Gina Calvert | This Moment

The Isle of View Experiment: Taking a Look at the Petri Dish

2012-02-11T17:19:00.000-06:00

The Isle of View Experiment began on January 6. The petri dish of my study revealed some surprising and mostly positive results over a period of five weeks:

Action: I followed every negative thought or word with the words "I love you," repeated as many times as necessary until frustration was gone. This included my garage, my husband Steve, a headache, my house, the news that my boss was leaving the company, my bills, my boys, and traffic. If something hit me really hard, I personified the rising emotion and allowed it to sit nearby while I concentrated on love.

Setbacks:

-Midway during the first week, I got sick. I wasn't seeing a good response from the fam and having difficulty staying in heart/essence. I found it harder to concentrate on love while sick, but I kept at it and was well in 24 hours.

-I found out that when your heart is open, people being mean hurts more (like a cut stinging from salt water.) The temptation is to slam your heart shut and move back over to ego and retaliate.

-Steve and the boys weren't responding as I wanted and I got overwhelmed with ego thoughts, and unable to sustain the experiment. I left town for the weekend to get renewal of my purpose.

-My boss announced that he was leaving the company. This one was complicated and took me five days to overcome. I found my energy sapped; I slept much more than normal, but I emerged with clarity and courage.

-One night I was hit by terrible thoughts of my daughters being killed. I immediately "loved" and fell asleep. I thought this was just random, but Steve had a similar experience on about the same day of his experiment. He woke up in the middle of the night, terribly and graphically worried about specific events--not something normal for him. In response, he "loved" and fell right to sleep. I now think this may be a spiritual attack as the spiritual forces of evil see your energy patterns changing.

Changes I Saw:

-I have often felt super happy for no reason (very rare for me, a chronic depression sufferer since childhood)

-Frustration was at lowest levels in several years, though little has actually changed

-I completely and easily forgave someone who had repeatedly been hurtful in 2011

-Family began to act happy, loving and helpful

-I had clarity about how to solve a problem with the boys that I had been fussing about for 6 months

-Steve looked ten years younger

-The house seemed to stay cleaner
-I had energy to tackle some long-neglected jobs

-I started back to work on my novel

-I began to share the experiment with a few people and they began to immediately experience:

Hope (a woman just diagnosed with cancer)
Clarity (a woman whose husband had not worked in many years)
Pain-relief (a woman whose hip had hurt for a year, a woman whose neck had been hurting)
Optimism (a woman who hated her job)

-I started to have thoughts about how much God loves me

-My daughter began to stay home more and seek me out to talk to me more

-The struggle to remain in essence on two frustrating occasions was difficult, but I did it. The sweetest feeling came over me about an hour later

-I made my usual "ugh" noise about the state of our garage as I passed through it, but immediately followed it with a few "I love you"s. I walked through the house and heard Steve say to no one: "I really need to clean the garage." (That one made my head spin!)

-Praising God was continually on my mind
-Steve began jumping up to get me stuff at the slightest indication that I wanted something

-The house I couldn't stand, I now feel very comfortable in

Hypothesis:

I mentioned in my initial post that the love of God has been poured out in our hearts. (Romans 5:5). It's a limitless supply, but it seems maybe He doesn't really send more until you're using up what you've got. When it starts to flow out of you, He cranks on the love faucet and you get hit with a replacement stream. THAT'S the love that you feel coming from Him. The more you send out, the more you'll be the recipient of his perfect love as He keeps you stocked up.

We've gotten so use to a trickle that we don't even realize how far it is from what is possible!

Reminders:

1. To whatever degree you're disliking or disapproving of ANYTHING, you're losing the ability to love. Those things become barriers to the flow. You have to love EVERYTHING. If this is difficult, you can start with "I want to love you," or direct your attention to something you DO love and focus on that. (This is just a temporary step to divert resistance.)

2. The only thing that can stop the flow is a word or a thought.

Henri Nouwen said that once he spoke with Mother Teresa about some things he was struggling with. She listened for a long time and then said, "It doesn't sound to me like anything that an hour a day of adoring your Lord wouldn't fix."

I'm in complete agreement!

Please share your results if you decide to take on the Isle of View Experiment--and I hope you will!

Winter Trees: The Lovely Bones

2012-02-04T22:53:00.008-06:00

Naked is in.

When trees get chilly, they strip down til they're wearing not a stitch.

Lately, their wooden skeletons strike me as important and dignified without the leafy finery that hides their bones in green seasons, and I've been trying to figure out why I've become obsessed with them.

They make me think of the book The Lovely Bones.

The book is not just about a girl who is raped and murdered and who narrates her own story; it's about the shockwaves that hit parents when their child goes missing.

The title was a spider's web to me. I couldn't wait to find out what "the lovely bones" were. And there it was, near the end:

"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections—sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent—that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life." (Alice Sebold)

An unthinkable and crushing event splintered a family, and the various reactions of its members immediately started to form a new framework to support the new life (resurrection!) that always appears.

Naked trees seem to reflect the invisible, miraculous, fragile frameworks--the bones--that hold everything in place. Those connections--love, really--are beautiful in part because they are so fragile in places. Yet they're awe-inspiringly strong, too, in ways we often can't see.

These poems (as the poet Joyce Kilmer once called trees), are speaking to me day after day. I think it's because I left 2011 behind me like an abandoned coat and entered 2012 naked as a winter tree.

Right away, a sad event occurred. Without my armor, there was nothing to hide behind. I felt exposed with the kind of contrast a winter tree is so famous for. Nothing hidden. Every tiny branch visible.

But I also saw a new path, and when I took it, I began to see in nature what my spirit visualized: a new definition of beauty and strength in middle age, and love for the underlying structures that make women lovely and interesting at this time in their lives.

Aren't the lovely bones of us an absolute wonder?

The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing --
...
Full of wings, otherworldliness.

The Winter Trees
Sylvia Plath

Poets, Kittens and Rain

2012-01-25T12:39:00.001-06:00

"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself;

admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches, because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place."

Rainer Marie Wilkes

I admit it, today and many days I'm not enough of a poet. My shoulders that keep inching up toward my ears tell me that is today's truth. The lack of enthusiasm for the day, my job, my future tells me that I am no creator.

Relax shoulders.You and I both know it's not true. So tell your story of frustration this morning. The rain we've so needed has been blissfully dripping for fifteen hours with at least another 24 hours predicted. A radio guy called it a "mess" but a caller said, "It's not a mess! It's a blessing!" The radio guy agreed but then called it an "inconvenience."

"It's not an inconvenience!" the caller said. "It's a blessing! The answer to our prayers!" I feel that way about rain. And I am blessed with the luxury to decide when and whether I go into the office on this rainy day.

What then? It's probably about the house we're about to buy. The roof and the foundation that need work that the insurance company is balking on. How do I move forward to buy a house I don't want to live in? I've been doing the Isle of View Experiment on it and it has definitely lessened my frustration with the lack of space and shortcomings of the house, but.... Wait! I know. I'll think about what I DO love:

I love my purple flowered armchair tucked into the back corner of the dining room where I do my reading and praying...and sometimes working, when I choose to work at home. Where I'm sitting now.

From here, I can see my purple cabinet. It was my grandmother's, salvaged from their "camp" house, the old house she had lived in as a child that had been moved to some property they had outside of Centerville, Texas and used for camping. It had eventually become a storage facility for stuff they didn't want. After her death, I called dibbs on the faded white cabinet, missing its screens, that had once held towels in her bathroom. No one fought me for it. To everyone else, it was just an ugly, broke-down cabinet. I painted it eggplant and put silver handles and knobs on it. It may be just the eyes of love through which I view it that thinks it looks very Pottery Barn-ish, but I guess that's what love does.

If I can call forth the riches of this poor old thing that adds a nostalgic bit of storage to my too-tiny kitchen, there is a poet in me capable of doing the same with this house. It has just not yet gotten inspired with its subject matter. It will though, because a creator never sees "poverty or a poor indifferent place." It always sees a resource for creation. And deep down, I am a poet. Not a very good one, a poet short on time and money, but a poet nonetheless.

Some more coffee and a little breakfast. Listening to the rain while I get back to the challenge of coming up with a company slogan using three words Corporate mandated I must include. Smiling at the "fresh" kitten that pops up every time I write 100 words (I've seen 6 so far in the little word editor I'm using called Written? Kitten!).

By the time, I sign off, I'll see the 7th, and that's too many words for a blog post, but sometimes you have to ramble a little to waken your inner poet.

And.....

There's my kitten!

Isle of View Part 2

2012-01-22T20:41:00.000-06:00

Sometime soon, I'll share with you what my first few weeks on the Isle of View Experiment have been like. I've learned SO much!

Before I do that, I want to explain something about how it works, so you'll know what I'm talking about later.

Do you remember that verse where Paul says,

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. [and so on for another few verses] (Romans 7:14-25)

When we read that verse (if we're able to read it all the way through), we all say, "I totally get that."

What Paul is referring to is a part of himself, but not his true self. Our true selves are made in the image of God. They're what we refer to when we say, "If you could only know her like I know her, you'd love her too." The other person doesn't know our friend's essence. He knows her ego.

The ego/natural man is a separate part of us that controls and is controlled by our minds. The ego doesn't know how to love. It's selfish and fearful. It wants to want more than it actually wants. That's why the satisfaction from getting things it demanded can have such a short shelf-life. It can't let you be happy for long; it's always pointing out the negative in every situation. And man, can it be nasty! I know I've certainly been shocked at some of the stuff my mind has come up with that was totally contradictory to who I "am."

The good news is that any time you want, you can step outside of ego and into your true self (a.k.a. "heart," the spiritual man, the essence of God) where he has poured out his love (Romans 5:5). It's surprisingly easy to do.

This is all becoming clear to me as I recall a time I was crying and suddenly--I don't know how--I was separate from the sadness and watched my ego crying, feeling nothing but intrigue. "Why is she crying like this? Her heart is broken, but it's obviously going to be ok, because I'm over here and I'm fine." As if realizing that I was no longer buying into the heartbreak, she peeked out from behind her hands that covered her face. She saw that the jig was up and grinned and the whole thing was over. I couldn't have told you later what it was about because essence keeps no account of wrong. Ego not only makes a list and checks it twice, it makes duplicate copies and frames one.

I remember another time I (ego) was angry but my true self immediately took hold. I wanted to stay mad but I couldn't. I didn't know at the time what made that shift but it definitely felt like an out of body experience.

If you don't identify or agree with ego, she can't keep up the drama. You have to think of her like she's your child throwing a fit in the supermarket. Not engaging can be the most effective strategy. (This is not the same as disconnecting, which is another ego trick.)

And here's the interesting part: Both facets of you cannot be identified with or seen at the same time. If you're loving, ego has to leave. And she knows it. That's why she fights you on this. But if you're in ego, you can't love. If you think you're loving while you're in ego, it's only because everything is going well or the person you love is giving you what your ego needs. Wait until something shifts and you'll realize your "love" for that person is not quite as sweet-feeling. Essence love does not need others to please it or be like it in order to feel love. It allows everyone to be who they are and isn't perturbed by that.

Think of 1 Corinthians 13 as a reality check. If you're feeling/doing the opposite of any of the things he says love is (kind, patient, not boastful, etc.), you're in ego.

As you ponder this, you can probably look back at your life and your relationships and easily identify which self was calling the shots at different times.

Isle of View, that place apart from pain with the x-ray view of everything, can only be maintained while you are in essence. And I learned this week, essence must be cared for and fed with God's Word, silence, and solitude. You can't operate this love just from strength of will. Strength of will is, after all, ego.

Ego is a clever character and once you see her, you'll be astonished at how she has controlled you all this time. Stay tuned to learn how you can make her your servant!

Have you had any experience with this or am I schizophrenic?

Isle of View

2012-01-07T12:58:00.000-06:00

If you're a Mad Gab fan, you might have recognized that "Isle of View" is another way of spelling "I Love You."

I've got an experiment going in this new year. I'm applying love to every single thing that confronts me, whether it's a physical pain, an annoyance, a disapproving thought, a mean person, a challenge I can't figure out, a broken windshield or a bill I can't afford to pay.

If "the love of God has been poured out in hearts" (Romans 5:5), then we're already overflowing with all we need, but we don't experience that flow (which feels like happiness and power) because we're busy dwelling in frustration, fear, worry, resistance, disapproval, etc. Removing those thoughts makes room for the love that's already there. And what if love is what makes all the great things we want in life happen?

In November I began having a stabbing pain in one spot on my knee. It only lasted 5-10 seconds, but it buckled me down everytime. Then this excruciating pain began to occur more and more often and to last longer, sometimes as long as a minute.

So I began to place my hand on the pain and say "I love you." Within seconds, it would stop hurting. Yes, I felt foolish, but I did this three or four times and it stopped happening. It hasn't hurt in at least a month. I tried it this morning with a sinus pain and that pain is now gone.

The success of that experiment has led me to start applying "I love you"s to everything that I previously disliked, hated, avoided, complained about, prayed about, worried about, got frustrated about. When those thoughts arise, I thank my mind for showing me where non-love exists within me and try to say, whisper or think "I love you." Sometimes, the best I can do is "I want to love you." Either way, the negative energy is dispelled. And even if the only change is in me, it's worth a try because all the negative responses--no matter how righteous or justified they seem--certainly aren't doing anything positive!

I will wait to share with you the crazy places I've been applying this love with equally crazy expecations of healing and change, but for now, just let me assure you that "I love you" really is an "Isle of View." It's a place apart from all the pain in the world. From there you can see everything from a 30,000 foot view, with fresh eyes, renewed hope and...well, LOVE!

Consider 2012 your Isle of View; the year you're going to see things differently by doing things differently. It's simple, easy, and free. It's just a decision away.

Go to there.

And stay there til something happens.

Happy New Year!

The Things We Superglue

2011-12-28T13:12:00.001-06:00

The kids were at Walmart on Christmas Eve morning as I was getting out our Santa cup and plate. The handle had been broken off the cup for two years--how is it possible that I hadn't had the two minutes it takes to glue on a handle for two years???

I called my last minute shoppers and had them pick up some superglue. By the end of the day, the glue had been used four times. I dropped and broke the remaining coffee cup from my favorite set -- a Starbucks limited collection of three. Then I was trying to clasp a chain on which hung a glass cross Danica had given me. One end slipped from my fingers and the cross clattered to the tile floor and broke. Later, I placed a large gift on the coffee table and knocked over my Jesus, Mary and Joseph figure (ironic, don't you think?). And then I broke my fingernail (no superglue for that!)

All I can say is thank goodness I had some superglue.

Alot of things get broken in a home, many of which can't be fixed. Some things could be fixed, but it's just not worth it. The things we superglue are the things we value. Anyone else looking at them might question why we're bothering but, for whatever reason, they mean something to us.

I've mentioned more than once that 2011 was one of my hardest years, in third place behind 1990 and 1995. There was literally no time most days to cook, clean, watch TV, spend time with my husband, write or do something fun--and that includes weekends. As I look back, I realize it's because I was busy trying to superglue--perhaps unnecessarily--the things I valued:

The Mulume family: Despite countless hours of effort and prayer, I was not able to glue this family back together. I did get sole custody of Boris, but his younger siblings went into a situation that is way less than ideal. These five kids, whose mother died 18 months ago, are separated by miles and many other limitations (including a father that is trying to keep the younger ones away from the older ones).

As the dust settles, I see that though they're not physically together, they're still connected. They stay in touch. I know that when they're all grown, the bond between them will still be there and be strong. I could feel that I failed, but I don't because I did what God asked me to do and left the outcome to Him.
In the looking back--as I burn the memories of conflict with those who opposed me, spoke ill of me in my community and thoughtlessly added a lot of extra weight to the burden I was already carrying--what rises out of the ashes is the realization that God never said standing in the gap for someone was easy. In fact, He showed through Jesus that it isn't. I realized that in some ways, this family can't be superglued at this time, but they desperately needed to know someone was on their side so they wouldn't lose hope. In exchange for that hope, I gained the love of five souls.

My own family: Now that I'm parenting three teenagers, each one of whom had (and failed) a defining moment or two this year, I see that they are who they are. I'm not molding them anymore. Now I'm standing to the side with encouragement, a little guidance when they'll take it, and (hardest of all) the strength not to rescue them. My job seems to be making sure they're connecting the right dots between cause and effect. I'm not supergluing--in fact, it's just the opposite. The superglue of their childhoods is becoming brittle, just as it should. I still hold us all together, but not with the tight, cheek-to-cheek bond of superglue. Despite what I didn't do that I should have, or did that shouldn't have, all three really love me.

My marriage: Wow, that thing could use some superglue! It's been neglected in this difficult year. Some of the breakage doesn't make for a clean repair; some of the little pieces got lost in the shuffle. It'll never be the tight fit of newlyweds who are so bonded that the only movement possible is away from each other. Out of necessity, we've stumbled into a kind of loose togetherness. As we see the horizon of an empty nest in the not too far off future, it makes us want to stick together more, but with less expectation and more acceptance of each other's failings. Though at times my marriage added to the weight I carried, there is no doubt that Steve loves me.

Me: In 2011, I often felt like I was falling apart. The thing that held me together was Jesus. He was my superglue. But like all these other areas I've mentioned, the spiritual joints of me are not stiff and static, like a superglued statue, or even rotatable like a doll's arms and legs. I'm a constantly shifting collection of atoms, easily scattered when a fist crashes down on my head, but then somehow, everything finds its way back to the center, who is Him. There are scars on the outside, but there is an inner strength that needs no repair. It's kind of remarkable to grasp the picture through my own difficult year that sometimes your body is needed in order to hold things together for other people.

Steven Covey says in his book, The Speed of Trust, that self-trust and integrity are formed when we make commitments to ourselves and keep them. I love that I was chosen and followed through. I gained a new level of self-love that helps me accept my mistakes, my aging body with its extra 2011-stress-induced-weight, and my complete inability to fix things.

Brokenness is a common theme of mine, but I've been shown a new layer of the dynamics of repair. The SuperGlue of Jesus is flexible. If you hold onto Him, everything that needs to come together will come together, but always in a new form. You may have to grieve the loss of the old form but, if you just wait, you'll see that you will survive the new configuration. And eventually you see Jesus in it. You will discover love in it.

