Radio Silence

I die a little every day
With you so far away
Three months its been
 since I talked to you,
And two months for your sister too
Big brother says that he can't do it
and the youngest seems oblivious
And so I die a little every day
and you so far away

Daily each of you  will do
whatever it is you do
you eat, you sleep,  you work or play
but I hear not a word
you say its too hard to talk about
 that you hate being on the phone
But at the end of each day when
 there still hasn't  been
 a word, a call  a message
 death takes another nibble

Today I'll die a little more
I see no end in sight
I thought  that if I acted cool,
you possibily, you could  you might
return to me, to us  and then
you'd share your life ,your love again
 and some "boring" daily doings.
But instead I feel the deadness grow
in the place where you once lived.
 And so
I die a little every day
With you so far away.

The Road Not Wanted

      What do you do when God throws you a curve ball?  When something comes along that changes your future dramatically? And no matter how often I pretend its not true, or that it only happens to others, it happens to us all: illness, injury, job loss, divorce, death of a loved one,betrayal, abandonment.. I have thought  that I would handle these things with skill and aplomb. No matter how much we plan or prepare or envision our future, its always different than what we expected. And i am not as good at dealing with things as I naively thought I would be.
     I've been lucky, or blessed or cursed, depending on your point of view. My life has been pretty much of a smooth sail.  Sure there have been storms, high winds and crashing waves, but no hurricanes and no damage to my ship. I've stayed pretty close to the course I picked out for myself. I like to know where I am going and I've been heading in that direction. I don't really like surprises, unless its something I already want and the surprise is the timing of getting it. 
        But God has surprises up His sleeve for me. Frankly, I don't like it. They are not in my hopes, dreams, plans or even imaginings. He's been doing this to me quite a bit in recent years, taking me off of all the roads I knew about and thought I might travel down. He's set my feet on completely unknown, and unexpected paths. I was a track and streets runner and He puts me on a mountain trail.  I was a road bike racer and He puts me on a single track downhill course.  I was a pool swimmer and He puts me in a rushing river. In other words, something I am not prepared for. I guess I didn't really believe that He was serious about being in charge, being the captain of my ship.
       The challenge for me is to respond  in  ways that I think please God. I am grateful that He doesn't get angry with me when I complain about these curve balls and strange paths to Him .He doesn't care if I rant and rave to Him about my feelings.  David did that all the time and the Bible calls him a man after God's heart. So complaining is not an issue unless i stop there and camp out in my complaints. I don't really want to do that.
      So I have been exercising my faith in His character and love.  Exercise is a good word for this process because its not a static thing.  Its a regular, weekly, daily, sometimes hourly and minute by minute choice. Sometimes it hurts and sometimes its difficult to do but this is my response. God is still God even when I don't know what the next hour, day , or week will bring.
     "But I know Whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that  which I 've commited to Him  until that day." 1 Timothy 1 :12(emphasis mine)

Life versus LIFE

I've been running..err jogging. I doubt any serious runner would call what I have been doing running, however I've been out there on the track and the road putting in the miles at a slow and steady pace. I'm doing this because I have a goal in mind. I signed up to participate in a 10K run in October.

Yesterday I was running along the beach and thinking about will power. I used to have great will power, but now not so much. My husband,on the other hand, is very strong. When he is training for something, his resolve to avoid treats or stay on his training schedule is impressive. So I was pondering why I choose to indulge in eating or acting in ways that don't help my 10k goals. I decided it that it was because I make the choice to enjoy life right now--meaning I want to taste the sweet flavor of that berry cobbler or skip my workout for a coffee date with my friends.

Then I heard the still small voice of the Lord telling me that I could enjoy life right now, in the moment by eating and drinking and chatting with friends. Or I could make different choices and enjoy LIFE. That means choosing with an eternal perspective.His Life flows in me, through me, energies me and gives me joy whether I am eating, drinking and socializing or choosing not to. I saw that I could enjoy His life in me if I ate or passed the dessert. And I remembered that eternal life is both now and later. I had lost my perspective. I had been short sighted and He was reminding me to enlarge my vision to take joy in both eating and abstaining. In Him I live and breathe and have my being, NOT in my senses. As I meditate on this and keep it in mind I hope to make more deliberate choices and enjoy LIFE not just life.

