Electric

To a group, who at one time would have flickered recognition.

Electric

How do I mourn you
When I refuse to believe you are dead
How do I stop remembering
The things you said
About me
As a person, a woman, a poet
How do I leave it behind

How do I stop wishing you back
Do I give up
Do I swallow hard and pack it in
Ditch the verse and grab my purse
And go
I wish I could know

Is it better to remember
And try to smile
Realize it was good for a while
Like a lover whose face I can't forget
Farewell, my dear, I'm glad you let
Me in for a time

Oh, I could probably try
To recreate you, reconstruct you
Some poor replica of your beauty
But how do you replicate perfection
Besides, it wasn't me who gave you life
I just happened by one day
And was forever changed

I can't promise to stop longing
Can't write you out of the song
That haunts me in the night
But will I be all right
When the gears rust shut
And nothing is left but
Quiet

When they don't even know you exist

It takes my breath away for just a moment, there in my inbox, the subject line without any brackets so it looks like it's a personal message. Just for me. It isn't. It's a blog title without any brackets.

And it's a beautiful entry, as always. Beautiful and meant for all of us.

I stifle the disappointment and tell myself those same things, things I hate hearing but know to be true. Things like it isn't about me, and to remember the big picture, and that God knows my heart and that's all that matters. And that I should be ashamed for wanting something more personal.

I wonder if anyone will ever feel that kind of happiness when she sees my name her inbox. I wonder if my offerings will ever disappoint when the brackets show.

I want to stay personal. I want those for whom I write to know they matter to me. No. I want her to know she matters to me. It isn't about me, but I want it to be about her.

I want to keep loving those beautiful women who write for all of us, even when they don't know I exist. Because they are reaching hearts just like I long to do, touching lives and making a difference and bringing smiles to faces of beautiful women who really need them. All faces just like mine.

Dusk

I wish I could describe this, writing here at my desk while a breezy spring dusk settles quietly around our quaint little house on Memory Lane.

I wish I could capture the way the wind rustles the leaves and sets the wind chimes outside my office window to a dancing and singing that calms me way deep down.

I wish I could tell how the crickets tweeping and a distant dog bark mingle with a far-off sound of a closing car door and leaves me with a feeling of being part of a community among these wide mossy trees and docks where hungry turtles await bits of bread, and the narrow lanes and little bridges where duck families crossing all in a row remind me to go slowly, always go slowly across.

I wish I could share this sense of beauty, this peace, this joy that I would love to put into words.

If only I could.

Safe

i cried to you, my heart laid bare
and you stepped close and held me there
for moments there i couldn't speak
no words would come; my voice was weak
when finally i could meet your eyes
i searched them but saw no surprise
just love like none i'd ever felt
so deep i thought my soul would melt
your soft expression seemed to say
my child, give me your thoughts today
i smoothed my hair with trembling hand
inept to help you understand
the ache within, not even i
could word the pain or quell the why
of being left outside alone
to face the darkness on my own
but as i pondered all these things
it brushed me like a monarch's wings
the kindness in your gentle look
as though you wrote me in your book
and somehow even scared i knew
it's safe to give my heart to you

Words

I've neglected coming here for a while. Not because it matters little to me, but because my energies have been spent deeply at Write Where It Hurts. I have missed being here.

In working on yesterday's WWIH column post, I was thinking about words and how our amazing God wired me to love them. It reminded me of a poem I wrote a year or so ago after reading a book entitled Poemcrazy.

