outskirts

Five-Minute-Friday: a chance to sit down and pen unfiltered, unedited, with community about one word. Share your story, won't you?
I have been hanging out with these wonderful writers for a while, and it has been one of the most encouraging experiences of my life. So please, come sit with us awhile?

Just link up with Kate Motaung here and encourage the writer who posts before you--that is the best part!

REACH

There wasn't even a word yet, and I was writing. Because I needed to. Because the writing awakens wonder.

Sometimes I don't live like I believe Psalm 139. "You hem me in, behind and before," "I am fearfully and wonderfully made," "in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me," "I awake, and I am still with you," "for darkness is as light with you."

Darkness is light in the eyes of the Creator. No darkness His sight cannot reach, and not just a reach that grazes with shaking fingertips, but a deep reach.

His eyes see what ours cannot—but our soul-eyes gaze, as Tozer writes, and this is faith, the things unseen. And yet all that darkness, all that not-so-simple dark as Luci Shaw says, “swims with complications” subtleties that He knows. How does God see? Does He have eyes? Or does He sense as Aunt Beast does, things beyond those who see can sense? (A Wrinkle In Time)

And how can I forget this? This wonder—not at the world or sunsets or winging birds, but at the Spirit hovering over the waters, and maybe that is why the wind across the lake fills lungs like no other, for He swept across the waters and breathed life into lungs and veins and minds and the wonder of Him sweeps over again, each breath a whisper of His name, and a remembrance of that first Adam-breath.

And remembering the last breath as He gave up to give us breath beyond this worldly air.

And these, Job reminds, are but whispers we hear of Him, the outskirts of ways reaching far beyond what eyes and minds can sense. A God we cannot overestimate. He knows “when I sit down and when I rise up,” knows “my thoughts from afar,” is “acquainted with all my ways.” Oh, to marvel that He knows.

letting go

This has been the song that echoes my heart. That whispered soft "I understand" when I needed—well, need it. Only He could orchestrate such a collision of music and soul. So please let the notes find routes to your heart and know that you are not alone.  Letting Go by Paul Cardall  

The ache, soft sometimes, that comes with the slow uncurling of fingers. 

The rhythmic release, repeated slowly, gently, rocking back and forth in a quiet tug-of-war. 

Thoughts of what is lost, sway forward to thoughts of what could be discovered. 

Remembering Who it is that loves first. 

Then stillness, surrender, and slow relinquishing of control, of dreams, of all that lay in sweating palms. 

Freedom follows. 

A smile curls on face, corners of mouth lifted by joy. 

noticing change

Five-Minute-Friday: a chance to sit down and pen unfiltered, unedited, with community about one word. Share your story, won't you?

I have been hanging out with these wonderful writers for a while, and it has been one of the most encouraging experiences of my life. So please, come sit with us awhile?

Just link up with Kate Motaung here and encourage the writer who posts before you--that is the best part!

Today's word: CHANGE


I look in the mirror and wonder a bit. Could that be me? Staring out placidly from those hazel eyes?

I don't look different. But then, I don't look in the mirror as much these days. I have been too busy looking in other directions.

It sure is me, in that reflective world. Makes me ponder, reflect. What has changed? Why do I feel so different? Something is missing. It is not gone completely. But it is smaller--something in the way I breathe and the words I speak. Not explicit, but an undercurrent of something filling in.

I run my thoughts over heart-scars and they tell me what I have happily lost--fear. And what fills? Him. And His courage.

My circumstances have not changed. I still don't have a job. And it looks right now as though I will be substitute teaching this fall. Something I used to look down on. Something I used to fear. All of my friends who just graduated with me have jobs--teaching and in other fields. And I find I am to wait. But I am not afraid.

This small place is much larger when you look closely, count details and see opportunities in humble places. And as much as it hurts, as disappointing as it is, and even though I grieve my dream, I am excited.

There are so many small ways to serve here, and if this is where He has me, this is where I will bloom. I will have time for people and writing and art and music. Time to prepare myself better for future students. Time to grow.

Only He could be such peace.

how to tell

Five-Minute-Friday: a chance to sit down and pen unfiltered, unedited with community about one word. Share your story, won't you?

I have been hanging out with these wonderful writers for a while, and it has been one of the most encouraging experiences of my life. So please, come sit with us awhile?

Just link up with Kate Motaung here and encourage the writer who posts before you--that is the best part!

Today's word: TELL

Sometimes I don't know how. 

How to let the words spill unfiltered--how to release the fear that dams my thoughts, my feelings, my self. I sat in a cold room and tried to express how much I love teaching, and the words came out all wrong.

