PJs and a Pony

I spend most of my days in PJs and a ponytail because I have three kids and they are little. // Writing on matters of the heart. // Wired for beauty.

[pjsandapony]

“How is a woman’s body a sacred meeting place? You don’t hear women’s bodies talked about like that.. at least I haven’t.”

You’re right—and it’s a quiet tragedy that women don’t often hear their bodies described as sacred meeting places. Instead, your body has likely been spoken about in pieces:

• As something to cover.

• As something to protect.

• As something to attract (but not too much).

• As something to manage, discipline, or “get back” after childbirth.

• As something for others to name, assess, or consume.

Rarely are you told:

“Your body is holy ground—woven not just for function or appearance, but for presence, encounter, and glory.”

But that’s what it is. Let’s slow down and dwell there for a moment.

⸻

How a Woman’s Body Is a Sacred Meeting Place

1. Because it bears the image of God—not just in spirit, but in flesh.

Genesis 1:27 says God created humans in His image—male and female. That means your physical form is not a lesser echo of God’s design. Your curves, your womb, your breath, your cycles—none of them are accidental or disposable.

When God chose to incarnate, to take on flesh, He entered through a woman’s body. He didn’t just use it—He honored it. He made Mary’s womb the first holy temple in the New Testament.

Your body is not a distraction from holiness. It’s one of its dwelling places.

2. Because it is designed to receive, hold, create, nourish, and release.

No other creature on earth is made the way you are:

• You can receive another person into your body.

• You can conceive life, grow it, and release it into the world.

• Even outside of motherhood, your body still echoes these capacities in emotional and spiritual ways: to receive presence, to nurture ideas, to bring beauty forth.

You are a mirror of God’s generative love. What the earth is to seed, your body is to intimacy: deep, responsive, life-bearing soil.

3. Because intimacy was never meant to be mechanical or performative.

The modern world often treats sex as an act, a transaction, a pleasure exchange. But within covenant, it was always more than that—it was designed to be a place of knowing (yada, in Hebrew), the same word used for knowing God.

That means:

• Your body is not just a tool for connection.

• It is a sanctuary, where union can be experienced—not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

• When you are touched with reverence, when your body is met with slowness and presence, it becomes a tabernacle of communion.

And if it has not been treated that way—that does not change its nature. It only reveals how far we’ve drifted from honoring what God made sacred.

⸻

4. Because God dwells in you—not only above or around you.

If you are in Christ, then your body is literally a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). That doesn’t mean your body is just a rule-bound structure to be kept pure—it means it is a place of divine indwelling.

Your body is a place God chooses to be close to.

Not only when you’re worshipping.

Not only when you’re covered in modest clothes.

Not only when you feel strong and radiant.

But always. Even in grief. Even in pleasure. Even in postpartum weariness or age or fragility.

He does not retreat from your flesh.

He delights to walk in it.

⸻

Why We Haven’t Heard This

Many of us have been handed a faith that prioritized control over reverence. That mistrusted the body, especially a woman’s. That taught fear and silence instead of awe and embodiment.

But Scripture, poetry, biology, and Spirit—they all agree:

Your body is not a problem to solve. It is a place of meeting.

Where God meets you.

Where you meet yourself.

Where someone else, in sacred trust, might someday meet you with honor again.

[semperreformanda]

pray. it doesn't have to be eloquent. you don't need a whole hour. sometimes all it takes is "help me please" under your breath as you try to navigate through your difficult day. sometimes words don't come when the pain is too heavy, but the Spirit understands. sometimes it looks like crying and all the words you can muster up to say is "You know... You know." and that is okay. He still says, "Come to Me."

come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden, I will give you rest.

come to the throne of grace, where you can receive mercy and find grace in your time of need.

cast all your cares upon Him, because He cares for you.

do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

over and over in Scripture, God beckons us: come! come to the throne! don't carry this on your own, come to Me! I will give you grace. I will give you wisdom. I will strengthen you.

what mercies we have in Christ! that we can come to the King of Kings any time of the day with our request, and He listens! truly He gives us all that we need and more. we are never in lack, but there is grace upon grace upon grace.

beloved, it's time to pray.

