Life After Expectation

It's already late and I'm just now settling down from our home fellowship of believers and I can't stop thinking and this is my cue for words.

So much promise was expected from last year. New beginnings, fresh starts, moving forward to whip up this farm and make it right once for all.

Instead, I'm living with trash.

Debris. Falling apart. Ruins. Part wasteland, part redeemed and part messy-in-betweens. It's gotten better in slow-time.

Last year's zeal in starting anew and the uber-gobs of planned change, only ended up being a painful crawl of waiting things. Many good changes came these last 12 months, like baby steps tottering back and forth unsteady.

My emotions swinging like a pendulum from humble and grateful to irate and how long before "We get there anyway?" To crying a whole weekend just because it seems like "there" will never be here.

And it's more than the farm, it's lives, or my life which can feel part redeemed, part messy-in-betweens.

Hind-sight would mark last year in big and bold the year of: Expectation. Many on hold, many still planning, many in process, and what is stuff anyway?

Obviously, "important" stuff.

A furnace and consuming fire has been my bread most this year. I come here to smolder out my heart and blaze a word trail, finding temporary relief. Manna has filled me and isn't this really the important stuff?

The world wooes me by expectations.

Petty.

Minor.

Too little and too much of nothing.

I want to thresh them like chaff. Hold them up, let the wind catch and blow them away.

Flesh which wants ease and worldly complacency is a slumbering beast, dull, and medicored. Spewed out. An open drain to swallow lukewarmness.

And I've burned, like a flame licking water. Consumed and I need this place to unshut the fire in my bones. I want to stand on the threshing floor and let a Holy wind separate my chaff. Let a stirring enratpure, hair whipping like a prairie wind and say:

"Let it blow!"

"Let me feel your Spirit. And Blow."

How can we experience His breath and not want more than oxygen? How can we look into His eyes and not want to be blinded? How can I burn for Him and not expect this? 

How can I come and not have: Anticipation?



2011--Anticipation

I shared this at Ann's place. For more words click over to read or live your own. And since we're sharing our one word over at Bonnie Gray's "Faith Barista"...I linked up there too. Click over and read or join your own word with others at either site.

The Ultimate Christmas Let Down--A Waiting Space

The Babe will soon be carried away, wrapped delicate for another Christmas return and celebration will retreat to boxes and hide in darkness.

Each year is like rediscovering forgotten pieces. Fragile things we store up, preserve for memories and remembrance of our own clay-self preserved by more than Birth.

Somewhere between here and spring, for those sojourners of re-Birth who labor the pangs of Return, we'll celebrate the first one. Resurrection's day awaits a time far removed in winter months but a day some call Easter.

I imagine the ultimate Christmas let-down was wintered in those hours and few days after Christ died and His people grieved in spiritual darkness. No palm branches to greet Him, just deep mourning over a delicately wrapped Body hidden by a tomb.

A bright season had passed, the stone closed, and the Disciples waited for whatever was next. They huddled behind doors with death pangs of labored prayer.

Today the sun gives a false sense of warmth and I'm stoking a fire in our stove. Brightness belies the cold outside but will eventually give way to humid heat in season. But for now, naked and barren landscapes speak of loss.

Loss of light on shortened days, loss of clothed trees left naked by absent leaves, loss of color by dormant meadows browning in rest, and loss of heat by winter air which pushes us inside. The Babe is soon packed away 'til next and we're left with winter. The months ahead will hold longing for warmth and new life.

His word laid dormant in that space between the Old and the New. Those testaments of life foreshadowing Eternity and Him breaking winter's deadness.

Winter is a hard pressing for Light.

I've found ornaments in purple, pink, and crimson orange, being hung now. Like spring buds preparing tree-ly garments, His praise skirts the sky.

I've found heaven across Texas when light slips the edge. It's like a tethered line which is drummed Heaven-taut and wraps me like an ozone etching wonder.

Elizabeth felt John the Baptist jump in her womb by the nearness of Mary's own womb of Christ. I feel the flutter in nature's groaning.

