For those who long for freedom

You feel grounded, rooted to this spot, and you feel like things can’t change soon enough. You feel discouragement nipping at your heels because you have the sense that by the time things do finally change it will be too late.

This is a prayer for those who are in the uncomfortable place of waiting:

For a change…..the crack of dawn in the darkness……for healing to come…..to get out from under that boss…..to not have to view the world from the window anymore. Maybe it’s the past that keeps pulling you back. Maybe it’s just one person.

You want to hit the open road and never look back because fighting the good fight is tiring. You don’t want to be the one left behind anymore, you want to be the one planning to fly off to fun without a care in the world. You want to get off the Merry-Go-Round and take a turn on the Ferris Wheel.

Maybe you’re in a care-taking role you never asked for, and you feel like you have been playing that role most of your life and you want another part in the play. Maybe it’s a parent who really hasn’t ever been there, and you wonder why in the world you feel you have to be there for them.

And even now, in their weakness, their neediness, their disease, their negative words still have the power to deliver a death sentence to your hopes and dreams, to rob you of every victory you ever almost enjoyed. But only if you let them.

Sometimes you wonder why God keeps them alive and you feel like it’ll only be after they’re gone that you will taste true freedom………part of that freedom will be the absence of the albatross of all that guilt hanging around your neck.

Stand tall, and know that God is fighting with you and for you today. Even now, it’s His freedom, His salvation that makes it possible to continue doing what you do. You have the living promise “that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Because of Him, hope has made a permanent home in your heart and right now, today you are a living testimony with a future filled with promise.

Hope flickers like a candle in her heart and this hope is what the negative voices have tried to stamp out again and again but the voices are becoming silent now because this is her time. The seed that hope planted in her heart has given birth to success, and no one and nothing can ever take that away, because now she knows she is worthy. Sometimes you must have the courage to step over the loss of that thing you never had in order to have the strength to move on.

Take heart, take hope today. He has already given you success. He is with you in the middle of wherever you are. It’s true freedom He gives and it belongs to you today!

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. Zephaniah 3:17

No road-kill on the golden streets of Heaven

It was laying there feet up by the fountain when I got home. E had called and said there was a dead pigeon in the garden and for some reason she couldn’t deal with it. This is the bravest woman I know. She wrapped up my foot when it was sliced all the way to the tendon and told me, “Oh, it’s not that bad.” She’d lived out in the patio room at 100 plus degrees so her Alzheimer’s stricken Mom could have her room. She’s also never met a vehicle she couldn’t operate no matter how big.

But from a young age, her Grandmother instilled in her a deep-seated reticence about touching birds: “They all have lice,” she remembers her saying.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized she must have meant a dove and not a pigeon; she gets them mixed up. She knows how I love doves, how I appreciate the backdrop of their cooing when I pray out in my shed. That’s why it made her sad.

I said, “I hope at least it was single…..not old enough to have a mate.” I have read they are one of the few animal species that mate for life; I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s a romantic notion anyway and one that makes me appreciate the fact that you hardly ever see one dove without another by its side.

“Use the shovel!” she said. I didn’t listen. It was surprisingly weightless as picked it up. I wrapped in lovingly in a paper towel, much like my own Grandmother did when my parakeet Peppy died on her watch. She saved it for us for when we got back from vacation; lovingly preserved in a strawberry crate coffin covered with a paper towel for its burial shroud.

I can’t imagine what my Mom thought about that………..

As I gathered the little form in my palms, I said a prayer of thanks to God for its short but meaningful sojourn on the earth; for the joy that it gave with its song in the morning, and at the peaceful close of day. And again I marveled that there will be no death at all in Heaven, not any. You won’t find any road-kill on the golden streets of Heaven.

As I said the prayer, I thought of how I have always loved the Native American’s deep-seated appreciation and gratitude for animal life, and the humility with which they took a life, knowing that the animal had made a sacrifice to sustain their own preservation. They never took more than they needed and nothing was ever wasted.

God created all life, and it’s through His grace that we all live and move and have our being. By His word the Heavens and Earth and all living things came into existence. Let Heaven and nature sing His praise:

He appointed the moon for seasons;
The sun knows its going down.
You make darkness, and it is night,
In which all the beasts of the forest creep about.
The young lions roar after their prey,
And seek their food from God.