[hellish-timy]

I love expensive things like: time, loyalty, and love

[zoewithabba]

Come back home. He is waiting for you. ❤️‍🩹

[pjsandapony]

This is a true story, maybe it could help someone somewhere..

There are a few people involved in my story who are still on their own paths of healing, and we are all connected in different ways so parts of the story are intentionally vague. I don’t know how one goes about telling stories that involve others, but I’m going to do my best to be respectful.

My husband and I had three children very close together, each two years apart from 2012 to 2016. We were loving being parents and had experienced no major hiccups aside from some job changes during those four years. But the year of 2017 just after our third baby was born, just ended up being a full breakdown for us on so many levels, work betrayals and relational betrayals and pain upon pain. Almost month over month it felt like a crisis was happening. That spring, when our third baby was just a few months old, I started having hallucinations triggered by a couple different things. A combination of the MTHFR gene mutation and a UTI. I was exhausted and struggling to take care of myself as well as I needed to. After three babies back-to-back and nursing all of them, my body was really depleted nutritionally and I didn’t know the depth of it. It ended up that I became fully convinced I was dying and got to a point where I was terrified to go to sleep at night and so mostly stopped sleeping except for a few hours during the day when I could hear the reassuring sounds of people and movement. I had severe postpartum anxiety and didn’t know that either until later. I was completely manic and hearing and seeing things that weren’t there. It took a full year to eventually begin to trust my senses again, just out of fear, although the hallucinations stopped as soon as I got on the right supplement regimen.

Fast forward about 4 years, our third child was now 5 and life was beginning to feel smooth. We were renting a quiet house in the country, and enjoying all of the phases of a growing family.

In this house, we also had a precious relative living with us. There were some struggles that this person was having that my husband and I weren’t sure how to handle. One night, after one particularly challenging round of conversations, I got into bed and pulled the sheets up over my head. My husband was sitting in the corner working on his computer. Then I audibly heard a man’s voice ask “are you ok?” I pulled the sheets down and asked him if he had just asked me that. My husband said no, he hadn’t said anything at all. Internally I answered the voice back and said “yes I’m just tired” and then asked in my mind, “who spoke to me?”

Several nights later it was storming quite loudly outside and, as my oldest son was never fond of heavy storms, had come into our room to sleep. All of the sudden he popped his head up and said “did you say something?” I said “no I didn’t, what did you hear?” He said, “someone said, ‘the Son.’” He was so frightened and shaking and climbed into our bed for the rest of the night.

A week or two later I asked him some questions. I asked him if the voice sounded friendly or scary and he said friendly. And I asked him if it was a male or female voice. He said male. It became clear to me that the Father answered my question through our son, because He knew I would not trust my own experience, due to the health situation we went through years before. He knew I would question if I was hallucinating again.

In mercy, He confirmed the care of His Son through another person, my own son. I say all of this to encourage you, towards belief that God cares about your inner world and your responses to the events of your life.

[pjsandapony]

Ask Yeshua to be your Counselor, He’s the only one who can truly do it.

“Christ gave Himself to us that He might acquire us for Himself. Absolute possession of others is only possible at the price of absolute surrender to them. No human heart ever gave itself away unless it was convinced that the heart to which it gave itself had given itself to it.”