My Jesus, Mary and Joseph figurine says it all. Click on the picture to enlarge it and notice that there is a gap in Mary's sleeve. And though Joseph's hand is broken off (and was never found), he still holds his staff. These two imperfect parents, who could have--because of an unexpected baby--called it quits before it even began, are instead held together by this Jesus who remains perfect--uninjured, unchipped--in the fall that marred His parents.

Yet, we know that His body was required to make their story our story.

May 2012 be for you a year of celebrating the new form of the broken things in your life made possible by the SuperGlue of Jesus, and of finding the courage to remain standing in the gap for those who need it, even if it seems it will crush you.

Be brave! Wait for the Love behind it all!

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work ~ Ephesians 4:16

Pausing in the Current

2011-12-21T20:36:00.000-06:00

The last of the jewels of autumn are glowing like watercolors in the soggy, winter etching that is overtaking the world. I snapped this photo on a rainy day that seemed to last two weeks. The tree was literally the only bright spot in my day.

I’ve noticed that I appreciate the intricacies of the seasons more and more as I get older. I think of glimpses like this as little presents from God tucked here and there to take my breath away--and also my attention away from things that are hard.

He does that other ways too. A few weeks ago I was reading Emmett Fox’s Sermon on the Mount. I got a hold of a chewy chunk-o-Scripture (Matthew 25 ~ the parable of the talents). The idea that “whoever has will be given more, even more than he needs, and whoever has not, even what he has will be taken away” gave me pause. It’s really just about the law of reciprocity…that what you give out is what you get more of.

It almost doesn’t seem fair, does it? You’re going through a hard time that drags on and on, and you get weary. You forget how to love in the midst of your struggle. Pretty soon, you’ve got even more hard times. The sparkler in this wisdom is that it's actually far better than fair—it’s a gift. It’s a little revolving door that can turn your direction around on a dime if you know how to go through it.

You choose whether you are a “person who has” or a “person who has not” through your gratitude and abundance thinking, or through your bitter, fearful, scarcity-thinking. It’s a matter of knowing, like the talent-holders in the parable of the talents, that your God is someone who can grow a tree without planting a seed--and then turn it into a rainbow. And oh, how this powerful, artsy God loves us!

The seasons are out of our hands, but what if we are not as bound to our own rhythms as we are to nature’s? What if, as our seasons change, we refuse to wait for the brutal tearing and messy sloughing of shedding skin, learning our lessons inch by inch? Why couldn’t we simply step out of 2011 before its threadbare places burst apart, and press toward our new beginning that starts now, not in 2012?

Fox says that “pausing in the current of the material to remember what we know to be true about God” is the essence of prayer. I checked that against my own prayer life, which seemed—lately—a little more like whining and worrying than pausing in the current of the material. The current had, in fact, washed me away. The idea of pausing made me pause some more, gradually lifting my head and turning my thoughts to what do I know to be true about God?

The answer beckons me to take off the coat of this year that I no longer need and leave it behind without a backward glance. To run naked into this new season of mine, having no pretenses that I'm armed and ready, or dressed to kill. There is no false image foolery to give me strength. I'm worn out and used up from a 12-month bad dream. I'm poured out. I'm undone.

Which means I'm ready for the kind of extraordinary things that happen when we let the real us show and operate from the only strength we truly have--His.

The real you may feel a little broken and bleeding, beat up and sore, exhausted and hopeless, or ashamed and afraid. The sparkler: those are just currents. Pause in them and remember what you know to be true about God. Then bravely step out of the current, letting it sweep on down to the sea, taking that old skin of yours with it.

Now you’re ready to look up, too.

Enjoy this short, very cute encouragement to look up from American Airlines. It's a timely reminder far more significant than literal air travel! Just hit the Play Now button when you get there.

Is This a Miracle?

2011-11-22T07:05:00.000-06:00

Something wonderfully weird happened a few years ago right before my book was published. I was in an IM conversation with my publisher. He was taking a direction I didn't like and I was "literally" freaking out in simultaneous texts to my editor, telling her each thing he was saying. My blood pressure was about to go volcanic and so I texted her to give me a text-slap: "Just tell me to stop freaking out!"

She texted back: TRUST GOD. I was an untied balloon suddenly released into the air. All the steam I was working up instantly whooshed out of me; I was immediately anchored and calm: "Oh, yeah. God. The one who got me started writing on this book." I texted back: "That's EXACTLY what I needed to hear. I DO trust God."

"I didn't write TRUST GOD. I wrote STOP FREAKING OUT!" she texted.

I punched in her number, needing to hear this in detail. "WHAT?"

She explained that she, too, was freaking out over something that had just happened (while she was fielding my freak-out). She said she typed STOP FREAKING OUT, but we both saw TRUST GOD on our screens.

God works through phone keypads?

Within minutes, two friends who had been very involved in my writing process called to see if I was ok. One of them was driving and felt God leading him to pull over and call me. It sort of confirmed that the text message was from Him.

I was reminded of that incident a couple of days ago while I was Swyping on my phone. That's where you just run your fingertip from letter to letter on your touchscreen and it recognizes words. It is a bit like my dyslexic daughter. Sometimes it will come up with completely nonsensical words. On this particular day, I went to Swype-text "Wow" and it interpreted it as "Write". It gave me pause.

The reason this was meaningful is that a fictional story that has been being birthed since I was in Africa 18 months ago had begun to write itself in my head. I hadn't had any time to get to a computer and put it down, but it was charging ahead like a toddler (or a teenager).

Albert Einstein said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though everything is a miracle. The other is as if nothing is." Is he saying there's no middle ground? Because inside my head is a very sensible world that keeps telling me to be realistic--that's the "no miracle" camp. But I've seen a few miracles---I believe. So even though there's a part of me that knows my Swype feature inserts random words, and that the letters in Write are on the same row as Wow, I am choosing to think that this is not that. I don't want there to be no miracles in this very hard life.

This Swype is part of larger momentum that has recently included:

Posting a comment on a random author's blog and being rewarded with him sending me a link to a set of stickers of monkeys flinging poo
Him (Scott Morgan) following me on Twitter, which led to me following him on Twitter (@write_hook)
Discovering that he has a new book called Building Characters from the Inside Out (Now #82 on Amazon---impressive!)

This is significant because I had recently begun to view the difficult people in my life as perfect fodder for antagonists in my story. They were teaching me things about being mean, cluelessly headstrong, and emperiously self-elevating that I am still oblivious to in my personal repertoire

Purchasing said book on my Kindle and reading it over the weekend and learning A LOT!
4 hours suddenly being freed up on Saturday when I had to take one of my kids to Grand Prairie (Rather than drive home and return later, I spent the time writing at a nearby Starbucks)
This morning I checked my blog list for the first time in forever and saw that Michael Hyatt had written about blogging for novelists
His blog post leading me to his book on writing a winning book proposal

I've never written fiction but I shared the plot of this story with my kids this past summer and their response blew me away. They were all awed and impressed, encouraging me to write the story. There really has been no time for writing for months, but once something demands to be written, you really can't do anything else. And you can do it in the middle of complete chaos or in the wee hours that previously would have rendered you...well, asleep. It's like rising flood waters that can't be stopped.

These particular flood waters are rising in the dark. I truly do not know what I'm doing, but I'm feeling empowered to learn. And learning always makes me happy.

Aw, crud! Just when I was realizing that my depression was great source material for one of my characters! Now that I've found its purpose, it will be gone in no time. I better write while I can still tap into it!

See what happens when you choose "Everything is a miracle"?

How about you? What miracle have you chosen to see that led you down a completely unexpected path?

My soul laid down in the grass today

2011-11-13T08:30:00.000-06:00

The alarm clock rings a little later than usual, 6:45 rather than 6. I'm giving myself a few days off from running, following my triumphant 5k event.

Despite the fact that I completed the event 2nd in my age division, felt enormously empowered, and declared myself a lifelong fan of running, I repeated the above scenario with the alarm clock at least 20 times.

Why? I had a big project that was requiring me to stay up very late. Almost all my evenings were tied up with appointments and kids events. I was still struggling through the family ordeal we've been in for almost a year. I had already committed to a 5-mile stint on a relay marathon team in early December. I knew I didn't need to lose my progress, and in fact, needed to step it up, but I just didn't feel like pushing through.

One morning, as I lay in bed debating with myself about getting up--just like the previous 20 days--I said outloud, "Just do it" and quickly jumped out of bed, making my way in the dark to the bathroom, where I pulled on my sweats and socks. I used the light from my phone to search around for my running shoes. As I tied them on, I felt a surge of energy, faint but remarkable. I almost seemed to hear Rocky music playing somewhere. Suddenly, I was anxious to be out of the stale indoor air and out in the fresh. I felt an excitement I didn't quite understand.

The temperature was in the 50s, a 50-degree difference than when I began running in June. Chilly at first, I soon found myself tying my jacket around my waist. The muscle memory of the shoes, the dark houses and the quiet streets said i remember this, and the hardness that had been forming around my heart for weeks started to crack. Forced to breathe rhythymically and deeply, I felt myself emerging from a toxic cloud of me-ness. I saw the cares and crud that had been piling up around me like autumn leaves under a tree scatter and whirl away.

I only made it a 1 1/2 miles, and 2 the next time. Now I'm back up to 2.56, thanks to my new running buddy who gets up at least 30 minutes before me and drives to my house to run with me. Hopefully we'll be up to 5 miles in 3 weeks. I'm pretty sure my lung capacity is being stretched because we talk alot while we run.

It has rained on us, and we've run @ 41 degrees, but it's all ok. When I run, my sadness flies away and my weariness is replaced with energy. Discomfort becomes the new comfort, because neurons in my brain are creating different connections associated only with positives, associations with no baggage. New memories, so to speak, that are stored in my muscles, and in the scenes my brain captures like snapshots: the sky (the ultimate drama queen!), flowers, autumn leaves, foggy mornings, brilliant sun, feet pattering on pavement, gasping for air but centering my breathing to a 1234 in-out-count and realizing I can do more than I think I can.

Still, I'm struggling with the afteraffects of a long and emotionally-pummeling experience. Even running isn't going to cut it by itself. I am more in need than I can ever remember of emotional support, laughter, stillness, time alone and a great big showing of God.

Unfortunately, everyone's busy. We're all too busy. The teenagers take up what little time I have left over after work, and it's hunting season, so the hubby is gone alot (or home, but processing deer in my kitchen). Still haven't found a new place to live, but thankfully, that has not become a crisis yet. A novel is trying to write itself in my head but I don't have the kind of time it would require. My house is a disaster but I have no will to really clean it. There's only one thing that will relieve this weight in my chest:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul likes down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn't make any sense.

Rumi

Anybody want to join me?

Perception is reality...or is it?

2011-10-30T09:28:00.003-05:00

How many women do you see?

Years ago I was a fan of a cleaning and efficiency guru named Don Aslett. He made a statement in his newsletter that I took to heart. He said that if your family is not turning their dirty clothes right side out before they put them in the laundry (or on the floor!), they're disrespecting you. He believed a sense of entitlement was behind this careless act. It made sense to me, so I set about trying to get them to "respect" me with their clothes. No one seemed able or willing to change this habit, so pretty soon, guess what? I felt disrespected!

The short cycle of this experience made it easy to see the cause of the problem: that label of disrespect I had assigned to wrong-side-out clothes. Since it was a newly acquired belief, it was easy to let go of and suddenly, I wasn't struggling anymore. (Well, I was still struggling to get them to put their laundry in the hamper, but I no longer saw it as a personal attack.)

This past week, while operating on low emotional reserves, I experienced what felt like meanness from three different people. I pondered this sudden occurrence in my life that had left me feeling a little bruised, a little bullied. Why did I need this meanness in my life? What was it here to teach me?

First and foremost, I know it's just another step in toughening me up. It's been time to put on my big girl panties for a year now. I operate in a sphere where mental toughness is required, and there's only one way to get it....through experience. Mean people are a fact of life and effectiveness demands that I navigate through them like that Subaru commercial where the vehicle avoids, in a matter of seconds, a dozen collisions with perilous objects on a winding road. It ends triumphantly; it doesn't pull over and change its pants.

To navigate like that, I have to challenge my perceptions. I already knew I had low emotional reserves. Perhaps what felt like boulders falling on my head were really just little pebbles glancing off me. That's not to say that I excuse bad behavior or pretend it doesn't hurt. I let myself experience the sadness or anger that is being generated. I know that if I don't, this event will come back to haunt me. But after the tears, stomping around and numbing out on Toaster Streudels, when I realize that my ego is wanting to decorate a little room for this precious sadness to live in, I step up and become my own coach.

My coach is never mean to me. It's not like my son's football coaches who yell and cuss and predict that he's going to wind up as a trash collector. It doesn't call me a baby or rebuke me for having emotional reactions. My coach first asks me to reevaluate the labels: "mean," "bruised," and "bullied." Of course, I never want to do this but I have learned that labels tend to pour cement around the moving parts in a situation and bring forward motion to a standstill.

It reminds me of the time a friend of mine asked a girl out. Her immediate response was a polite "no thanks." It rocked his world and he called me and asked me if I had heard her say anything bad about him, and why did she have to say no with a knife to the gut? We talked a long time about the stories he was concocting. I finally said, "If you're going to make up a story, at least make it one that makes you feel good rather than suicidal. Maybe she's dating someone else, maybe she's going through a divorce, maybe she's gay." He laughed as he realized how many stories he had written from that one simple "no thanks." Of course, it's better not to make up a story, but sometimes you do have to find an explanation that allows you to move on. Because it's all fiction, go ahead and make it a comedy so you can laugh about this later.

So my coach calls me out on my perceptions. When I refuse to see things another way, it asks "So what if it is true? What if the behavior you witnessed really was appalling? Are you going to become bitter? Are you going to shrink back from your calling just because some hard words hit you--words from people whose meanness is--100% of the time--a result of fear, jealousy, or pain of their own?" Then he pulls out the big guns: Scripture. He reminds me of Romans 8:28, that all things work together to those who love the Lord and that yes, this event does indeed fall within the category of "all things." I'm always bummed when my coach uses scripture because I know I won't have a leg to stand on.

If you're dealing with an upset child, a cranky customer, or what the Bible calls a "weaker brother," you need to initially treat their perceptions as reality if you want to create unity. But when you're dealing with yourself, you need to ruthlessly call out those perceptions. You need to question how you're perceiving reality, because that reality is being formed by what goes on in your head. What you believe to be true, really is. If they really are mean and I'm wounded by it, then I'm now a wounded victim. Ugh! I'd prefer to see this whole thing like they're hawks dive-bombing at me, only I'm indoors and they hit the window and slide slowly down like in cartoons. Since I'm okay, I'm free now to see that they're the wounded ones and may actually need my love, forgiveness, not to mention first aid.

Maybe you think it's better to be realistic, to call a spade a spade? I'm sure there are times for that, but I agree with Will Smith, who said that "being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity." I'd rather shake off what appears to be real in favor of something that seems impossible, fantastic and bigger than what I can do in my little reality. Perception isn't really reality, but because it quickly becomes reality, you have to punch through it like a football team breaking through the paper wall onto the field.

Perception is reality, and it isn't. You get to choose. And yes, sometimes it does involve punching.

I hope you dance

2011-09-24T11:41:00.000-05:00

"Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?" ~ Mary Oliver

For the majority of my life, I have had such a high-strung inner landscape that PEACE was the thing I sought after. I defined peace as the absence of conflict, people, noise or deadline. I have such a sensitive neurological structure that other people's energy created turbulence in my own already disturbed energy patterns. It was completely chaotic and I was unable to soothe it or sort it out unless I was alone.

Finding alone-time was my one personal goal. It was a survival mechanism, much like the one that leads others to drink, eat, have sex, shop or zone out to television. Unlike other emotional medications, the effects lingered for days, and since the Bible says to "be still and know that I am God," I defended this need as biblical.

Recently I've found two things I like better. One is my new understanding of the Hebrew word for peace: Nothing broken, nothing missing. That certainly upends my former view of peace. The problem with my old need for peace is that it precluded relationships, which are pretty much the point of life. It kept relationships at ego levels, where the connection was not about relating, but about negotiating. Even without surface conflict, that chaotic energy coming from others felt like conflict to me and I couldn't relax. Because I felt great when I was alone, I concluded that the chaotic energy must, indeed, be everyone else's. It would take days to sort out what was my own contribution to the maelstrom and what was yours.

The second thing is that while peace is a highly desirable fruit of the Spirit (get that: FRUIT, or outcome), there's something else that is even better because it thrives in community and spreads the peace to others besides just yourself. It's basically the vibration of LIVING, enjoying life, moving, breathing, laughing, dancing to an inner strain of peace, music and strength. It's JOY, thrumming along the tenuous strings of connection with the world.

It makes you accutely aware of the real places where something is broken or missing, and desirous of flooding those places with love (as opposed to control, rejection, or despondency--a.k.a. Fight, Flight or Freeze).

I have to give credit for this particular new attitude to training for my 5K. Here's what I've found:
1. Though I don't really enjoy the actual exercise, in running I've found reconnection with and heightened awareness of my body (the point of connection between mind, spirit and this dimension of our world).

2. I've discovered "I'm enough, just as I am," strengthening my belief in myself (which was mistakenly offloaded in my desire to deny self and take on Christ).

3. The joy of moving that I, personally, lost as I grew up. (Think about how much kids move: jumping, twirling, skipping, running, climbing, fidgeting! Where did that go?)

4. I no longer seem to pick up everybody's energy. I'm aware, but I'm not inundated. Perhaps it's because there's no tangled ball of firing neurons in me for their stuff to get enmeshed with. I believe this is the beginning of differentiation.

Someone told me a few months weeks ago that they "saw" me dancing. Like Sarah, I laughed/scoffed. But lately, that's what I'm doing. The music that makes me dance stays in my head for days, creating continuous, minute "wiggles"-- like my inner self is trying to get out of the busy and serious grown up that is me.

I've thought alot about the song I Hope You Dance...and how much I haven't.
I'm reminded of the saying Dance Like No One's Watching...and how much I haven't.

Things are shifting. I'm laughing more. I'm worrying almost none, despite the fact that two very large, impending, potentially devastating possibilities are hurtling toward me. As always, I could find a dozen other things to "dislike." (Wouldn't it be funny if we could put a thumbs up or a thumbs down on everything and then just move on?).