Psalms 104:19-21

I leave you with this Lakota prayer I found today……it’s a good meditation for it shows us how small we really are in the realm of creation, but also, how very loved we are. How thought of by God himself. Not a sparrow (or dove) falls to the ground without Him knowing…….

Oh, Great Spirit,
whose voice I hear in the winds
and whose breath gives life
to all the world, hear me.

I am small and weak.
I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes
ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made
and my ears sharp to hear your voice.

Make me wise so that I may understand
the things you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.

I seek strength, not to be superior to my brother,
but to fight my greatest enemy – myself.

Make me always ready to come to you
with clean hands and straight eyes,
so when life fades, as the fading sunset,
my spirit will come to you without shame.

– Chief Yellow Lark, Lakota, 1887

The Long Way Home

The day I left my hometown in 1992, there was disorder and chaos and a big moving van outside my apartment complex, and my boss pretending to organize it all. I was on the cusp of a grand adventure, moving away from the hometown and family that I loved; the place where I had always felt secure, yet at 30 years of age, I had never lived away and I felt it was a good opportunity to do something radically different.

I left behind a husband recently buried, and a lifetime of memories. Mostly all good.

It was a move to the high desert of Arizona, with the promise of pine trees and mountain tops and a bit of snow.

Two cats yowling in carriers across the desert in driving rain that came from nowhere, all these years later and that is one of the memories that stays.

That, and my Mom with tears flowing and a heart breaking for a girl that she could no longer keep safe. And a Dad trying not to cry but not succeeding. She carried out to me her most precious possession, the Bible we shared together. An old tattered copy of “The Way.” I still have it, all these years later; with both of our notes co-mingled on hope filled, love filled pages.

We built a dream home, E and I, because back then it was as inexpensive to build as to buy, so why not? A dear, sweet couple named Mr. and Mrs. Bott signed over the deed with a handshake and fifty bucks. A three-story house grew up on that lot. My room was beyond custom-made French doors on the very tip-top, and when it snowed it turned into a snow globe. If I opened my windows, I could almost reach out and touch the tops of the pine trees and in the dark early mornings an owl would hoot.

But there, even in that magical place of beauty, I never felt quite at home.

I discovered that you can’t rush healing by building a dream on top of sorrow, especially when you’re running away from the only One who can heal you.

Even so, God jogged along beside us. He touched us through some very special friends we met there, and a little brown Presbyterian church.

Then that dream died. None of our boss’s promises rang true and he stopped paying his business taxes and all of a sudden nobody was sure they had medical coverage anymore, and he started storing food and ammunition and got kind of crazy. That led to another move and a wonderful opportunity at a big company in New Mexico. It was a terrifying round of interviews, but we both landed jobs.

In Arizona, I was a small town girl in another small town, but Albuquerque was something completely different. I became swallowed up in a huge company and I floundered in a land that looked mostly like a brown paper sack. It’s only now, with some distance behind me, that I can see that it had its own brand of magic. My Mom came to visit and she was mesmorized by the clouds, said she’d never seen any quite like it.

We found a house in the exact neighborhood I said I wanted to live in. It was hilly and pretty and my boss lived right down the street. At night all the garage doors would open and swallow up the people. Nobody played outside, not in the front yards anyway.

Despite feeling lost in a giant corporation some good memories stand out from that time. Of bright-colored balloons against the sky, so many it was staggering, and my brother and sister-in-law who came for the Fiesta, all of us thinking that she was free of cancer then. I remember laughing together over icy cold Coronas under a tin roof at On the Border as the thunder rolled.

And God spoke quietly to me in the sun one day as I cracked the cover of Philip Yancey’s book The Jesus I Never Knew. That’s when I started my journey back home, back to Him.

Arizona beckoned once again with a job transfer, and another move back to a place that I considered closer to home…….it was back across the desert, with the same two cats, older now. And we landed squarely in the arms of Grace when we found a church we could truly call home.

It was peace, and grace, and prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit and traveling that full circle that made me realize that the only one I could truly trust to bring me home to healing was God, and He never left.

And of all those beautiful places, it’s this humble, manufactured home in a senior park, the one that surprises people when they walk in because it looks nothing like that preconceived idea………is the one that truly makes me cry at the thought of leaving it. This place where I pray, where I pour out my heart and He listens.

This place where a blog was born, and two cats lay buried and two more are now getting to be old men. Where the clouds roll in on summer afternoons and the thunder rumbles. Where the doves coo and the quails cry. Where we dealt with E’s Mom and the Alzheimer’s and her Dad’s death, this place is where we most feel like home because it’s where the river of His grace has carried us.