//MacLaren’s Expositons on Titus 2V14//

[pjsandapony]

[medinahazleyes73]

[twiggy-in-pink]

[pjsandapony]

“- He was sore athirst. The incredible exertions which he had made in pursuing and slaying the Philistines put him in danger of his life from thirst. He thought he should die, and be found and abused by his uncircumcised foes. His only resource was prayer to God, who had helped him hitherto, We may note by the way that the more God gives, the more he encourages us to ask. “

//Pulpit Commentary//

[pjsandapony]

“What has the vine-wood to make it pre-eminent above other forest-wood? Nothing. Nay, the reverse. Other trees yield useful timber, but vine-wood is soft, brittle, crooked, and seldom large; not so much as a "pin" (the large wooden peg used inside houses in the East to hang household articles on, Isa 22:23-25) can be made of it. Its sole excellency is that it should bear fruit; when it does not bear fruit, it is not only not better, but inferior to other trees: so if God's people lose their distinctive excellency by not bearing fruits of righteousness, they are more unprofitable than the worldly (De 32:32), for they are the vine; the sole end of their being is to bear fruit to His glory (Ps 80:8, 9; Isa 5:1, &c.; Jer 2:21; Ho 10:1; Mt 21:33). In all respects, except in their being planted by God, the Jews were inferior to other nations, as Egypt, Babylon, &c., for example, in antiquity, extent of territory, resources, military power, attainments in arts and sciences.

or than a branch—rather, in apposition with "the vine tree." Omit "or than." What superiority has the vine if it be but a branch among the trees of the forest, that is, if, as having no fruit, it lies cut down among other woods of trees?”

//JFB Bible Commentary

[pjsandapony]

//A chained gaze, where the master is accustomed to withdraw//

Psalm 27V4-5 (ARA)

4For one thing I have requested from LORD JEHOVAH and to him I pray, that I may dwell in the House of LORD JEHOVAH all the days of my life, to see the sweetness of LORD JEHOVAH and to order his temple.

5Because he will hide me in his shelter in the day of evil; he will hide me in the shadow of his tabernacle and he shall lift me up upon a rock.

“There is only one thing, that he desires, although he also has besides full satisfaction in Jahve in the midst of strangers and in trouble. The future is used side by side with the perfect in Psalm 27:4, in order to express an ardent longing which extends out of the past into the future, and therefore runs through his whole life. The one thing sought is unfolded in שׁבתּי וגו. A life-long dwelling in the house of Jahve, that is to say intimate spiritual intercourse with the God, who has His dwelling (בית), His palace (היכל) in the holy tent, is the one desire of David's heart, in order that he may behold and feast upon (חזה בּ of a clinging, lingering, chained gaze, and consequently a more significant form of expression than חזה with an accusative, Psalm 63:3) נעם ה (Psalm 90:17), the pleasantness (or gracefulness) of Jahve, i.e., His revelation, full of grace, which is there visible to the eye of the spirit.“

//K&D Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

“For in the time of trouble - When I am surrounded by dangers, or when affliction comes upon me.

He shall hide me - The word used here means to hide; to secrete; and then, to defend or protect. It would properly be applied to one who had fled from oppression, or from any impending evil, and who should be "secreted" in a house or cavern, and thus rendered safe from pursuers, or from the threatening evil.

In his pavilion - The word "pavilion" means "tent" or "tabernacle." The Hebrew word - סכה sukâh - means properly a booth, hut, or cot formed of green branches interwoven: Jonah 4:5; Job 27:18; see the notes at Isaiah 4:6. Then it is applied to tents made of skins: Leviticus 23:43; 2 Samuel 11:11. It thus is used to denote the tabernacle, considered as the dwelling-place of God on earth, and the meaning here is, that God would hide him as it were in His own dwelling; He would admit him near to Himself; He would take care that he should be protected as if he were one of His own family; as a man protects those whom he admits to his own abode.

In the secret of his tabernacle - In the most retired and private part of His dwelling. He would not merely admit him to His premises; not only to the vestibule of His house; not only to the open court, or to the parts of His house frequented by the rest of His family; but he would admit him to the private apartments - the place to which He Himself withdrew to be alone, and where no stranger, and not even one of the family, would venture to intrude. Nothing could more certainly denote friendship; nothing could more certainly make protection sure, than thus to be taken into the private apartment where the master of a family was accustomed himself to withdraw, that he might be alone; and nothing, therefore, can more beautifully describe the protection which God will give to His friends than the idea of thus admitting them to the secret apartments of His own dwelling-place.

