The first day of 2014

The new year. It's here.

Half of me says, already?
The other half says, finally.

I love the feeling of a fresh, new, start. The confidence that comes from knowing that He who began a good work in me, is just and faithful to complete it.

I look back at this past year, chalk-full of so much. Like shelves packed tight with books. I'm glad we have a New Years Day. It makes me take a moment to pause, to remember, to look forward.

This last year looms full of mountain tops, valleys and plateaus where I was not on the mountain or in the valley. It's full of things I never thought would happen. Mistakes I never thought I'd make, victories I never thought I'd have.
Through all the ups and downs, all my inconsistency, my doubts, my expectations there is One who has been faithful.

Christ.

He's the grace that's held my last year together. Looking to this new year I expect to see even more of His abundant grace.

My hope for this new year; my heart's desire, is to earnestly seek and truly know my Lord, my Savior and His grace, like I never have before. I want the nearness, the close intimacy that comes when we draw near to HIM and He draws near to us.

While I don't have a list of resolutions, I do have a few things I hope to do with regularity in the new year. They are:

memorizing, writing, reading, praying, listening, loving, and breathing.

I need to memorize more of God's words! I can easily remember quotes from a movie or book, but my repertoire of God's living words is shamefully small. This needs to change.  

I need to write more! Much more than I did this last year. I'm starting with a goal of posting on this blog and our business blog once a week, on Monday. {clearly, I'm working over-time with this post.} And then I have dreams of a cookbook and possibly a novel. Probably neither of those will be completed with the close of 2014, but they most certainly won't be if I never work on them.

I want to be in God's word every day. I want to daily be renewed and transformed by words that come from the breath of God.
I also just want to read more books this year. I allowed myself dry times of little reading material last year. This was a mistake, {as it always is} I need the creativity of other writers to inspire and feed my own creativity as I write; I need to be inspired and challenged by tales, old and young.

I need to pray more. I need to pray constantly. Every moment of any day I can approach the throne of a perfect, Holy God, and I can talk with Him. It's an incredible gift! But often, I neglect it. I want set times of prayer throughout my day, like a monk who shapes his day around the bell that rings for prayer.

I need to listen more. I'm so quick to talk; to spout my ideas and opinions. In my haste to say something how often to I do I trample over someone else? If I'm honest, often.

I need to love with Christ's love. I so often love people with my love that is small, temperamental, selfish, and really not love at all. I need to love the way God loves me which is faithfully, abundantly, selflessly.

I need to take more moments to just breath. In. Out. I need to be still and know that He is God. I need to revel in His presence. His peace. I need to just breath. Breath deep, long, slow. Grab hold of the moments, don't let them just run by.

I pray that you reach out and grab hold of this new year; that you revel in its gifts, large and small. Most of all I pray that you taste, feel, and know GOD like you never have before.

6 July 2012

Imagine a world where time is churning, constant motion. It stops for no one. It waits for nothing. In this world where times moves constant and loud, people are frantic to grab hold of it.

Like a train chugging by, time huffs and puffs down the tracks stopping for no one. Some people clutch their belongings in one hand; with the other they reach out to grasp the time that is moving past them. Like the pink rays of the sinking sun, time slips through the fingers that don't hold it tight.

Some people stand in a constant state of readiness. They jump at a chance. Grasping it tight because they know time won't wait. A man is offered a job as a newspaper editor. He accepts the hour of his offer. A tall boy with dark glasses asks a girl to marry him. She accepts immediately. Her train is here; she figures she better get on. She knows it won't slow down and wait. If she refuses him, he will ask someone else tomorrow.

A girl steps out into the cool of evening air. A field adjacent to her property is filled with the lights of hay trucks. Their metal arms clank and churn as they pluck the hay bales from the ground. Their headlights are steady beams in the glowing dusk. The sound of the machines is constant and echoing in the small valley. The girl realizes that this is the way time is. The churning metal groans louder in her ears. Time won't wait. It's on the move. She walks back inside with determination. She will write her book. She will write it now.

To some, this constant motion of time is terrifying. They stand at the station frozen, watching time steam by them. But they can't gather enough courage to reach out and step aboard. They're paralyzed by fear. By questions.

A man in a checkered bow-tie, clutches his small suitcase. The trains whiz by. They blow his hair in his face. People walk by him. Close by. They brush against him. He doesn't move. Very soon he realizes that the hair he's brushing away from his eyes is grey. He feels weak and sits down on the concrete. Time is closing in. But he hasn't done anything! He stares into the face of a train engine nearing him. He feels his life has been empty.

He perceives the train is not going faster or slower then it ever has. It chugs along. Constant. Moving. Grinding metal gears. It waits for no one. For nothing.

A page with words.