But this thing that has gotten into me just won't let me focus on the negative. It just keeps saying, "Yeah, but listen to the trees dancing to the tune of your wind chime." Or "Yes, you probably should go do the dishes, but look how clear the air looks today."

What is this that's gotten into me?

Look, mom! I'm dancing!

Fall in

2011-09-11T09:39:00.000-05:00

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

by Mary Oliver

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

[This poem makes me want to cry, sky-dive, lie face down on the earth, explore, ascend and fly, face the worst with an open heart that is willing to be crushed, knowing I will arise out of the ashes a stronger, more alive person.

It makes me want to run like the wind with cold air burning my lungs that are no more breathing just a little and calling it a life; to close my ears to those dark shouters Caution and Prudence, believing once again in the impossible.

It makes me want to love like I've never been hurt and dance like no one's watching.

It makes me want to weep for all the sadness in the world contained within breathtaking beauty, and vice versa. It makes me want the fulfillment of being engulfed fully in God--to fall all the way in, no longer dipping just my toes or wading in to my knees or gasping as the midriff feels the shock, but submerged because of His perfect courtesy of letting me in--all the way in.

It makes me wish I was at the beach, shoes off because I'm standing on holy ground.

Thank you, Mary Oliver.]

Run like the...jello?

2011-09-10T12:08:00.002-05:00

I've started four different posts since the last one, but all my thoughts have been so half-baked, I just thought I'd spare you.

I wanted to talk about my new shoes and how one of the elements of the armor of God is having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Couldn't find a way to transition from one to the other.

I wanted to talk about the epic skies I've been seeing since I moved my running outside. How blue skies without a cloud in sight are gorgeous, but skies where the light (sun or moon) is at such a low or high angle that fantasmagorical colors (or even a million shades of gray) are reflecting off billowing clouds are just EPIC, like an old master's painting. It's the Light's relationship to the interruption to perfect peace (clouds) that makes it so fascinating. My eloquence on the subject just wasn't coming off epic.

This is definitely an UP!

I wanted to write about how up and down, two-steps-forward-three-steps-back and three-steps-forward-two-steps-back the running journey is, but couldn't find a way to make it interesting.

The reason I've struggled with both running and writing is that my heart is breaking.

After the long battle we've had with the custody situation of three motherless children, it appears (from a physical perspective) that we are about to lose. There's literally nothing left to do. (I have one idea, but it involves asking a 22-year old girl to do the impossible. Now, I believe that nothing is impossible with God, so maybe I should stop thinking that getting her to agree will be impossible.) There are others involved who believe everyone involved should end up back in Belgium. Their actions are guiding things in that direction.

The judge has stated that our boy should stay with us. We talked to him about adoption (if his dad would relinquish his rights, but he's been here fighting for them for a year; he's unlikely to quit now.) The truly inspiring thing is that our boy said he would love for us to adopt him, but there's no way he will let his siblings go live with their dad and not go along too, to protect them from their dad. He believes he would never see them again if he stayed and they went. He's likely right. To make this choice is to give up his dream of playing football, going to college on a football scholarship and making the NFL, which his coach has said is a real possibility.

He's 15. And he's the only one involved in the situation who is choosing a path of true love over his/her own desires. As I said, inspiring.

What does all that have to do with jello? Running, and perhaps moving in general, have the curious effect of bringing your sadnesses to the surface. When I'm running, all this grief about my boy starts to rise and I either have to stop running to make it subside, or I have to let it come out. I haven't perfected the art of running while weeping yet (not enough lung capacity!!!), but one of my mentors says it's a common element in his running of marathons. This explains to me how all my life, when I've been sad, I've wanted to just get still; being still as a statue helps keep the emotion down. (In fact, I wrote a blog post on this subject years ago!)

Race day is also his 16th birthday. I am SO SAD I can barely even write this right now. [crying break] I just read a Facebook post about people who think they can't love an adopted child as much as a biological one and I just want to punch them in the face! I have a biological child, two adopted children and this one "foster" child--I love them all the same. To lose this boy will be to lose my child.

I thought for awhile that running was making me stronger in my life. The thing that it took to push through went with me into every other thing I did during the day. Now, what I'm learning is that it's not linear--it's a circle. Running makes me stronger in life and, in turn, being strong in life enables me to run. If I feel defeated, I literally cannot keep running. If I'm prayed up and worshiped up and know that I serve a God for whom nothing is impossible, and that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me--really know these things--I can run like the wind. (Well, maybe more like a slow breeze!)

If I don't know these things in my heart, soul, mind and muscles, forget about it. I'll be running like a puddle of jello. (Which is to say, NOT RUNNING!)

I'm really grateful for this deadline that keeps me getting up at 6am and pushing to reach 3.1 miles by September 25. It forces me to not give up this custody/immigration battle before God has had a chance to unfold the whole story.

A friend gave me a great passage. It's Joshua 5:13-15. Joshua has been commissioned to lead the Israelites in Moses' absence. He's gearing up for the conquest of the Promised Land. He meets a man with a drawn sword. He asks: "Are you for US or for our ENEMIES?" The man says, "No, but I am the commander of the Lord's Army. Take off your shoes for you're standing on holy ground." Basically, he's an angel, and he's not on anybody's side but the Lord's. There was a time for fighting but now is the time for worship.

That's where I'm at. Letting go without giving up hope. Trying to abolish anger at those who--my heart keeps incorrectly asserting--have screwed everything up. Looking up, to worship and give thanks for the privilege of knowing my boy. Grieving when those storms blow through. Keeping up with my running out of sheer desperation. Believing in the impossible. Making sure my boy is loved up. Making sure that I am too.

Up.

O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you."

2 Chronicles 20:12 NIV

The Disciples' 5k and Heavy Breathing

2011-08-15T17:33:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago I wrote about Jesus' disciples rowing on the sea: John 6:19-21: When they had rowed three or three and a half miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were terrified. But he said to them, "It is I; don't be afraid." Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.

That story, given to me several weeks ago as encouragement, was the catalyst for a major tectonic-plate shift in my psyche on Friday, which may or may not have been the reason I made it to the Federal Building in an impossible sprint.

What I didn't see til last night is that they had been rowing for three or three and a half miles. That's 5K!!!

If you follow this blog, you know I'm in training for my first 5k. I have five weeks left. I had gotten up to 1 1/2 miles on a treadmill with plans to get up to 3 miles by Sept 1, then move it outdoors. Then vacation came and re-entry from vacation, crisis and more crisis. In the last three weeks, I only ran 3 times. The last time, I decided to run outdoors because we had had a cold front and the morning temp was actually below 90 degrees (barely).

I discovered that day that running on a treadmill and running outside are two different birds. I didn't even get a half a mile before I needed to slow to a walk. Several more days passed without running. I told my husband that I had to get serious, with only five weeks to go. He offered to run with me and I accepted. I really need some support. So we got up yesterday morning and headed out.

He hasn't exercised in several years (neither had I), so he turned out not to be a cheerleader as much as a marker that showed me how much I had improved. I ran 1.2 miles in 14:40. An added bonus, as he fell behind, was the assurance that my butt looks good, which is a good thing to know when you're going to put on running pants in public, but there's clearly a bias here, so who really knows?

One of the most important things I'm learning is that lung capacity is the biggest issue. The lungs give out before the legs do. My lung capacity has definitely increased, and I see labored breathing as further expansion in progress, not a reason to stop. It's something to focus on, to be intentional about.

Breathing. It's just at the heart of everything, isn't it?

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness,

which unites your body to your thoughts.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

As I ponder the connection between the disciples' 5K and mine, and the attention on that story at just the right moment, AND how all of this relates to breathing, I'm just reminded of the Spirit, who is the Breath of Heaven, and how he facilitates God's movement in the world. I'm reminded of the intricacies of our "one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all." (Ephesians 4:6.) I use to think all these "alls" were people. Now I'm including all thoughts, all events, all experiences...you know: ALL.

What a privilege to be a participant and a witness of that kind of Greatness, that kind of infinite Lung Capacity!

Worlds are forming in my heart

2011-08-13T20:02:00.000-05:00

...Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning--
whatever it was I said

I would be doing--
I was standing
at the edge of the field--
I was hurrying

through my own soul,
opening its dark doors--
I was leaning out;
I was listening.

Mary Oliver

Mockingbird

After I dropped my daughter off at the airport this morning, I found myself home alone. This was something I used to have 7/5, but haven't seen in many months. Not even for a minute. (Did you get the "7/5" yet?)

I was disappointed in myself for fussing at the kids on a busy Saturday morning (everybody going in a different direction by 7:45am). Anxious to hear that Danica made her flight. Tired. I wanted to sit with coffee near a window and bask in our first rain in months, but the house was so messy I didn't want to be in it.

So I went to bed with my computer. I read about how to motivate teens. I published my latest blog post. I caught up on--and got inspired by--a few of my favorite bloggers. I dozed. I recalled yesterday, turning it every which way in my hand like a stone, examining all its edges and planes.
I found myself in a quiet place again, as I always do. Some distant MotherVoice seemed to be saying I should do some laundry or cleaning, but I tuned it out. (Is this what my kids do?) I'm in need of mending. I've been at the frontlines for weeks. Meister Eckhart reminded me that "I need to be silent; worlds are forming in my heart."

Things are shifting; I am unveiled, yet not completely. Even though the stress in my life is escalating and I keep thinking I can't take any more, I do. At least 95% of the time, when I take my emotional pulse, it's perfectly and calmly doing what it should do, despite some obnoxious red alert going off somewhere in my head saying, "Shouldn't you be freaking out about this?" It's as if part of me is evolving, expanding, breaking free and some part of me is against it. It's like a Lobster Effect of the soul. (What a great book title!)

I think it's my ego, struggling for survival, demanding its petulant day in the sun, seeing it's diminishment in the forecast. It wants me to come back into our little safe house where we can be miserable together. (Your ego may be about power, but mine has always been about the glorification of suffering. Whoa! That's a brand new insight, just cranked out, right this second! Oh my goodness: My ego is a MARTYR!) Even as God is building me up right before my eyes, my ego is acting out a dramatic death scene.

Everything that has happened this past month--the things I've told you about and the things I haven't--are laid out like a puzzle before me. Without the box, I can't really see what the image is, but I'm glimpsing some interesting things. As always, I evaluate my "minus-deltas" (the areas where I felt like I could have done better) for lessons learned, being honest but gentle with my exhausted, strong-fragile self.

So, anyhoo, everything I'd want to tell you today can be found at Martha Beck's latest blog post Zero Attachment: Zero Anxiety. I'm tempted to discuss it, but I'll just let you read it. Maybe it will have as profound an effect on you as it did me in my quiet space this morning. It was too good not to pass on.

"...in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength..." Isaiah 30:15

Passport to the other shore

2011-08-13T10:03:00.000-05:00

My daughter Danica was invited on an almost-all-expense-paid trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to celebrate a good friend's 16th birthday. The invitation came in June. It was perfectly planned: mom and dad, two sisters, each with their BFF. The departure date was yesterday, August 12.

Life is crazy, right? I work. She's 17. We were having conversations about what needed to be done and she was taking care of getting herself ready. I thought everything was under control on my end.

They were supposed to leave for the airport at 7am. At 10 pm the night before, after spending an hour picking up one kid after work and two hours driving another one around selling this year's fundraising item for football, I was preparing her paperwork and discovered that her passport (purchased at the same time as mine, which I had just used last year) had expired. I had no idea that children's passports are only good for five years. I had to call the family and tell them their daughter's birthday trip was about to be seriously altered. Living, as I do, right on the edge of insanity, it was a short nudge off that cliff.

I stayed up til 2:30 online and on the phone, trying to find out how to get an expedited passport and change her flight to the following day. On three hours of sleep, we hit the ground running that morning, having a 7:30 meeting with the principal of the school she wants to transfer out of (10 days before school starts) and a 10:00 meeting in downtown Dallas at the Federal Building. I had no idea how it worked, so I had her come fully ready to go to the airport on the off chance they would hand me the passport within the hour and I could call American Airlines and get her on the last flight out today (1:15pm).

They told me the passport would be ready between 2 and 3 and that the Federal Building closed at 3 on Fridays. I took her home, rescheduled her flight for the following morning (paying an additional $271) and went to the office, trying to get in a few hours because I'm out of PTO. For that same reason, I didn't want to get to the Federal Building at 2 and wait for an hour, so I left work at 2:15, thinking I would get downtown about 2:35, park and be in the building by 2:45.

Um....NO. I was zinging along at 75 mph when traffic suddenly came to a massive stop about three miles before my exit. I start, alternately, praying, begging, singing "He is Able", pretending to be calm, calling myself names for cutting it too close, crying, professing faith and freaking out. You get it, right? If I wasn't there before 3, the nearly $600 I had spent on airfare and $200 on a passport would be wasted AND she would miss her trip AND their daughter's trip would be ruined AND I would feel obligated to pay them back the $1400 they had spent on the trip for her. (!!!!!)

I could see the exit a half-mile ahead, not a lane of traffic moving. It was 2:40. Even if I was at my exit right now, I still had to make my way through downtown, find a parking spot, get into the building, through security and up to the 11th floor. I knew I was defeated. I knew that nothing I could do would get me there. It was going to take a miracle.

An encouragement someone had given me a few weeks ago popped into my mind. It was the story of Jesus' disciples rowing and rowing in the storm on the sea. Then Jesus gets in the boat and suddenly, they are on the shore. They had encouraged me to stop trying so hard to work everything out and let Jesus make it easy for me. [John 6:19-21: When they had rowed three or three and a half miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were terrified. But he said to them, "It is I; don't be afraid." Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.]

I was certainly in a sea of automobiles. I had been praying for a Moses-style parting of the ocean of cars, but I was certainly not doing it calmly. The realization of imminent failure did not hit me. It washed over me like an anointing. I let go, and it was a physically observable thing. I imagined Jesus in my boat and pictured finding myself suddenly at the other shore, time having stood still. I stopped rowing (i.e. striving). Literally, ten seconds later, a parting occurred. My lane emptied, the exit was dead ahead with no one in front of me. After crawling at 20 mph, I was able to hit 50! I looped around onto Commerce---not a car in sight! I hit only green lights. I passed the parking lot I needed and knew I didn't have time to go around the block. It was 2:45. I parked illegally on the corner diagonally across from the Federal Building and dashed across the street, and across the other street in my heels. I didn't care if I got a ticket or even got towed! I ran into the building and threw my stuff down onto the x-ray machine and walked through the metal detector. I hit the elevator button five times to make the elevator hurry and rode up to the 11th floor-praising God, arriving at 2:50. I walked out of the building--with a passport--at 2:55.

On the ride down, I praised God alot. Then I started asking for the additional favor of no ticket/towing except that I remembered the idea that when you ask for 'NO' of something, the universe only hears the "something," so I didn't ask for "no ticket," I asked to be done paying for this passport. My car was still there--sans ticket. I dashed over and sped away to have my little silent heart attack. I made it back to the office in 20 minutes, noticing that the traffic jam I had been in had more than tripled in length.

I never actually felt the need to collapse and I have found that the story of my Sybil-like behavior in the car cracks people up. Mostly, however, in troubling times when so many of our prayers don't seem to be being answered, I'm finding that people are thrilled to hear that He still moves stones, that He still calms seas, that He still rescues the perishing!

He is able,
More than able,
To accomplish what concerns me today.

He is able,
More than able,
To handle anything that comes my way.

He is able,
More than able,
To do much more than I could ever dream.

He is able,
More than able,
To make me what He wants me to be.

UPDATE:
The morning of the departure, I woke up at 6am to a foreign sound. It was the soaking rain our drought-parched region has been begging for all summer. I stood in the doorway in my pajamas just breathing it in in gratitude. We left on time for our 15 minute commute to the airport, but when we got to our exit, we found it was closed due to construction. In heavy traffic, in the rain, we were routed around in a big circle that added at least 20 minutes. I felt yesterday's panic resurfacing, but immediately rejected it. I dropped her off with only a little bit of dread that she was cutting it too close. She called a few minutes ago that she was in the terminal and everything was a "GO". By now, she is 20 minutes closer to Cabo San Lucas.

He really is MORE THAN ABLE!

Lead Me to the Cross(es)

2011-08-12T15:51:00.001-05:00

Two weeks ago today, I took a beating.

I confronted one of the passive aggressive people in my life. It did not go so well, considering that passive-aggressive people, when pushed, can become either full-out passive or full-out aggressive, and this one chose aggressive. I'm more accustomed to passive.

This was partly because I was weakened from being on vacation with five teenagers who lost a good friend during that time. In fact, one of my kids was at the party where he drowned. I was preoccupied with planning my divorce (kidding! sort of). I was also becoming panicked because someone had asked me to purchase three thank you gifts a couple of weeks prior, 6" crystal crosses within a specific price range by a certain date. No problem, I thought, but they turned out to be no longer available where she had first purchased them and for two weeks, I had been unable to find them anywhere else. By the time I knew this to be certain, it was too late to order any, even at a higher price. The deadline was the next day.

These things were on my mind as I went into the aforementioned conversation, which quickly went downhill because the topic under discussion shifted from the problem I had with this person to the boatload of problems this person had with me that I had never even had a reason to suspect. Can you spell BLIND-SIDED?

Then soon afterwards, I had to tell my very busy friend that I didn't have the gifts she needed for the following day. She wasn't upset, just said she would go looking herself. That's when I learned that she didn't care if they were crystal nor mind paying more. Though I was exhausted from the emotionally difficult conversation, I headed after work for places I'd already been to look for different kinds of crosses, determined not to let my friend down. At the first two places, all I saw were chintzy or event-labeled crosses (First Communion, baby dedication, etc.), so I went to the place I dislike the most in the world (after Walmart): The Mall.

I started at Dillard's. They had two crosses, one at twice my new budget price and one at three times. I figured, at worst, I could pay the difference and chalk it up to lessons learned. Then I literally walked every inch of that mall, praying "God, lead me to the cross(es). You can see them, take me there, Please Please Please."

I returned at last to Dillard's, crossless, despondent at 7:30 pm, still praying that God was going to pull an Elim out of this day. (This is where He directed the children of Israel all around the desert looking for water and finally brought them to the oasis of Elim, where there was plenty of water. By the time they found it, they knew God had allowed them lack so they would recognize that the provision came from Him.)

