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!