scarlet letters....and 5 minutes

From Lisa-Jo's "On Fridays around these parts we have a little tradition. We throw caution (editing, revising, and worrying) to the winds and just write. Without wondering if it’s just right or not.For five minutes flat. You’re welcome to play along. The rules are easy. Write your heart out for five minutes and show us what you’ve got. Tell your readers you’re linking up here and invite them to play along.

And most importantly, go visit, read, and encourage the fellow five-minuter who linked up right before you.{Pretty please turn off word verification for the day to make this easier!}

Easy peasy. Oh and there’s always a little fun something-something in it for one five minute artist. Last week I got to give away my very own DaySpring Mother’s Day card (how cool is that?!) to random winner Dancing Joyful. It’s not too late to order your own right here.

This week there’s a totally cute All Things Are Possible Water Bottle by DaySpring up for grabs.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes for the prompt:"

If I Knew I Could, I Would…

GO:

If I could, I wouldn't wear a "D" for the divorce of my past. The way I lived thinking like the world and living any way I pleased.

If I could I wouldn't wear "P" for prodigal waste. Making choices, so many wrong ones that all led me straight back to the only right One.

If I could I wouldn't wear "F" for failure. To be a Momma and have a daughter far from you and know how it feels like failure many days. But knowing deep down, only He makes successes.

If I could, I wouldn't wear "H" for hurt. All the pain I inflicted and scattered like debris' of my past.

If I could, I would wear "L" for how He "L"oves. The only true thing which filled all my wandering days with hope, this Love. Beloved "L"over of souls who wooed me ever so gently in my darkest hour of need. "L" for "L"ovely in all His ways,"L"ord of my life who gave His very own. "L"ife. And more abundantly than I'd ever known.

If I could I'd wear "L" that letter drawn in scarlet.

And I'd look to see if you wore one too. If not, I'd hand you mine.

there are empty, lonely days and meeting places

You had high hopes.

It felt right and gloriously good all week, but then Easter morning came and went. And suddenly your house was plunged into an ever more wonder-less-land. You and your people living there but something was missing.

Lonely besets, though you weren't alone. And Sunday ended more like an empty tomb, without a Body, a friend, a family member, or an anybody besides you and yours.

I don't know how many past Easters I had set the bar high. All my dress shopping, shoe snagging, and gussy-ing up for that special service to only come home and have it fall apart. Disjointed from all the wonderful happenings I wasn't part of, cars lining driveways except ours.

Friends, family, loved ones, whole communities gathering somewhere else.

This year was different but I wondered about yours. Was it full of fellowship and friends? Or more like a party you were partially invited too? All dressed up and no where to go afterwards? Or a full schedule which by the end of the day, left you empty-handed?

And I thought of how we are sometimes a Mary rising early, hurrying to find our Beloved to only find Him gone. Perhaps a Peter outrun by a friend looking for our closest Friend to discover Him missing.

Mary wept and Peter left. Both empty. Both missing something lost, even worse than before. They'd rejoiced with Him all the week prior to that fateful day on a cross. And now, they didn't even have a Body in death.

But we know how the story ends, like He knows yours. Even when you're blind to how He'll "fix" it. When you're aching for arms of comfort. When you're left behind by friends or left out. When you're living with an upside down future where there doesn't seem an out. When you've seen some burdened stone roll away, to only reveal scraps....

Then you're in the meeting place. Not always in our timing, but always in our need.

Sometimes, He tarries His comfort. The hour expires and all that's left are stone cold tombs.

And we're at our own Lazarus-gathering, grieving. A relationship, a lost friendship, a troubled marriage, that prodigal child, a parent, a longed-for Heavenly reunion and there lies the groaning.

Emptiness. Fabrics of a torn life. Abandoned burials.

When Jesus came to where Lazarus was buried: "He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And He said, 'Where have you laid him?'” John 11:33,34

He not only groaned and was troubled by sorrow, but He also asked, "where?" Where do I need to go? And we groan too, bound by death while aching to be made alive and He asks "Where have you laid your sorrow?"

