31 Days: Purple

Purple. 

I think of purple wildflowers by the roadside. Purple pansies by the houseside. African violets in my grandmas windowsill. Purple pottery mugs filled with coffee for that early morning time. Purple streaking the sky sunset and sunrise. Purple in my sisters jacket and my favorite sweater.

 Purple majesty. 

Bright, bold, beautiful. 

Subtle, soft, alluring. 

Splashes of color.  God painting this universe with his majesty. 

31 Days: Storm

Storm. 

 I think of thunderstorms. Wild and free the thunder rolls over my hearing. The beauty of sitting wrapped in a blanket on my porch to watch. Smell the fresh and clean scent the rain brings.... Feel the coolness of the air. Feel as if all my worries and fears wash away. See the lightning strike in flashes of light cutting through the air. No pattern. To try and capture, freeze it on camera is impossible. So I watch. Soak it in like the ground soaks in the rain. And the color. The color of the sky is changed. It's a masterpiece of God's wildly glorious beauty. 

31 Days: Love

I see the word Love and I think of a Father's love.
 I think of how a daddy is the first man in a girls life.
 I think of an infant girl wrapping her tiny, little hands around her daddy's finger.
how she'll grow and her hand will tuck into his... how he'll be the one to teach her how to ride her bike. put the worm on her hook and take her fishing in grandpa's pond.
be the first to call her his princess. and smile proudly thru the years.
how he'll hold her tight, take his turn soothing the nightmares away in the dark.
how he'll be flabbergasted when it's suddenly a woman in front of him and he's at loss and yet, she's really still his little girl. looking for his love. his reassurance. his pride in her accomplishments. his protection when she feels uncertain or threatened. how she really just wants her daddy's hand and know it's ok cause he loves her.

31 Days: Home

Home is where the heart is, right?
home is a safe place. its not just where you live, though that makes up part of it, its where you are at rest. where walls come down and you are with the people who see you best. where you do not have to be on the defensive, but rather carry in your weariness, your troubles from the outside, and drop them.
it's where you are all of you and extend the same to those you live with...blood family or adopted. or friends. its where you can place your mark uniquely. the colors of the walls and the pictures that are framed and the flower pot in the windowsill,pillows on the couch...or not, are all accents, they add the flavor, feel of you, your family, your roomies, to this space. home is you carving out a sacred and safe place. its a place you reach from and extend your hands to those who dont know home.

31 Days: Embrace

embrace.
I think of hard things. things that are uncomfortable.
things that push at my comfortable boundaries.
things I don't want to do. things that stretch, transform, change how you think or do.
I go into them with great trepidation. not wanting to embrace the moment. to see its potential. to see how the hard things can transform.
can beautify a life when that hard thing has been entrusted to God's hands, is a part of His Blessing of His Will.
I dont want to hold it close, acknowledge its hardness, its roughness, its comfortable to embrace something rough and sharp to the touch.
But what if  I don't?
those hard things we see in the world, in our town, our backyard. where ever they be.
these children who are lost. wanting, needing family, cause they are gone, or broken down into chaos. children, women, men, hungry, dying on streets. the wars, the bombings, sudden destruction of lives.
the lonely, the one everyone passes by who is dying to be noticed and loved.. the kid picked on mercilessly for looking different. That same, thankless job every day that is hard work that leaves you feeling defeated. the grieving.
what if whatever one God calls us to notice, we respond?
we embrace that moment that has us swallowing the fear and stepping out in faith.
What then?

31 Days: Family

Family. Family is raw. its an unveiling. its people seeing you at your best and your worst. its close quarters, no holds barred. we fight amongst our selves, but don't ANY of you touch my sibling: I will eat you alive. We are each others best friends and worst enemies. we learn everything there is to know about each other cause let's face it: we are all in the same small house.
Or not. we are constantly surprising each other. there might even be something you dont know in spite of living together because we are always changing, growing. but we are family. God grafted us into a place specifically. we're hard wired to love each other even when things fail. even when they dont turn out like we hoped or planned. we keep on loving and forgiving athousand faults because we're family. we've been bonded together by shared memories, shared trial, shared experience, shared love. a life completely unique to us.

linking up with Kate Motaung

31 Days: Calling

Calling.
As I think about the word Calling, what jumps to mind is the sermon series we just started at church. 40 days of fellowship.
I think of God calling. 
God calling to us, inviting us to be with him and with our our fellow saints and sinners.
Our brethren. this group of believers we call family.
Calling us to spend time with him on mor than just our sundays and our wednesday night prayer meeting because even though they're very nice, He wants more. God calling to each and every heart and yes, calling it with a purpose. and placing  A CALLING, a way of life, something we are to do.
But first i think of the call to be together as believers with him.
I admit, He has been steadily drawing on my heart lately.
That God wants to be with me?
Priceless.
God is calling so sweetly.

