Good morning, beautiful souls. ☀️ A gentleman stopped me this week — genuinely concerned that I didn't know what doors I was opening. I've sat with that all week, and I think it deserves more than a quiet nod and a change of subject.
I've been born again since I was seventeen. My formation began at my grandmother's knee. In high school I was active with Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ. Later I converted to Catholicism, shaped profoundly during the era of Pope John Paul II. I believe in the Holy Trinity. I worship one God. I am not pagan. And I am not an abomination.
To call me a witch cuts everything short of what I do. I am an Appalachian Braucherei Practitioner. I am a Bruja. I am a healer of natural arts. God is not absent from this table — He is the reason I sit at it. Let's look back before we leap into the weekend. 🌊
✦ What the Word Actually Says
That word — abomination — appears 142 times in the King James Bible. 149 in the Geneva. The Hebrew roots are to'evah and shiqquts: things fundamentally incompatible with God's nature. Words He chose to repeat, emphatically, across centuries. A word that powerful doesn't get to be casually aimed.
It is the hell I have walked through that brought me here. Years of it. That same fire — the kind that reshapes a person completely — is what earned me the title some recognize as Old Crone. Not an insult. A credential. The easy road doesn't hand those out.
If it is true that David caught God's eye, I can tell you — I caught His heart.
🕯️ The Candles Are Lit
This morning I'm burning three candles, each holding an intention for us as we close out the week:
📖 The Word
"She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future."
Proverbs 31:25
I keep coming back to the laughing part. Not laughing because nothing hurts — laughing because the strength and the dignity were already put on before the future ever showed up asking questions. That's what I want to carry into every conversation like the one I had this week: not a defensive posture, but a clothed one. Strength and dignity aren't something I have to go find when a gentleman stops me on the street with genuine concern in his eyes. They're already worn. All I have to do is not take them off.
🃏 The Cards — Deviant Moon Deck
Four cards came out when I reached for three. The deck had more to say than three cards could hold.
Withdrawal. Old emotional territory. The crescent moon overhead says you've been here before — and I have. Every time someone questions what I do, some old, tired part of me wants to fold my arms and turn away from the offered cup entirely. This card is the reminder that I've survived this exact feeling before, and I'm still here to feel it again.
Precision. Balance between worlds. Discernment in action — the answer to every fear about what doors I open. She stands with one foot in the world people can see and one foot in the world they can't, pouring between two cups without spilling either one. That is exactly the work: Christian and Bruja, Trinity and folk remedy, church pew and hag stone. Not a contradiction. A pouring.
Gripping so tightly that grace can't get through. A mirror offered — for him, and a caution for me. It would be easy to grip my own defense just as tightly as he's gripping his concern, both of us white-knuckled and neither one listening. I don't want to hold my answer that hard either.
Craft witnessed. The work is valid whether or not everyone can see it. This one showed up on its own, and I think that's the point — the deck putting a period on the sentence I didn't finish. Whether a gentleman on the street approves of my table or not, the craft built at it still stands.
This week comes down to a table I've been sitting at a long time, being looked at by someone new. He saw a woman he assumed was opening dangerous doors. I know exactly which doors I've opened, and who handed me the key to every single one of them.
The candles are burning burnt orange, deep purple, and white this morning — truth spoken plainly, authority earned in fire, protection and clarity over it all. The Word reminded me I'm already clothed in strength before the questioning ever starts. The cards reminded me not to grip my answer too tightly, and that the craft is valid even when witnessed by someone who doubts it.
🕯️ Rest. Restore. Rise. 🕯️
📖 One More Word
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
2 Corinthians 12:9
I didn't go looking for this verse to win an argument. I went looking for it because I was tired — the kind of tired that comes from being questioned about something that cost me years to walk through. Power made perfect in weakness is not a tidy comeback. It's an admission that I don't have to have the perfect answer for every gentleman who stops me with concern in his eyes. I just have to sit at the table He set for me and let that be sufficient.
🌅 Morning Meditation
Lord, you know my beginning. You know every road I walked to get here — the ones I chose and the ones I survived. Let me sit at this table in your name, with your hands, doing your work. Let those who question me see not what they fear, but what you built.