I was holding the less expensive one, prepared to personally pay $20 for each one over what I would be reimbursed (which I DID NOT HAVE!). Then I realized they only had two, and I needed three. That left only the ones that were $40 over my budgeted amount. Not only could I not afford it, it just wasn't an appropriate gift.I was almost unable to stay upright at that point from weariness.

A sales person asked if I needed help. When I told her what I needed, she said that was all they had. Then she said, "Wait, I think there are some pewter ones over here." We went to the frame section and found, ON THE HALF PRICE TABLE, gorgeous scrolly pewter standing crosses. The sale price put them within my original budget. I snapped a picture and texted it to my friend, who loved them.

I returned home at bedtime, physically and emotionally drained. My last prayer was for God to pour strength into me during the night so I could face the world. The next day, I felt a little bruised, but quietly strong, bolstered by my cross experience. Over the next two weeks, the difficult conversation turned out to be a massive learning experience and the beginning of a series of unveilings that are moving me to a new and unexpected place.

His work in us is amazingly, beautifully, and without fail, interwoven around the Cross, but I love that on that day of weariness, He gave me such a tangible reminder of that by leading me to the cross(es).

The perfect blend of icky

2011-08-01T11:50:00.000-05:00

I caught a fish at the lake the other day. He was just a little guy...a perch about six inches long. Johnny put him in a bucket. His two-year old son Jack came over and, after a few minutes of slippery evasion, got a grip on him and lifted him out. It was only a few seconds before the fish flipped out of his hands into the crook of his elbow and flopped onto the dock, dying almost instantly. Jack, a seasoned fisherman at two, nonchalantly picked him up and tossed him back into the lake.

How I wish this incident did not make me think of the passive-aggressive people in my life! I have three of them currently on deck, with whose slipperyness I could easily get caught up doing a circus act.

Passive people can be frustrating in their flaccid do-nothingness and avoidance.

Aggressive people are aggravating in their pushy, in-your-face bossyness.

Passive-aggressive people are the perfect blend of these burrs under your saddle. They're subtle with their disrespect. They slip back everytime you try to approach them with something they want to avoid, never doing anything you can reproach. They've got hidden anger a sharp eye can detect, but they're going to use that aggression in a secret way. They're going to make it subtle, so if you try to pin down what's happening, they can act innocent and accuse you of being the problem. They're cowardly, manipulative, unprofessional and....

(shhh...the perfect model for a character in the novel I'm writing!)

In all the emotional hoopla of the last few weeks, I've been to the mat with God and gotten very clear. This clarity is bleeding over into all areas of my life. It's like a veil has been removed (it has! my emotional attachment to my perspective!) and I can see what people are up to, why they're acting the way they're acting. Instead, I'm taking notes, pondering. I think it's part of what God is doing in me in the area of leadership (more on that another time).

The biggest questions I have are these: Am I suddenly being presented with passive-aggressiveness because I'm passive-aggressive? Is it because I've become too aggressive myself, thereby bringing out this defensiveness in others? It's possible while aiming for Assertive, I may have hit Aggression. Or maybe I'm just seeing for the first time.

Since I don't feel emotional enmeshed with it, I'm able to ponder what each one needs and how I can draw them out of this reactive position. Love, grace, and apologetic backing down are my usual M.O., but because I'm thinking more in terms of leadership these days, I wonder how would a good leader handle this form of aggression? Love and grace, to be sure, but what do those look like when you decide not to back down?

I'm in entirely uncharted waters here.

Two of these fish are definitely keepers. (And if the third one turns out not to be, my professional life is gonna be rough!) Has anybody discovered a productive way to reach a passive-aggressive person when you don't want it to end up like my little perch...

flipping, flopping, and ultimately, out of reach?

Unfolding

2011-07-31T09:16:00.001-05:00

"Don't just do something! Stand there!" said the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Sometimes that's very good advice, I'm learning.

About a month ago, after a spring filled with lots of freaking out, I saw a trainwreck in the near future. I was pretty sure the situation to which we had dedicated untold hours, blood, sweat and tears was not going to work out. At least my definition of "working out." That was about the time I told God I was done and I sensed him telling me to remember that our battle is not against flesh and blood, and to stop fighting the battle on the physical plane. I took it to the spiritual plane and found peace.

What I was calling a trainwreck is now upon us, only my renewed perspective of doing spiritual battle not physical battle has enabled me to see through a different set of lenses. I see that, though there's going to be some terrible upheaval, uncertainty and pain, and though there are a lot of scary unknowns, God is not suddenly surprised or his purposes derailed. The events that have transpired have served important purposes. I could be terrified and overwhelmed; instead I felt fascinated to watch as events unfolded.

I told my husband the news and he began to take action. I asked him not to. "This time, let's just watch this unfold and not try to fix a situation we can't fix."

"Are you saying we should just wash our hands of it all?" he asked.

"Not at all. If the responsibility is truly ours, we'll do what we have to do. I just feel convinced that God will provide something better than we could figure out. In fact, I'm sure the provision's already in place."

He agreed to wait and watch and pray.

That night we were watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in our attempt to get caught up on past Harry Potters so we could watch the final segment in the theater. I was struck by this conversation:

Professor Snape: If we are to truly discover the meaning of these events, perhaps we should, for the time being, let them unfold.
Professor McGonagall: [Gasp!] Do nothing? ....

I had a sense of deja vu! From the outside, letting events unfold looks like you're doing nothing. As my friend Tom said, "Sometimes doing nothing is the hardest thing of all." So true. Doing something, anything, even if it's the wrong thing, gives us a sense of control, which is the very thing we're worried about.

The reason doing nothing is so hard is because "doing nothing" is not necessarily doing nothing. It's active and courageous. It requires you to face your fears. It demands that you trust. It asks you to accept that horrible truth: I have no control here. That's hard stuff!

I am sad for those who will be wounded when the axe falls later this week. I am a little concerned that more responsibilities will fall to a family (mine) already way past capacity (in fact, I spent a worrisome day with the two shoulder angels going at it: "It's going to be fine, God's got this." and "But what about.....?") Despite the decision to watch things unfold, even I get a little Professor McGonagallish every so often: "What, do nothing?"

I have an active peace. In the midst of this strange calm, with the weatherman predicting a "tornado" headed our way, I see that this stance has helped preserve a relationship that could have easily been mortally damaged during the six months of serious disagreement (this is a major testimony to the power of Christ working in all those involved!). This peace is paving this treacherous road inch by inch, giving the others who struggle in this situation a perception of grace and love on our part, rather than condemnation. Is this what God meant by "making crooked paths straight"?

It's not here yet, but I'm confident that one day we'll discover the true meaning of these events --a little sooner and with a little less stress-- through the strategy of allowing them to unfold. Whoever said "Time will tell" was one wise woman.

A Scuba diver sees the heart of God (Guest Post)

2011-07-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

This is a guest post from my friend at work, Barbara Perser. She is the assistant who helped me grant myself permission!

It’s dangerous to take a vacation. Dangerous for work that is! I have the hardest time concentrating the week before each trip and the week after. So, today, I am sitting at my desk, staring blankly at my computer screen, day dreaming of my scuba vacation.

My husband and I are scuba divers. We belong to a great dive club called “The East Texas Mud Divers.” There isn’t any “blue water” within 250 miles of Dallas so we have to dive in lakes and quarries. Blue water is what we lovingly call the ocean. Any ocean will do. We LOVE to dive. Each year we take a blue water trip with our club. This year, 28 ecstatic divers went on a week-long trip to Grand Cayman. All that we’d planned to do was dive, dive and dive some more.

My husband Philip and I have been diving since the summer of 2002. I’ve learned quite a lot about diving and I’ve learned a lot about God while doing it! He is amazing and good above the water and below. During my dives, I spend most of my time praising for His creation and the sense of humor He has.

Solitude is a gift that I receive from Him while diving. It’s so peaceful. The loud noises of the world are "drowned" out when you're underwater. I can only hear my steady breathing and the beating of my heart – unless there’s a Parrot fish nearby. Parrot fish chew on the coral reef and you can hear them crunching. Occasionally I will hear another diver banging on his tank to get the attention of anyone around. They’ve seen something and want to point it out. Other than that, it’s silent.

When I first started diving, I was afraid. I was a born again Christian and new in my faith. I depended on God then (as I do now) to help me have the courage to dive. I used Isaiah 43:1-3a as my mantra:

¹ But now, this is what the LORD says—
   he who created you, Jacob,
   he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
   I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
² When you pass through the waters,
   I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
   they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
   you will not be burned;
   the flames will not set you ablaze.
³ For I am the LORD your God,
   the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I still love that passage. Today however, since I’ve experienced that peace that the Bible speaks of, I can dive with that verse in my heart and my eyes open to see God’s glory. I’ve been looking for God’s heart on my recent trips and I’ve found it in a couple of places! I asked God to open my eyes and he did! As I was swimming in about 60 feet of water, I saw this brain coral and tube sponge. They both look like hearts to me.

There are so many amazing things and creatures to see in the deep. I am awestruck! I believe that God is delighted when we see Him in the works of His kingdom. I will keep looking!

The Dip

2011-07-15T14:18:00.001-05:00

Now that I'm in the corporate world, I hear alot about metrics and see a lot of models and charts that illustrate those metrics. This, for example, is the typical chart for the path of progress in any successful endeavor: You start off strong, make some short strides, but then resistance sets in. If you hope to reach success, it is necessary to survive what Seth Godin calls The Dip.

In my 5k training, the dip looks like losses rather than gains in mileage progress, gains rather than losses in weight, lagging enthusiasm and confidence, achy bones and excuses not to train.

Oh, and a lot of internal whining that I'm going to die, that I can't do this, why am I doing this?

I meditated on Mark 11:23 yesterday: "For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says."

He will have WHATEVER HE SAYS??? (I feel sure this works in the negative as well as the positive)

Here's how I pressed forward in my dip yesterday:
I thought of a crisp, coolish race day morning in September (fantasy, I know!).
I pictured myself several pounds thinner in cute running clothes.
I saw my friends there to cheer me on.
I saw myself running the entire 3.1 miles without cardiac arrest.
Most importantly, I countered every negative thought with an audible "I can do this! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (The guy on the treadmill next to me was either distracted or similarly spurred on.) After all, if I'm going to have whatever I say, I want to speak victory!

The next thing I knew, I had met my goal of running four 1/4th mile sprints in a two-mile session in less than 30 minutes. (Rein in your envy--not many can run/walk a 15-minute mile!) For good measure, I also addressed abs, biceps and triceps. (Maybe next time I'll pass on that reward cookie I had later in the evening.)

So, here's what I noticed about these metrics:

On the graph above, the whole endeavor is uphill except for the descent into failure. UPHILL (mountains!) is a tangible, painful concept to a person who can barely run on a flat surface that moves for me and is located in an air-conditioned room. Every now and then I give myself a little bit of incline just so I can appreciate flatness, and I wonder: where did I ever get the idea that success shouldn't be so hard?
Even the descent into The Dip is difficult, characterized not by ease, necessarily, but by hard work that just doesn't seem to be paying off.
On the treadmill, I am able to easily measure improvements in 1/100th of a mile increments. This is SO empowering. My progress has been thus: 1/8th mile, 1/6th mile, 1/5th mile, 1/8th mile (DIP), 1/4th mile (response to Dip). This is not the slightest bit impressive to my athletic sons, but I do not compare myself to others or downplay my progress. I congratulate myself for going to the gym, staying on the treadmill, and going a little further than I think I can.
Words matter: "You shall decree a thing and it shall be established unto you..." (Job 22:28)

Success in life cannot be measured by how hard the journey is! In fact, it's been said that life wouldn't be so hard if we didn't keep expecting it to be easy. I'm finding that there's no substitute for the sense of success when you see yourself have victory over the resistance found in The [inevitable] Dip.

I'd love to hear about the dips you've climbed out of. How did you do it?

Do you know how awesome you are?

2011-07-14T16:40:00.001-05:00

A couple of years ago I was invited by a woman named Celeste to pitch myself as a potential ladies retreat speaker. I told Celeste about my family, my book, my ministry and my upcoming trip to Ghana. Ultimately, the church decided to go with another speaker, but just a few weeks ago, Celeste emailed me and invited me to once again pitch myself for their next year's retreat.

Along with giving myself permission, this encounter created another shift in my world that created even more shifts, and finally a jail break.

The face of freedom can show up small

A tiny crack in a prison wall...

Nichole Nordeman, No More Chains

I went back and reread my original email to Celeste to figure out where in my story to start. Didn't want to overlap too much, you know. I began to mentally sift through the events you're undoubtedly sick of hearing about: my Ghana trip, the four-month depression that followed the trip, the boy who came to live with us, his mother's death, going back to work after 31 years at home, inheriting the boy's family and working to find homes for them, going through an acquisition at work, having the boy's sister move in with us....AAACCK!!!

The process of laying all of that out (I didn't go into detail to Celeste) caused me to have the epiphany that is depicted in this video:

If you're like me, you lost the ability to breathe for a second when you saw how big that wave was. I instantly transposed my life as that wave and me as that surfer. I saw the previous paragraph of my life from a 50,000 foot view and thought: "NO WONDER I'm stressed!"

This is true for you, too. You're a frail human surfing through treacherous waters all the time. Just trying to stay upright, right? God knows life is hard. In fact, your life is so difficult, it's never been attempted before.

For He knows our frame;

He remembers that we are dust.

Psalm 103:14

Take a look at your life from the 50,000 foot view. See what God sees when he looks at you. Read Nehemiah 4, and especially verse 10. These people were accomplishing an amazing feat: rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem despite danger, limited resources, and outside taunting. They got half of it done in record time. Then they looked at the rubble that remained, rather than the feat they had accomplished. They got discouraged and started believing they couldn't finish. I have been there so often.

For once, don't look at the rubble that remains to be sifted through, the work you're not accomplishing, the messes that exist in your life. Look at what you ARE accomplishing....staying upright on a ginormous wave of life. More importantly, see the power of the One that animates you, gives you life, upholds you when you can't hold yourself up. He has confidence in you because HE is your strength.

That perspective may be the crack in the prison wall that shifts everything for you overnight, that reminds you that you can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens you!

You're awesome! God is proud of you for staying on the surfboard--or for getting back up on it when a wave knocks you off. And when you see yourself the way he sees you, surfing through this life could actually become fun!

a journey of 3.1 miles begins with a single step

2011-07-09T13:51:00.001-05:00

I am currently reading Jon Acuff’s book Quitter: Closing the Gap Between your Day Job and Your Dream Job. In it, he tells of having to go on a diet to offset his love of Gordo’s queso. He noticed that as he lost weight, alot of other areas of his life started to improve too. This, he says, is because “discipline begets discipline. When you step up to a challenge before you, your ramped-up resources rub off on other areas of your life.” He cautions that it works the other way too: doing poorly in one area drags down other areas.

I felt the power of this truth simply from signing up for a 5k. I printed off the training schedule that would take me from 0 to 3.1 miles in only 12 weeks. I was happy to see that every other day was a rest day, so even though I have only run twice in the first two weeks of my training period, I have actually been on target for 8 days out of 14! Go me!

Like Jon, I have seen some changes in other areas: I’m drinking less coffee. I’m less apt to crash after work when I need to cook/clean/shop/do laundry. And--THIS IS BIG--I’m less alarmed by the continuing parade of alarming events in my life. (Among other things, I may have to move in 30 days because my landlord wants to sell the house we’re in—and I haven’t even thought about crying.)

It can’t be the abundance of endorphins released through exercise that explains my slightly improved attitude. I can barely run 1/8^th of a mile at this point! No, I think it’s this: A challenging goal, a decision to act, invitations sent out to witnesses…these things have energized me somewhat to not be humiliated in front of those witnesses.

That's you. You can come down to the race in September, you can contribute to Girls on the Run (the charity for which I’m running. Click here to donate), you can pray for the two families for whom I run, or you can just check in here every few days to see how it’s going and what I’ve learned. I’d love to have you along.

I also want to challenge you to take a step. Do one thing differently tomorrow. Take a different route home, smile at a coworker you usually avoid, refuse to take offense, eat something new, dare to feel lucky,....just take that one step and see where it leads you!

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

Hebrews 12:1

Lucky

2011-06-29T12:02:00.035-05:00

Do you feel lucky? (I apologize if that makes you think of Clint Eastwood staring you down with a gun in his holster! I promise that’s not where I’m going!)

When most people think of being lucky, they think of things going their way. They think of serendipity. They think of good fortune they don’t deserve. That’s all great when things are going your way and you’re in a season of good fortune. But what if you’re not?

Take a second and watch this video to the beautiful song Lucky.

Did you notice that although this couple is singing about being lucky, they’re actually separated?

How do you do that? How do you feel lucky when you’re obviously sad about something…maybe even the thing you feel lucky about? (If you’re a parent, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about!)

I’m convinced it’s in the BUT.

We’re apart, but I’m in love with my best friend.

We can’t see each other, but I’m in a Hawaii!/Prague, Czech Republic!

We’re separated, but we’ll be going home one day.

Both clauses in each sentence are true, but what’s after the BUT is the truth they’re giving weight to, and the reality they’re experiencing.

If you want to FEEL lucky, if you want to make beautiful music of the life you’re in, what you hope for in the future has to be bigger than what you've got right now, but you have to see what you have--not just what you don't. You've got to put the power of faith and love into your words. You gotta watch your BUTs.

Do you feel lucky? Apparently, it’s a choice!

Challenge: If we could sing this chorus everyday with our hope set on Jesus, our BFF, how could that change your life?

Lucky I’m in love with my best friend

(the one bigger than all our problems)

Lucky to have been where I have been

(gratitude for the the good in our past)

Lucky to be coming home again

(hope for the future)

Girls on the Run

2011-06-25T08:05:00.023-05:00

Are you a girl on the run?

I am. Just look at the marathons I've been running since this time last year:

Taking in a 14-year old boy, whose mother died three weeks later.
Returning to work after 31 years of self-employment.
Undergoing an acquisition at work the same week the boy's younger brother and sister were dropped off at my home with their belongings.
Finding other homes for three of the five siblings, and helping them with their grief.
Managing the schedules, emotional landscapes and physical care of my three teenagers.
Holding my marriage together, and, most recently,
Helping my husband renovate an old house in the evenings in exchange for a truck and a place for one of the older girls to live.

