fade into a new glow

That is what it feels like--this blog fades, but into a new glow, of my new blog, Stones by the River.

I want you on this journey with me.

He has plans--small big ones, and I want to give you what I can, what He can give through me.

To give you encouragement, to give you empathy, to give you small reminders, because it is the small that add up greater than anything we see as great in our lives.

So art--my illustration & graphic design skills will be used for His glory, for your knowing His glory.  And my words, hopefully even better.

There has been self-doubt. There has been back-and-forth. There has been trying to measure the success of a blog, when I should have just been counting the ways He loves. I mean, there are hundreds of other blogs. Thousands. Maybe more. Why add to the clutter?

But I ignore my small-mindedness, and I step out on the faith He asks. He doesn't promise 100 readers, or even 50. He promises that if I follow Him, I will know Him, and He will finish the work begun.

Maybe this new blog will be used to fill small spaces in lives. Maybe I won't ever know--which is probably for the best.

Being a writer is hard--the self-doubt is monumental. But there is One I cannot doubt.

So join me? Walk a few minutes every other week or so beside me? Have tea, coffee, cocoa? I will bring art, my heart and words, won't you bring your eyes and soul?

I wasn't ready

10:46 pm, and I decided I wasn't ready. No five minutes of free-write and community for me.

I didn't think I would even do it. I will probably be among the last, and my blessed few will read it.

Everything is messy just now. Complications to finding work, friends bleeding hearts half out from a hundred miles away, Restlessness itching me from the inside. Transitions, transitions.

I won't be using this blog much anymore--I have decided to start a new one, because I am ready for something new. This was my first blog, my first brave, and I will be letting it go soon. I might still do my five minutes here, but even that is unknown just now.

I am ready for something different, something focused, yet more encompassing. I am calling it Stones by the River. It will be my space to mark the places where He has been in my life in the hopes that we might all see Him more clearly. I want to incorporate my other artistic skills--photography, lettering, drawing. Remnants was what I had time for when I had time for it. But He deserves more than my remnants, and I am ready now to give more.

I must decrease, I must, and this new blog will hopefully be a way for Him to increase.

I wasn't ready to post these words, wasn't ready to share this part of my journey, this risky venture into new, uncharted lands. But He was ready.

I wish I could give you, dear neighbor, something more profound, more interesting, more beautiful, but today this is all I have.

let us create

tonight I link up brave with Aliza Latta on her blog. Sharing hidden away writing that doesn't seem ready for the light of day. So here are two.

A restlessness

wrestles

below my skin

beyond currents of blood

through tendons and muscles

and burrows in my bones

then deeper

to a place I cannot point to

or touch

or even explain

except that

I know it is

my soul.

This restlessness is 

hunger,

that gurgles in the night

or a slow rising

of invisible wings

and the gentle lifting

of my chin to point

to that blue ceiling

speckled with collections of dandelion seeds

in preparation to take flight

when the wind sweeps a certain way.

But restlessness never uses

plain sorts of words

is never explicit or clear.

She is a haze that clouds

the places I rest

so that I am never certain

I am where I hoped I was.

She gives a depth to life

and reminds me the breadth of

living,

widening eyes and

opening windows to let in fresh air.

She never speaks,

but looks out every window she passes

with a little bit of

longing. 

********************

The strings tremble,

shaking out

a tune.

and the songs

that are sung

by the

trembling

are perhaps

the most beautiful

of all.

remembrance

He speaks between,

behind and before my own words,

turning them back to me,

as though writing is really like tossing a

boomerang.

I write,

forget,

write,

forget,

then read those words

and remember in humility,

in rain from my light-catching eyes.

My words are crumbled bits of bread dropped,

small reminders

stone altars at river banks,

as though He is whispering

I was here.

whisper

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!

WHISPER

Sometimes I don't listen very well. 

After the way Job's God-words have been walking behind me and throwing shadows across my path, you would think I would get the picture. But Job 26:14 is back for another round of unedited writing and community. 

It has been easy for me to feel down. There is a hold on my dreams of students and books tumbling around a classroom under my direction. Some days feel heavy with the weight of imagined judgement and my own disappointment. 

So I began the adventure of substitute teaching today.  I watched the sunrise spread all purple and pink and golden rays and lines flinging across a sky scaled with grey clouds, and the sun came up orange. That ocean wave of mist twirled up in the hollow in a perfect curl.``

All I have is what I need, this I know, Audrey Assad sang quietly. I felt peace then. I knew not that I would be blessed by the coming day.

He'd been whispering in my lonely, tear-flecked moments "My ways, you cannot know." Whispers of His goodness to come, outskirts of ways, incomprehensible thunder, hemming in behind and before, searching out paths. 

I could talk about my day for quite a ramble. But I will just say this: I couldn't stop smiling on the drive home. 

Grace spilling into smiles, and hope rising like a second dawn, slow and misty.