And He says:

Where is your loss? 

Point Me that way.

Where have you wrapped the grave clothes? 

Take Me there.

Where is the buried stench?

Let me call it by name and bring it to Life.




I shared this at Jen's place:

Also, Shared this at Ann's:

if you're living the crippled life

I don't know that I've suffered. Really suffered like a third world country but somewhere in our lifetime we suffer something.

And these last couple of years of purging my old life, I'd discovered my secret life.  My modest suffering revealed my hidden relish of status, opinions, and addresses.

When we gave up our dreamhouse to come to Texas, caring for the least of these, I hadn't known the depths of my heart. How much I cared what people thought about me. How embarrassed I was now of our modest, run-down farmhouse and I wondered if we'd ever have company again.

And I think of those who really suffer and what is mine but vanity. Really? Selfish pride which holds onto every scrap of "decency" boiled down to a number on a mailbox.

Suffering has been about a heart attitude. Struggling with my soul over what I wished different to accepting His grace and blessing right where I am. These past two years have been about the wrestle. "So Jacob {I} was left alone, and a man wrestled with him {her} till daybreak {and a very long night}." Genesis 32:24

This place, with it's broken windows, hole-y walls, leaky roof, dingy carpets, falling in floors, and a whole farm part hay and part trash was supposed to be short and temporary. As the days turned months, turned two years and still counting, I've wrestled in my heart and in desperation grabbed Him with “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  Genesis 32:26

This Easter is about my limp.

This week's a reminder how my flesh is knocked out of joint and I'm living the crippled life, out of socket. How I must now lean on Him to walk straight. How my handicapped heart needs revealing so that I become desperate for His touch.

Our strength is valued by the world, but our weakness is invaluable to God. It leads to flesh crippling so the Spirit has room to reign our walk.

It's our struggle, our wrestle with ourselves. It's getting to the point of  grabbing Him in desperation for His touch, His blessing. But we have different ideas of blessings than He does. Don't be surprised when the limp comes. When you're hip is thrown out by holding on tight.

This week is about looking to that cross, the broken body who came to fill our empty soul-tombs. And when we finally grab hold with all desperation, don't be startled or embarrassed by His cripple. There's deep joy in this crutch.  Because your crippled life {in Him} just means "you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” Genesis 32:28 





I shared this at Ann's "Walk with Him Wednesday" and jammed with Bonnie Gray's "Faith Barista Jam" . Also at Ginger and Charlotte's "Spiritual Sundays".

 

when life seems bankrupt and you need a gold-digger

It's that documentary show I keep thinking about. Shipwrecked sites and exploring large bodies of water in a "Treasure Quest" with divers combing through blankets of blue like an awkward bird moving through air.

But business carries on above as {operating} boats go port to port with their goods while passing over these bottom dwellers.

And some days life bankrupts us and we sink.

I've watched the "Treasure" crew as they move stealthily from one wrecked site to another. Many are scattered on the ocean floor but it's only with fancy gadgets, investors, special equipment and crew are they able to treasure-quest at all. Skill and knowledge belonging to an elect. The hunting left to a few.

And us land-locked folks, we do the same, thinking only an elect few have access to wisdom or treasure. After we're sunk, we think it's our place to stay below water. We consider ourself just a bunch of pieces, shattered shells and we're a shipwreck in need of a gold-digger.

We carry on Kingdom business like a bottom dweller, thinking treasure hunters are only for them, that person, so-n-so, a skilled someone else.

But not me.

But you'd be wrong.

No matter how wrecked it seems, how far you've sunk, how bankrupt things are, there's an Investor that raises our Titanics. And He gives "you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel." Isaiah 45:3 

It's the One who calls you by name which strikes gold in a heart. When you know, really know He calls you by name and all else pales, is when you hit the mother lode.



With thanks {and Ann}, Today this is the only gift I'm counting: Christ, our greatest Treasure hunter who raises us from our wrecks









How could I forget our playdate with God
at Laura's place "The Wellspring"?




