Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce
There is a phenomenon happening around Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce that is bigger than music, football, celebrity, or fame. People watch them, talk about them, celebrate them, travel to see them, and feel emotionally connected to what appears to be happening between them. There is an energy surrounding them drawing people in by the masses. My children laugh at my obsession, but I am not obsessed with their celebrity. Until a few years ago, I could not have named a single Taylor Swift song. I had always thought of her as a good girl, but I did not know her music or understand the world she had created. Then I began watching her speak and my admiration grew. I watched interviews, performances, and small moments with her fans. I listened to the things she said about creativity, identity, heartbreak, criticism, courage, and becoming. I wanted everything I could find on her to watch. I found her impressive on a thousand different levels.
I had followed Travis for much longer. I watched him before he and Taylor began dating. I watched him play football, interact with Jason, speak about his family, compete, laugh, cry, celebrate, and express himself without apologizing for it on his podcast. Something in his spirit drew me in long before the world began watching the two of them together and now, as I watch this enormous cultural phenomenon unfolding around them, I cannot help but believe people are responding to something much deeper than fame. I believe the Spirit is drawing us toward something. I believe people are recognizing a glimpse of God through them.
They are human beings, and I do not personally know either one of them, but every single human being was created to reflect something sacred of the Creator. Sometimes the qualities of God become visible through a person's creativity, joy, courage, tenderness, strength, gratitude, or ability to awaken life in others. Then when two people come together and reveal something neither one could fully reveal alone.
The Murmuration
It reminds me of the phenomenon of birds flying together called a murmuration.
Each bird is magnificent on its own.
It has its own wings.
Its own instincts.
Its own strength.
Its own place in the sky.
But when thousands of them come together, something almost magical happens.
They swoop.
They rise.
They turn.
They fold and unfold across the sky as though one spirit is moving through many bodies.
No single bird is leading.
No bird is surrendering its ability to fly. Each remains fully itself while also becoming part of something far greater, more beautiful, and more powerful than it could create alone.
Perhaps, this is what happens when two people come together without trying to overpower, control, or diminish one another. They do not disappear into each other. They do not surrender their identity. They remain fully themselves, yet their awareness of one another creates a new movement, a shared energy, a sacred rhythm, a living expression that could not exist through either one alone. Healthy love may be something like a murmuration.
Two people flying freely, responding to one another, shifting together, and creating something breathtaking in the space between them.
Not one leading while the other follows.
Not one becoming larger while the other becomes smaller.
Two whole beings moving together, separate, but connected and somehow becoming part of something more magnificent than either could reveal alone. I believe this is part of what the world may be witnessing.
We are seeing a glimpse of the mother.
We are seeing a glimpse of the father.
We are seeing strength and tenderness standing together.
We are seeing a woman who does not have to diminish her power to be loved and a man who does not have to diminish her power to feel like a man.
We are seeing two people who admire one another rather than compete and the world is captivated because we are starving for the kind of mothering and fathering energy they seem to carry.
We are longing for a mother who calls us into life.
We are longing for a father who makes life feel safe.
The Mother on Her Stage
Sometimes I turn on The Eras Tour on Disney+ and simply watch Taylor. I am not listening for a particular song. I watch her. I watch the way she walks onto a stage and fills the entire space with joy, creativity, excitement, gratitude, imagination, discipline, playfulness, and complete permission to take up space. She does not simply perform for people. She gathers them.
Thousands of strangers enter a stadium and become part of something together. They sing, cry, dance, dress creatively, exchange friendship bracelets, compliment one another, and celebrate the experience as a community.
Taylor creates belonging. There is something profoundly mothering about the energy she brings into that space. A mothering spirit gathers life, nurtures what is trying to emerge, recognizes what is beautiful within another person and calls it forward and creates an atmosphere where people feel safe enough to feel, imagine, dream, play, create, and become.
Taylor empowers little girls, teenage girls, grown women, and older women who are still trying to recover the parts of themselves they once surrendered. She gives women permission to become the fullest versions of themselves.
Not the smallest version.
Not the quietest version.
Not the version that makes everyone else comfortable.
Not the version apologizing for being intelligent, emotional, ambitious, creative, powerful, complicated, or fully alive.
Do not allow anyone to rob you of who you were created to become.
Do not make yourself smaller because someone else is uncomfortable with your light.
Do not abandon your voice to keep someone from leaving.