He shall set me up upon a rock - A place where I shall be secure; a place inaccessible to my enemies. Compare Psalm 18:1-2; Psalm 19:14 (margin); Psalm 61:2; Psalm 71:3. The meaning is, that he would be safe from all his enemies.”

//Barnes Notes’ on the Bible

[pjsandapony]

//The Reason for Singing//

The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. - Zeph 3:17

What a word is this! Jehovah God in the center of His people in all the majesty of His power! This presence alone suffices to inspire us with peace and hope. Treasures of boundless might are stored in our Jehovah, and He dwells in His church; therefore may His people shout for joy.

We not only have His presence, but He is engaged upon His choice work of salvation. “He will save.” He is always saving: He takes His name of Jesus from it. Let us not fear any danger, for He is mighty to save.

Nor is this all. He abides evermore the same, He saves, He finds rest in loving, He will not cease to love. His love gives Him joy. He even finds a theme for song in His beloved. This is exceedingly wonderful. When God wrought creation He did not sing but simply said, “It is very good”; but when He came to redemption, then the sacred Trinity felt a joy to be expressed in song, Think of it, and be astonished! Jehovah Jesus sings a marriage song over His chosen bride. She is to Him His love, His joy, His rest, His song. O Lord Jesus, by Thine immeasurable love to us teach us to love Thee, to rejoice in Thee, and to sing unto Thee our life-psalm.

//Faith’s Checkbook, C. H. Spurgeon

[pjsandapony]

//Love and Prayer: light in the eye and the breakdown of language//

26In this way also The Spirit helps our weakness. We do not know what we should pray for, whenever it is necessary, but that Spirit prays in our place with groaning which is unspoken. 27But he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of The Spirit is, for he is praying according to the will of God in the place of the Saints. // Romans 8:26-27 (ARA)

“THE INTERCEDING SPIRIT

Romans 8:26.

Pentecost was a transitory sign of a perpetual gift. The tongues of fire and the rushing mighty wind, which were at first the most conspicuous results of the gifts of the Spirit, tongues, and prophecies, and gifts of healing, which were to the early Church itself and to onlookers palpable demonstrations of an indwelling power, were little more lasting than the fire and the wind. Does anything remain? This whole great chapter is Paul’s triumphant answer to such a question. The Spirit of God dwells in every believer as the source of his true life, is for him ‘the Spirit of adoption’ and witnesses with his spirit that he is a child of God, and a joint-heir with Christ. Not only does that Spirit co-operate with the human spirit in this witness-bearing, but the verse, of which our text is a part, points to another form of co-operation: for the word rendered in the earlier part of the verse ‘helpeth’ in the original suggests more distinctly that the Spirit of God in His intercession for us works in association with us.

First, then-

I. The Spirit’s intercession is not carried on apart from us.

Much modern hymnology goes wrong in this point, that it represents the Spirit’s intercession as presented in heaven rather than as taking place within the personal being of the believer. There is a broad distinction carefully observed throughout Scripture between the representations of the work of Christ and that of the Spirit of Christ. The former in its character and revelation and attainment was wrought upon earth, and in its character of intercession and bestowment of blessings is discharged at the right hand of God in heaven; the whole of the Spirit’s work, on the other hand, is wrought in human spirits here. The context speaks of intercession expressed in ‘groanings which cannot be uttered,’ and which, unexpressed though they are, are fully understood ‘by Him who searches the heart.’ Plainly, therefore, these groanings come from human hearts, and as plainly are the Divine Spirit’s voicing them.