Being a Christian is like clay feet walking in Heaven-shod shoes, like a torch carrying Flame to wintered souls, like a provided heat of Holy consuming which gathers inside Christ to weather any season.

We are marked.

We are inked in Eternity, like a sky speaks of Heaven, like a tattoo visibly marks the flesh and pierces a Kingdom straight through us and decorates Heaven on earth by skin. And I'm waiting for all things to be made new.

"..If the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?" 2 Corinthian 3: 7, 8 (NKJ)





(All pictures taken on our farm. The green one was at night when our leave burning produced a stalled smoke, from a lack of wind, over our pecan tree and was back lit by our outside light.)

Unwrapping Grave Clothes by a Birth--How Do We Live Christmas Radically?

How does one daily unwrap Jesus in life, find Him among the thrills or falls from it? Where do we find longing so strong He rounds our fleshy corners and upends our staled routines of world? How is it possible to bring Heaven on earth and walk with a Heavenly-holed heart never full?

Rodeos don't conjure up visions of Christmas or mangers or angels harking Birth and shepherds bowing to a King. Instead, dirt and coughing on dust kicked up by horses, bulls, and boots scuffing earth come to mind. I've choked on dirt and scuffed up my dusted life and found the thrill is dangerously brief.

Maybe there was a bull or maybe not, perhaps only genteel animals surrounded a Babe all those years ago.
 
But He didn't come for only the genteel. 
 
He came for the un-noble, the broken, despised, the weak, the lowly, the un-wise to shame the things which are.
 
Sometimes I've needed blindness to see. Be knocked off my horse, meet dirt on hands and knees and crawl so I can walk. A hard dismount to let go of reigns and grab a Holy reign. To become a thing that is not to nullify the things that are.

"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. 1 Corinthians 1:27-29

I've needed rebirth, to be a babe swaddled in Heavenly garments, drink Holy milk and grow. I need dependence on Spiritual food to live between Heaven and earth, to strengthen feeble knees so I'm able to shoulder this Jesus' mind.

I need change. Not the world's lustering offer of it, but craving the Spiritual tutor which teaches a Holy exchange.

It must die first. To produce growth, new life, and harvest, the seed must dismount it's host plant and land on soil and die in dirt. We find it strange how a Life can be made alive from death when a babe came and birthed this purpose. For a death so Life could live. A cycle both Spiritual and natural and Bethlehem was a garden where a Seed left the Host, sprouted, and died to live.

I must follow the cycle. My re-birth by Spirit means I need my own walk to a cross. Follow the way to a hill for flesh to die, inhale the scent of burial's spice and allow it's seal in a tomb so He can quake me alive. I walk in grave clothes only He can loose and free me from.

And isn't unwrapping really layer upon layer of unwrappings? An endless supply of Presence to which never ceases to upend and I too am a seed. And the seed must die and I'm grave-ly wrapped and seek my own unraveling by a Voice which calls me out of tombs. Called to live, to Life and a Babe is more than swaddled infancy, it's Holy cloth by which a King was grown to quake graves, free captives, and birth Life from death and this is Christmas.


I shared this at Faith Barista's "Unwrapping Jesus" series, click over for more or leave your own.

I also shared this at Ann's humble place and we're sharing Christmas. Go visit her wonderful writing, be blessed and read others along the way.

When Writing Is Like a Deep Well--With No Bottom

It's Monday and so many words have already spilled out in emails and I'm having a hard time finding my way to the closet for real clothes. That would mean putting away pj's and the day may really begin.


I'm not ready for it.


Instead, I'm stuffed with words, with a Star, and seeing how Body parts work together and I've overflowed in letters. Hopefully these letter-receivers won't be buried like some avalanche broken off a hillside and gather in a heaping mess below. My heaping mess of trying to bring Heaven to earth, to fumbly articulate how Christ was delivered by human hands and feet this past weekend. My meager words may just foul the whole thing up. Or cover Him up by too many falling off my own jagged cliff sides.

And now I'm tired.

