To words: you have given me the most precious gift of expression. You allow me to express my pain and joy, my love and hate, my passions and the values for which I stand. You give me the space to live into the creativity the First Word instilled in me and you nudge me until I set you free.  You have given me the ability to express my love for others more fully. You continue to teach me how to use you to express myself, how to bring about good, how to stand up to those who abuse their power. You have let me in on a secret so many either keep locked up or neglect to admit: you bring power. Words bring knowledge and knowledge is power for those who are oppressed, for those who are on the fringes, for those who seek to live into the freedom and love for which we were created. You, oh dear words, bring power that has been used for good and for ill, and I pray that I can use you for all the good in the world. I pray that you bring love and peace, hope and light, joy and fulfillment through my feeble attempts to heed the urging you place upon my lips and fingertips. You have freed me to love myself and others more fully and more beautifully than I could have ever imagined, and I long for others to know the love and joy you bring.

To those who have given me words: I have too many to thank in this regard, but there are some who have played an important role in giving the most beautiful gift of language and expression.

To my mother: you were the first to give me words, and they came in the form of stories read at nighttime under the cover of darkness and a single lamp above my bed. We read for hours and hours countless books, tales of adventure, of bravery, of love and of joy. As a sponge, I absorbed all those words, held them tender in my soul and let them guide me, giving me the light and life I needed to traverse the landscape of school. You gave me the foundation of words that the rest of my life has been built upon. For that, I am forever grateful for I would not be where I am today if it were not for your delight in a story.

To the Church: you have given me the language of faith, ever-changing as it is. You have walked beside me through the long, arduous journey of discovering a faith as old as time itself. Even when I wanted to give up, you gave me more friends, mentors, and professors who gave me more and more language from which to choose to express my sense of the Divine that I found etching itself into my conscience. I found the Divine in a brook bubbling its way through the forest floor or friends reconciling in a warm embrace.

To the musicians, Jennifer Knapp, Joy Williams and John Paul White, Justin Vernon, and Andrew Hozier-Byrne and the other minor poets of my life: you gave me words for my experiences, usually more specifically for my pain. You met me in some of my darkest places and you said, “I know,” with your wailing words and your haunting melodies. You understood me through your music more than anyone besides my husband ever has. To you, I am forever grateful for being with me through thick and thin and for giving expression to that which I could not express myself.

To the authors, J.K. Rowling, Gregory Maguire, Ellen Hopkins, and Alice Walker and the other great story-tellers: you have given me beautiful worlds of magic paired with the extraordinariness of the mundane. You have given me the lens of compassion for teens caught in sex trafficking and drugs, as well as the cold, hard reality of racism we still live amidst. You have inspired me, challenged me, and made me into a better human because I have read your words. You have always pointed to the Truth, no matter what stage of life I have been in when I read you.

To the theologians, Yolanda Pierce, Ruth Huston, Henri Nouwen, and Katherine Sakenfeld and the other brilliant minds who I’ve read or been taught by: you have given me the priceless gift of theological language, of expressing my faith with emotion and brilliance. You have refused to let me be complacent with myself and with the world around me. Your words have stuck with me, changed me and formed me into a more compassionate, understanding, and challenging person of faith. Because of you, I cannot be content to continue in silence when my LGBTQ sisters and brothers, my black brothers and sisters, my Muslim brothers and sisters are being oppressed. You have given me life through the introduction to a God who is not a sadistic, blood-lusting monster and for that, I owe you all my sanity and my faith and a life (hopefully) well-lived.

To the everyday poet and lover of words and life, Emily Humpherys: you inspire me with every word you write. Keep writing, it will bring you and so many others joy and peace and happiness. You have a gift for crafting words and sentences that are deeply rich and full of life. Don’t ever let it die, unless it’s to birth something even more beautiful than what you’ve written.

To the articulate one and lover of people, Caleb Romoser: your eloquence with speech is a combination of your prowess of the English language and also your keen discernment between which words to use and which words to leave out. You love people so well, and you do it so well because you know what words will best be heard in that moment. Never stop speaking for the world is all the brighter because you decide to speak out.

To the most concise and intentional word-smith I know, my husband Reed Burge-Lape: I treasure every word you have ever written or spoken to me. While I could write a five hundred page book about my love for you, you would write a twenty page chapter and it would be just as powerful. I envy your precision and your intentionality with words. I strive to ruthlessly cut my word count and I fail miserably every time, while you naturally say what you mean and that’s that. You write more eloquently than I ever could. Never stop being frugal and intentional with your words, for you do it so well and the world would forever miss the potential power and impact of a word if you stopped.

To all of you: may words be with you all, forever and always, bringing you light and life and good, good love.

Photo cred: Em Martin