Along the way, self-care vanished. TV and other forms of relaxation disappeared. Cooking and cleaning were scaled back. Family time evaporated. Friendships grew distant. Exercise became extinct. I did, however, gain a few things:

Exhaustion
Self-Doubt
Self-disgust
Weight

With my recent epiphany about granting myself permission, I found myself ready to break free of the limits I had allowed to be placed on my...well, freedom. Though I am still exhausted, still overwhelmed by the span of care I oversee and still have NO spare time, I saw an open door and tentatively approached it.

Each year, our company hosts a charity challenge run. This year, they have chosen Girls on the Run, an organization that educates and prepares girls 3rd through 8th grade for a lifetime of self-respect and healthy living. This is a real challenge for women, isn't it? I know a 51-year old who's still struggling with it!

Girls on the Run began in 1993 when, during a sunset run, Molly Barker found the inspiration to overcome years of self-doubt and being defined by others. Three years later, she founded the non-profit organization which encourages girls to train for a 5k. The training process includes a curriculum that addresses the need for girls to remain true to themselves as they transition into the middle school years where self-doubt often takes over. Besides the training, they also give scholarships.

I can't do a marathon, or even a half marathon. I don't just don't have the time--or the strength--or the desire--or the money! (This is a fundraiser for Girls on the Run; the minimum commitment was $300.) Do you hear all that self-doubt???

I read this week that Tim Ferris, author of Four Hour Body, believes that “99% of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for mediocre goals…” He says “Unreasonable and unrealistic goals are easier to achieve. Having an unusually large goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal. Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you will throw in the towel.”

At this time, I am capable of running approximately 4 mailboxes, which might be 1/16th of a mile, after which I need 15 minutes to catch my breath, but I signed up this week for a 5k (3.1 miles). This may seem reasonable to you, but it truly is not a mediocre goal for me, considering my obstacles. I have only 12 weeks to get ready and my knees ain't what they used to be.

I almost let myself off the hook because of the cost, but I decided this factor further qualifies it as an “unreasonable goal.” And that’s where you come in. Will you donate to Girls on the Run and, by doing so, become a cheerleader on the sidelines of my effort to expand my capabilities to embrace the life I live—committed to serving an orphaned family—with strength and exuberance, rather than defeat and exhaustion?

Think of it as ministering to the ministers, supporting those who care for orphans, being Aaron and Hur to me (two men who held up Moses arms so a battle could be won. I know, it's weird, but check out the story in Exodus 17!)

You'll be helping me and a bunch of 3rd to 8th grade girls find self-respect and healthy living so that I can lead this brood I've been blessed with. Any amount will be greatly appreciated!

If you can help, please click on the PayPal button below or click the link to donate directly to Girls on the Run in a way that credits it to my commitment (preferred). Whatever I don't raise, I have to pay--YIKES!

If you've ever wished you could take in stray children but just can't, this is a way to help a bunch of them vicariously! If you're moved to help, I'd also like to ask for on-going prayers for our family and the family we're helping.

Bless you!

Click here to donate directly to Girls on the Run

Permission Granted

2011-06-13T22:50:00.000-05:00

I was angry. I was sad. I was tired.

Note to self: "Get over it."

Right jab to self: "Stop being a baby."

Butt kick to self: "Why can't you stop acting like this?"

This, even though I knew that emotions, like a river, don't stop flowing just because you erect a dam. No, once dammed, they overflow their banks!

So anger turned inward became resentment. Sadness turned inward became depression. Fatigue increased exponentially.

Then I sat through a week long certification class for the product my company sells (a church management software). We learned, among other things, how to set up activities in the program. Everytime I did it, it wouldn't work. The instructor would open a new page that I couldn't get to. So I would call the assistant over and tell her it wasn't working for me.

Three times she asked, "Did you give yourself permission?"

You see, due to the security layer in the program, any new activity that is established has to be assigned viewing or editting rights, even to the creator of the activity. Three times, the answer was no, I hadn't gone to the security rights page and assigned myself rights to my own activity.

This was something of a revelation, a metaphor for my life right now. I saw it right away (well, after the third time.)

I wasn't giving myself permission to be angry, sad or tired. I wasn't showing myself grace or love. I was "damning" the river of emotions and wondering why I felt increasingly worse.

I kicked myself one last time for knowing better, but immediately withdrew the reproach in favor of a better approach.

Permission granted to be angry. Permission granted to be sad. Permission granted to be tired of everything I'm tired of. Forgiveness for being grouchy and for forgetting that beating oneself never works when one is seeking change. Compassion extended for the difficulties I've had on my plate for nine months, no less difficult because others have harder ones. Permission granted to say it's been hard. Too hard. That I want to quit.

An offer to housesit this week at a beautiful house with a pool. What about the kids, the meals, the housekeeping, and Steve, who feels every bit as overwhelmed as I do?

Permission granted to put myself first, for a change, so I can take care of everyone else a little more humanely.

Ah....I feel better already.

Where brilliant and wonderful dreams begin

2011-05-31T13:40:00.000-05:00

If you cannot change the things that make you crazy, you must change the way you look at them. There are two ways to do that. You can reframe them in a way that enables you to walk away (i.e. “this is hopeless”), but if you do that enough, you create a lifetime of avoiding commitment and growth, which is where the truest blessings of life are found.

Alternately, you can step around to the other side and envision something in process.

You’ve heard it said dozens of ways, but I liked this one. Although I can’t quite see it, the Chinese symbol for CHAOS is said to depict an image of a new plant breaking the ground.

The modern translation for chaos in Chinese is “a place where brilliant and wonderful dreams begin.” It illustrates the difficult circumstances when new projects or plans are starting. It depicts how great things can be born from difficult or chaotic times.

This makes me think about an article author Anne Lamott once wrote about the agricultural meaning of the word “yield.” It is “produce.” Yielding, as a verb and a noun, speaks of growth. She made the point that if you mix in the other definition of yield (surrender), you get an image of us as the ground. Are we going to be hard, dry, and unyielding, or are we going to be fertile and let something beautiful grow?

That’s how I’m reframing my chaos today.

How do you do it?

What is truth?

2011-05-28T12:42:00.004-05:00

My husband and I used to counsel with couples and listen maturely to their debate. Then later we'd get caught up in their fight...he siding with him, me siding with her, continuing their argument until we were as furious at each other as they had been.

Somewhere along the line we came to ourselves and realized the utter futility and stupidity of this tack. In part, it was because of a situation we witnessed with a couple we knew.

The man was accused by his 14-year old daughter of sexual abuse. He denied the charge. We watched the family (immediate and extended) split in two. We listened to the "evidence" of both sides, but we didn't take a side. We knew it could be true. We knew it could be false. Being judge and jury was not our job. Being friend was. So we stayed friends with both sides. One day Steve accidently used the words "if it's true" when speaking to someone on the It Is True side. She exploded in anger, "If it's true? Of course it's true! [insert "evidence"]!"

Several years later, after we had moved away, we heard that the girl had come forward and recanted. By then, her father's life was destroyed. It was heartbreaking.

I remember how glad I was for this man's sake that we had stayed neutral. We hadn't had to know the truth to decide what to do, because the truth was essentially un-knowable at that time.** This lesson stuck with me. The idea that in any conflict we can know the whole story, see the whole puzzle, or have the absolute truth has been scrubbed from my paradigms. For the most part, I can, with a few reminders, be at peace in the state of "I don't know." I do not have to be judge or jury. I only need to love all involved (which is infinitely harder!)

A recent situation I've been embroiled in for the last five months has sorely tested my resolve on this approach. For the first six months of the situation, I was able to just love and gradually gain new pieces of information without stress or feeling the need to take control. It just was what it was, and clearly, God was in charge. I felt that God would let me know if I needed to take action.

But other people got involved (to help) and started pushing, prodding and poking on the situation, determined to discover the Whole Truth Now. Their actions seemed to me to be threatening the situation that I had been convinced God was in control of. And it sucked me in.

I began to be afraid, stressed, angry, hurt, confused, and desperate to know definitively what I should do. It was miserable. I finally reached a point where I told God I was done. Tired. Want out. Can't do this anymore. The only solution to my pain was--obviously--for him to remove the situation from me.

Instead, He put Ephesians 6:12 into my mind, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood." He convinced me that my stress and fatigue were from engaging in this pointless battle to know truth on a level where it can't (at least for now) be known. He showed me that my hurt was essentially pride--the need to feel respected by others. He asked me to let go of the hurt and conflict, and fight where the real battle is--on a spiritual level.

Anais Nin said "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

I was there. It had become more painful to hold on to my position of struggle than to let go. I let go, and was instantly rewarded with not only peace, but new information and insight. I found that I didn't care what people thought of me anymore and I could clearly see what motivated their actions. I no longer needed to make sense of conflicting information and I could immediately recognize my own unproductive thoughts and mental stories about what So-and-So meant by such-and-such, making it easy to diffuse those powder kegs.

Now, when a torrent of those thoughts hit me and I can't seem to escape, I just start worshipping. I start singing "Oh Lord, you're beautiful!" and before I know it, I'm ok.

So what is truth? The truth is that there is a God and I am not Him. The truth is that Jesus is the Way, The Life and the Truth. When I don't know the truth, can't figure out the truth, and really NEED the truth, the most stress-free WAY there is to seek Him--and not just as a source for the answers I need.

Connecting with Him, seeing Him, giving it all to Him brings me to all the truth I need to navigate the murky waters of:
F.alse
E.vidence
A.ppearing
R.eal.

**I DO know that sometimes we have to take a side, even without all the facts, and that we definitely need to do our due diligence to discover as much truth as can be found. I'm convinced that where this level of pursuit lies in our sense of security is the real issue. Once again, it all comes down to trusting God, not information, for my wellbeing and direction.

The Art of Faith

2011-05-20T17:32:00.001-05:00

Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods {and circumstances-gc}.

C.S. Lewis

Like my father before me and my daughter after me, I am ambi-brained: almost equal parts left and right brained. I love art and lose myself most when I'm creating. Yet I'm equally at home with, and somewhat dependent on, processes.

So, C.S. Lewis' concept of faith as an art feels like a revelation! I keep wanting faith to be a science, which, of course, contradicts the very definition of faith: the conviction of things unseen (Hebrews 11:1). I want it to be something I reasoned myself into, which would seemingly make it solid rather than air-like.

But faith is not the reasoning, just as art is not an outline. Lewis says faith is the ability to hold on to what the reasoning has taught you when circumstances are telling you something different. Or when your human tendency to assign and reassign meaning to incomplete and/or faulty sets of data kicks in. When that right brain is constantly clicking away at details trying to make sense of them, (and you're trying to keep an open mind to allow for a broader understanding of truth), your faith is A) necessary for stability, but B) hard to hold on to, especially if you're trying to hold on by doing more reasoning.

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” – Pope John Paul II

It's helps me to think of faith as an art. When I think of the art of writing, for example, I realize that:

1. It shouldn't look like anybody else's.

Sure, there are some guidelines about grammar and style, but some of the best authors ignore those in crafting their unique voice. (Think ee cummings). You're an evolving person; you shouldn't look like anyone else, and eventually you won't even look like you. Comparisons are killers in writing and in faith. What is surfacing in you right now is really all that matters. It is the raw material of your art and faith, no matter how ugly, painful, or uneloquent it is. And if either your art or your faith are about someone other than YOU, they're inauthentic.

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Oscar Wilde

2. Writing is always in flux.

Every finished piece of writing should ideally undergo at least three drafts. You never get it right the first time. You don't even try to. You just lay a foundation from all that's mulling around to be worked with, knowing that soon you will be able to assess what was once formless and make sweeping changes in direction, if necessary. The final draft is about fine-tuning and polishing, as well as coming to an realization of what has been being birthed. I'm sure this process is somewhat similar in songwriting and other forms of art.

It takes time to finish a season. Why should you be frustrated with yourself in the middle of winter that your garden isn't growing yet, just because you think winter should be over? If the season isn't over, then it isn't reasonable to expect to be at final draft stage yet. Faith may remember that spring is on its way long before anything green pokes its way into our awareness, but it doesn't feel bad for shivering in the snow.

Everything works out in the end. If it hasn't worked out yet, it's not the end.
Author Unknown

3. You're never really done!

You'll never find all the typos or say all you wanted to say. You could tweak away at your project forever, which is why deadlines exist. Even if you do one day declare your project "perfect," time and a little emotional distance will change your view on that, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't exactly what it was supposed to be at the time: a step in the journey.

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and

beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

Anna Quindlan

So why do we suppose faith should be any different? We're dealing with deep stuff in the universe here. We're finite mortals being given glimpses of eternity (both within and without). We're obviously standing on the border between two worlds, pulled by the gravity of both. As we spiral upward in our spiritual growth, each new level of faith-building feels just like the old ones, which causes us to second-guess our progress and beat ourselves up.

The act of birthing our art and our faith is really just the ongoing birth of us. It's imperfect and messy, but also very, very beautiful to Him. Like any proud father, he is able--more than all others involved--to focus on the coming offspring (us!) with anticipation, love and joy--and sympathy for the pain of the laborer (also us). Never does He look on a birth process with a critical eye, because we are his creation.

All beings
are words of God,
His music, His
art.

Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps
in our
souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.

He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart.

-Meister Eckhart

Miracle #1928

2011-05-01T09:41:00.002-05:00

They meet up for a family photo. When they get there, one of their children hands them a fat wad of cash.

***

She met him while driving down the highway. He had tattoo'd "sleeves" that she thought were cool. He wrote his number on his hand and held it up to the window. She jotted it down and called him later. He had a cool name and a bad past: just her type of guy! When he skipped town a month later, he took a large portion of her DVD collection and $500 she had loaned him. Everytime she thought of him for several years, she got mad.

***

They said 'yes' to the request to house a teenager for the summer. Summer turned into fall, fall into winter. With winter came the request to become his legal guardians and to become surrogate parents to his four siblings. In the back of their minds, they wondered how they would manage it. Finances had been tight for many years. Besides the recession, they had also lost their entire lifesavings (and supplemental income) due to their investment manager's deceit four years before. With faith that God would provide, they said 'yes' again, put their hands to the plow and never looked back.

She found a job paying more than she deserved. Friends and acquaintances and strangers who heard of the situation surprised them every so often with a hundred dollars here, a couple of hundred dollars there, often just as one of the children had an expensive need. Despite the feeling of never quite having enough, they managed somehow, even began paying down their debt. When they looked at the future, they could never see how they were going to get by, but the past always reminded them that God was providing.

***

Three years later, he called and asked to meet with her. She was surprised to realize she felt no bitterness. "No, thanks," she said. He tells her he's trying to get his life back together and that part of that means making amends where he has hurt others. He wants to pay her back the money he stole.

"No, thanks," she says again. "Just pay it forward." She's not mad anymore, but she really doesn't want to see him. A friend says, "Why don't you meet up with him and give the money to your parents?" She loves the idea. She meets up with him, and accepts the $500.

***

When she sees her parents that night at the photoshoot, she hands them a fat wad of cash. They are blown away and awed anew at the God who stirred the heart of a young man they had only met once to release money, that He then directed to their need through the willing channel of that daughter.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Friend, God has promised to supply all your need. His greatest pleasure is in being believed. Do not worry about the HOW...trust that He always looking for creative ways to blow your mind and care for you. Spend your life on others. The seeds you plant WILL yield a harvest.

Long ago we trained ourselves not to expect financial harvests for the spiritual seeds we sowed, but I am becoming a believer in the rightness of that expectation. I make no promises to you about that; I can only share what is happening to us.

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Luke 6:38 NIV

I am SO blessed!

The earth laughs in flowers...and the walker gets the joke

2011-04-27T14:57:00.000-05:00

This blog post is dedicated to Barbara Shallou, whose daily walks, gorgeous photoshoots and heartfelt blogs inspire me to a slower pace and a sharper eye for natural beauty that can only be found at a slower pace. I am even shamelessly stealing her style today. As always, photographs can be enlarged by clicking on them.

I brought my tennis shoes and camera to work and stole away at lunch for a walk. It's the first time I've been outside in months for anything other than commuting between the house and the car.

Right outside my corporate park, I found a meadow and lost myself in its secrets. Most of these shots are of tiny, tiny flowers. I kept thinking of Matthew 6: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk. ~Raymond Inmon

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~John Muir

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing. ~Aldous Huxley

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~John Muir

Solvitur ambulando, St. Jerome was fond of saying. To solve a problem, walk around. ~Gregory McNamee

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. ~John Muir

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. ~Henry David Thoreau

After a day's walk everything has twice its usual value. ~George Macauley Trevelyan

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see. ~John Burroughs

If you are walking to seek, ye shall find. ~Sommeil Liberosensa

Thoughts come clearly while one walks. ~Thomas Mann

How can you explain that you need to know that the trees are still there, and the hills and the sky? Anyone knows they are. How can you say it is time your pulse responded to another rhythm, the rhythm of the day and the season instead of the hour and the minute? No, you cannot explain. So you walk. ~Author unknown

Now shall I walk or shall I ride?

"Ride," Pleasure said. "Walk," Joy replied.~W.H. Davies

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. ~Soren Kierkegaard

Walking gets the feet moving, the blood moving, the mind moving. And movement is life. ~Carrie Latet

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. ~Wallace Stevens

I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. ~G.M. Trevelyan

God speaks in 3D

2011-04-02T15:15:00.001-05:00

I have a condition known as logophilia: the love of words.

God loves words too, but he's also kind of famous for putting some meat behind his words. (Jesus, for example, is THE word. And his favorite kind of words were word pictures.)
I find great comfort in the words of God that have been preserved for me, but when God paints a picture...it speaks to your soul from the inside out.

God's paint is love.
Sometimes you're tossed directly into the paint pot of His loving message for you like a kid into a pool--joy is the result, even if takes your breath away at first.
You're covered with it, splashing it around with abandon.
You slip and slide in it.
And laugh.
I've had that happen.

Maybe the paint comes buried in a word, which makes its way from the page to your eyes (or from someone's lips to your ears), and into your heart.
Maybe you toy with the word...
Or maybe it just sits there like a little serendipitous time bomb until something comes along to puncture it, transforming a little piece of you from drab (an actual color, according to my friend Barbara) to green.
I've had that happen.

Other times, God's paint is carefully brushed onto the canvas of your concerns by one of his artists.

Maybe it's a whole gallery of his impressions, each one containing you--from your best angle, in perfect light--as he sees you.

It's obvious he's been stalking you, taking pictures of you in the past, present and future, without your knowledge, casting everything you do in a better light than you do, yourself, always minimizing your good traits and emphasizing your bad ones.