I sit here wishing I could express my frustration with people I cherish. Speak my affection for people I love. 

But sometimes words just don't work quite right. This word is too long, too many hard sounds--that one is too short, not enough vowels. The emotions wear the words like an ill-fitting dress that bags where it shouldn't and squeezes everywhere else. 

Maybe we can't always tell our hearts with words. Maybe we were given eyes and hands and tears and laughter by the One who weeps and laughs with us because they can speak where the words don't fit. Perhaps there are pauses and spaces in conversation on purpose, to make room for all that words cannot do. 

I adore words, but I cannot help but admit their humility. Is not silence more eloquent for the contrast of wonderful words? We were given both. We need both. 

There are so many ways to tell people about the Love that casts out fear. Let Him show us. 

"When God will not use thee in one kind, yet He will in another. A soul that desires to serve and honour Him shall never want opportunity to do it; nor must thou so limit the Holy One of Israel as to think He hath but one way in which He can glorify Himself by thee. He can do it by thy silence as well as by thy preaching; thy laying aside as well as thy continuance in thy work." Mr. Oldfield's Soliloquy, North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell

earthy

My thanks to Luke Mathys for the "earthy" metaphor describing God's love, and his lending of the idea to me.

His love is

earthy,

yet unearthly.

And deep within it

I am pressed and planted,

a tiny seed,

feeling a little lost in the thick of it,

startled by the vastness

reaching softly round the globe—

immensity unable to be held or contained in frail

clay pots that break like

idols’ feet.

It is here that I wince as

my outer walls break open—

an awakening eye—and something

grows,

reaches up,

part of me I had never

known or seen or hoped for.

Waking is an ache

sometimes—

can I keep my eyes open?

Face the bruises and jabs from thorns,

sticks and stony hearts? Face darkness?

But here He slows me

to a pace—a place—

where I can feel textures,

lean into loam, and know,

He is closer than all that dark.

He readies me to bloom.

Fill

Fill, Five Minute Friday

Running on empty,

as they say,

wondering how to get through the day.

trying not to break

when I think of what

I do not have--all 

the things I crave, and never get.

But maybe I need broken,

a crack to let the light in,

the love in;

spill

and be filled.

We seal ourselves

up so tightly,

so that our hearts don't bleed out

and our souls don't fall.

But we aren't plastic bags

or tightened mason jars,

but cupped hands,

that hold what is given, 

and let the rest slip through 

with gratitude.

Release what is not to keep,

and receive what is blessed.

This is how we fill.

of dreams and the future

This was first penned to a dear friend whose blog you should definitely check out. It was as much for her and I as it is for you--I had it in the back of my mind that it might make its way here. After a refreshing weekend on one of my favorite humble plots of land (Camp Union) I am home and seeing with new eyes, learning that "the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is." (Ann Voskamp)

I walk on remembering that you know this place. I trudge through the uncertainty, the flailing arms and flinging questions that sit on my shoulders and whisper to my mind: Why does it seem that no one wants to hire me? Why does it feel as though all the work, the care, the dedication, the love of it cannot be translated through the iceberg with writing we call a resume, hardly anything worth resuming. What part of my flat, paper self  falls thin to the other papers that are not even papers but electronic files, just lines and lines of code—and who can find soul in words that cannot be poems?

But you know this place, this path of that dreaded word that smacks us in the line of the grocery store when we cannot bear to think the person in front of us might dig another coupon out of her carpet bag with the bird-handled umbrella sticking out of it. That p-word that demands of us what we are too angry, too hurt, too scared to give because we wonder if calm means we don’t care? Patience. There, I said it. You’ve known the path that requires that precious commodity found only in choice.

You’ve had to wait.

And in my fluttering honesty, you had to wait longer. I think you still are. For those dreams, and I have waited, what, two months? And already I’m fidgeting because impatience is an uncomfortable position in a hard chair that aches your bones and cricks your neck.

I remember trying to find the words to say trying to grasp the difficulty of walking without certainty. Of being encouraged by your certainty in the one thing we both know is a firm place to found a life.

Him.

I remember them because you said them, and I echoed them back to help you remember them, these electrifying promises.  For our good. Friend, for our good. That is what He said, and we both know our good is not the smooth slope, because smooth seas and skilled sailors and all that stuff they say. It is the narrow valleys, steep cliffs and tear-stained nights that do the difficult, sometimes painful work of making us whole.

That tearing off of darkness to make way, make room for dawn.