It's a good tired, a contented weary of feasting on Goodness and sharing the meal with others but then the feast is over and I wonder if I was glutton of words and I feel a nap coming on.

Writing draws out deep waters and leaves me feeling like a gaping hole sometimes. Kinda raw, exposed, trying to express with few and when I can't stop the flow, I think it's too many. To me. Too much. Word gluttony. But maybe that's how it really is. We are meant more than finite and we can't always stop Heaven from spilling on earth. Even words. My words because I only want His and sometimes He speaks longer than I would, or shares more than I'd reveal, or leaks an ocean where I would've trickled a drip.

Mondays have a way of finalizing good weekends, cementing them to the past but still close enough for familiar lingers. I'm teetering between two worlds, remembering how Christmas moved this weekend and yet ahead there's still a week more to go. I don't think it's all the fancy windows dressed up in tinsel and lights or caroling, or houses done up bright which make Christmas spirit the season. Something is definitely different this time of year, a Holy stirring which comes by one true Spirit.

And I think I'll take that one to the pillows.

I shared this at LL Barkat's "In, On, Around, Monday". Click over to read more Monday-ish days or share yours.

A Wild Christmas Tell--Stampedes, Mangers and Dirt

I didn't snap a picture of the herd stampeding me for dinner two nights ago.  

I tried.

But the blurr of slobbering cows rushing for dinner aren't the most photogenic. Obviously I lived to tell about it. Don't stand between a cow and his food. But since I was the Food-lady, I wasn't in too much danger of being crushed under hoove.

Although it did cross my mind.

They skidded to a stop and waited me to walk them back to the food trough were things resumed to "normal". My oldest son was with me and he'd said something just before the stampede that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

Out in open meadows of pasture and enjoying the rustic life, he'd brought the dirt piled up in his hand and said "Mom look, we have good soil!" He'd scooped it up from some pile and was telling me the qualities of good soil.

I didn't hear most of it.

I was thinking of why he said "soil" vs dirt. Why "soil"? And thinking what child says "Mom look, we have a good soil"? And he's so excited of this "good soil" and really? Is it that exciting?

Now you know how slow I am sometimes. I see the natural and many times I have to marinate the natural in spirit. A crockpot on "low" percolating a Morsel I have yet to discover.

I want to have "good soil" so I'm learning how to fertilize it, tend it, give the minerals it needs to grow good fruit. Even if it means stripping out the things which grow in it to pull back the bare essential of Christ. And I'm wondering if the fruit of my lips speak "good soil" to my boys?

Black and loamy is the best for growing crops. The dark color comes from all the fertilizing and plowing and rich minerals.

It's the place for roots.

I'm gardening this Christmas.

I'm checking my heart and tending to weeds, fruit inspecting, plowing and planting with tools in hand. The mineral of Words going in and learning how to grow them out. Soil sits. It's the Gardener who does the work and fruit is the product of His labor. Soil determines the quality and I'm not a scientist.

I'm fruit bearer. Good or bad.

Wise men went looking for a place to bring gifts, a babe, a King and the skies declared it true with a star. A good Seed was planted on the earth that day. And sitting soil isn't idle. It's an incubator for growth, maturity, and Life. And isn't this Christmas, why He actually gave it: to plant the Seed in "good soil" and give His fruit away?

I shared this at Faith Baristas' "unwrapping Jesus" series. Click over and unwrap you own tell or read others.

I shared this at Ann's place for more practices of Christmas click here.

Hidden Among the Grass--Gratitude and Resurrection

The farm is slowly changing and cows have made a re-entrance. It's amazing how these extra mouths trim pastures and hay meadows and beat back overrun blades.

Amazing too, how it looks like hope.

These trodden and familiar paths of hoove trails, made smooth by traveling herds, remind of a time I used to follow them as a child.

I now follow new ones as a Mother with my own children traveling along these laden, herd-highways.

And we cross from fence line to fence line to find these path-makers to bring them home. Bed them down in the pasture close to our house and feed them.