Maybe your logophilia causes you to convert these images into Answers you can turn into words and retell, fit neatly into the compartments of your thoughts, and revisit as needed for comfort.

You buy up the whole lot to frame and add to your collection.

Only something happens.
The paint doesn't stay on the surface.
It's alive...it's starts to seep through the pores of your pain, dripping into dry and desperately thirsty places you can't see, permeating, drenching, saturating, until it starts to pool, then run.
From every direction, colorful rivulets begin to gather speed and volume, as they unite with the love already poured out in your heart which had slowed to a trickle because of all the debris in the way.

Love levels begin to rise.

You're going about with your life, applying comfort on the outside as usual, strengthening yourself with WORDS, His words, your words, the words of the wise.

You can't see the increasing flow or the verdant life popping up like instant spring along the banks of your internal streams.
Until it reaches critical mass.

Suddenly, the comfort isn't academic and cerebral--you feel happy.
Ideas start to explode.
Things that were impossible yesterday feel perfectly feasible today.
The realization of His love for YOU, as shown through that gallery exhibit, eclipses the external tides of difficulty and so-called impossibility that just keep hitting you, day after day after day.

You stand taller.
You don't care what anybody thinks about you.
You hear his voice again.
You know what you have to do.
You know you will make it, because he loves YOU, just as you are.

I've had THAT happen.
This week.

I needed an Answer...
And instead, I got to see who God sees me to be.
And when I saw me,
I saw YOU.

Oh, how he loves us!

You knew

2011-03-04T06:11:00.000-06:00

You knew.

You looked down the stream of time and saw a crisis in my future. Not a big one; just a long string of medium-to-medium-large ones back to back in the middle of the worst icestorm in Texas in years and an acquisition at work.

You knew I would reach a breaking point in the middle of it. You said I wouldn't be tempted beyond what I could bear, and would provide a way of escape, and You knew I would reach that point in the first week of February.

You knew this a long time ago, so back in August, you planted the idea of the way of escape in J and L's minds. We tried to turn it down..."can't afford it" we said. "No, it's a GIFT!" you told them to say.

You knew I dreaded the gift, as I repeatedly asked you to get me out of it. The timing was terrible (I was going to miss all the initial training from our new corporate headquarters, I had three teenagers testing their limits), plus I don't really like this kind of gift.

You knew, you saw, that the last 72 hours before the unwrapping--and all the way up to the last moment--the pressure increased in intensity, loudness, and diameter.

Suddenly the gift was there (it was literally an escape, the cruise I mentioned in my last post). You watched over us as we crawled for 8 hours at 30mph over icy roads from Dallas to Galveston.

You heard me deal with problems with teens at home via the phone for the first three hours and wonder if I should get off the ship before it left port. You sent someone to pray for us. You slowly peeled my shoulders from up around my ears, where I didn't even know they were. It felt somewhat like the unpleasant sensation of popsicle toes defrosting after playing in the snow in Texas snow boots (plastic bags and duct tape).

You knew that several days of gazing out to sea, playing with words to describe the different blues of water and sky, laughing with friends, scuba-diving, not doing ANY work, and not speaking to my kids would be just what I needed!

You knew when I got home, I would immediately be back in stress, but that I would be able to handle it from my newly re-established normal height. You knew I would need to make sense of it all, so you sent me to Elijah.

You knew I would be able to relate to Elijah's story of extreme stress, followed by an angel RX: a respite of body and soul care. He wasn't done, but he got a break: divinely protected sleep, divinely provided food (twice) that came with an encouragement: "Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you." Another long, discouraging task lay ahead of him, but you gave him miraculous strength to accomplish it. Then you brought him his replacement who ministered to him after a long, obedient life.

You knew I would finally see that the provision was in place before the need was even known (You're so good that way!)

You knew I would take comfort from Elijah's story that all my difficulties, endured moment-by-moment in your Presence, are nothing less than the service of your anointed ones. Not a sign that I'm faithless. Not a punishment for one of my crimes, but a journey to mold me into someone fit for the task that lies ahead. Living proof that you entrust me with what I cannot do, while empowering me to do it. More evidence that your favor is upon me (for these difficulties are coming out of two EXTREME blessings!)

Thank you for knowing. And thank you for the gift!

Chill Pill

2011-02-14T22:17:00.000-06:00

Blue is the overwhelming "favorite color." Blue is seen as trustworthy, dependable, and committed.

The color of ocean and sky, blue is perceived as a constant in our lives. As the collective color of the spirit, it invokes rest and can cause the body to produce chemicals that are calming.

Indigo, a deeper blue, symbolizes a mystical borderland of wisdom, self-mastery, and spiritual realization. While blue is the color of communication with others, indigo turns the blue inward to increase personal thought, profound insights, and instant understandings.

Blue is the least "gender specific" color, having equal appeal to both men and women.

How the color blue effects us physically

Calms and sedates

Cools

Aids intuition

{From Sensational Color}

We just got back from a cruise. There is something about the waters and skies of Mexico, striped with every shade of blue imaginable, that causes one's shoulders to slowly separate from one's ears.

It took a few days. The last day, I sat on the back of the boat and lost myself in these frothy aquamarine ocean ruts while alternately reading Man's Ultimate Search for Meaning.

I'm sure not working or worrying or wearying helped, but I'm positive that what did it was the blue.

Though I always thought of God as bright white and yellowy, I'm now convinced He must be blue. Here's why:
“Blue is the only color which maintains its own character in all its tones...it will always stay blue; whereas yellow is blackened in its shades, and fades away when lightened; red when darkened becomes brown, and diluted with white is no longer red, but another color – pink.” -- Raoul Dufy

Lately, I've been at turns darkened or diluted into unrecognizable shades of me. I like knowing that there is Someone, Something, Somewhere that is eternally blue, blue all the way through...

True blue.

i thank You God for this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

e.e. cummings

Ready for Anything

2011-01-19T07:53:00.000-06:00

My boss shared a couple of Kindle books with me by a productivity expert named David Allen. In Ready For Anything, he begins the book discussing the fact that life is filled with unexpected events, but there is a way to be calm and organized enough to be ready for them. To prove his point about the perpetual onslaught of unforeseen changes, he challenges the reader to go to their calendar, one month from the current day, and write the following:

"David Allen predicted that by today, something unexpected will have happened

that will significantly affect my life."

It was January 3.

I actually went to February 3 and wrote that sentence.

On January 10, something completely unexpected happened that will significantly affect my life for many years to come. I hadn't gotten any further in the book yet so I didn't have my readiness strategies in place yet, but not being ready doesn't keep tidal waves from hitting you, does it?

It'll take several blog posts to tell you about what happened because I want to include the incredible back story that led to this moment in time. It's a story about the courage and love of a mother who probably every day of her life carried a load bigger than all my life's loads put together, and who has handed me a legacy that I am truly privileged to enter into.

It's a story about the heartbreaking way God doesn't seem to answer prayers. And then He does, and you could miss it if you weren't piecing together the whole story or letting Him use you to answer them. The energy and peace you have--but shouldn't--clues you in, sustains you and continually directs your focus from impossibilities to impossibilities-coming-true right before your eyes.

Stay tuned!

Breathtaking

2011-01-08T21:22:00.059-06:00

God, help me to breathe in all my moments...

so that when moments like these happen...

I'll have some breath to be taken away...

GOOD ONE, GOD!!!

Thursday night my 16-year old daughter had a little fender bender caused by a momentary distraction as a light turned green, the red-light speeding camera flashed and her phone vibrated. It wouldn't have been a big deal except that she lightly rear-ended a Lexus that has sensors in the bumper that set off a warning light in the dashboard. We asked the owner to give us the opportunity to pay for the damages without involving the insurance company.

We're still waiting to hear what repairs will cost.

No matter how much it is, we can't afford to fix it.

But we can't afford for her insurance to go up, either.

Friday morning, we brought this matter to God and asked for a healing.

We asked that the owner would take his car in and that there would be either nothing wrong or something wrong that is unrelated to the fender bender.

(I suggested a low level of transmission fluid.

God doesn't usually take my suggestions, but I was feeling desperate.)

I stayed an hour late at work that day.

As I left the building, this is what I saw.

I don't know that it's a special message for me,

(or maybe it is)

but I do know that my discouragement about the car,

and my fatigue at the end of a work-week were

INSTANTLY FORGOTTEN.

I think that's what heaven's going to do

with our memories of earth's troubles.

(Now I know why I threw my camera in the car this morning!)

Taking Cover in Fowl Weather

2011-01-04T19:15:00.002-06:00

Have you heard the news stories about the hundreds of blackbirds that rained down—dead or dying--from the sky in two towns (one in Arkansas, one in Lousiana) over the weekend?

While the birds were tested for cause of death, apocalyptic and other theories proliferated. Fowl autopsies revealed that the birds were most likely either scared to death by fireworks—or--scared and disoriented by fireworks, so that they were flying lower than normal and began colliding into things. Most died before they hit the ground.

When I read this, I was struck, not by a bird, fortunately, but by two thoughts:

1. When something out of the ordinary happens in our life, why do we immediately begin to project doomsday causes and effects into the scenario? Actually, we do this with ordinary but unwelcome events too.

I suppose it's possible those birds died because of a blast of toxic air or poisoned waters that could also kill the inhabitants of those two towns, or that Jesus is coming. And I know that if wrongdoing has been done, we might not be able to trust the answers we're given, but I just think we should wait at least a few minutes for the facts.

I’m reminded of a Peanuts cartoon where Linus and Charlie Brown are watching TV and a ball enters the frame and hits Linus in the head. He begins to writhe on the floor, screaming in agony, referring to blood and death. Lucy walks through and tosses over her shoulder, “It was a rubber ball.” Linus immediately stops dramatizing and says, “Oh.”

I hate it when that happens.

2. Stress kills. (news flash, I know!) Chronic stress kills slowly, but sometimes our high speed lifestyles put us at more imminent risk. I feel sorry for those poor birds who, out of fear and disorientation, kept flying, even when disaster began to explode all around them. Apparently, it didn't occur to them to take cover, find a safe haven, slow down. (Man, I am so stepping on my own toes right now!)

Both these thoughts share a theme of living apocalyptically…always looking for cataclysmic disasters, yet missing the ones right under our noses. If we’re going to think apocalyptically, let’s do it according to this particular dictionary entry: a prophetic revelation, especially concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil. (Also, let's slow down.)

Jack Canfield, of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame, lives every day believing that the universe is conspiring for him. Whatever happens, no matter how bad it seems, it's going to end up working in his favor. Maybe Jack has his brain wrapped around Romans 8:28: “ALL things work together for good to those who love the Lord”.

All things. Even birds dropping from the sky.

Food for thought or comment:

How could a story about birds raining down produce good in your life?

What have you "apocalypticalized" in your own life lately?

What fireworks are happening that you need to remove yourself from so you can be still?

The Memory of Flying

2011-01-02T17:54:00.000-06:00

"The most resilient parasite is an idea planted in the unconscious mind." ~ Dom Cobb, Inception

One of my favorite movies of 2010 was Inception.

The events of the first half of the year made me feel quite at home in this story that graphically illustrates the layers of the human mind while exploring inception, the fictional notion of planting ideas deep into someone's subconscious by constructing and sharing elaborate dream scenarios.

At its core, idea implantation is not an new notion.We know that every action stems from a thought which derives from a belief, perhaps buried in your subconscious. Where did that belief or idea come from? The more tired you get of your behavior, the more interested you become in exploring what it is that makes you tick.

Focused work on our mental, emotional and spiritual innards is slow going. The two-steps-forward, three-steps-back back dance is sometimes interrupted by incredible unforeseen interludes of soaring in open spaces of psychic freedom that render us the only true progress we actually enjoy. All the rest is just hard work, chipping our way through solid bedrock, trying to remember what we're doing, trying to get excited about little nuggets, trying not to forget those mystical moments of flying.

As we begin a new year, I'm still plugging along in a season of difficult mining. Maybe you are too. The memory of spiritual flying both frustrates me in my current earthbound state and keeps me from settling for the half life of the upper layers of a mind trapped by some idea. I get bored with the work and lack of progress because I know this is not the most effective way.

It's a subtle shift; the other dimension is just beyond a veil that lies lightly over our perceptions. Though the idea may be engraved in stone, we know that Jesus specializes in rolling away stones that entomb death, stones that appear to have sealed a fate.

My husband's hunting buddy Ken said, "People talk about the grass being greener somewhere else, but I'll tell you, the grass is greenest wherever you water it."

It's important to identify the ideas that are producing less-than-spectacular results in us, but when we haven't hit the motherlode yet and we don't know exactly what's down there, a proactive strategy is to plant and water the ideas we DO want to be at our core. Inception, in other words, only we're not talking about ideas as parasites, but as living seeds.

David said, "Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you." (Psalm 119:11) The Word is powerful and alive: "The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Heb. 4:12) That's precision! We put it in and it goes to work! Fortunately, it works like a laser rather than a jackhammer!

If you're interested in watering or flying, I hope you'll join me and many others who will read through the entire Bible in 2011. The particular reading plan I'm using divides the reading between Old and New Testament (a little of each, each day), so that you actually end up reading the New Testament twice. I've downloaded the mobile app from this site (http://www.youversion.com/) and have done my first two days of reading that way. It has the ability to bookmark favorite verses and a place for personal notes. And if you get off track, it'll reconfigure for you so you can catch up.

I'm ready to "mount up with wings like eagles," which happens when we "wait on the Lord." (Isaiah 40:31). Beth Moore says that word "wait" means to bind ourselves to. I can think of no more tangible way to bind ourselves to Him than bind ourselves to a commitment to meet up everyday over His Word!

May you have a blessed and beautiful 2011!

Our star didn't light up, and other Christmas stories

2010-12-26T18:06:00.001-06:00

I didn't notice it for a couple of weeks, but there it was. The Christmas star didn't light up. In fact, we couldn't even find the plug that should have hung down from it and to which we usually connected a string of light. (We were too lazy to investigate any further).

The crock-pot gingerbread Katrina made for the first time burned all the way through without us realizing it.

Jared (our 14-year old) didn't buy anybody any presents.

For the first time ever, we ate off paper plates (ugh!).

It rained.

Our traditional English toffee (which was made while it rained) wasn't crunchy at all.

The Bark-Off Steve got for Gizmo's stocking didn't work.

For the first time, Katrina didn't get to spend Christmas day with us, having gotten serious enough with Sam to begin the Christmas-trade-off between parents.

But if we remember these things at all, they will be overshadowed by the noteworthy stories of our 2010 Christmas:

Jared and Boris (our live-in 15-year old) disappearing during the gift-opening and returning with two hastily wrapped re-gifts for Sam...gifts scavenged from Jared's stuff (a pocket knife and a collage of Martin Luther King pictures, dust still clinging to the top of the frame. It had been given to Jared by a friend several years ago because he shares a birthday with MLK. Funniest of all was Boris's inscription to Sam: "I feel like you're my black brother.").

Dance-offs with our new X-box 360...Boris busting moves that left Steve in the dust, and me somehow defeating Katrina. Very white Jared and Sam learning the official moves to Soulja Boy.

Devouring some amazing food, including Black Pepper Vanilla Porkloin with apples, green beans made the way we never eat them anymore (with bacon and almonds), Brazilian Shrimp gumbo, red velvet cake balls, pumpkin spice eggnog with amarula, English toffee (even soft, it's awesome), and our traditional chocolate cookies with mint topping.

Boris asking to buy Jared's PayDay candy bar from his stocking--and paid $3 for it! Only later did he find out that Jared had pretended to pull out his own candy bar but in fact had pulled out Boris's PayDay and sold it to him. When Jared told him the next day, we all laughed. Then we laughed even harder when Boris said that he had eaten both of them anyway.

Katrina finding on Amazon an old video we had been looking for for years: Steven Spielberg's How I Spent My Vacation...a favorite she and I had loved during her childhood.

With the help of many friends, being able to give Boris and his four siblings (whose mother passed away this summer), the biggest Christmas they've ever had.

And the magic of a candlelight service that put everything that was awry into perspective.

Mirrors in motion

2010-12-23T13:56:00.002-06:00

I got up at 1:30 this morning to see what the four teenagers were up to. They provided a verbal mirror of my appearance. Apparently my hair was sporting a natural "bump-it" look, which they were all too happy to comment on.

As my life has been careening crazily down the Christmas highway, with speed bumps of parenting teens, I've been seeing mirrors in other things too:

The autumn leaflets Mother Nature has passed out that have made their way into drifts along the side of the road, kicked up into whirling dervishes by first one car and then another, before they settle back into their new, reshuffled and, for many, temporary locations.

The birds that thickly congregate on the electric lines around town this time of year, scattered briefly into the air as another kind of larger bird lands on their wire, or some unseen (to me) threat ruffles their feathers momentarily before they realign in their formations.

I think if I went bowling, I would relate to the pins. Jolted and sent flying, corralled and restacked.

If I were visiting friends with a baby and their toddler's ball whacked the mobile over the baby's crib, I would see myself in those brightly colored swinging objects, briefly tangled and dislodging each other from their designated spots.

I want to see myself in the moon, stately, still and whole (even when partially hidden from view).

I want to recognize my life in the horizon-views of majestic mountains we don't see around here.

'Tis apparently not the season for that.

So, having marked off all the unrealistic expectations of my to-do list, I will begin to cross off some of the realistic ones and let Christmas be what it will be.

I will make time to see the chiropractor again in hopes of getting my rib back in alignment (not as bad as a broken rib, but painful, none the less).

I will keep in mind that all things look good from a distance.

I will remember that we are made of atoms that shift and morph into new shapes just from the act of being looked at, but that re-formation is the profound and hopeful truth that makes sense of the chaotic restructuring.

I will listen to Red sing Pieces, and cry a little as I remember the first time I heard this song, when I was sitting in the car in the rain with two friends, and we were being restructured... one was leaving us.

I will think about the Christ who came to make all things new and recollect how beautiful I find swirling leaves to be when I don't think about being one of them, and consider that...

Maybe there is a beauty in my life that I don't see.

The Perfect Family

2010-12-10T13:31:00.000-06:00

This is my family: Danica, Jared, me, Steve and Katrina. We clean up pretty well, don't we? We almost look like the perfect family!