31 Days

Tomorrow starts thirty-one days of free writing.
I'm excited.
I'm scared.
 Nervous.
It's been a little too long since I followed the 5 Minute Friday prompts...
Will I be able to do this? every day?
But maybe, just maybe, this will be my kick start back into writing.
It's daily.
And oh the anticipation of writing.
of breathing in and letting words fill the page.
Be my exhale. Settle me into a rhythm of release.
It will be good, and I will certainly try. =)
So join me for these next 31 days as we explore and wonder at different themes in our lives.

Try

I hear the word try and I think of how much time I've spent trying. 
As if it was all up to me to earn Gods favor. That I just need to try harder. 
do better.
run faster.
think smarter.
I think of what it is like now to be 20-something and trying to live life.
And trying leaves no room for anyone to help. and you feel grateful and guilty all at the same time.
...like you shouldnt be excepting Someone else's kindness, yet without it, you are lost. 
you need the grace gift. 
you really dont have to try quite so hard. 
not just money, but time, energy, love.
these are God-gifts.
It really isnt up to you or me.
we cant win His favour by our deeds.
we have only to accept it. to live it and breathe it.
By Him we live and move and have our Being. Acts 17
if we seek him, instead of trying.
IF.
if we see him.
and move with Him.
he is here, therefor, we will be here.
if he is there, then we will be there.
if we live simply looking for his face. his hand print. his footprint.
if we live walking in his footsteps like the little child whose greatest joy is to jump from foot print to footprint his daddy leaves in the snow; will we walk that closely?
that joyously?
not thinking of anything but the greatness of following daddy around: will we suddenly find a whole life?

FMF: Hope

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul - EMILY DICKINSON

Hope. 

That all so elusive thing. 

Sometimes.

Sometimes its hard to grab onto. sometimes I'm grabbing onto it for all I'm worth... Hoping for brighter days. For days that aren't ruled by fear. By eating disorders. By more Fear.

By insecurities. By weariness. 

Yes I'm hoping.

Hoping for sunshine in my soul. For that quiet confidence that He is God. that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Hoping for peace. For rest. the deep breath of the soul that knows all is good and is content. 

hope will lift me up. entertain the imaginings of a bright future. of good things happening and joys.

Those Cobwebs of Fear

If I told myself to sit down in front of a blank space and just write....what would I say?
If I knew it didn't matter if it was perfect or not.
What then?
Just knowing that I have to sit down and write.
Have to untangle the thoughts of my mind and make space for new ideas and just keep sorting..
Doing a massive spring cleaning in the home of my mind and constantly getting distracted by nostalgia or by things that have been there for so long, well, they comfort me?
But wanting it right. Wanting it to be habitable...welcome to the Presence it needs most.
and feeling like I JUST cleaned that spiderweb yesterday...but its back again...stickier, tendrils trailing across the space it wants to inhabit and wont give up. I touch the string again and it sets off a familiar chord of fear again. and I find myself drawn in in its stickiness and I want to give up...what use is there in chasing out the spiders that will be back tomorrow and the next day and the next day after that?
Every 'use' as long as the sun still shines and I breathe air.
His breath. Breathed out on me.
Mine. Sucking it in and again.
He didn't mean for me to live with sticky webs of fear crowded through my mind. clinging to each other and anchoring themselves for the long haul.
Spinning out all the 'what ifs' of everything that could ever go wrong and choking out any sight of His dear face.
so I will clean and scrub and have Him pull out every fear that clings to its home in all the corners of my mind.
Just for today, I will rest on His grace.
and since tomorrow, when it gets here, will be today then... I'll just rest again on His grace.

Five Minute Friday: MEET

today.
today I am tired.
I hurt. In more ways than one.
I have illness that keeps recurring every time I stress out. I have something else that just isnt quite right.
and I hate having to deal with them. Despise what feels like and unending battle, a continuous cycle of pain....and then I tell myself "stop being such a baby! there are other people who go threw this too you know!"
But I think you got it all together when you do.
Maybe you don't.
 I know I don't.
the funny thing is how God shows up in my broken space.
what starts with a groan and a wondering "why again?" and progresses to a verbally rough moment with God that suddenly collapses into defeat... Or maybe not defeat. But a place where my brokenness is solidly in his hands and not mine, These are hands that CAN heal. I know that. and maybe someday. I'm Believing that. But today is more about my heart and how its wandered from its healer. How when everything was good it decided it could coast on its own. And today is healing because God met my heart in beautiful ways.