Their ritual return for evening chow behind secured gates and fencing, feels familiar like a trail finding its way back through time. One which connects to some distant land I once lived.

In it's abandoned state, this place looked every bit a curse. And after returning here, there were many days it felt like it was true.

But we saw promise.

Promise hidden but waiting for resurrection.

A life of ruins hidden under heaps and I'm constantly in a life of return. Because I need a resurrection.

Daily.

And Life came from death and so I let my flesh lay on a cross. Where any rights or pride are brought low and worn like a thorny crown which humbly drip them away.  Where I long to return to dust, to anything, so I may let a Spirit be free. All I need is abiding in Him and I long to unrobe skin.

Hope is visiting and He never left.  I hid Him in the ruins.

But He's resurrected and I'm living in Promise.



Gratitude:

#168--Friends who share journeys some different, some the same, but all together connected in body to Him.

#169--Praying with friends and breaking off little pieces of who are in the process

#170--Neighbors who are near and real

#171--Moving most every year and to finally know how roots feel in a home away from Home. (Kindof like a tree stretching for Heaven)

#172--Christmas where God moves His people to give and it's all Him and only He can orchestrate
such things

#173--Forsaking the commercialism and unhurrying the season and it is good

#174--Looking forward to more farm escapades and finding beauty in ashes

#175--A Husband who works this land with such vigor and dedication that I can't help but see the promises hidden, though slow

#176--My oldest who scoops up dirt from our pastures and says "Mom, we have good soil." And he's thinking of planting flowers and my love for them and I'm thankful for "good soil."

#177--My youngest who's a sponge and soaks and I'm learning to tread words more carefully. (I'm still learning and failing and learning again)

#178--My Husband's job as a air ambulance pilot, this field he loves, now closer to home so I have him with me more often


Visit Ann for more gratitude.

Burnt Offering--Aroma's Spiritual Warfare

"Then burn the entire ram on the altar. It is a burnt offering to the LORD, a pleasing aroma, a food offering presented to the LORD." Exodus 29:17 and 18

It's homemade and delivered by hands which delivered me to this world and I know it's that time of year. Christmas fudge mounted on plate and I bite my first piece and imagine it attaching to my hip. Dark calories stare between family and I'm thinking of all the ways it'll tip my scales. But we remember fellowship in food and how it's only in special times of year and the scale is briefly forgiven.

Celebration links arm with food and I enjoy the many flavors and wonder if I have any offering.

Thanksgiving to Christmas and weight has upward potential and how do I tip the scales in spirit? Where do I go for spiritual fat which requires me to exercise it in Him?

I learned earlier this year to unfocus the tallying of numbers and just slow down to satisfy. Hurry only leads to stuffing and stress to calorie's comfort. And I've found how I simply think of hunger and eat modest and not make it some mathematical dilemma.

Tallying up numbers doesn't make us free it just makes us aware. And spiritual hunger isn't about numbers but finding the Source of satisfaction.

This Christmas we've been trailing along the Advent and inhaling the pleasing aroma of Christ. And I'm letting my offerings burn in a furnace with Him because I'm a messy sinner. I'm prone to fault in a stumbling flesh but it's only through Him I'm not burned and am able to walk in fire.

We're practicing Christmas by practicing Christ and I'm not all that good at it. And I'm remembering celebrated food and how it was offered a sacrifice and how we eat the offering of Him.

I'm linking with a body in Spirit this family under Blood and together we're becoming those parts. And I'm learning how much I love to live like this with them. Touching and reaching and up against realms and doesn't it come with a fight? And these Hands and feet made whole are tipping the scales with aroma. And I'm learning this burnt offering of His people isn't just an aroma which reaches Heaven but may very well reach the depths of Hell.

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12


And I wait in this pause of Advent.

When Christ Is A Shoulder To Cry (and it's His people)

I first looked to my husband and whispered how I think I should and did he think it'd be a good idea? He whispered back that it must be if it was on my heart and encouraged me on. A year with this small group of praying friends and I haven't mentioned much of it before. My voice had been lost on this issue because I've been pregnant in the promise of a spiritual rebirth.