When I was 29, a young woman told me that she was jealous of me, my marriage and my looks. She didn't know that my marriage was a complete disaster (an affair was taking place) and that I was so skinny because of acute depression. I understood in that moment that presenting a perfect picture was counterproductive to ministry effectiveness. Nobody would share their struggles with someone they thought couldn't understand or had never struggled. My so-called "perfection" only served to make others feel discouraged about their imperfections.

It was a defining moment for me; I stopped trying to present the perfect picture, became open about our imperfections and struggles, and began the process of actually becoming useful in ministry! I began to understand that healing had also been being hindered by the image of perfection I tried to project.

Speaking of imperfection, I was recently reminded of the four infamous women listed in Jesus' lineage in Matthew 1:
* Tamar (the woman who secretly seduced her father-in-law, got pregnant and publicly forced him to fulfill his responsibility to her.)
*Rahab (the prostitute in Jericho who saved the Israelite spies)
*Bathsheba (the woman who had an affair with David)
*Ruth (the Moabite woman who married into the Israelites. She was godly, but her nation was formed by the incestuous relationship of a drunken Lot with one of his daughters and was considered trash by the Israelites.)

Even godly women weren't normally included in geneologies, but our preacher says that the inclusion of these particular women makes Matthew the equivalent of the 7-year old at Christmas who tells Grandma about the fight his parents had on the way over, or who moves the gravy bowl off the stain on the tablecloth it was strategically hiding.

The point of these four women is this: Jesus came into an imperfect family and he didn't want to hide it! Revealing the skeletons in his closet was pivotal to what he wants us to understand about ourselves and him. Our imperfections makes his redeeming work shine that much brighter!

I won't share the imperfections of my family on this blog, but we have them. We are involved in some pretty heartbreaking issues right now. We have A LOT to be thankful for and are, for the most part, very very blessed.

But perfect? No.

Highly functioning? Not really.

Struggling? Yes.

The upside? It keeps us holding onto God like shipwreck victims to a life preserver. It gives us points of connection to those to whom we minister. It somehow makes us conduits of the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

And as difficult as our life can be these days, it is infinitely easier than when we were a closet mess, slowly imploding from the effort of hiding it. Our goal is to embrace brokenness, teach others to do the same, and find God in the shattered places. We want to encourage families to stop aiming for perfection and begin healing through disclosure and authenticity.

Christmastime brings all our longings for the perfect family to the surface. When your yearnings make contact with the rarified, cinnamon-scented Yuletide air, let that sting remind you of the perfect baby who came into a screwed-up family to open up all our family closets and breathe redemption into them.

Christmas Giveaway

2010-11-30T17:52:00.000-06:00

When I returned from Ghana, I put together a coffee table book from my visit to the bead factory where Freedom Stones purchased the beads they would be using to create income generation projects to prevent trafficking. It was called Little Bead: A Story of Transformation. The photography in it is just gorgeous, and the quality of the book is amazingly elegant!

It was meant to be a gift for the woman who inspired/cowrote it (Pam Cope of Touch a Life), but to my surprise, other people started asking for one. We even auctioned one off at a fundraiser for Ghana projects...it went for $100!

So, I'm selling them now for $40. 75% of the profits go to projects in Africa directly related to orphan care. You can purchase one at my website (http://www.fromgraveltoglory.com/) or...

Just in time for Christmas,

I'm giving one away!

I'll even autograph it and get Pam to autograph it, as well. It will come with a glossy bookmark of your choice. Each one features a picture from my trip and a couple of beads from the factory.

Want to check it out before you buy or enter?

Send me your email address and I'll send you a link which will enable you to peruse the entire book digitally.

Here's how you can enter to win a copy:

Leave a comment on this post. You will be assigned a number based on the order of the comments, and a number will be chosen by random.com. I'll take comments til December 7. The winner will receive their book by about December 15th.

For more chances to win, send the link to others. For each friend who leaves a comment that includes your name, I'll assign you an additional number.

Merry Christmas!

High Speed Photography

2010-11-28T02:18:00.001-06:00

(Click on pictures to enlarge)

3:30 p.m.

We gathered at the back of the deck, facing my parents' house so that the woods could be the backdrop for our traditional Thanksgiving photographs. Stuffed with the cornucopia of baked blessings the season brings, we didn't dally as much as usual because dark was falling faster than we expected and a few cheeks had been splashed with a raindrop or two.

3:32 p.m.

Suddenly a gust of wind came over the house, showering us with the crisped, golden pamphlets (leaflets, if you will) the trees fling from themselves to announce the coming of the seasonal king: "Hear ye! Hear ye! Old Man Winter is almost here." In this case, his entrance was abrupt. Balmy breezes were immediately exiled as the promised cold front kissed our faces.

A frisky calico carpet was stirred up and swirled around us. The temperature dropped ten degrees in moments. We speedily made our formations, determined to beat the rain. Family groups and subgroups, morphed through the years as season after season passes, hastily took their turn.

And I think we got some of the best photos we've ever had, thanks to my brother Robert, who took all the formal poses.

My sister Glenda's family

My sister Donna's family

Nephew Dustin and his mom, Treva

My kids

My sister-in-law Vickie's family

My parents

Robert and his daughter Shannon

definitely got rained on!

We had 30 present for Thanksgiving this year, and that's with 8 people missing.

This year we had the usual pickin' and grinnin', a 7-table Bunko tournament, a Nertz game, a 50th birthday celebration, a lot of food (my favorite: Brazilian Shrimp Gumbo!!!), an Alabama loss to Auburn, a 35-degree golf tournament. The little kids watched an ancient Three Little Pigs video dozens of times; the big kids napped, texted and stared into their computer screens.

Every year that passes finds me more grateful and incredulous that we pulled off another year of long-distance Thanksgiving safely. I feel the same way about the health and blessings we've been privileged to enjoy.

We don't deserve it, but that makes our gratitude all the more poignant.

What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me?

Psalm 116:12

A Gratitude Adjustment

2010-11-23T20:43:00.000-06:00

The Von Trapp children are distraught because their beloved governess, Fraulein Maria, has left them. They remember a song she had taught them during a thunderstorm that had distracted them from their fear. It was called My Favorite Things. In an effort to ease their pain, they decide to harmonize about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. With sad little voices, they labor through the list of favorite things. Partway through, they trail off and Gretl, the youngest, holds up her bandaged finger and says, "Why don't I feel better?"

Ever been there? You're grateful, but you know you could feel more joyful about the good in your life. You count your blessings, but you just don't feel like singing. There's a heaviness that won't lift.

Sometimes it works to put your woes on one side of the balance and your blessings on the other.

Sometime it helps to take a look at the difficulties others have.

But sometimes, you have to deal with the elephant in the room.

You have to grieve for your departed Fraulein Maria.

You have to work through what's weighing your gratitude down. By doing so, you give your gratitude wings.

But how do we do that?

God is a master at gratitude adjustments. He has a funny way of making whatever it is ok, at least for a little while, even if it doesn't move an inch--and he usually does it without the use of guilt or scales.

Thanksgiving is a great time to move some of those boulders off our shoulders so the fountain of gratitude underneath can bubble up.

May your Thanksgiving include some one-on-one time with the One who is worthy of all our praise and gratitude and whose love that has been poured out in our hearts (Romans 5:5) is the wellspring for all the gratefulness we could ever hope to feel and to show.

And the hits just keep on coming

2010-11-13T10:19:00.005-06:00

Overload.

Washing machines...electrical circuits...budgets....volcanoes....people. They all have their limits. The exact line of overload is often invisible, so we stuff in just one more towel, plug in just one more appliance, ask just one more thing of a person (ourselves) already stretched past the point of available elasticity. And the whole thing short-circuits.

Ever been there?

Shelley's approaching 40, as if that's not enough all by itself. She and her husband have been active in ministry, raising two boys, working out their marriage for twenty years. Suddenly, the mother of all catastrophes hits the fan. He's been having affairs for years, wants out, turns his back on God and his kids. He changes his mind and decides to fight for the kids. Then...the camel's straw...she gets a speeding ticket. By itself, it would only be a minor blip on the radar screen--or, more likely, it wouldn't have even occurred if she hadn't been late for a court appearance.

Melinda's just had the worst month of her life. Her daughter sustained an injury that knocked her out of sports. Everything in her career is turned upside down due to reorganization at work and a series of hurtful reviews. A breast cancer scare rounds out the month (made even more scary because her mother died of breast cancer several years ago, as did a coworker just last week.) Then the dishwasher floods the kitchen.

John's been feeling for years like the file folder icon that's perpetually being slammed by oncoming files during a lengthy download process. The counter showing the remaining megabytes and minutes seems to be increasing, rather than winding down. Will it ever finish downloading? He's got three health problems that all require surgery, but no time or money for the procedures. He's got more debt than he can imagine ever paying off and little respect at work. His daughter's moving in with her boyfriend, his son got busted for truancy, and now the remote won't work.

Drowning in details. The big stuff takes all our energy and emotional reserves. Who's got anything left for the computer to freeze, the dog to escape the backyard, a tooth to start hurting?

Bad news never has good timing, does it?

I've developed a theory about the adage "when it rains, it pours." In that place, I always think, "Why now? I have enough on my plate. I just cannot deal with this NOW!"

It's this: There are deeply buried things we need help with that can't be reached any other way than through shifting tectonic plates that increase our internal pressure. We're pretty content to let sleeping dogs lie, but God's not. Like a volcano, all that pressure forces stuff to the surface that normally just boils around in our core.

If you're in a season of mounting difficulties, consider that it's pouring so you can be freed of something burning a hole in you from the inside. Consider Patricia, who has been being physically abused by her husband of four years since the first week of their marriage, who continually said, "I can fix this" and "It's my fault, I'll just do this or that differently." A stomach virus was the scale-tipper that led her to finally admit: "I got nothin'." Suddenly, like dominoes falling, that confession has initiated the painful process of the steps that will ultimately free her from her abuse. The pain of holding on has now exceeded the pain of letting go.

Coming to the end of yourself in the perpetual downpour is the beginning of the storm system passing through. As you let your fingers slip from the cliff from which you feel you're dangling, you will find your fall cushioned by the One who's been waiting to catch you from just a few feet below.

You won't know for sure until you let go, but you can't hold on forever. He has said, "I will never forsake you." He's waiting for you to believe that.

Heart of Life

2010-11-02T16:53:00.000-05:00

I was watching Castle last night. His daughter had fallen in love and was waxing eloquent about how she "gets" all the songs now. So later Castle asks Beckett how she knows when she's in love and she says, "When all the songs make sense."

I've been on an involuntary music fast: my MP3 player is broken, my computer is crashed and the radio was stolen from the car I'm driving (before I got it). So yesterday, I found a $3 Amazon MP3 coupon and downloaded 3 songs.

It's cold and rainy today. I've had a pretty laidback workday with my boss out of town; even got to have lunch with my daughter Katrina and then give her a tour of my office.I've been listening to one song over and over. I love the melody...so perfect for a rainy day! And like love songs make sense to the person in love, these lyrics just make sense to me today.

There's a little melancholy in the tune of my life, perfectly mirrored by this guitar-picking, but at the same time, there's this ribbon of unexplainable hope and buoyancy waving in the foreground. I don't have a list of whys and wherefores, and could, in fact, give you a list of so-called "woes". To tell the truth, I think it's this: the job has been squeezing old resentments to the surface that I've wanted to ignore in favor of being mature and grateful. I haven't found a way to resolve them, but just admitting to them has unblocked a dam so a sweetness can flow.

This song perfectly fits the heart of my life right now....fully living out the idea that despite pain, the heart of life is good. I hope you'll be uplifted by Heart of Life by John Mayer.

"We don't need to seek for love. We need only to remove the barriers which we have built against it."

Rumi

The Nature of Strength

2010-10-23T11:16:00.001-05:00

I mentioned last week that I've been reading battle stories in the Old Testament. They're pretty funny. God sets up His people in situations with impossible odds and when the leaders exhibit extraordinary faith in His power to do impossible things, He does! (Check out 1 Sam. 13: - chap. 14).

The way that God leads us into His plan is a mystery. As Kay Warren says, "You say 'yes', then he hands you a polaroid that is undeveloped. With each step you take in faith, the picture develops a little more." Even saying yes or knowing what to say yes to are nebulous, ethereal things. First you see or hear something that sends a 'ping' to your heart.

For me, it was witnessing two friends of mine do battle against physical death for their loved ones over the past several months. In both cases, their prayers were answered. I have no way of knowing the impact of their battle approach on the outcome, but I was blown away by the impact it had on them. I had never seen anything like it. Despite the lack of sleep and food, they were strong, cheerful, optimism, encouraging, confident, beautiful and inspiring. And as I watched them, I felt the 'ping'. It seemed to be saying, "You can do that too."

I usually argue with that kind of bigger thinking, but I said, "Yeah? Me? I could be that strong and warrior-like?" And the answer was YES, in the form of the picture I wrote about in my next to last blog. I knew that this picture of me was not within the scope of my own strength or natural abilities. Yet, I knew that if He saw me that way, and I believed Him, I could do whatever He wanted me to do.

I had spent almost two years in a deconstruction process that went to some very deep core issues of who I am. I was ready for the next chapter, ready to believe the vision He cast for me, ready to live in that truth, rather than the so-called "truth" I see.

I said yes and was given the undeveloped Polaroid. Almost immediately, exactly like the O.T. battle stories, obstacles began to arise like ROUSes in the Fire Swamp. Doubts and fears threatened to set in, but I held strong to my vision. Opposition to the battle plan began to appear. I cried, but I held to the vision. Unrelated burdens and bombs were dropped on me. I wondered how I could keep going, but I held to the vision and kept going. I entered worlds I had never seen and said and did things I have never done (i.e. my new job!).

I have had all the usual thoughts of being done, about to collapse, can't take another thing, but then I realize the latest hit's impact on me has been like a little spit wad thrown at me, not the boulder my mind wants to project it as. I actively keep in mind the comparison of my life to a fairy tale.

Friends, this is what it is to soar on eagles wings with God renewing your strength. The necessary action on our part is to wait on the Lord, which Beth Moore has taught me literally means to "bind myself to." (Isaiah 40) As I hold onto Him and His vision for me with everything I have, I find that I can easily praise Him in the storm. He prioritizes for me what is important in my life (and some days, I totally disagree!) Even though I don't particularly want to soar and do battle in the arena of church management software, I know that if He has put on my heart to work in the world of orphan care and womens' ministry, yet led me into executive administrative assistance, this is an important part of the path to prepare me for the work that is on my heart.

(Besides all that, he has brought me an orphan or two to take care of right here in my own home, and I've already done some ministering to women in my office.)

My point in all of this is simple but very profound to me because I didn't know that strength doesn't always feel strong: When faced with an impossible situation, you have two choices. Melt into a puddle or choose strength. When you choose strength, you have exactly what you have chosen: strength. We really can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, and then we start to feel it.

I heard it several times at the women's retreat last weekend: God doesn't call the equipped, He equips the called. Once God has His finger pointing at you, calling you, saying yes is scary and painful, but saying no is painful in different ways with no hope of relief.

Say YES today, to whatever you know He is asking of you! The soaring will be scary and difficult, but the view is worth it!

P.S. Though I've had a lot of hits lately, I haven't had many comments on this blog for quite awhile. Are my ramblings making a difference in your life? I don't have much time for blogging and am considering letting it go for now. Do I need to quit, write about something else, or improve my writing style? I need some feedback!!!

Pondering

2010-10-21T22:09:00.001-05:00

I had a chance to sit by a pond yesterday, "pond"ering my universe while gazing at water surface patterns. As I studied them, I coined a new personal meaning for "ponder" and a received a fresh breeze into my life, in an uncharacteristically wordless way.

The subtle currents of the pond reminded me of a city full of people. Calm, glassy swaths reflecting shore and sky seem like peaceful, affluent older neighborhoods where the homes, lawns and occupants are manicured and mature. Barely a ripple can be seen unless a fish bravely surfaces, and when one does, the excitement quickly dies away. Evidence of his mad leap is smoothed in moments, as if the lake is keeping its secrets.

Through these smooth expanses slinks a restless street gang, its skin vibrating as it inches through and across the unresisting waterscape. A perpetual shape-shifter, it gobbles up the stillness, then is swallowed into it.

Evanescent diamond dust suddenly glitters in the downtown scene, pin-dot sparkles flashing like papparazzi. Taking their cues from the sun, they twinkle back and forth then suddenly vanish, as fleeting as a fad.

Breezes stir the patterns like cultural tides, pressing all the neighborhoods toward one shore, but for the occasional hold outs who swirl to their own agendas along the edges, or perhaps at dead center.

Despite seeing the pond as a city, timelessly unchanging in its ever-shifting patterns, alive with an unseen force, I haven't solved a single thing and I have to go.

Then I realize I'm feeling better and that, somehow, this body of water has, in its calm chaos, quietly explained to me all the reasons and seasons of my various environments and my never-still-for-long heart...

without a word.

Rereading old love letters

2010-10-05T09:03:00.001-05:00

One of the best feelings in the world is when God has been leading you through an uphill journey and you reach the summit. The clouds part, the angel chorus sounds, and your breath catches as you see the new vista He has planned for you. Looking back, you see what it was all about. It was hard, but suddenly, it was worth the climb.

I got there last week. A puzzle piece slipped into place and much of the confusion of the previous year made sense. I felt empowered by the newly-enlarged wingspan God revealed to me. I sensed that lift off was imminent. I was ready!

Unfortunately, so was Satan. Wow, he's crafty. He knows precisely what words will instantly deflate your gaily, wind-dancing balloon into a stretched-then-shriveled pile of latex. He finds exactly the right person to do something that probes instantly into your oldest, most vulnerable lie. Mine is "You don't really fit in here. We'll let you stay, but you're not really like us." There are always a bunch of sub-lies stapled onto the edges like some poorly-planned project folder with sticky notes and receipts (reminders of past expenses!) and hastily jotted postscripts. It gets plopped down on your desk just as you're about to leave for an exciting weekend, with a note: "NOT DONE; COMPLETE BEFORE YOU LEAVE!" Your heart sinks. You're so sick of this file.

On mine, which showed up late Sunday night, there were a lot of paper-clipped items that I easily discarded, but a stapled, day-glo-yellow reminder of the Thanksgiving when my book came out was unavoidable. I was surprised at how raw it felt to view the memory of how I had invested quite a bit of money to purchase every single member of my large family a copy of the book. One of my sisters and her husband were truly thrilled for me. A couple of people thanked me. That was two years ago. No one but that sister and brother-in-law have mentioned it since.