i must have created quite a picture
dozing with a giant white bear
in the crook of my arm
Poemcrazy scrawled across the bookjacket
covering my face and making a slight
indentation across my right cheek
it wasn’t a nap, entirely
not even rest, since words danced and floated
through my mind, tempting, tantalizing
like a cummings poem i’d read as a child
(it stuck with me, his style, only i didn’t know then
that something in me was secretly longing for that kind
of freedom; i rediscovered him today in the pages pressing against my forehead)
i must have seemed a taciturn eccentric
hands limp and relaxed as verse took shape
behind the book resting on my face
shielding my eyes from the sunlight of midday
(though not my ears from the whine of a weed machine
wielded by a well-intentioned neighbor)
i recalled lines i’d read moments before
and how i had smiled at the mention of word games
i’d played in my girlhood
how did she know
i dreamed in word tickets of meander and flummox and herb garden
and winery and worthlessness and side-winder
while the whining ebbed and flowed and breezes blew
and my hair tickled me awake
so even though it might appear i’d left behind
lazy susans and black-eyed peas and catharsis
in the land of a people i call the ballantrae
my favorite thing of all is that
i feel a little bit like a poet today

After a long dry spell

When it's been a long time, it can be hard to start again.

I navigate these waters in a boat I keep patching with that pizza man's help because he is always near me. I would be lost without him. Our children, mostly all grown up now, are making their way each their own and it can be hard to keep up with all the twists and turns and rough places.

But we keep patching and we keep paddling and we keep praying. God's grace stays right here with us and holds our patches fast and keeps loving us and giving us more and more grace for the moments that we try to turn around and extend outward to those who might need it at the time. Mostly, I think, it's me who needs it.

This will be our third son to wed. It will be a Sunday afternoon wedding near the end of a beautifully mild Florida November on a day that in the past has brought tears. We are hoping for the coming tears to be good ones.

Today was Thanksgiving Day. It was a confusing day for me, bizarre in its difference with our family gathering and meal postponed a day and all of this day spent cleaning and organizing and trying to make sense of personalities until I fell off to sleep in the afternoon in our big canopy bed. It was nearing dusk when the grandbaby arrived and attention turned to little feet pattering over wood floors and cookie-smudged face and babbled words for everything she sees. She sleeps now, among soft blankets on Pappaw's side of the bed until her mama and daddy come to scoop her up pigtails and all and take her home.

Tonight I am grateful, truly. I am grateful for a rusty but renewed ability to write, the unwordable comfort of being able to pray, and the love that patches all things together.

When it's dark

It feels empty.

Where life spills out on the floor

Maybe it's writer's block. Or maybe it's just that I've been completely overwhelmed, or overloaded, or something.

I still am.

But I'm trying to pull up and out and word again, really I am.

The hardest part right now is that I couldn't talk about what I'm feeling even if I did have words for it because whatever this is, it's too raw, too open to the elements, too private to put out there.

So I keep trying to process it in here, and I'm finding that's a lot more easily said than done.

The Spirit of God loves sinners and dances best where life spills out on the floor.      --John Fischer

Right now I have to leave the dancing to Him.

I can't hear the music.

Why?

I've always been amused by the "Why?" questions little ones are famous for asking. 

What is even more amusing is how annoyed we adults have a tendency to become when asked this popular question incessantly. I've heard some pretty snappy retorts to those questions, uttered in frustration to hush a kid up. Been hushed up like that a few too many times to count, myself.

But what if the little ones have it right? {Imagine that.}

What if "Ask, Seek, Knock" really is a good idea? {Wait...didn't God say something about that?}

Not long ago I read a blog entry by a favorite blogger, Single Dad Laughing, in which he writes about using the why question as a tool to get to the very core of any issue one might be facing. He suggests writing down the issue, and then asking, "And why is that?", then answering that, followed by asking the question again, until the central problem comes into focus and a solution begins to emerge. He gave an example from his own journaling, and it was nothing short of brilliant.

It made me smile to think about how I will respond to the next child who asks me why.

I think I will grin and say, "To make you ask questions!"

And I will really mean it.

Back to Words

I know eventually I have to stop running this all through my head and just write.

I have to stop thinking about why I've been blocked, how to get started again, whether it's worth it or not, whether anyone will even care that I've come back to the land of the written word. Well, except for Jen. I know she cares because she took the time to tell me so.

So if nothing else, I am writing for Jen.

