Alabaster Jar

Beloved, There is something I have never spoken aloud until today. Before I launched Alabaster Publishing, before I uprooted myself from New York, before I fully understood the woman I was becoming, I carried a dream that followed me like breath. I dreamed of a desert. Not the desert of war, though I once walked that landscape too. Not the sand of conflict, though my body remembers Desert Storm in ways I still cannot fully name. No — this desert was different. In this dream,

Today my tears are not of sorrow— they are the overflow of a heart that knows what it means to survive the storm and still rise with oil in my hands. Today is my husband’s birthday. A day I wasn’t promised. A day God preserved. A day heaven circled long before the enemy tried to cut the timeline short. I give God glory because I watched the valley try to swallow him. I watched pain grip his body. I watched fear whisper in the night. I watched the enemy test our breath, our fa