Each day, I wake up to a miracle because now I can finally appreciate the beauty of the journey.

And I pray for the grace to be ready for the next move, for there is a stirring within me to go back to the place where I began; to end my journey there. I know it’s faith that leads us all home, and I am seeking God’s face for whatever lies ahead. I find myself in a peculiar place in this journey, that of being afraid to leave and afraid of not leaving soon enough.

But maybe that’s not a bad thing, for if I didn’t have the fear, I wouldn’t need the faith.

Please join me over at the Atlas Girl Blog Tour to help celebrate Emily Wierenga’s book launch of Atlas Girl today. It’s a must read!

When it’s easier to label someone than help

Hey you, man on the side of the freeway with a sign.

What are you?

A fake, a phoney?

Are you playing us for a fool or are you really homeless?

Really poor?

Really a disabled veteran?

I want you to know, you haunt me.

Driving by later at night, I see you are no longer at your usual post by the freeway exit and neither is your friend.

The one whose turn it is to hold the sign while you wait in the shade.

I wonder, where do you sleep?

Where are you right this minute?

And is it my job to judge whether you are really what you say you are?

You shame me.

You teach me how far I still have to go in my faith journey.

I see you everywhere, and everywhere I wonder.

What…..who…..how you are and how you ended up there.

I just want you to know……

You haunt me.

And I am thinking that Jesus probably haunted a few people too.

Matthew 25:35-40

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’ Matthew 25:35-40

photo credit: creative commons via flickr Ed Yourdon

Evening Falls……

I sit, long after I should. Everything is set aright, lamps off, doors locked, and I can feel the morning pressing in, even though it’s still across the world. It is creeping up, as it is past nine. The alarm will go off at 4….just 7 little hours away.

Still, something keeps me up. Maybe its the way the party lights shimmer against the window, their color the only thing alive here in the quiet night. They seem to whisper a promise of parties come and parties gone and parties yet to be. Pinterest calls me but I tagged teamed that already, and Facebook as well. The cats are even settled in their nightly places, their eyes know things that daylight doesn’t quite understand.

Times like these make me savor the last shreds of what’s left of the day. I contemplate what it means to be here now, alive, breathing listening for every night noise. It’s an amazing thing to know God’s up there seeing everything at once. Seeing the orphan in Haiti, the tears of a mother in Africa who can’t feed her child, the praying minister deep in the silent halls of a church in China, and the over-indulged and the overworked and starving here too.

I fight sleep and I don’t know why. I guess because I am trying to hear the world like God does. I hear….yes, but only when it’s quiet.

The grace that leads us home

Every now and then, when I think that maybe I’ve come to the end of my words; where I think I might even quit blogging, I have a morning like I had yesterday. For no particular circumstance or reason I could think of, I felt bouyant. I didn’t walk, I floated. I said, “Good Morning” to most everyone I saw and I really felt it. I looked in their eyes and I saw that my joy ignited something in them. It was infectious.

I call this feeling resting in God’s sweet spot. The Bible defines it as the “Hope” that lies within us. Hope with a capital “H.” He gives me those days, those moments when I least expect them, and that’s when I know that there is no possible way I could ever stop writing about it. The Bible says always be ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within us. This hope is what the world needs more than ever “………but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; 1 Peter 3:15

When you are awash in gratitude you want to tell everyone why; so much so that you can’t keep it from flowing through your fingertips. It’s a natural reaction of the hope that comes from the assurance of knowing that ultimately, it’s Grace that will lead you home. Nothing can replace that sweetness. That hope gives way to torrents of gratitude that become the backdrop of a life walking hand in hand with our Savior.

As I went down to get coffee I thought, here I am all these years later in this good job where God has placed me when I had no clue what to do with my future. A small town girl with no degree who long ago had her life drastically rearranged by sorrow has now been here 18 years. All those times when I had to duck into the bathroom stall to pray, to even get in the door, he heard me.

It’s amazing how He’s provided for me. Even when I made bad decisions……veered wildly off His path, given way to fear, despair and worry. All along the way, He has been by my side. He has taken those little seeds of faith and watered them with my tears along His own mixed in and grown a garden path thats vibrant and rich.

It’s only with a little bit of distance that we can see that our road has truly been paved with grace. And it’s that grace that will lead us Home.