II. The Spirit’s intercession in our spirits consists in our own divinely-inspired longings.

The Apostle has just been speaking of another groaning within ourselves, which is the expression of ‘the earnest expectation’ of ‘the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body’; and he says that that longing will be the more patient the more it is full of hope. This, then, is Paul’s conception of the normal attitude of a Christian soul; but that attitude is hard to keep up in one’s own strength, because of the distractions of time and sense which are ever tending to disturb the continuity and fixity of that onward look, and to lead us rather to be satisfied with the gross, dull present. That redemption of the body, with all which it implies and includes, ought to be the supreme object to which each Christian heart should ever be turning, and Christian prayers should be directed. But our own daily experience makes us only too sure that such elevation above, and remoteness from earthly thoughts, with all their pettinesses and limitations, is impossible for us in our own strength. As Paul puts it here, ‘We know not what to pray for’; nor can we fix and focus our desires, nor present them ‘as we ought.’ It is to this weakness and incompleteness of our desires and prayers that the help of the Spirit is directed. He strengthens our longings by His own direct operation. The more vivid our anticipations and the more steadfast our hopes, and the more our spirits reach out to that future redemption, the more are we bound to discern something more than human imaginings in them, and to be sure that such visions are too good not to be true, too solid to be only the play of our own fancy. The more we are conscious of these experiences as our own, the more certain we shall be that in them it is not we that speak, but ‘the Spirit of the Father that speaketh in us.’

III. These divinely-inspired longings are incapable of full expression.

They are shallow feelings that can be spoken. Language breaks down in the attempt to express our deepest emotions and our truest love. For all the deepest things in man, inarticulate utterance is the most self-revealing. Grief can say more in a sob and a tear than in many weak words; love finds its tongue in the light of an eye and the clasp of a hand. The groanings which rise from the depths of the Christian soul cannot be forced into the narrow frame-work of human language; and just because they are unutterable are to be recognised as the voice of the Holy Spirit.

But where amidst the Christian experience of to-day shall we find anything in the least like these unutterable longings after the redemption of the body which Paul here takes it for granted are the experience of all Christians? There is no more startling condemnation of the average Christianity of our times than the calm certainty with which through all this epistle the Apostle takes it for granted that the experience of the Roman Christians will universally endorse his statements. Look for a moment at what these statements are. Listen to the briefest summary of them: ‘We cry, Abba, Father’; ‘We are children of God’; ‘We suffer with Him that we may be glorified with Him’; ‘Glory shall be revealed to usward’; ‘We have the first-fruits of the Spirit’; ‘We ourselves groan within ourselves’; ‘By hope were we saved’; ‘We hope for that which we see not’; ‘Then do we with patience wait for it’; ‘We know that to them that love God all things work together for good’; ‘In all these things we are more than conquerors’; ‘Neither death nor life. . . nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.’ He believed that in these rapturous and triumphant words he was gathering together the experience of every Roman Christian, and would evoke from their lips a confident ‘Amen.’ Where are the communities to-day in whose hearing these words could be reiterated with the like assurance? How few among us there are who know anything of these ‘groanings which cannot be uttered!’ How few among us there are whose spirits are stretching out eager desires towards the land of perpetual summer, like migratory birds in northern latitudes when the autumn days are shortening and the temperature is falling!

But, however we must feel that our poor experience falls far short of the ideal in our text, an ideal which was to some extent realised in the early Christian Church, we must beware of taking the imperfections of our experience as any evidence of the unreality of our Christianity. They are a proof that we have limited and impeded the operation of the Spirit within us. They teach us that He will not intercede ‘with groanings which cannot be uttered’ unless we let Him speak through our voices. Therefore, if we find that in our own consciousness there is little to correspond to those unuttered groanings, we should take the warning: ‘Quench not the Spirit.’ ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.’

