About Erika: Share a cup of tea with Erika Morrison and you’ll likely find your chi balanced, your heart stirred, and the earth beneath you thrust heavenward. She’s a Spirit-led, poet-hearted, story-telling Life Artist. She’s wife to Austin, Momma to three handsome hooligans, and soul sister to a vibrant community of Christ-followers in New Haven, Connecticut. A compulsive creative, Erika gathers the stories and symbols of the seemingly mundane and weaves them with great panache into the deeper story of love she sees in the life of Jesus, and from life with Jesus. Readers of The Life Artist will find pieces of this story scribbled and shared online in the hopes that they, too, will live this Life as a precious, fine art.
Her name is Diamond.
By the time she was 21 she’d had three children with three different baby-daddies and been around a lion’s share of city blocks. Her eyes are as deep brown as the dirt on the earth, but not as dark as her heart or as heavy as her shoulders feel under the weight of ongoing drug abuse, failed relationships and the guilt of neglecting her children. She’s chosen her addiction over kissing her kids goodnight, goddamned habit she can’t kick for the love of anything – even though she kicks herself to sleep every evening when she lays her head down on a different street corner, or at the local bus stop depending on the weather. Diamond would give thanks to the powers that be – if she believed in them – for the pretty looks that make her so successful at panhandling for money as well as selling the poems she writes on her wrist on the rare occasion when she’s hit with inspiration. Maybe in five years or never, Diamond will have just enough ounces of willpower to get straight and finish high school. Maybe in five years or never she’ll be alive and clean enough to raise her own kids. Maybe in five years or never she’ll have a job and live in her own home, like she always dreamed.
It will either be in five years…or never.
I know Diamond’s story because she was standing outside the pizza parlor when we arrived with family and friends to celebrate our youngest son’s 9th birthday. We were up on gaiety and togetherness, excited to make our little “Monkey” feel like five million Ben Franklins. Then Diamond shows up, inserts herself between our bodies and pleads with my mama for money. Of course, my mama did what I would’ve done if I’d gotten there first…she invited Diamond to our party. Invited her to dine at our table and come into our laughter and joy-filled family energy.
Diamond didn’t look this gift horse in the mouth, but enthusiastically accepted being swung into the lot of us. Besides, we were at Modern Pizza, voted 3rd best pizza in the nation and who’d turn that down? So we wait together for our table and I’m getting to know her like she’s a new friend because, well…she is.
This is not a mystery to me anymore, nobody is the sum of their circumstances and on the other side of Jesus, everybody is my family – it’s just going to take an eternity to get to know all the people I’m related to.
I always start with the one right in front of me.
Diamond had just gotten “out” from being in for thirty days. She has a crack-cocaine habit and didn’t make plans for getting caught. Maybe her mama could have taught her better how to hide from the authorities that incarcerate if she hadn’t died of an overdose on the same day Diamond gave birth to her first baby during her 15th year of life. “Life” – now there’s a relative term. Diamond’s life was pushed slippery and small and already high on heroin into the arms of a drug-dealing daddy, raised under the volatile roof of addiction and tucked to sleep each night…scratch that. Nobody tucked her in to sleep.
Within five minutes, I learned that my new friend was one of the funnest people I’d ever met, making jokes and being all sarcastically loud; messing with the birthday boy like she’d been his aunt for his whole life. “Jude, Jude! Let me see your presents!” She’s sitting next to me and reaching over the plates and pizza with the familiarity of intimate fellowship. I could see her God-given gifts underneath all the winter layers and man-made masks and without even thinking about it she was offering them into our fold.
In the quietness of my heart, I began speaking important words over her broken body.Come Home with me sister, I love you right here and right now. Come to the one true Table, you are needed and wanted and damn if you don’t make the party better and the celebrators more whole.
We were together for two hours total and Diamond became our people, but the struggle is…without a cell phone or a stationary place to sleep, she’s been hard to find again. Since that day I’ve been driving around looking up and over and down the streets and sidewalks for Diamond. I just want to see if she would like to go to Target with me, run a few more errands and grab us some lunch. But I can’t find her anywhere.
She’s my friend and I would walk with her if she wanted me to and she could hold my hand when I needed her also. Because her situation does not disqualify her contribution or make her asset-less. She is not a deficit for being dependent on drugs and hand-outs, but is infinitely more than the things that have happened to her or the choices she’s made.
And above all the things I can think of, I just need to tell her: “Diamond! Diamond! I want to see you shine!”
(Erika) LifeArtist: http://www.the-lifeartist.com/
Deeper Story: http://deeperstory.com/she-is-not-her-circumstances/#comment-70003
Illustration Credit: http://www.traciecheng.com/
Not Kidding: My communion experience minutes before I was led by my daughter to read about Diamond (I left this comment on Erika's post)
As always mind-bending experience reading your words feeling your heart pound! In communion this morning while eating the bread I saw Jesus in a mighty windstorm and flags of the nations were blowing away some catching on to Him and He said, “Don’t worry about the nations” (as if the entire planet is one people group!) Then in the wine I was concerned about a person’s responsibility and the HS whispered “don’t worry about others” (as if saying ‘He’s got this just pay attention to Him’) We can’t be caught up worrying about others or carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders – We come to Him and He leads us to wherever the next Table is. We can only ‘eat one meal at a time’ and He sets the table for us. (Again with your kind indulgence I would love to reprint this on our blog?) Blessings… kinda can smell that #3 in the nation pizza slice too! : )
Her name is Diamond.