Do not surrender your dreams to earn belonging.
Take up the space your life requires.
People love her because she does not merely stand on a stage asking them to admire her. She awakens something within them. She gives them permission.
Permission to speak.
Permission to create.
Permission to lead.
Permission to grieve.
Permission to change.
Permission to begin again.
Permission to wear the glitter, sing loudly, dance freely, feel deeply, and stop apologizing for the size of their joy.
She holds all the emotions of being a woman.
The tenderness and the anger.
The confidence and the insecurity.
The desire to be loved and the refusal to accept less than respect.
The heartbreak of losing someone and the relief of finding yourself again.
The embarrassment of choosing the wrong person.
The wisdom gained from surviving it.
The longing to belong.
The courage required to walk away.
The pain of being misunderstood.
The determination to remain visible anyway.
Taylor does not reduce women to one acceptable emotion. She does not tell them they may be powerful but never needy, loving but never angry, successful but never wounded, or grateful but never disappointed. She holds all of it. She gives language to all of it. She reminds women that being emotional does not make them weak, their emotions contain wisdom, their sensitivity is not a defect, their stories matter, including the painful ones. She takes heartbreak, rejection, criticism, disappointment, and misunderstanding and transforms them into music, art, connection, and life. She shows us the wound does not have to have the final word. Something beautiful can still be born from the place that tried to destroy us. This is a glimpse of the Divine mothering energy of God. A healthy mother does not teach her daughter to disappear.
She teaches her to recognize herself.
She does not shame her emotions.
She helps her understand them.
She does not tell her becoming powerful will make her unlovable.
She reminds her, anyone who requires her to become smaller is not offering her love.
When Taylor walks onto her stage, she creates a world where girls and women can practice being visible. For those few hours, no one is telling them they are too loud.
No one is telling them they are too emotional.
No one is telling them their dreams are unrealistic.
No one is asking them to shrink.
They are taking up space and they are doing it together. Little girls look at her and s ee possibility.
Teenage girls hear language for feelings they could not explain. Grown women remember the younger versions of themselves they abandoned while trying to be loved, chosen, accepted, or safe. Older women remember becoming does not have an expiration date. There is still time to speak.
Still time to create.
Still time to dance.
Still time to recover the dreams they laid down.
Still time to become the women they were always created to be.
Mothers Multiply- Taylor Multiplies
Mothers multiply. They do not merely carry life within themselves. They awaken life in other people.
They take what has been entrusted to them love, creativity, wisdom, courage, tenderness, joy and plants it into the lives around them. This is what I see Taylor doing. She does not simply enter a stadium carrying extraordinary energy. She multiplies the energy throughout the entire room.
Her joy becomes their joy.
Her courage awakens their courage.
Her creativity calls their creativity forward.
Her freedom gives them permission to become free.
Her willingness to take up space teaches little girls and grown women that they are allowed to take up space too.
People do not leave her concerts exactly as they entered. They leave singing louder. Dressing brighter. Dreaming bigger. Feeling more deeply. Creating more freely. Feeling less ashamed of who they are. They exchange bracelets with strangers. They compliment women they have never met. They celebrate one another instead of competing. They dance without apologizing. They cry without hiding. They become participants in the energy instead of spectators watching it from a distance.
A healthy mother does not keep all the life for herself.
She calls life forward in everyone around her.
She does not simply shine.
She reminds other people they shine too.
Taylor is not creating millions of women who want to become Taylor Swift. She is empowering millions of women to become more fully themselves.
She multiplies confidence.
She multiplies imagination.
She multiplies emotional honesty.
She multiplies beauty.
She multiplies joy.
She multiplies the courage to begin again.
She multiplies the belief that what tried to break us can become part of what creates us.
This is the power of the Mother Energy- Spirit. The mother receives life, nurtures it, and releases it into the world so that it can continue multiplying beyond her.
Letting Taylor Mother the Little Girl in Me
This can sound silly, but I turn on the concert and allow Taylor to mother the little girl inside of me. The little girl who was not always taught she could be loud, joyful, creative, emotional, powerful, visible, and fully alive. The little girl who learned to watch the room before expressing herself. The little girl who sometimes believed that being loved required her to become smaller. The little girl who needed someone to say:
You are allowed to be here.
You are allowed to shine.
You are allowed to feel everything.
You are allowed to take up space.
You are allowed to become everything God placed within you.