And it's Monday at L.L. Barkat's:

going the distance ....and five minutes

{write for 5 minutes}

--Go--

Marathon isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Rather, distance is like a place I used to live. Always the next distance of moving from place to place. No where in particular for roots or homegrown friendships.

Distance was more like distant.

And it suited me. The ever-changing scenery, different stages set at yet another schoool. Ahead of each move, I'd actually imagine a new personality. Who do I want to be now? I'd ask myself this and play out different roles in my head.

But roles and real life have a way of crashing the party. No matter how I tried, I always ended up being me in the short end. Funny how that happens.

Distant suited the detached way of nobody really knowing you. Even though I really wanted to know someone and be known, it wasn't safe.

But that's changed. I've had those feet knocked out from under me more than a decade ago. I thought I had kept my heart upside down so that everything would fall out. Until I saw the holes and realized all my distance (and moving) wasn't gonna fix that. Just the great Physician, time, and a different kind of distance.

I didn't think I had it in me. This endurance for living life in one long place. Or really knowing people and them actually knowing me as someone besides the "new girl" in town. When the "new" glitter fades and people begin to know you in ways you didn't know yourself. Securites {in ourself, others, Him} are tested, weaknesses, strengths, personalities, gifts and together we fill in the cracks of eachother. Isn't this how "iron sharpens iron"?

It feels good, hard, and more like a marathon. Distance is about going it with those in our life and not away from them.

It means training to run the race and carrying eachother if we have too.

--end--




"Got five minutes? Let’s write. Let’s finger paint with words. Let’s just write and not worry if it’s just right or not." Lisa-Jo  Join us with your five minutes "on distance", click here.

sunken shipwrecks and {Resurrected} living

Yesterday, an unbroken umbrella spanned overhead like a deep ocean and I felt like I was on the bottom floor. I never tire of these blues waving their wispy whites when it's in the sky.

But let it be a real ocean and the bottom would just give me the creeps.

We've been watching documentaries on ship wrecks and sunken treasures. U boats, aircraft carriers, old wooden cargo ships and a trove of history, or coin, sits on the ocean floor.

I didn't know how much was down there.

And I've imagined me in a wetsuit breathing through a tube. A shadow of a boat bottom disappearing in a deep dive and alone with large mammals or creatures moving somewhere out there. All my air stored in a tank, I feel short of breath just thinking about it.

And I remember my creeps.

Standing in tides, skimming shallow waves just shy of the beach makes me feel part of a big submerged unknown. Toes disappearing to another world, it feels like I'm standing on two worlds.

I've even went waist deep with water to my ribs. It seemed I was on a big, blue cliff and if I went much further, I'd fall plum off. I enjoy this strange place much better on a beach.

I've thought about that recently.

How an ocean is ridiculously normal to its inhabitants. How this world of air feels rightly familiar and how a lone metal can doesn't seem enough for lungs. How I'd feel all panicky surrounded by a huge blue world when diving.

But it takes this dunking under to find it. A sunken treasure means it was first shipwrecked, baptized in an ocean before resurrected. And you know where this is going. A Fisher of {wo}men who came, wrecked His life on a cross. Sunken in a dark cave when raised off the earth floor, our Treasure came up.

He's the perfect example. This Easter living we're called to live. Radical wrecking of our life which is strange to the world. Only when we sink can He pull us up. A Peter-picture of a water rescue, a sunken treasure and "beginning to sink he cried out, saying, 'Lord, save me!'” {Matt. 14:30}

Those powerful words hold the key, Lord save. Captain of my life, King of all kings, Ruler of all I have, all I give is yours, You make my life not my own, kind of Lord. And He takes our shipwrecked ways, saves us and we become a creature standing between two worlds carrying Heaven's cargo. And the greatest Treasure of all is on a hunt to pull up His treasure in you.

But we must first be sunk.




{And just maybe you're shipwrecked, sunken to depths, scattered to pieces on a bottom floor, then my friend, I hope you know you are a treasure. And the greatest Treasure Hunter wants to pull you to surface and let your treasure shine.}
     Shared at Ann's.

