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!

I am Undone

and there are two ways of being undone.

I feel undone because the devil has been unraveling me: spinning me out faster than I can catch a breath.
a frayed bit of rope unraveling fast as the tension tugs on it.
split ends and weakness.
I cannot hold anything.
I try to braid the rope back, pinch the end, try to stop that unraveling; but it slips through clumsy fingers that burn at its touch.
rope burn is painful.
so is trying to hold your life together in your own strength.
it's clutching, grasping, clawing, gasping as your head sinks below water.
it's undone.
it's a stripping away to a painful place where the devil crows over you and your loss.
it's debilitating.
paralyzing,

and then, there's UNDONE.
life lived upside down and inside out but oh-so-right because He's at the center of it.
it's Matthew 5 and that Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are you who you are poor, mourning, meek, hungry, thirsty, persecuted, judged; you outcast of this upside down world who choose to hand all this over to God and be the peacemakers, the righteous, the merciful, the pure, the satisfied: those sons and daughters of God.
it's loving not just neighbor as your self, but love your enemy too.
the giving of your soul. heart, mind, and strength to God alone.
it's being unashamed to be the light, His warm-light in an otherwise cold and distant world.
its God in flesh, in you.

Five Minute Friday:Exhale

let go.
let the breath carry with it all the negative charge inside.
feel the gut-deep sensation of relief that spreads.

EXHALE.

suddenly every hard line, every tight spot, is softening.
my self eases into a relaxed pose.
body, soul, and spirit no longer at war.
just realigned in His rest.

EXHALE.

everything that bothered.
everything that gnawed at you.
that spun you out feeling helpless.
its gone.
it cant live in His breath.
so breath it in.
and out.
and again and again till you find the rhythm of life lived by Him.

5 Minute Friday : Grateful

My soul sighed when I saw this word.
I have lived in such fear and worry. Wondering how it will all work out.... and staying blind to things that already have. No more does God come through on a need, than it has been swallowed up in some new worry.
Always something else that could go wrong.
But I need to just stop.
Stop.
Stand still.
Cease striving and know that I am God.
I caught my breath when I first read this version.
It added another dimension, another layer to the already arresting words, Be Still.
Cease striving.
Stop carrying on with all my worry! Stop striving to make it all work out.
Who's on the throne anyway? Did God abdicate when no one was looking?
Do I believe Him or No?
Am I willing to put my trust in Him and say thank you?
Say thank you that I still have food in my mouth, a roof over my head, a job for a Christian boss, many, many friends, family...thriving, soul feeding churches in walking distance.
All my needs met God.
Every. Last. One.
In all things, Giving thanks to the One who has keep of our souls.