I let that little girl receive the message. I let her dance. I let her dream. I let her remember the creativity, wonder, boldness, and joy that belonged to her before life taught her to protect herself. I take in that energy, not because it belongs exclusively to Taylor, but because it ultimately belongs to God.
Joy belongs to God.
Creativity belongs to God.
Beauty belongs to God.
Gratitude belongs to God.
Imagination belongs to God.
The power to gather people and call them into greater aliveness belongs to God. Taylor appears tapped into it. She has opened herself to something that has always been available, and God is expressing through her in a way that causes me to stand in awe. I am not trying to become Taylor Swift, nor do I want to. I want to be me, but the move expressive life giving version of my own self. I am allowing what is alive in her to awaken what has been sleeping in me.
Her joy reminds me of the my joy and calls it forward.
Her creativity calls my creativity forward.
Her courage confronts the places where I still hide.
Her freedom reminds me freedom is available to all of us.
Her willingness to take up space gives the little girl in me permission to stop apologizing for existing.
Her light does not take anything away from mine, it reminds me light is available to me.
Her expansion does not limit my expansion, it reveals what can happen when a person stops resisting the gifts God placed inside of them, and gives it to the world.
The Father on His Stage
Then there is Travis. I have watched Travis for years. I followed him before he and Taylor began dating. I watched him play football, interact with Jason, speak about his family, compete, laugh, cry, celebrate, and express himself without apologizing for it. I have gone to Chiefs games because I wanted to stand in some proximity to the spirit of greatness on the field. He is surrounded by greatness and greatness seeds more greatness. I wanted to experience the spirit he carries among thousands of other people.
Just as Taylor has her stage, Travis has his. His stage is a football field. He walks onto it with strength, courage, intensity, passion, discipline, brotherhood, excellence, and complete commitment to the moment.
He is fierce.
He is competitive.
He gives everything within him.
But what I see in Travis is not merely the energy of an athlete. There is something fathering in his spirit.
It is strong without feeling cruel.
It is powerful without needing to overpower.
It is confident without diminishing other people.
It is protective without feeling possessive.
It is masculine without becoming hardened.
It is playful without becoming careless.
It is tender without apologizing for its tenderness. He gives the world an image of a man who can be physically powerful and emotionally expressive.
A man can compete fiercely and still love openly.
A man can lead and still listen.
A man can be confident and still be moved.
A man can laugh, cry, embrace his brother, empowers his brothers, honor his family, celebrate his friends, and delight in the woman he loves without becoming less masculine. This kind of strength is healing to witness. Many of us were raised with distorted images of fatherhood and manhood. We learned fathers were supposed to be stern, distant, controlling, emotionally unavailable, or difficult to please. We learned that masculine strength was something we might need to fear. Some of us experienced men who protected us in one moment but criticized, silenced, rejected, abandoned, or controlled us in another. We learned to brace ourselves around masculine power. The fathering spirit I perceive in Travis gives me another picture.
A father can be strong and still be safe.
A father can protect without imprisoning.
A father can guide without controlling.
A father can be powerful without making everyone around him feel powerless.
A father can create an atmosphere where the people he loves feel free to become more.
Travis stands beside a woman whose light fills stadiums, and he does not appear threatened by it.
He celebrates her.
He sings her songs.
He dances in the crowd.
He smiles with pride.
He allows the world to see, he delights in her.
He does not seem to be asking her to become smaller so that he can feel larger.
His spirit seems to say:
Shine brighter.
Become more.
Your greatness does not threaten my strength. Your success does not erase me.
I am proud to stand beside you.
There is something profoundly fathering about a man who publicly delights in a woman. Healthy fathering does not withhold affirmation to maintain control. It does not make people beg to be noticed. It does not criticize every accomplishment or find a way to diminish every success.
It says:
I see you.
I believe in you.
I am proud of you.
Your light is safe in my presence.
A fathering spirit creates safety, not the false safety of controlot a safety that says, You belong to me, so I will decide how much freedom you may have.
True safety says:
You are still your own person.
You are powerful in your own right.
I trust your strength.
And you will not have to carry everything alone while I am beside you.
Fathers Seed and Ground
Travis multiplies energy too, but in a different and equally necessary way. He seeds people with the groundedness of manhood. When he walks onto the football field, he carries strength, discipline, courage, loyalty, brotherhood, emotional expression, playfulness, and complete commitment. Those qualities do not remain inside of him. They move into other people. Boys watch him and see being a man does not require becoming emotionally disconnected. Men watch him and see they can love their brothers openly.