Also at E.E.'s place.

we have days stacked against us

Weekend is behind us, chalked up to a yesterday, and today is about work. I have homechool assignments, chores, maintaining order, typical house routine and these weekly schedules take work to keep them.

I need lee-way, grace, and room to wiggle. Schedules feel like vice-grips, yet there is value in them. But not without discipline or {un}perfection.

And Monday comes stacked against me.

Two large piles barged their way straight into today and it feels like not only is the weekend behind, but so am I. Already. Clean towels made a rare but sudden exit. All of them.

Today laundry is mocking the way I feel so many weekdays.

No matter how we try to be caught up, there's always more catching to do. And we never get done. Not really. So many days seemingly stacked against and we start out in a temper stack too. We bully ourselves right into a corner, fighting our way out.

We only have two hands to do anything at all.  So why stress? I mean really, why at all stress?

And in all our doing, catching and schedule-keeping, the only thing we really need is to be caught. Enthralled by the One who sees the odds stacked against us and takes them on. This One who's on the ropes with us, cornered and all.

Isn't this the way I need to start Monday after all? His yoke making all our daily, scheduled yokes in light of Him.

Because He makes our yoke light. And all these other things no longer heavy under His load. No matter how pressing the day, I need Him if I'm to truly press through and not stress.

So I start.

Laundry, cleaning, school, meals, and Him, without particular order other than all my day's Hope began there in Him. I need Hope even more when things want to pile on, up, over and life seems like a steam locomotive running me down. Without Hope, I'm left with a bunch of grumpy piles. So I begin the dismantling, two-handed at a time and a pause for gratitude:




Thankful with Ann:

--quiet weekend of silence and home alone while all the little men and Hubby went camping
--silence over time reminding me how much I really do appreciate noise.
--good weather for cub scouting adventures
--good British movies, front-row seats to a Masterpiece Theater at a t.v. all to myself
--beautiful warm sunshine-y days, flip-flopping from place to place
--rain! some more needed wet stuff overnight last night
--weather websites which allow me to watch storms roll in, with all tornado warnings and lightening and knowing He's has the best information, but I still like watching His wonder thunder in
--a garden which provides fresh veggies and ways for a family to be sustained in both activity and health


Since it's Monday and about Monday.....also at L.L.'s place "On, In, Around Mondays". And maybe since this is also about finding His Hope early today to start the day, I'll share at Laura Boggess' place "Playdates with God". Because we sure do need them.

When promise seems lost and you're sick of waiting

How do we follow promise to it's appointed time? When it's hard and long, so far from sight you think you're a million miles away?

We have debt-free dreams. They seem long. But we've come far. Gave up much.  Downsized from a large 3 level home to a dilapidated farmhouse and started small.

Started over. Lowered our standard of living and chose leaner ways, because we have dreams.

It wasn't forced on us.

And still waiting is hard. Promise seems impregnated with pause and we're left wondering when? Why so long? And then we grope our way around and consider resorting to a handmaiden's hand-me-down promise.

We already know how Sarah knew promise. Beyond child-bearing years, when God told her she'd have a son with her husband. And she laughed. Years passed when she finally gives her handmaiden, Hagar, to her husband for a son. After waiting on the impossible the only "plausible" route seemed like promise needed a little help. Yet we know much grief ensued when the real promise came after Sarah birthed Isaac.

But knowing Sarah's story doesn't mean much to us, when we're the ones left waiting. 

It's personal now.

Then it happens to me and I'm grasping, irrational, desperate because I want sooner than later. And later, seems off schedule like a missed appointment. A very important appointment. So I resort to looking for something, anything to finish right now.

And isn't this how we shortchange ourselves? Seeking the temporary rather than patiently abiding for the long-awaited arrival. This painful birthing of a gift.

There's the temptation to give a little "help".  To spend. To upgrade our life. To do something besides waiting. And the danger is: I'm willing to grab a Hagar and get this promise rolling. My hungry appetite, fleshy stomach that it is, would rather have temporary soup than some long awaited birthright.

 I'm an Esau, a Sarah, an Eve looking to have it right now. Why not take it?