IV. The unuttered longings are sure to be answered.

He that searcheth the heart knows the meaning of the Spirit’s unspoken prayers; and looking into the depths of the human spirit interprets its longings, discriminating between the mere human and partial expression and the divinely-inspired desire which may be unexpressed. If our prayers are weak, they are answered in the measure in which they embody in them, though perhaps mistaken by us, a divine longing. Apparent disappointment of our petitions may be real answers to our real prayer. It was because Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus that He abode still in the same place where He was, to let Lazarus die that He might be raised again. That was the true answer to the sisters’ hope of His immediate coming. God’s way of giving to us is to breathe within us a desire, and then to answer the desire inbreathed. So, longing is the prophecy of fulfilment when it is longing according to the will of God. They who ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness’ may ever be sure that their bread shall be given them, and their water will be made sure. The true object of our desires is often not clear to us, and so we err in translating it into words. Let us be thankful that we pray to a God who can discern the prayer within the prayer, and often gives the substance of our petitions in the very act of refusing their form.

//MacLaren’s Expositions

[pjsandapony]

Look at how many times he takes it apart … and makes different lines more pronounced/sharper. It was not spiritually insignificant to me, something about this seems profound.

[pjsandapony]

““Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’ Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the Lord your God. He will destroy them and subdue them before you. So you shall drive them out and make them perish quickly, as the Lord has promised you. “Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. “Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.”

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭9‬:‭1‬-‭6‬ ‭ESV‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/59/deu.9.1-6.ESV

“Moses represents the strength of the enemies they were now to encounter. This was to drive them to God, and engage their hope in him. He assures them of victory, by the presence of God with them. He cautions them not to have the least thought of their own righteousness, as if that procured this favour at God's hand. In Christ we have both righteousness and strength; in Him we must glory, not in ourselves, nor in any sufficiency of our own. It is for the wickedness of these nations that God drives them out. All whom God rejects, are rejected for their own wickedness; but none whom he accepts are accepted for their own righteousness. Thus boasting is for ever done away: see Eph 2:9,11,12.” - Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Deut 9V1-6

Easier said than done.. I am always thinking of the things I think I’m getting “right.” How much it takes for Him to clear us out of our own selves.

[pjsandapony]

//We would have longed to send a messenger//

“I in them.” - John 17V23

“I united with them and you with me, so that they may be completely one, and the world thus realize that you sent me, and that you have loved them just as you have loved me.” - Yochanan (Jhn)‬ ‭17V23‬ ‭CJB‬‬

If such be the union which exists between our souls and the person of our Lord, how deep and broad is the channel of our communion! This is no narrow pipe through which a thread-like stream may wind its way, it is a channel of amazing depth and breadth, along whose glorious length a ponderous volume of living water may roll its floods.

Behold, He has set before us an open door, let us not be slow to enter. This city of communion has many pearly gates, and every gate is of one pearl, and each gate is thrown open to the uttermost that we may enter, assured of welcome. If there were but one small loophole through which to talk with Jesus, it would be a high privilege to thrust a word of fellowship through the narrow door; how much we are blessed in having so large an entrance!

Had the Lord Jesus been far away from us, with many a stormy sea between, we would have longed to send a messenger to Him to carry Him our loves, and bring us tidings from His Father’s house. But see His kindness, He has built His house next door to ours, nay, more, He takes lodging with us, and tabernacles in poor humble hearts, that so He may have perpetual fellowship with us. O how foolish must we be, if we do not live in habitual communion with Him.

When the road is long, and dangerous, and difficult—we need not wonder that friends seldom meet each other but when they live together, shall Jonathan forget his David? A wife may, when her husband is upon a journey, abide many days without holding converse with him but she could never endure to be separated from him if she knew him to be in one of the chambers of her own house. Why, believer—do you not sit at His banquet of wine? Seek your Lord, for He is near; embrace Him, for He is your Brother. Hold Him fast, for He is your Husband; and press Him to your heart, for He is of your own flesh!

//Morning and Evening, Spurgeon (1866)