Welcome! Welcome to this new, clean space. I can breathe here. Come in for a minute.

It’s a new day. The wind is shaking everything outside, but it’s not a mad shake. It’s just excited. The sky is gathering back with fistfuls of rain, today’s confetti. I have written the word PURGE on my calendar. I am making room, imitating the air.

A shift has come in my home and in my spirit, the one from the utter solitude of writing a book to the openness and intimacy of asking people to read it and to help me get it out to the world. At first it felt a mechanical switch, like making a facebook group of friends to come along side me was something I was supposed to do, but they are mostly people I know and all people I love. I feel it now, needy in what seems a healthy way.  Don’t we need each other? Aren’t we to work together, spur each other on?

Sharing your story or asking for help at first can be that way, especially if you have intimacy issues like I do. I can tell you my story all brave-like (which is what I did in my book), but it’s not easy for me to need others. Sharing within a real community can be mechanical and vulnerable at once, but then it switches into healing if love is at the forefront.

It’s a real-life, every day practice to be real and open with your people, and I’m not sure you can live without it if you’ve made it your heart to serve your neighbor. How about “the least of these”? When the homeless man is crouched on the ground beneath the beating sun, how can he be your neighbor if you hardly let your real people in? How are we loving each other if we aren’t available?

It hurts a little how healing does, but as I begin to tell you about my book, I think it’s going to get real.

The first thing I’d like to share with you and ask you to do is begin thinking about what it means to experience the wild in the hollow.

Wild in the Hollow is when you sense the presence of that wind-wild God, that sometimes unexpected feeling of home, of hearing and of being heard at once. Every metaphor points to Christ. Let’s open our eyes and our ears to Him in the world around us. Think about the millions of metaphors for God, all the ways we can see His presence. Think birth; wind; seed; father; artist; beauty; mother hen; blood; eagle; still streams; mighty waters.

To keep you on the lookout, if you find yourself in a moment like this, share it with us using #WildintheHollow on Instagram. The grid of these photos gives me chills.

[easy-instagram tag=’wildinthehollow’ limit=18 thumb_click =’original’ template=’horizontal’ thumb_size=200]

I’m excited to see what you see!

Give yourself a tour around here before you head out. Ted Barnett of Contemplate Design did such a beautiful job. I can’t believe this is our space.

Check out the Wild in the Hollow book page! This is where you can keep up with our beautiful grid.

I just got this in the mail today and have walked about 5,000 tiny circles in my house since. My vulnerable story is in a book, and that’s ridiculous, but I do love it. Right now it’s listed for pre-order at only $9.73! That’s pretty cool.  

A photo posted by Amber Haines (@amberchaines) on Jul 1, 2015 at 1:49pm PDT

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