Life has been nuts here at Easterhouse for a few weeks now. That would probably be the biggest reason I haven't been writing--not block at all, but busyness. Imagine life being nuts at Easterhouse. I realized the redundancy as soon as I typed it. Dance competitions, our daughter's Sweet 16, sons turning 18 and 20, a high school graduation...basically the normal kind of crazy for this family.

Life has also been a bit different since Steve's carpool ended and he started having to drive to Tampa to work every day. I appreciate his ride buddy for the past two years even more now. I'm also mad at him for abandoning us. Well, okay, not mad really. He gave us $100. in gas cards at the end of his driving just out of the kindness of his heart, so I can't be too mad. But yeah, that extra $500.+ a month is hitting us pretty hard. Our move back to Tampa can't come soon enough.

Back to life being different. With Steve taking the car every day I am stranded with no car all day. Not that I went very many places before, but I always knew the car was in the driveway if I needed it. And it isn't like I have friends up here that I hang out and do things with. I've never felt quite so alone with regard to friendship. Well, there was one other time, but it was for a shorter period.

And it isn't like I don't have any friends; it's more that I don't have friends who like to hang out--at least with me. I'm hoping that will change when I get back to Tampa nearer where our kids live and closer to some of my long-time friends there. I'd really like to get involved in ministry again. A fish out of water: that's been me.

There is no point to this, other than breaking the ice and returning to the word world.

I guess that's all.

Turning Thanks - (In)courage featured post

I am humbled and grateful to be featured at (In)courage today!

What were they talking about, turning thanks? I could barely understand their words, but today I understood them. Today, I comprehended what they really meant, even if they didn't.

Please be so kind as to read the post here? You are precious, and I appreciate you very much.

The Way I Was Raised

I was raised with boundaries, and if in my childish folly I pushed them, the rod of correction drove it far from me. Who knew the writers of the Bible could be so spot on?


I was taught that respect was given before it was earned, and that politeness is never out of season. I was taught that a job worth doing was worth doing right the first time, and that the world doesn't owe me a favor. I was raised to say ma'am and sir, so if that offends you I'm sorry, but that's how I roll.


I was raised to believe that chivalry isn't dead, and to accept it gratefully. I was taught to believe the best in other people, and to always respect other people's time. I was taught that my word is my bond, and that what I do and say reflects on my family, so to choose wisely. 


I was taught that love is not conditional, and that kindness and a good work ethic are part of a good person's fabric. I was taught that if I said I'd be there at 5, to be there a little early, and that if I was going to be late I'd better make it a rare thing and I'd better call and let somebody know or have a good reason why I didn't. 


I was taught to appreciate the little things in life and not to sass my parents, even when I didn't think they were on the right track because they were older than me and had been around the block a few times. 


And as I've gotten older, I have come to appreciate all these things all the more as I watch other people selfishly and thoughtlessly run roughshod over other people with seemingly no concern whatsoever. 


I will always be grateful that my parents didn't have to worry about getting arrested for spanking a child because I'm far from perfect but I love and respect and serve people from the depths of my heart whether they love and respect and serve me in return--and sadly they often do not. 


I am glad I am the woman I am today, imperfect but striving to improve and glad for the chance to live in this big wide world for a time. And when God calls me home, I hope He is as happy to see me as I will be glad to see Him, and to at last be reunited with my parents who thought enough of me to do the hard thing and choose parenting over the buddy system. 


I thank God that I was RAISED, not lowered, believed in and not ignored, celebrated and not simply tolerated.


I can only pray that I am blessed to be able to pass along a legacy of parenting that will keep producing good people who are grateful for the way they were raised.


Because the world is a better place when parents really are parents. It lets kids be kids who have a fighting chance of growing up to be good parents themselves.


I am eternally grateful for the way I was raised.

And it came to pass. (251-260)

All these things that hurt us, that sucker-punch us and take our breath away, they can't keep gaining victory over us because they came to pass.

They came...to pass.

That's something to be grateful for, that these light and momentary troubles (that usually seem neither light nor momentary) came, had their moment in the sun, and then passed.

