dollar one does. But I'm in a different place now, financially and otherwise, and this time it fits. Guilt-free. That's not a coincidence on a week built around release — it's confirmation that I've grown into a season I once had to say no to.
And then there were the stuffed peppers. I built the whole thing in the crockpot this week — all the layers, all the filling — and realized halfway through I'd forgotten the onions. I cooked it anyway. It wasn't quite what I remembered, but it fed me. That's the whole lesson, honestly: it doesn't have to come back exactly the way it used to in order to still nourish you.
📖 The Word
"She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness."
Proverbs 31:25-27 — NIV
This is the Proverbs 31 woman, and this week I finally understand why she laughs at what's coming instead of fearing it. She's not laughing because nothing bad can touch her — she's laughing because she's already proven to herself she can carry whatever does. She doesn't wait on anyone to open her door or run her house. She just does the work, and lives inside the fruit of it. That's the whole reading this week, wrapped up in one woman's portrait.
Note: I read this one first in the NIV and it struck straight through me, so I want to be honest that it's the translation I'm sitting with this week rather than my usual KJV. The heart of it holds steady either way — strength standing in for fear, and a woman who does not eat the bread of idleness.
🃏 The Cards
I pulled three cards this morning to ground myself for the weekend ahead:
The Emperor showed up steady and square-shouldered, and I take it as a call to responsibility and leadership — not looking for a father figure to hold the structure of my life together, but becoming the structure myself. I'm the elder in my family line now, whether I asked for that or not, and the Emperor isn't handing me a burden here. He's handing me an appointment.
The Nine of Pentacles is the woman standing alone in her own walled garden, comfortable, self-sufficient, enjoying exactly what she worked for. The falcon on her wrist is tamed — even her own wildness answers to her now. This isn't loneliness. It's sovereignty. I don't need anyone else to complete this picture, and that's the whole point of the card.
Upright, the Five of Cups is a person so fixed on the two spilled cups they can't see the two still standing behind them. Reversed, the head finally turns. This card is the hinge of the whole pull — it's possible to honor a loss and still choose to live. My grief doesn't get resolved so much as it gets reordered, moved from the center of the stage to walking quietly alongside me instead.
This week handed me a lot to sit with — grief that's older than I want to admit, and a release that's cleaner than I expected. Next week I'm finally taking the water taxi over to the aquarium, something I've put off waiting for company that never showed up. I believe God puts you where He wants you, and maybe the whole point of the water taxi is that I'm supposed to be there on my own.
The orange candle is still burning, the road is opening, and for the first time in a while, the leap ahead doesn't feel like standing at the edge of a cliff. It feels like the creek back home — the cold half-second before you hit the water, and then just relief, and coming up laughing.
🕯️ Rest. Restore. Rise. 🕯️