When I don't write. It's not because I have nothing to say. When I don't write, it's because I have too much to say. Thoughts crowd my mind like so many books weighing on old shelves. Thoughts. Fragments. They float mid-air. If I don't write, I don't give shape and form to these floating things. I feel that I fail.

Lately the thoughts come thick and fast. They fill the shelves of my mind so full they tumble off into a cahotic heap. When I lay down at night my head is heavy as lead because it's so full of thoughts.

I know very well my thoughts are not always, if ever, original. My small mind contains questions that have been asked by millions of minds before me.

But there's something satisfying in expressing something in your own words even if it isn't your original idea.

What is the good of having thoughts, opinions; ideas, if you can't give them flesh and bones in clear words? Thoughts without words are faceless clocks that can't tell time, croissants without butter, books with empty pages.

I feel as though I could lock myself away for a long time and just write. The words would spill reckless over the pages. In the end, I wouldn't have an incredible manuscript, something brimming with oringinal ideas. I wouldn't have a New York Times Bestseller. But what I would have, would be mine. It would be my thoughts and ideas made flesh.

A truth, I think we all know...

Life is a gift.

I think deep down this truth is written on the cavernous walls of our hearts. We know that life is a gift, but do we live like it is?
Truthful, I don't always live like this.

This morning I was walking into the pale sunrise of morning, out to the white barn, to milk the goats. The air cold, but not freezing. All around me the world, dressed in white, gleamed in the yellow light. The light touches the folds of the mountains with soft hands. Snow and ice crunch beneath my feet. Above me, the blue sky is dappled in silver clouds like the spots on a faun's back. They shimmer in the sunlight. In the west, dark blue storm clouds roll and churn as they climb over the mountain's peak, spilling into the sky above our valley. Though the clouds still hover far away, I can feel their energy.

I walked into this beauty with a mind full of our mortality.

We know a man, our neighbor. His body is wracked with the incurable Lou Gerick's disease. The disease seeps into every part of him. He can't walk. Now he can barely speak. We each have a number for our days, but his number grows smaller. We pray for him every day. God is reaching his heart. I don't think this man has every let God reach into his heart.

With my eyes full of light, I was hit with the truth in a new way.

Life is a gift.

It is a gift to be alive. To draw breath. laugh. cry. talk. write. love.

I've always known life is a gift, but I don't simply want to know.

I want to wake to each sunrise and breathe deep this gift.

I want thankfulness for life to spill out of me every day.

I want to live keenly aware of the number of my days.
I want to live keenly aware of the gift each one contains.

questions.

 

He is a boy. He is a man.

 He is a boy man.

Teetering on the edge of boyhood,

looking into the vast unknown of manhood.

 

 

His lips are pursed, wondering.

 

His eyes are open questioning.

 

 

 

He is a man who looks,

sometimes unsure, sometimes with questions into his future.

 

We all have questions.

In each season of life,

we ask.

we wonder

...

 

Miracle.

I sit in a cold barn, in my pajamas, on a hard bale of straw. I am sobbing out my heart to the Lord. Choking on the words that come from my soul through my hoarse voice, uttered in the still of the big barn.

Goats chew softly, their hay. I cry out. Weak pleading. All the ugly that is my heart spills out through hot tears and prayer.

My God hears. He knows.

He knows.

No one knows so well as He the depths of this wayward, sinful heart of mine.

How easy I see the speck in another's eye. How can I see at all? Logs protrude from my eyes.

Our human eyes are prone to see the inconsistency in others. We don't look in the mirror often enough for our inconsistency to glare back at us.

My hot breath hitting the cold air turns to clouds of fog. Hot tears barely escape my lashes before they feel cold.

I sob out loud to my Lord. I ask Him to teach me how to love those around me without condition. I ask Him to teach me how to live joy; how to live in the Spirit not in the flesh.

I hold out my heart, a throbbing, bloody mess. I ask my Savior to take it, renew it, make it new. Fashioning the ugly broken, into something God-glorifying.

He takes this filth I hand Him. He knows the dark depths of my soul.

But.

He loves me still.

This is a miracle.

After the hot flood of tears; the surrender. My Father sends me a peace. A quiet stillness in my soul.

Later on, as I bustle to prepare something delicious for Mommy and family, who are feeling sick, Mommy thanks me for working with such a joyful spirit.

I am taken back.

I have a joyful spirit?

This is not me.

The joy, it is God.

God inside of me. God chiseling away at the ugly scab of my nature; growing inside of me His tender Spirit.

Philippians 1:6
And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to comletion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Thankful.

      Dark clouds hover, thick; ominous. Rain pounds the saturated ground, creating puddles around the stiff cornstalks dying in the hibernating garden. Days come and they go, still the clouds bubble overhead sending rain down on our wet farm. Today breaks, clouds hurry out of the way as burning sun streams through. Golden light saturates our field. Illuminating every drop of rainwater. A million prisms are created in millions of rain drops. They capture gold sun, reflecting it in bright contrast to the heavy grey clouds that loiter around the horizon. Sun comes into our house, filling our windows with white light.