They can hug. They can cry. They can celebrate. They can be playful. They can be fierce competitors without turning every relationship into a competition. They can honor their families. They can express affection. They can stand beside a powerful woman without becoming threatened by her. They can be masculine without becoming controlling, distant, hardened, or cruel. Travis plants a picture of manhood which feels grounded rather than fragile.
His strength does not seem dependent upon making someone else weak.
His confidence does not require another person to become silent.
His masculinity does not disappear when he becomes tender.
He shows a man can be powerful and affectionate, strong and emotionally present, competitive and generous, protective and playful. Confident and humble enough to celebrate another person's greatness, this kind of manhood seeds safety.
It teaches men that their power was never meant to dominate life. It was meant to protect it, strengthen it, guide it, and create a place where it could grow. When Travis celebrates Taylor, he is not only loving her. He is planting a message into every man and boy who is watching:
The woman beside you does not have to become smaller for you to be strong.
Her success is not your failure.
Her voice does not erase yours.
Her light does not diminish your light.
You can stand beside her, celebrate her, and remain fully grounded in who you are.
While in the same moment he is seeding a message into women too:
There is a form of masculine strength that will not punish you for shining.
Manhood can protect without possessing,
a strength that can remain present when you are emotional, a
confidence that will not be threatened by your power.
You can experience safety without surrendering your freedom.
Taylor multiplies the energy of life. Travis seeds the groundedness making life feel safe. She calls people upward and outward. He reminds them that they can stand firmly in who they are. She awakens creativity, joy, emotion, expression, and possibility. He awakens strength, steadiness, protection, loyalty, and grounded presence.
She says: Come alive.
He says: Stand firmly inside your life.
She reminds us, we are allowed to expand. He shows us expansion can have a strong foundation beneath it. A healthy mother multiplies life. A healthy father grounds life. The mother nurtures the seed until it begins to grow and the father tends the ground, protects what is growing, and gives it room to become strong. Neither is greater than the other. Life needs both. Joy without grounding can become scattered. Strength without nurturing can become hard, creativity needs safety, tenderness needs protection, freedom needs a foundation and power needs love.
Letting Travis Father the Little Girl in Me
When I watch Travis, I allow that fathering spirit to reach the little girl inside of me too.
The little girl who learned she had to protect herself.
The little girl who believed no one was coming to help.
The little girl who learned to be strong because masculine strength did not always feel safe.
The little girl who needed a fathering presence to say:
You do not have to defend yourself every moment.
Your emotions do not frighten me.
Your strength does not threaten me.
Your voice is safe here.
Your light is safe here.
You are allowed to rest.
You are allowed to become everything God created you to be.
Taylor's mothering spirit gives the little girl in me permission to expand. Travis's fathering spirit gives her permission to stop bracing for the moment someone will try to make her small again.
The mother calls her forward.
The father makes it safe for her to remain visible.
The mother awakens creativity.
The father protects what is being created.
The mother teaches her to dance.
The father does not silence the music.
The mother says, Take up space.
The father says, I will not require you to surrender it.
The mother says, Feel everything.
The father says, Your emotions will not make me leave.
The mother says, Become fully alive.
The father says, You are safe to be fully alive.
Both are equally important.
When the Mother and Father Honor Each Other
What moves me most is not only the mothering spirit I perceive in Taylor or the fathering spirit I perceive in Travis. It is what seems to happen when those energies meet without trying to overpower each other.
Her expansion does not diminish him.
His strength does not confine her.
Her creativity seems to expand.
His expression seems to expand.
She seems free to soften without becoming powerless.
He seems free to become more emotionally visible without becoming less masculine.
They appear to multiply one another. This is what healthy love does. It does not drain the life out of two people until they become shadows of who they once were. It does not require one person to dim their light so the other can feel secure. It does not consume identity. It strengthens it.
Healthy love says:
Become more.
Try something new.
Express another part of yourself.
I will celebrate what is being born within you.
Perhaps, this is the deeper phenomenon the world is responding to, not simply the excitement of a famous singer dating a famous football player but the image of the mother and the father honoring one another. The mother is not required to surrender her power, the father is not required to hide his tenderness. The feminine does not have to attack the masculine to protect itself. The masculine does not have to control the feminine to feel strong.