By the time she was 21 she’d had three children with three different baby-daddies and been around a lion’s share of city blocks. Her eyes are as deep brown as the dirt on the earth, but not as dark as her heart or as heavy as her shoulders feel under the weight of ongoing drug abuse, failed relationships and the guilt of neglecting her children. She’s chosen her addiction over kissing her kids goodnight, goddamned habit she can’t kick for the love of anything – even though she kicks herself to sleep every evening when she lays her head down on a different street corner, or at the local bus stop depending on the weather. Diamond would give thanks to the powers that be – if she believed in them – for the pretty looks that make her so successful at panhandling for money as well as selling the poems she writes on her wrist on the rare occasion when she’s hit with inspiration. Maybe in five years or never, Diamond will have just enough ounces of willpower to get straight and finish high school. Maybe in five years or never she’ll be alive and clean enough to raise her own kids. Maybe in five years or never she’ll have a job and live in her own home, like she always dreamed.
It will either be in five years…or never.
I know Diamond’s story because she was standing outside the pizza parlor when we arrived with family and friends to celebrate our youngest son’s 9th birthday. We were up on gaiety and togetherness, excited to make our little “Monkey” feel like five million Ben Franklins. Then Diamond shows up, inserts herself between our bodies and pleads with my mama for money. Of course, my mama did what I would’ve done if I’d gotten there first…she invited Diamond to our party. Invited her to dine at our table and come into our laughter and joy-filled family energy.
Diamond didn’t look this gift horse in the mouth, but enthusiastically accepted being swung into the lot of us. Besides, we were at Modern Pizza, voted 3rd best pizza in the nation and who’d turn that down? So we wait together for our table and I’m getting to know her like she’s a new friend because, well…she is.
This is not a mystery to me anymore, nobody is the sum of their circumstances and on the other side of Jesus, everybody is my family – it’s just going to take an eternity to get to know all the people I’m related to.
I always start with the one right in front of me.
Diamond had just gotten “out” from being in for thirty days. She has a crack-cocaine habit and didn’t make plans for getting caught. Maybe her mama could have taught her better how to hide from the authorities that incarcerate if she hadn’t died of an overdose on the same day Diamond gave birth to her first baby during her 15th year of life. “Life” – now there’s a relative term. Diamond’s life was pushed slippery and small and already high on heroin into the arms of a drug-dealing daddy, raised under the volatile roof of addiction and tucked to sleep each night…scratch that. Nobody tucked her in to sleep.
Within five minutes, I learned that my new friend was one of the funnest people I’d ever met, making jokes and being all sarcastically loud; messing with the birthday boy like she’d been his aunt for his whole life. “Jude, Jude! Let me see your presents!” She’s sitting next to me and reaching over the plates and pizza with the familiarity of intimate fellowship. I could see her God-given gifts underneath all the winter layers and man-made masks and without even thinking about it she was offering them into our fold.
In the quietness of my heart, I began speaking important words over her broken body.Come Home with me sister, I love you right here and right now. Come to the one true Table, you are needed and wanted and damn if you don’t make the party better and the celebrators more whole.
We were together for two hours total and Diamond became our people, but the struggle is…without a cell phone or a stationary place to sleep, she’s been hard to find again. Since that day I’ve been driving around looking up and over and down the streets and sidewalks for Diamond. I just want to see if she would like to go to Target with me, run a few more errands and grab us some lunch. But I can’t find her anywhere.
She’s my friend and I would walk with her if she wanted me to and she could hold my hand when I needed her also. Because her situation does not disqualify her contribution or make her asset-less. She is not a deficit for being dependent on drugs and hand-outs, but is infinitely more than the things that have happened to her or the choices she’s made.
And above all the things I can think of, I just need to tell her: “Diamond! Diamond! I want to see you shine!”
(Erika) LifeArtist: http://www.the-lifeartist.com/
Deeper Story: http://deeperstory.com/she-is-not-her-circumstances/#comment-70003
Illustration Credit: http://www.traciecheng.com/
Not Kidding: My communion experience minutes before I was led by my daughter to read about Diamond (I left this comment on Erika's post)
As always mind-bending experience reading your words feeling your heart pound! In communion this morning while eating the bread I saw Jesus in a mighty windstorm and flags of the nations were blowing away some catching on to Him and He said, “Don’t worry about the nations” (as if the entire planet is one people group!) Then in the wine I was concerned about a person’s responsibility and the HS whispered “don’t worry about others” (as if saying ‘He’s got this just pay attention to Him’) We can’t be caught up worrying about others or carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders – We come to Him and He leads us to wherever the next Table is. We can only ‘eat one meal at a time’ and He sets the table for us. (Again with your kind indulgence I would love to reprint this on our blog?) Blessings… kinda can smell that #3 in the nation pizza slice too! : )