The misunderstandings, the failures to communicate, the growing pains, the hormones churning and changing, the confusion brought on by one life season morphing into the next, they will have their day and then the sunset will come. There will be rest and there will be the rising of a bright, hopeful sun.

And in each new day we will encounter all these familiar hurdles but this time we are stronger.

This time we know just a little bit more, have a little more hope. We have a better outlook.

And outlook makes all the difference.

I face the new day, the new week, with a smile.

Gifts one by one, all the way to one thousand...

251. Phone call from my Bree
252. Ciabatta, 4 loaves, piping hot from the oven, packed to send with my girlie to her sleepover
253. Fresh-squeezed lemonade with extra pulp and a bit of zest
254. Poetic words leading a friend to think of me
255. Polish sausage medallions and cheddar slices on sun-dried tomato and basil wheat thins, with tart lemonade over ice
256. A longing deep within to eat intuitively according to the Creator's design
257. Loving accountability among friends
258. Support showing up unexpectedly
259. My daughter's thoughts on One Thousand Gifts
260. Anticipation of reviving a family reunion once vibrant and strong and connected

Dear Mama,

These are days I really could use being able to talk to you.

I think we would be spending a lot of time together, you and I. I wish I had made more time for you when you were still here. I know you would say it's okay, that I did my best, but I would give almost anything to have those days back.

My kids are almost all grown up, Mama. How did this happen so fast? I wonder, did you feel like someone had sucked all the air out of the room the afternoon I told you at 16 that I was pregnant and by the end of the day I was a bride and three weeks later I was a wife? Because I have a daughter who is nearing 16 and thank God she has so much more sense than I did and already in her young life is wiser than I was at three times her age, but she's growing up so quickly and I already miss her and she isn't even gone yet.

How did you do it, Mama? How did you watch your kids grow up and move on in their lives without running after them and begging them to slow down and let you hold them just a little bit longer? Because sometimes that's how I feel.

Life seems to be speeding up and I want it to slow down so I can breathe and squeeze the essence out of each little moment and why aren't you here so I can ask you all these things?

The grief books lied. They told me it would get easier, the missing you. It isn't easier.

I don't miss you less like they said. I miss you bigger and deeper and more gut-crushingly than anything I could ever have thought grieving could be.

You're gone too soon and I can't make you come back and I am mad. Oh, I am so mad, Mama, and not at you and not at God but just mad because you should be here. We should be spending this time together, these hours that are coming so lonely, should be talking over coffee and joking silly like we used to and starting cookie dough fights and stirring chicken and dressing with our hands and playing UpWords and plotting pranks.

It's been five years, and still sometimes in the night I cry for you. Well, sometimes in the day, too. Sometimes the only way I can get through this is to just not think about you, but that empty is worse. I would rather feel the pain than to not feel you.

I miss you, Mama. And I love you now even more than I did, and I wish I could I could hug you and tell you how these days I'm living through right now make me long for you more than I could ever have imagined.

The tears I shed for you, though, I consider a gift because they mean you are still part of me, still nestled deep in my heart where you will always remain. I see you a little more clearly each year in my bathroom mirror staring back at me, the you reflecting through my own features. Rosie has your smile, and sometimes when she turns a certain way I draw in my breath at the resemblance. How I wanted her to know you longer.

I take these things to God, and I ask Him to heal the hurt so I can keep going, keep trying to mother my children, even as they are so swiftly taking flight, with the fierceness and courage of the woman who mothered me.

If I can't make you come back, at least I can make you proud.

The Calming of a Storm

I awaken to rain coming down and go quickly to the window where it is raining in and I close it and I sigh that it has to be closed away. I love rain.

Within moments it pelts hard and I go to the big glass door and slide the blinds away and watch trees swaying and bending in crazy directions with startling swiftness, water blowing in sheets changing direction mid-air.

Another storm, but not like the last one, filled with fury.