So I began and leaked and chin-quivered the words. And my voice whispered many trails down my cheek and promise seems long off and I feel like I've miscarried. My mothering ways all done up wrong and crooked and so I've waited, because only He makes the paths straight.

"..In all your ways submit to him, and
he will make your paths straight."

Proverbs 3:6

Quiet thoughts of a daughter have been my bread most of these years because He knows the seasons needed. But lately, I've pick up the mantle of my heart and press it in to prayer.

The world looms like a tyrant in the hearts of our sons and daughters afar and there's only One true liberator. And He doesn't look like me. I'm just Hands, Feet and a Mouth who tries to bless with Love like a Father from above.

It wasn't always that way.

But this way shows more of how He changed me and filled me by a greater form than sin. How He took the cavernous trail of mistakes and nailed them to a tree. I'm a bride of "Hosea" sought out and bought at a price for return after all the ways I lived without Him. A Bride to a Lamb, the Lion of Judah, King of kings and I've been impregnated with promise for a child already born. And mysteries are cloaked behind Spirit's delivery date but many calendar days continue in thanks:

My Gratitudes:


#166--Choking back tears and knowing it's ok to leak with these people

#167--God's faithful Presence

#168--Christmas this year all different and special and just like Jesus' speaking near

#169--Remembering it's not me, it's Him and failing at super-hero(ing) isn't failing at all, it's just where He begins

#170--Warm pot-belly stoves on cold, blustery days

 #171--Friends who link arms to be Jesus in my community and quickly pick up our list of needs-n-blessings to those around us and cheerfully begin to be Hands and Feet

#172--Neighbors to stop in, visit, and disturb schedules, yet it's only with joy we leave afterward

 #173--Several small groups who don't need to be told to do, they just do

 #174--A husband who loves and encourages me to be the way God designed, gifted me and how could I be me anywhere else?

#175--To promises, though my natural doesn't see all the workings of Spirit, but ministering and battle is done in spite of sight.

#176--For Jesus who came and started  it all.

I'm Peeling

The end was in the beginning and from here I'm looking to it

since here is different and I wonder if endings are too.

The let down days of anticlimactic January

typically hinges to dull gray, little blue,

dropping all Season's Spirit,

like the wrappers which clothed my anticipation, are tossed away.

There is change and I don't feel

the high

or the squeal

or all the "me"s and shopping sprees.

I'm peeling.

Shedding former bustle of commercialism's addict
which lures like a shiny bait hook,

and focusing instead on giving ourselves away.
I'm peeling.
Under layers I'm steadied by change and leveled by Love

and not perched preciously high for a climatic fall.
This season is only a beginning, a birth for a start.
It's an anniversary, a birthday, a birthing of hearts.
I'm peeling away.
It's coming in waves like a marriage long in years,
where Love's sown deep among furrowed skin.
Wrinkled between lines like a fine aged wine He's pouring His in me.
Will the ending come like a Bride who celebrates anniversary to
remember how Love wooed her in, but loves more today than then?
 Will anticlimactic loose it's sting and this post-Christmas really be about
Love carrying on for our sins?
January's typical month of being the one after, but this year will I remember it as a birth in song?
As a Life come to live with me eternally long?
He doesn't only live in December 'though I pause to remember, embrace,
wrap myself 'round and cherish this Gift inside me.
I'm peeling away,
"wasting" my life for a Babe and so much more.
Pulling the wrappers of masks, ripping off my showy bows of false "oks", tugging the tape of security,
shredding the paper by tearing who I am to unwrap Him.
I'm peeling back Advent days in the onion of life, flaking back to a core
of celebrating a birth of Love and remembering how
He came from the end to start our beginning.
I'm peeling by Hands which bring me raw and wholly exposed
to His edible parts and I'm peeling the days to where it all began.


I shared this at Emily's "Imperfect Prose". Click over for more clay vessels sharing pieces of them and Him.