This morning, with no time for self-pity before I had to leave for work, I confronted Satan on this issue, repudiating his lies, rebuking his effort, refusing to cradle that old memory. Of course he would attack just now; he can see when someone's breaking free. I knew I couldn't file this folder away, though, without some help from God. I knew just slamming the door on painful thoughts would only lock me in with them, and that's when I thought of this:

When my husband and I were dating, we spent six months of our nine-month courtship apart: he in Florida, me in Texas. This was back in the days before the earth's crust had cooled; cell phones and emails were a thing of the future. We couldn't afford to talk on the phone alot, so we had to write letters. When I wanted to reach out and touch him, I had to go back to those letters. There was always lots of information, but the lines I read and reread were the ones about how much he loved and missed me. I pored over those passages that held clues to our possible future with a magnifying glass of girlish hope. Those were the parts I returned to again and again.

I decided to reread some of my old love letters from God. "God, remember that time I was freaking out just before my book was published because I thought the publisher was about to ruin it, and how you told three people to stop what they were doing (one of them driving) and contact me, and how one of them was having a freakout moment of her own, and when I told her via instant messaging to just tell me to calm down, she typed "calm down" but the words we both saw on our phone screens were 'trust Me'?"

"And God, remember that time I was trying to plan a speech but you wanted me to talk about something else so you kept blocking that passage from me and when I finally caught your drift, you told me what you really want me to say and know, and you warned me about some difficult things I would face as an author and how I would survive them?"

"And God, remember that time on the beach you told me to shut up?" (I'll have to tell you about that sometime; it's one of my favorite memories because it's where we first started having a real relationship)

I reminded myself of all the trips we've taken together and the tears and laughs we've shared. He reminded me about the couple who had told me and Steve just that afternoon what a difference we were making to them as they struggled through a difficult season of their life. I began to believe that though I truly may not "fit" into the scene where I first heard Satan that evening, in the comfy way an old pair of jeans fits, that doesn't mean God didn't put me there, or that my lack of comfort means I should leave.

As I thought about this "newly enlarged wingspan," the vision of a more proactive, warrior-princess kind of role in His kingdom that God was casting for me, I realized that God doesn't really want those kind of people to fit in! He wants them leading out in front, secure in His love and approval of them, never undone by others' refusal to validate them.

Less than 24 hours later, I had shed that heavy, minimizing cloak Satan tried to get me to wear and was once again standing on that summit, wings spread and ready to fly...thanks to some old love letters.

The shores of His ocean

2010-09-24T19:28:00.000-05:00

The first full week on my new job went well but that doesn't mean there weren't things to ponder, digest, process, clarify and regret.

Unfortunately, there have been a lot of other things going on in my circle this week, beginning with the heatstroke of a 37ish-year old friend who is on a ventilator with little brain activity...for 6 days now. The 21-year old daughter of a family at our church who had a seizure and drowned in the bathtub. A four-year old with cancer who underwent a stem cell transplant and is now enduring agonizing misery from sores all over his body. A friend who is grieving his divorce, two women who are grieving the violation of their five-year olds, and still another, the nine-year anniversary of her husband's passing.

As a witness to all this suffering, I remember. I remember that when breaking hearts desperately plead with God, the inevitable and universal questions about His nature burst out like steam from earth vents at Yellowstone. This is the process of faith-building, but it's so, so hard to endure.

These moments remind us that we've been living like we were in control, taking stuff for granted, coasting, hoping our turn never comes, hoping we never have to put words to the nagging doubts about God that exist under the surface.

They put us squarely in the tension between the certainty that God can and the uncertainty of "will He?" Our bargaining, lamenting, and begging are the fearful aspects of our recognition of our smallness, and the hope that if we promise to do better, perhaps He'll intervene. All our so-called unanswered prayers lead the parade of fear through our memory.

I have no answers. All I know of Holy is that the only cure for the terror of our utter helplessness in the realm of existence is surrender, where we are inexplicably visited in our smallness with peace, love and the unlikely assurance that no matter the outcome, everything will be alright. Nobody can convince you this exists until you go there.

And then it's okay to be little, 'cause you know you're not alone.

"Everybody seems to stand up taller when You're easy to explain."
Nichole Nordeman (Real to Me)

Trading Spaces

2010-09-14T10:37:00.000-05:00

I'm trading spaces this week.

I will trade my time, normally spent sorting through words of my own, rearranging them like some still-life collection that I photograph with my blog...

...for new words--someone else's words--about technology and strategy and innovation.

The tools of my scrapbook trade

Time wiled away painting a story of precious memories for a mother
...in favor of clicking out a new kingdom story for a church.

Time usually passed quilting a comforting home for my family to return to at day's end...
...for a venture in which I will long for someone to provide a comforter for me at day's end.

Energy and strength like spending cash in my pocket...
...soon to be budgeted and commandeered for maximum efficiency.

Freedom to dream and ponder at full flame...
...destined to flicker and sputter under the heavy weight of time pressure

I am thankful for 31 years of the privilege of getting to be a stay-at-home mom;
     even a crappy one at times
     who let the laundry pile up
     and the pantry get empty
     and the beds go unmade
in favor of following my heart down winding, unpaid highways.

To be able to unfold at my own pace and develop appreciation for who God made me to be.
For opportunities to share what I've learned with others.

I don't expect it all to go away.
It will simply shift and morph as all things in life do.

The timing is right.

I'm ready and even excited, but in trying to wrap up some pressing home-jobs
...carpet cleaning
...taxes
...cleaning out 14-year old son's closet
...shopping for a work-wardrobe
I've already discovered...
...the scarcity of creative musings
...the drought of time to be inspired by Nouwen or nature.

With a little rain, things are blooming again in my yard

I step into this new world with the excitement of a kindergartner in August (new shoes! new crayons!)
And with many of the same fears...
...will they like me?
...what if I need my mommy?

and the fears of the teenagers...
...what if I'm hopelessly uncool?
...what happens if I fail?

I have a chapter in my book called Defining Moments in which I talk

about trading spaces. In it, I wrote that the strength of the trade

is found in focusing on the new space, not the old.

As I say goodbye to this beloved and comfortable old space...
(....that I've surely not been grateful enough for...)
I look forward with enthusiasm and optimism for the expected upside...
(...an income!)
And the unexpected surprises my new challenges will hold as I seek to blend a corporate world and an artsy soul.

The God who directs my path has brought me to this one and I know that He works all things together for good!

Thru the lens

2010-09-08T11:14:00.006-05:00

I mentioned in my last blog that I had been "developing" (tee hee) an interest in photography. There is so much amazing inspiration for photography on the web* these days; I've caught the fever! I don't have a great camera, and I don't know how to use the one I have, but I've decided not to let either of these things stop me.

Yesterday, I heard about a guy who took a picture every day and at the end of the year, his pictures revealed to him that his life was boring. So he decided to get more involved. He became the first to raise his hand when volunteers were requested. He got more active in what his kids were doing. He continued to take a picture a day (or maybe he took a bunch of pictures every day and chose one to represent that day, I can't remember). Either way, he was astounded at the difference in Year 2's collection of snapshots. Now he has some kind of ministry or business encouraging other people to take pictures every day, not about art, but about focusing on life.

I LOVE this idea.

While I was on my sabbatical at a friend's lakehouse last week, there were times I just wandered around looking through the lens. It's really true that we see things differently when they're framed by the camera's lens. Sometimes, we miss things: I missed a heron lifting off because I couldn't "find" him through my lens. But more often, I saw textures and reflections with wonder. Like this shot of the reflection of a row of lights dancing on the water at night!

Looking at life with a sort of expectancy of finding a hidden blessing or an interesting angle to photograph in the mundane, disappointing, frustrating, even tragic, is a recipe for hope and optimism. It's not so much creating art as discovering it.

And as I think about doing that...of making sure that everyday I find something noteworthy to record on film, I am reminded that our focus as followers of Christ is a lens itself...that we hopefully [literally filled with hope] view everything through a schema of possibilities of redemption, seeing beauty and a reason to dance where others do not. (I, personally, do not always do this.)

Here's what I'm seeing right now, thanks to Hermine:

Beautiful rainy day

But one shot later, I saw the light in the window...a symbol for home.

Light in the window

Suddenly, I felt gratitude. See, it's working already!

Whether you are a photographer or not, I extend to you the challenge to take up your cameras and see what shows up, see what you learn about yourself through the lens.

*(The photographer at this link has created a necklace for photographers that I really like!)

Ars Gratia Artis

2010-09-01T16:29:00.016-05:00

Remember the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer icon of a roaring lion and the phrase Ars Gratia Artis encircling his head? Ars Gratia Artis means art for the sake of art. The phrase was a bohemian cry in the1800s which affirmed that art was a worthy pursuit on its own terms and did not need moral or instructional justification.

I ended yesterday's blog post with the idea that sensation in the realm of our existence is an art, and that theme has been playing as background music in my head ever since. .

I recently read the book The War of Art, which is a butt-kicking about the pull of resistance against the fulfillment of creative urges. The author addresses our disinclination to move, that inertia that doesn't want to do the hard work of giving birth to the masterpiece the mind has conceived. Yet, as Anne Lamott says, we are the designated typists (or fill in the blank with the art medium of your choice) of the muse in the basement.

My art is definitely at war. I'm a fairly pragmatic person, yet a large portion of my soul has been artistic since birth. As a child, I was a prolific sketcher. I moved on to painting, cross-stitching, basket-making, quilting, tie-dying, and jewelry-making. I attempted the violin but decided that music was definitely not my niche. I made a "career" out of scrapbook-making and writing, and and am now being pulled toward photography. Despite this, I've found that I'm in desperate need of an inner bohemian to affirm ars gratia artis in my life, which explains why I am so attracted to talented people who embrace their art.

One of my problems is my fear of mediocrity; another is my sense of responsibility to put my family's needs above my own. But I'm discovering a guilt component too.You see, lately I feel a strong calling to set aside the higher levels of Maslow's Heirarchy of needs to which my birth has entitled me in order to minister to those who languish on the bottom levels. In fact, I'd really like to be a person whose self-actualization occurs while doing so.

If I can justify the time spent, I can justify creative dishes because someone might eat them, and I can justify scrapbooking because I'm preserving my childrens' heritage. But to write stories no one will ever read, or take photographs no one will ever see seems selfish and wasteful of time, unless I can somehow give it a moral justification.

So what do I do with the desire to create such things? What do I do with this craving I do not entirely understand and never really questioned before? In her book Walking on Water, Madelyn L'Engle embraces the idea that art is the act of co-creating with God. The image of God in us perpetually reenacts what God is and has been doing in the world since the beginning of time: CREATING.

Think about it, if you have a creative urge in any field, isn't this when you completely forget yourself, your hair, your financial situation, your cellulite, and time itself? Suspension in that place of timelessness is what Deepok Choprah calls "functional immortality." That respite alone explains why we crave time to be creative, why we long to birth something breathtaking. It is one way the eternity in our hearts seeks fulfillment. L'Engle believes that we can even see something of God in the art of even a non-believer, because the creative urge of all mankind IS His spirit in us.

Balancing that with His call to feed the poor or free the trafficked is my challenge. I'm not sure I'll ever escape the need to link what I do artistically in some way with that calling. And maybe we are not meant to. Because even though God obviously created ars gratia artis--sunsets, peacocks, and ocean views--with beauty in mind...even though our enjoyment is so obviously the goal of much of His artwork {I mean, seriously, what is the point of flowers?}...He instilled a function in it all...that we would see Him in it.

And if, in creating, I am drawn closer to Him through the sheer joy of splashing around in the colors He made, or squishing the texture of words between my fingers, experiencing sensation--the art of life--then, isn't my enjoyment of that a joy to Him?

What? You've never see What Dreams My Come?!!

By my friend Barbara Shallue

And if, in creating, someone else sees Him in a new way through my rearrangement of those colors on a canvas or words in a row, isn't that a joy to Him?

Maybe the finished product is not the point; maybe it’s about

[you've never heard this from me before....]

the PROCESS.

Maybe there is no ars gratia artis,

because maybe art is really for the sake of God.

perhaps ars gratia artis really means, after all,

God, for the sake of God.

If so, for His sake, I find Him in my art as surely as the worshipper find Him in the pew, on the mountain or through the faces of the poor.

P.S. If you've subscribed to this blog and you received 4 email messages about it, I apologize!!! I couldn't get some of the spacing of photos to work properly among the text.

Serenity in the midst of pain

2010-08-31T09:17:00.000-05:00

On Sunday of my sabbatical, while being serenaded by Chris Rice in his classic hymns CD Peace Like a River, I cooked up a breakfast of uber-healthy pancakes (1 c. fat free cottage cheese, 1 c. uncooked oatmeal, 6 eggs, pureed in blender) with lightly cooked fresh blueberries and pineapple, brought to me by the letters Y, U and M!

I had to stop in the middle of breakfast to capture this heron (?) who landed right behind the boat dock. I scared him off while doing so and was hindered in witnessing his lift off by a tree:

He landed

I could tell he was aware of my presence even though I was a long-way off using a super zoom setting

When viewing the world through a zoom lens, I'm not very quick or intuitive. (Is that a metaphor for my life?)

I wrote all day and into the evening. When you don't know what you're writing, you can write pages and pages before you feel a direction start to form, or find yourself hitting upon a truth that needs to be told. It's very two-steps-forward-three-steps back.

I decided to take a break and hit my photos. I kept humming an old Wynona Judd song: Old Pictures. "Looking through my old pictures, faded photographs. Some of them bring me close to tears, others make me laugh. Old memories seem to come alive..." (double-clicking on photos will enlarge them)

: Read
Old Pictures Lyrics
here.

I spent ALL the rest of Sunday and most of Monday spreading pictures out on this massive dining table and all around on the floor. I threw away probably a third of them...the duplicates, eyes-closed shots, the faded sceneries from long-ago vacation...all the ones nobody would ever put in a scrapbook or in a frame. I am proud to say that I have now reduced 30 years of photographs (not counting all the ones that are already scrapbooked) into the top three decorative boxes in this stack. It was a nice stroll through memory lane. I've got some really cute kids!

Katrina blowing bubbles to Caroline

Our family had a bluegrass band in the early 90s. This is us performing at Silver Dollar City in Branson. I'm on the left.


Jared trying to catch a frisbee with his stomach


Danica, when she found out I had bought her tickets to Wicked for her birthday

THEN, I went through my computer and organized all my digital shots in appropriate files with appropriate tags. In true "If you give a mouse a cookie" form, that made me remember that I never made the digital scrapbook of my parents 50th wedding anniversary party almost two years ago. I had it completed and uploaded by 11 p.m....hopefully it will arrive in time for my mom's 71st birthday on September 19!

I'm pretty excited about what I've accomplished. Now about that "pain" part...

Somewhere in the middle of all this (probably the two hours I sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor, getting up and down to sort pictures, I hurt myself. My low back/hip are KILLING me! I can't sit in one position for too long, but changing positions is excruciating.

(Can you spell O-L-D?)

Lord Byron said, "The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain." Part of completing the puzzle I'm here to assemble is understanding my existence in the world. This morning, I'm pondering the fact of my pain in the midst of my serenity and wondering what God might be drawing me into through this path...

and I like that it's call ART.

A moment of perfect clarity

2010-08-29T10:14:00.000-05:00

So....I got a job. I should start in the next few weeks. The enormous loss of our entire life savings and retirement several years ago through a Ponzi scheme (our investor is in the same prison as Bernie Madoff), combined with this recession, have made it imperative that I find "real" work, and I am beyond grateful that a friend of mine has asked me to be his executive administrative assistant for his high-tech, cutting-edge database software-as-a-service (SaaS) for churches.

I'm like a ping pong ball, going back and forth between excitement and fear, relief and sadness. I've been mostly a stay-at-home mom for the 26 years I've been mothering, finding ways to earn an income from within my own four walls while juggling it around parenting, marriage and ministry. Though it gets hectic at times, it has worked! It's been one of the most amazing blessings of my life. I see that now, of course, as it's about to end. The truth is, at times, I've wished for an escape to new horizons.

Well, here they come!

In one last hurrah, I'm currently engaging in a much-needed sabbatical at a friend's lake house for four whole days. It's not rustic--it's VERY nice!

I brought about two weeks worth of work with me...a couple of tasks that can never be done in the time and space of my own life...I'm either going to sort and organize all my photographs, or write, in hopes of finishing up the jigsaw puzzle of my past year's experiences that included Africa. Or try some combination of the two.

My first assignment was to sit on the porch gazing at the lake very early this morning while I waited for my coffee to brew. It's a private lake, and it was beyond quiet. It was perfectly still.

The view from the back porch

The movement on the waters was so slight it could only be called an occasional shimmer, as white skies were reflected back with mirror brightness. Every leaf on every tree was as motionless as those in a painting.

I thought I saw a few branches dancing high up and far-off, but they settled down immediately when I saw them, as though they were misbehaving children in church who've just been given a lowered-eyebrow-warning from a parent. Not a bird tweeted nor a cricket chirped. I even watched a cloud through a break in the trees for several minutes, and it didn't change shapes in the slightest! I remembered:

The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him.

This place is His temple. I am His temple. He is found in the praises of His people (Psalm 22:3), and in the still small voice after the fires and whirlwinds of our lives (1 Kings 19:11-12). He says "in quietness and confidence" will be our deliverance and strength (Isaiah 30:15).

It's hard to find still and quiet places in order to still and quiet our minds, but when we do, we will find that we already know something we've been striving to see (Psalm 46:10). The puzzle pieces that look to us to be scattered and jumbled across the surface of a table, are already assembled into the picture He's been painting. When that which is known in heaven becomes visible on earth (Matthew 6:10), we will see with perfect clarity the picture on the box. That is my earnest expectation this week.

Happy Sunday morning to you, with prayers for the clarity you are currently seeking!

Poem Archive

2010-08-23T11:02:00.005-05:00

A compilation of the [bad] poetry I've written:

Morning 3/30/09
Everlasting 6/15/09
altar call 11/11/09
adrift 1/20/10
full of emptiness 2/7/10
Dancing on the High-wire 2/23/10
tight-fitting skin 6/5/10
The Breath of Corruption 8/10/10