My normal routine is interrupted as lightning streaks across the sky too close and cracks quickly and I unplug my computer to keep it extra safe from surges, gather up my book and green plaid blankie and pillow and curl up on the couch where I can hear the rain loud and feel the breeze blowing through.

I read about suds and sanctuary and slowing down and I lie there with book propped on empty tummy and muse at the picture of filling with thoughts that nourish far more than food ever could.

I absorb it all, three or four pages of wisdom so dense it makes me sleepy again. I lay the book on my tummy upside down like a little roof and close my eyes and pull green plaid softness under my chin and rest.

Storm calms but rain is still falling and I think how much I love the sound of the dripping, the soothing away of worry and anguish from a broken yesterday and the promise of a rain-washed today, another day the Lord has made.

An hour goes by and I rouse to the beeping of a message and would probably ignore it but then I think about how I don't want to sleep away such beautiful hours filled with rain and wind and thunder. I toss aside green plaid and hear my pen fall through the couch cushions to the floor. Squeezing my hand into the gap, I wince a bit and grasp it barely and fish it back out.

I will need it for the underlining of this new day.

The Blessing of Brokenness (231-250)

I was broken today.

Cracked open, heart beating hard, soul bleeding, drained out onto the carpet.

I turned from my desk, walked to our big canopy bed, crawled in on his side because I needed him, and wept myself to sleep.

My chest hurt when I woke up. I found out later my husband's had been hurting all day. He didn't know about my brokenness, but he felt it.

Ironic that Ann's post for today was "When You're Feeling a Bit Broken". A bit? So much more.

But not broken like Him. Still never as broken as Him.

And as I remember Him, and as He re-members me, I ask Him to never let me forget what it felt like to hurt over Truth.

Because He hurt over it. I didn't die today, but He died for me for life and for days like today when all I wanted to do was curl up in His arms and be lost in Him. Or found.

Now, wrung out and weary from the fray, I rest in Him.

His arms are a safe place for the broken to rest.

To be made whole the way only He can make one whole.

Tonight I re-member.

The counting of gifts continues.

231. Living in the happily ever after
232. Baby girl screechy noises
233. A cousin happier for finding me
234. Sweet little grandgirl all fussy and tiredish and rubbing her eyes
235. My Mattie, home for two days
236. Rain trickling down, thunder gently rolling, gifts of grace
237. Smooth transitions
238. The buying of a wedding dress, the becoming of a bride
239. Sweet tea
240. Teen girls laughing, building memories
241. Coconut cream pie (and a buddy to share it with)
242. Dinner at the Hard Rock
243. Lovely girl turning 21, smile all alight
244. Lora feeling better
245. Tears collected in a sea of crystal
246. "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth." (3 John 1:4)
247. Loved ones who believe in me (and remind me what it was like to believe in myself)
248. Being re-membered
249. Hunger
250. My beloved, my best friend

Kitten's Song

Kitten's Song

Amid the chaos in a noisy room
She gazes from clutter to toy to broom
And wonders who she is and why she's here
She loses herself, but for a while
In a dream not unlike that of a restless child
Where her name is Kitten and she lays aside her fear

She can't help but wonder as she sighs
At the million unknown answers to her whys
Where is the little girl she used to be?
The one who just wanted to matter somehow
To belong in the yesterday, and the here and now
Who wonders what it's like to feel truly free

Her thoughts drift gently back over the years
Escapes her eye, a solitary tear
And trails a salty pathway down her face
It isn't the first time pain has trickled down
She feels sure it won't be the last ache found
But she knows she just can't stay long in this place

She opens swollen eyes at last
With no real notion of the time gone past
To find three pairs of staring, curious eyes
A tiny finger reaches to brush away
A tear that has somehow managed to stray
A tiny voice, a whisper, "Mama cry?"