Linking with Kate Motaung for Five Minute Friday.

Five Minute Friday: Relief

There's a quiet relief in release. 

In surrender. Letting go. In stop trying so hard.

A guest pastor spoke his weekend on training, not trying. 

God doesn't want us to try harder. try harder. but to to train.
To come before him every day.
To do the same thing over and over like an athlete till its ingrained in us. 

That we're going to fail, but failure isn't final unless we say so. That our failures are, (oh yes!) the stepping stones on a path of stronger faith. And in this I have sobbed relief.
To be reminded again this weekend that its really not about the doing, the striving, the trying so hard; but about my relationship with him and everything falls in place from that starting point. That I just coming seeking his face because 'You have said, "seek my face." My heart says to you, " Your face LORD do I seek." ' Psalm 27:8

That love for a beautiful Savior who loved me first is my motivation for all my life. 

He's carrying me. 

So my heart was fun and i struggled and it took me twice as long to write as it should have, but I needed to try to express it. linking up with Five Minute Friday

FMF: visit

visit.
oh if I could just sit down face to face and have a cup of tea...or coffee.
face to face with Jesus and being able to ask all those pesky questions!
And hear audible answers.
you can wish for that sometimes. when it feels like too many decisions are staring you in the face and you just want a clear answer. straightforward. a this or that answer. definite.
but not sitting there straining to hear into the silence and hearing a permissive will of God. An either or. its up to you on this one. Just walk with me awhile? just enjoy these moments of together. he asks for communion. for breath together day by day and just a letting go of all your thoughts to him and let this flow happen, be connected. knitting life together and then it doesn't seem to matter quite so much that its not audible voice, because you are hearing.
he is there. and you hear best in the quiet. it carves out this slow, hallowed place. He's more present, more there. you learn to hear in a new way.

Five Minute Friday: When

when I sit here and rock my brother's girlfriend's sister's baby boy.
rock him gently and try to ease him into sleep. his hazel eyes blink and close against his will, and someone walks by and they snap open again. but he is lulled to sleep and I have a quiet space in which I muse about his older sister.
she is 2. almost.
and she is determined that she is staying here.
the house is getting picked up and packed up around her to move, but she is pulling her things back out of the bags and back on her shelves.
She is not moving. no sir.
and then I think of how comfortable I get with my surroundings and I don't want to budge cause it s comfortable, and then I wonder, how often am I like that with God? I cant see where he wants me to go, and I'm quite comfy. I just cant see it
But He can.
Just like this little girls daddy can see how much nicer and better the house is that he bought and is taking his little girl to.
then I wonder....when will I learn to trust my daddy God in all things?

Five Minute Friday : Keep

I wrestle with myself. With this need to 'keep myself. I want to make sure everything fits. That the money is neatly budgeted. That I don't go over. that I keep myself in order. I strive and I try. It must all work out logically. 

By trust God? Go out on a limb. On a leap of faith? Why is it so hard?

Because I won't. With my mouth I say I trust God, yet to look at my actions, I must admit otherwise. 

How much am I missing, in not giving myself fully to his keeping? He has proved himself faithful over and over. Even as I strive and it falls short, he is still always there to make up the difference, to make up the lack. To make me complete and lacking in nothing. 

But I have this feeling that he would rather I want it as well. that I cease striving.

 And let him keep me. 

Keep me in every good thing. In his love. 

Five Minute Friday: Wait

So I wait. 

I am in that I between stage. 

Mind and heart filing with ideas that want expression...

But how?

And when?

What will it look like?

I wait. 

In expectation.

In breathless anticipation. 

In anxious wondering because let's face it: waiting is not always something we do well. 

But I want to. 

As I stand between what feels like two seasons of life, I want to do the waiting well. I want to be preparing because I don't know what's coming, I just know He's coming. 

He's coming with another change for me. And I distrust change. It always hurts at the first bit. It's scary cause its different. 

It doesn't look like I've known. 

But I want to be waiting in expectation this year. 

Watching for his hand in my life. 

Taking that deep breath and following that way he leads. 

Five Minute Friday: Welcome

Welcome

And the new year comes. It brings a clean start. There is the sigh and the old year slips past and that drawing in of breath ushers in possibility. 

New things to learn. New rthymns of life to begin. Some right away and some not to be discovered but in time. Either way, it happens. 

There is a freshness, a sense of a unmarked, unspoiled landscape before. Just waiting for that first footstep. And then the next and the one after. 

Breathe deep! 

Begin again. Be welcomed into the cleansing of a new year. 

Let your life and heart find the rhythms Christ has etched for you. 

Be blessed!