Strength and softness are no longer enemies.
Protection and freedom can exist together.
Joy can have grounding.
Power can have tenderness.
Love can make both people more alive.
Why I Believe God Is Using Them
I do not believe my love for Taylor and Travis is simply an obsession with two famous people. My children may laugh at me, but I am not chasing celebrities.
I am moving toward an energy that has been lost in me and in the world.
I want to stand near joy.
I want to stand near courage.
I want to stand near creativity.
I want to stand near healthy strength.
I want to stand near tenderness that is not ashamed of itself.
I want to stand near people who are becoming fully alive, because their aliveness reminds me I am allowed to be fully alive too. I do not know Taylor or Travis personally. What the world sees is only part of who they are. They are human beings with private struggles, imperfections, and complexities none of us can fully know. I am not making them God but I believe God expresses through them.
God expresses through music.
Through art.
Through athletics.
Through courage.
Through discipline.
Through joy.
Through physical strength.
Through creativity.
Through tenderness.
Through the way one person celebrates another.
Through the way someone's presence awakens life in thousands of people.
God is not limited to pulpits, churches, sanctuaries, or religious language.
God can move through a concert stadium.
God can move across a football field.
God can move through a song that gives a woman language for her heartbreak.
God can move through a man who shows the world that strength and tenderness can occupy the same body.
God can move through two people who appear to admire rather than diminish each other.
I believe God is using Taylor and Travis in a profound way in this world. Perhaps they do not even fully understand how. Perhaps none of us fully understand the ways God uses our energy, gifts, relationships, and willingness to become fully alive, but when millions of people are being drawn toward joy, connection, creativity, courage, generosity, celebration, and love, I believe something sacred may be happening. God is not only doing something within them. God is multiplying something through them. Through Taylor, joy, creativity, emotional freedom, and feminine empowerment are being multiplied throughout the world. Through Travis, courage, safety, tenderness, brotherhood, and grounded manhood are being seeded into the world. They are not the Source, but they appear open to the Source.
And what moves through them does not stop with them.
It spreads.
It awakens.
It multiplies.
It calls life forward in the rest of us.
Through Taylor, I hear the mothering spirit say: Come alive.
Through Travis, I hear the fathering spirit say: You are safe to be alive.
And somewhere inside of me, the little girl is finally receiving both.
• What if the people who captivate us are sometimes revealing something our spirits have been longing to receive?
• What mothering energy do you need today-joy, creativity, nurturing, belonging, emotional freedom, or permission to take up space?
• What fathering energy do you need-protection, affirmation, grounding, courage, steadiness, or the safety to rest?
• What might God already be awakening within you through the people whose spirits make you feel more alive?
A Prayer to Receive the Mother and Father
Creator of all life,
You are the Source of every quality that nurtures, protects, comforts, strengthens, gathers, guides, grounds, and calls us into wholeness. Restore within us the sacred spirit of the mother. Teach us to gather without controlling, to nurture without losing ourselves, to create spaces where people feel welcomed, seen, celebrated, and free to become fully alive. Give us the tenderness to sit with pain, the courage to bring life from wounded places, and the joy to remind one another goodness still exists. Teach us to multiply joy, multiply creativity, multiply courage, multiply love. Let the life You place within us awaken life in everyone we encounter.
Restore within us the sacred spirit of the father, teach us to protect without possessing, to guide without dominating, to stand firmly without becoming hard. Give us the confidence to celebrate the light in another person without feeling threatened by it, make our strength safe., make our leadership gentle, make our presence a place where others can breathe, rest, grow, and shine. Teach us to seed courage, seed strength,seed steadiness, seed the groundedness of healthy manhood into the generations coming behind us. Heal the mother wounds within us, heal the father wounds within us. Heal the places where nurturing became control, protection became fear, strength became cruelty, and tenderness was treated as weakness. Teach us to receive the mothering and fathering love that comes from You, then teach us to carry that love into the world.
May we become people who multiply life in others.
May our love never require another person to become smaller.
May the feminine and masculine within us no longer live at war.
May strength and softness meet again.
May protection and freedom walk together.
May creativity have safety.
May power be held by love.
May every life we touch hear the invitation:
You are seen.
You are safe.
You are loved.
Take up your space.
Stand firmly in who you are.
Come fully alive.