Dry Bones

Here I am again... I am trying to get over my writer's block. For a long time I just felt like I didn't have anything to say. Nothing even sparking in my head waiting to be ignited into words. But it's been coming back little by little. This week I have been reading in Ezekeil 37 about dry bones. I love that passage. Israel says to the Lord " Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost and we are indeed cut off." They have three complints and the Lord replies with three sets of three answers. I just love the extravagance of God. Israel: Three issues. The Lord: Three times three responses. He says, " I will open your graves, raise you from your graves and bring you into the land of Israel. Then He says, "I will put my Spirit in you, you shall live and I will place you in your own land" And finally He declares,"You will know that I am the Lord, I have spoken and I will do it."

So even when I feel a little dry or a little lifeless or a little bit out of touch or cut off or all of them at once God has a response.

And as I look deeper into what God says here I see three things He promises to do for us.

First: He changes where we are: he digs us up, takes us out of the dirt and puts us in a new location.

Second: He changes who we are. Now we have His life, His breathe, His spirit with in us

Third: He changes what we know: We will know that He is Lord, that He speaks and that He acts on behalf of his people.

H

Imagination

I am thankful for my imagination. I am convinced that God gave us our imaginations to help us know Him.  I  think about how Paul said that God was able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think( Eph. 3:20).  We can't know God with just our thoughts, He is greater than the sum of them.  How can I fathom a Being that is so different from me? I use my imagination, knowing that He is over and above my day dreaming.  Yet they help me to draw close to Him.  So open your hearts, your dreams and your imagination and join me on my flight of fanciful fiction. 

prologue for 2010

Christmas is coming , and my desire to try and write an advent devotional that fills my needs and desires has awoken.  The dark mornings and the coming holiday fill me with a longing to persue, to understand, to experience what Christmas really is. And for me that is the Christmas Story..the whole story.  Long ago I read Two From Galilee  by Marjorie Holmes( a book I highly recommend) and the story became alive for me. Mary and Joseph were really human beings just like me and they had no idea what was really going on.  I want to try and explore their experience from my perspective, in a highly imaginative way.  Perhaps it will help you to connect to the story and the season .

Thankfulness

Today I write in tribute to my Mom who died right after Thanksgiving 4 years ago.  I can't believe its been that many years but it has.  In these last few years, I have come to know her and understand her much better. Now that she is gone, and not exasperating me, I can see all the ways that I am like her and I am more thankful than I ever was for all the good things she sowed into my life.

This year we will have Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings at my house. Nine people coming and my girls and I are cooking it, all of it, home made, from scratch(except the turkey, which my husband has masterfully prepared for years. Thanks babe!).Why do we do this?  In part, because my Mom did and that's how you do it. She cooked  allot, without complaining.  I think she must have enjoyed it, because I do and so do most of my kids. And I see this as a gift from my mother.

Another thing that my Mother gave me was the seeds of thankfulness. I say seeds, because she planted something deep and profound, that keeps growing inside of me and changing me. When we were little, my parents taught us to pray before bed. They didn't teach us a prayer to pray, they taught us to pray, by giving thanks.  Ever night we said Thank You God prayers, things from the day and our life that we  were thankful for. We came up with them, we said them out loud together.

A number of years ago I realized that every time I went to pray I began with some kind of thanksgiving. It was completely ingrained in me that prayer and thanksgiving were connected. Giving thanks was rooted deep into my being. I am certain that this habit comes from being taught to give thanks ever night.

So I began to speak about being thankful with my own children, who were mostly teenagers at the time.  I called it cultivating thankfulness. I told them that one of my life's rules or goals was to cultivate thankfulness. 

I don't begin to think that I have accomplished this. I have been challenged recently by  ways that many others are developing thankful hearts.  But I am deeply grateful to my Mom for the seeds she planted and the fruit its borne in my life.