She swallows hard and kisses the hand
And meets little eyes with a smile and a plan
To cherish these Heavenly blessings come to Earth
She thinks of the young ones at her knee
About how grateful she is that they are free
To have a favorite color, to know their worth

She whispers a prayer of thanks that she
Is the mother she wished her own to be
Thanking God for letting her live out the love she needs
She places the toys again on the shelf
And somewhere in her musing she finds herself
Like a rose blooming forth from the tiniest of seeds

LLE

Sky

Lisa May's photos are some of the most beautiful I've ever seen. Her shots of clouds and trees and sunsets are breathtaking.

So today as I was browsing through some of her latest photo posts, a thought occurred to me that I thought might be worth writing about.

Ann Voskamp writes about living life from our knees, both in prayer and in mindset, much like a child. About how viewing life from the perspective of a little one gives us a whole new vantage point.

It was no accident that God said to become like little children.

As I was noting my favorites of Lisa's photos, I noticed that the ones I love most have the sky as the background. Whether clouds or sun or brilliant blue sky, they draw me in, call out to something deep within me. Something in the images make me feel very close to God.

And that's when it hit me. I don't often shoot photographs with the sky as the backdrop. Usually there's just "stuff" behind the subject, whether person or thing, and I never realized how much that can take away from the natural beauty of a scene.

It shouldn't surprise me to realize that the sky is perhaps the most majestic backdrop of all. When I was little I thought that was where God lives. And while I now know God's presence more intimately, I still like thinking of the sky as the place from which He beckons us.

Much of what a child would photograph stands a good chance of having the sky as a backdrop.

I can learn a lot from that.

The heavens declare the glory of God; 

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Psalm 19:1

She speaks in dreams.

I read the entry three times. I thought maybe by the third time I wouldn't cry. I was wrong.

Precious three-letter Ann, full of grace and sharing it all with us, reaching out her beautiful, humble hand that has cradled fragile bubbles and mended boo-boos and combed out grief tangles and reached for the moon, expressing a desire to help us all. A desire to help someone like me.

Why did I cry? Because I felt like she had been watching a playback of my life, listening to my dreams, hearing my heart for helping women the world over to speak theirs. She saw it and heard it all, and she wrote those words for me. And the longing of my heart is to do that for someone else. For many someone elses.

Funny story. I used to have this recurring dream of speaking at a conference to thousands of women, something like a Women of Faith conference, or something similar. In my dream I was an author of inspirational books for women. Over time I eventually managed to convince myself that even though that thought jazzed me to the core, things like that don't really happen to people like me.

Right?

I mean, the people who speak at those conferences grew up in Christian homes, never had years gobbled up by the locusts of abuse and family dysfunction, always had it all together.

But aren't there women I know, even personally, who have brought the brokenness of their pasts forward and risked it all by laying it out on the table? And I know why they do it, why I want to do it: because someone else needs to know she isn't alone. Someone else needs to know that He restores what the locusts have eaten and then so much more.

It's been my heart for as long as I can remember, this loving on others in Jesus' name. When I was little I always sought out the one person in a room that no one was talking to, sidled up alongside and said hi. Those people rarely rejected my silly-but-sincere friendliness, and many went on to become lifelong friends.

My love for writing has been with me my whole life, and has combined with my love for helping people quite nicely. The result has been more letters, notes, commissioned poetry and dedications, blog entries, and articles than I could begin to number.

It came naturally, like breathing, my passions all converging to form the perfect storm on the page and in conversations and in song, reaching up and out and painting with words the beautiful thing Jesus was making out of the mess that was me.

I know that if He can do it for me, He can do it for you, too.
And if He wants to do it for me, He surely wants to do it for you.

If He loves me this much, ordinary imperfect girl that I am with five kids and two grandkids and one beloved I'm still love-struck crazy for, a deep love for people and a heart full of wild dreams, He must also be crazy for you.


You, lovely one that you are, whatever you've seen, whatever you've done, wherever life has taken you.

You are not alone. And neither am I.

I, and hundreds of others just like me, keep asking God over and over for one thing: the opportunity to make a difference in a life. In just one life, and then another, and then more as He leads. We know that this longing was knit into us by Him at the forming, so all we are really doing is agreeing with Him and being true to our purpose: to love on His people and encourage them to love on Him and on one another.