Waiting stretches faith and tests our human condition. Sometimes when we think we're done, we're still waiting. Not exactly what I had in mind over two years ago when we first started this journey. It grates my flesh.

And in the waiting, we're blinded. Unable to see the path before us, because if we saw then trust would be irrelevant. Jesus said, "..wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about." 

Because after the wait, a Comforter.

A new birth.

A gift hidden in the darkness of waiting.

It seems impossible but we are given One right now. And isn't this why we celebrate Resurrection? How those disciples before our time painfully waited in place for Promise so that we may have One right now. Whatever we're waiting, He's waited longer. Communion, in sweet fellowship without waiting but entering this very day.

So I do. I praise, stay my heart on Him and let other things keep their waiting.

For now.

Over at Ann's talking about Easter. This is me, waiting for some things but not the One thing. He already gave this Promise and I choose again and again, to remember.

Also shared this on "Spiritual Sundays".

If you met me....and 5 minutes

{{Five minutes of writing about "If you met me...." at Lisa-Jo's. Join us.}}

--start-

"If you met me..." 

You might smell me coming on my favorite perfume of 13 plus years. You'd know how I'm energized by being near people and talk louder than most in a crowd. And if we were in smaller group or one-on-one, I'd ask you a ba-zillion questions because I love to hear about your life. You might find me intently listening or intently talking but always I want to leave knowing a bit of your heart.

In a large group, I'd probably be quietly watching. Avid people watcher that I am. And I wonder if that is anything like bird watching. Because I'm fascinated by all the different flavors, colorful personalities and vibrant interaction of humans.

If you met me, you'd know I visit Sonic often and commute long distances for just about everything. I'd text ya, just because, and wonder how you're day is going.

If you met me you'd know I cook out of necessity. And if you're a good one, I'd be in awe.

I'd think about you inbetween visits and would always look forward to the next one. You'd know I treasure close friendships and consider you an investment worth every second of time.

If we met, five minutes wouldn't be enough. I'd want us to talk long and often.

--end--

{{Your turn!}}

how about right now

As I write, trees are bending and waving hard in a fast moving wind. We need these seasons in life. Wide open skies are gleaming promise of new flowers, buds, a garden growing and we all need hope.

With a slow start to the day, storms rising this Momma up early to watch weather roll in, I'm tired and behind. All the things which need doing are stacking high.

It's why I stop with gratitude and count. And now is as good a time as any. Set my footing on the right path, I need to number something other than a chore list.

I've thrown open the windows to hear the wind talk and nibble around the heart.

Warm hope carried on those unseen waves called wind. Once naked trees, now all green, bobbing under the roll as if an audience ushering in Spring, excitedly applauding in their commotion.

And I love how Spring feels to the soul. How a Spirit is described like a wind blowing and Spring is about resurrecting life.

So many ways life comes alive and us being invited in. Today is about choosing to notice and joining it, even when the day comes late.





With thanks and Ann,

--gentle and not so gentle winds which remind how season rushes by and I want to savor and notice
--watching others in their journey and how He's writing His plan on each of us
--rain, even in storms, to a dry and thirsty land
--a time of fellowship with friends, parks, field trips and many visits in between making a week full of fun
--marveling at the way homeschooled kids are creative, a-park-turned-Revolutionary-battlefield, complete with "paul revere"-ettes proclaiming "the British are coming!", "Brits", Americans, prisoners, guards and much more
--time to catch up and multiply all I still have to do
--that satisfied feeling of finishing a task
--Spring and all it's wonderful-ness

it's the stories we don't tell

{I'm guest posting at (in)courage will you join me there. This is a place where women can come and lift eachother up. I've personally benefited from so many words there. If you don't know about it, just pop over and browse. There'll be something there just for you and tell a friend. We really are meant to (in)courage each other.}

Those quiet things we keep buried are the parts we don't want in our story. But they are. And somehow they twist their way up or tangle us down and we try to live like they never happened.

But they did.

So we tell our stories.

This is about setting our stories free..... {click here to read}