      Thankfulness streams into the dark of hearts, bringing warmth and light. On the eve of Thanksgiving, I am reminded that thankfulness is not something we exercise once a year. It’s a choice we make every day, every moment, every second.

     

      I think of Ann Voskamp’s  book, One Thousand Gifts. God used this little book to open the dark unthankful of my heart, exposing it to the light. If you haven’t read this book yet, you should. {Go here to order the book and read her inspired blog: http://onethousandgifts.com/ }

      The choice of thankfulness is not easy. It’s not what I  instinctively choose. It goes against the grain of our sinful nature. I say, “why, God?” not “Thank you, God.”

      The choice of thankfulness is a glorious one. When we open our hands to praise God, to receive everything from Him as a gift. Thanking Him for the good, the bad, the beautiful; the ugly. To stop saying why long enough to give thanks, opens the dark to let in the light. In His light is joy and peace.

Psalm 28: 7
The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to Him.

      Thankful, starts in the small, the everyday. We train our eyes to see God’s hand at work in the tiny things, so that we can trust Him for the vast unknown.

My thankful starts in the everyday common.

 

Thank you for butter.
For rolling pins.
For sticky, flour-covered counters.
For baking pie crust, flakey and golden.
For soap bubbles.
For rain pouring.
For cold wind blowing.
For singing hymns with the family.
Thank you for my dear family who loves me when I’m the hardest to love.
Thank you Jesus Christ, my Savior, for your blood to wash me.
Thank you Jesus for your love to a wretched sinner like me.

Psalm 107: 8-9
Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men! For He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.

Choose to live in the thankful.

A meeting about, writing.

      The air is cold. Frost clings to the grass, the leaves, the trees. Fog rises from valleys in towering mountains. It haunts the river; it whispers around the metal bridge as we drive over. Our hot breath collects on the car windows.

We are on our way.

      Once in the city, the streets are crowded and small. We turn onto a small road lined with small cars. We park and walk up to a brick building. A red sign hangs over the door. We step inside to warmth. A fireplace glows. Deep armchairs surround it. Tables coupled with chairs are scattered across the wide room. The floor is smooth and dark. The walls are warm and full. Music plays in the background, bright and cheerful.

      Pulling up seats to a table in the middle of the room, we wait for our fellow writer to come. He walks in quick with a book bag slung over his shoulder.

All writers are here now; ready to begin.

      We pull out fragments of writing, and pens. I have a RED pen, of course. The two boys eye my red pen as I make edits across their pages of writing. They both wish they had RED pens.

      RED is the color of the editor's trade. And if you're a writer you're inevitably an editor and you should own a red pen.

      The three of us come to the table with different styles, different areas of expertise, and different methods of editing. We are drawn together by the love of words and the conscientiousness of the gift God gives by creating us to use them. When you set out to use the gift God plants inside you, there's a responsibility to glorify Him as the Creator of the gift. With His strength, I endeavor to do this.

      I come to the table with a distinct aversion to over-used adverbs; my pen itching to cross-out superfluous words. Once upon a time it was terrible for me to cut extra words from my writing. It hurt. I loved each word. I thought they were each perfect. I know better now.

      My companions who sit at the table are very similar and very different from each other. Both admire, sometimes emulating, the rich wordiness of Dickens, Hugo, Hemingway, and Tolkien. Both are sticklers for correct grammar usage.
      One alphabetizes his shelves of books, and he thinks we should all speak like characters from Shakespeare's plays.
      The other, of my writing companions, is obsessed with correct comma placement and he doesn't love to read out loud.

      We set to work. Words fly thick and fast over the table. One of us reads aloud, he does all the accents. Scouring the page, we look for the missing punctuation mark, the superfluous adjective or adverb, the repeated words; the missing words. We halt the reader, sometimes after just one sentence. We rip the sentence apart, tearing it limb from limb, exposing gaping holes. Or, we pause to admire the flow and sound of a sentence. The writer smiles as the other two express sincere esteem for his work. There is humility and gentleness present as we critique and inspire each other in our writing.

      The huge clock on the wall behind us ticks away the minutes, the hours. Still, we talk about words; commas; quotation marks. History, stirring music, incredible books, worthy authors, all creep into our discussion. We sip frothy lattes from large white mugs. Our time runs out. Pens and papers are put away.

Time to say goodbye.

      I step out of the warm into the light of the setting sun drawing heat from the earth. I take a deep breath filling my lungs with cold. I feel encouraged, inspired, and invigorated. I have ideas for new things to try in my writing. Commas dance before my eyes, a little clearer now. I'm excited about the writing projects of my companions.

Most of all, I am excited and thankful for this vast world our Lord has created for us to discover and express in words.