I am nobody special, just a woman He created, a shadow of the Former who knit into me a deep passion for connecting with others and connecting them with Him. I'm so silly I get tearful every time I even talk about how much joy He has brought into my life just through the women He has given me opportunity to encourage.

I keep praying for more chances, more beautiful daughters of His to find a way to bless and with open hand direct all the glory back to Him. It's a dream too big to let go.

Know what my big dream right now is? To meet you. 

There is a lovely gathering coming up soon with this dream in mind. The SheSpeaks conference in North Carolina July 22-24, 2011 is being offered by Proverbs 31 Ministries and is a time of learning, fellowship, encouragement, fun, and celebration of the common purpose of connecting the hearts of women with the heart of God the Father. I can't imagine what a blessing this conference is going to be. I'm hoping to find out first hand. 

Would you like an opportunity for a scholarship to this treasure of an atmosphere? Please go HERE to enter. I would love to see you there. Walk in His grace, and perhaps our paths will cross in North Carolina. I would love that.

What Surrender Really Means (205-230)

 

I was reading chapter three in One Thousand Gifts (again) last night where she quoted Ephesians 5:20.

And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

As I was thinking about the weight of this verse, I thought, Hey, wait...if that is Ephesians 5:20, that's the verse right before "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ", and then "Wives, submit to your husbands".

So then I got to thinking how nearly every time I've ever heard teaching on Ephesians 5, it's always been approached (more like attacked) from the "wives submit" angle and it's either used as a bludgeon for wives or it's being pounced upon as an awful, archaic, patriarchal religious practice.

And I got to thinking that if vs. 20 was in place, was being practiced by His people, then the attitudes and behaviors mentioned in the next verses would already be in place.

In other words, if we were already giving thanks to God for everything, we would be living a life of Eucharisteo and we would already be submitting to one another out of reverence for Him.

Eucharisteo precedes the miracle. Thanksgiving precedes submission (which for many is truly a miracle, just saying). All joking aside, submission seems like such a miracle to us because it is the direct opposite of what our world teaches us--in commercials, on billboards, in schools--to set our sights upon.

Can't we see that submission is not a stiff sentence, but soft surrender to the Savior?

He breathed us into being. Surrender to Him is purest joy. All grace, all gift, all joy.


Counting on, toward the first thousand...
205. Teens who act nothing like the teens on TV
206. Little trip back to childhood in the form of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on bread soft and sticking to the roof of the mouth, peanut butter smooth and thick, jam painted on cheeks in a sticky purple grin
207. Coffee with Belgian chocolate toffee creamer
208. Hot cocoa from an adapted hot cocoa mix recipe
209. His sweet mercy in crisis
210. Being loved with an everlasting love
211. Knowing deep that He is always enough
212. Peace that goes beyond feeling
213. Pretty toes (but mostly the daughter who took it upon herself to pamper her mama)
214. Blog readers taking moments to comment thoughts
215. Gravy
216. Reading One Thousand Gifts for the second time, slowly
217. Chatting with a kindred friend
218. Life viewed through the lens of grace is different, changed, new, replete with hope
219. Time to walk away from my desk and think outside the box
220. Stillness for the knowing that He is God, and that if it is meant to be, it will be, according to His will
221. A husband who offers chocolate for the soothing of the melancholy
222. The rediscovering of family from long ago, photographs from a time that makes the heart race with memory's creaking hinges and shadowy images
223. Resolve to silence that preserves the bond of peace
224. An armload of chocolate on my desk
225. Hope between lines of sadness when the moon presses in close and wrings out mama tears
226. People in high places who remember what it felt like to be a little people
227. Memories of a Little People doll house, a mama, and her little girl, playing, laughing, saving up memories for later
228. Rain falling, breeze blowing, heart wording, all on a Monday at the hello of spring
229. Grins shared between us the way they were way back then
230. Rosie and Belle in Mama's rocker on the front porch