It’s the fruit that the Apostle Paul talked about, the fruit we reap if we don’t weary and the knowledge that none of heartaches were in vain and that to your surprise is the knowledge that you’ve overcome the world right along with Jesus.

And He’s given me a best friend to laugh with, share with, walk along this path so I don’t have to go it alone. Someone whose own life has been paved with grace as well. The Bible places a high value on Godly friendship:

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (or sister). Proverbs 18:24

I am feeling this grace today, friends and I want to share it with you. Call upon the Lord today, and begin your day with gratitude. Before you know it, the counting with become a way of life that will stay with you no matter the circumstance.

The Me I See

Sometimes, when I am outside of myself looking in, I see the real me not the one I have imagined or invented. And sometimes I don’t recognize that person talking, smiling, interacting with others. But there is someone else I see, just on the fringe of my consciousness, just outside the ring.

Sometimes she hides in the shadows waiting for me to find her, but sometimes she dances into the light just long enough for me to get a glimpse, then she jumps back, ripples of laughter in her wake.

She beckons me with a wave of her hand and when I finally join her, that other me, the one that happens when I am still, or creating, or caught up in catching the stream of life, or praying, that’s when I get in touch with who I really am. I guess when I lose myself is when I find myself. Jesus said something along the same lines. He said, whoever tries to save His life will lose it and whoever loses His life for His sake will find it.

The real me is the one I find without trying. That’s the me I want to be all the time. The me that’s not afraid to bloom, right there in the open.

I most like myself when I stop thinking about how others perceive me and just be the me God created. In doing that, I enter into Creation with Him and agree that His plan is good, and that I am good the way He made me, doing what He created me to do.

That’s when I can almost hear the stars sing.

Living starts to be authentic when we let our masks drop. From ourselves…….from each other……and from God. When we no longer have to be afraid to speak for fear of not being loved. Cradled in the circle of grace…..that’s where we all want to live.

When I stop trying so hard to be what this world wants me to be and be the me that God made, there’s a resurrection that happens. In finding the real me, I discover that I am fearfully and wonderfully made by a God who loves me. Running into myself, I can’t help but collide with God too.

This is what Jesus said about that:

I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10: 9

“For he who finds me finds life And obtains favor from the LORD. Proverbs 8:35

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. John 14:6

When we find Jesus, my friends, we find life the way it was meant to be lived. We find life, hope, truth; everything that has ever or will ever be good. We find it all when we find Him.

Prayer today: Thank you Lord, for loving me, the real me. Help me to see myself the way you see me. Help me to fall in love with me each and every day, for it’s only when I love and accept myself that I can love others the right way. Help me to forgive myself fully every day for failing myself…..You…..others. Help me to love more. Thank you for the joy I find in creating, for it’s where I can find You. Cover everyone in my circle with Your peace and grace today. Bind us together in love, Lord. Amen.

When its still waters you seek………..

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul……”

The other day I awoke with a feeling of disquiet, of unrest. I felt like a rubix’s cube that someone had tried to fit back together wrong. Or that maybe there was a piece missing. I carried the feeling around that whole day. I was craving peace and still waters but I wasn’t sure how to go about getting it, I just knew I wanted it…..needed it.

Living the Christian life, we know those days will come. The best part however, is that we know they won’t last. We carry a living hope that refuses to let us despair, for we carry Christ wherever we go. The Holy Spirit rests deep within our soul. He is the still water we seek, and though at times the turbulence of this world rocks us, sends uneasy ripples in any number of ways, we need not worry.

Yesterday in prayer as I opened the Word, I felt those ripples begin to quiet as I read the words, fingered through those pages in the early hours. After awhile, I felt their calm assurance slowly begin to fit the pieces back together. I sensed a hope as I closed my eyes and once again meditated on those quiet waters. I felt Him start to restore my soul.

Because we need that, each day, don’t we?

The world rips us at the seams. People do it too, with hurtful words or actions tossed carelessly in our direction. The world is full of unrest, but here in this calm, in the eye of the storm, He restores us. He lets us know that no matter what happens outside.

He will be here with us on the inside. Where the still waters lie.

He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows. Surely goodness and loving-kindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 23

Photos: Gilbert Riparian Preserve, Gilbert Arizona, and The Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island, Washington

There are places…….

There are places you miss like the face of a loved one…..I know this face. Years full of memories have attached it to my soul, so much so that it has become not just a place, but part of who I am. I see it and they all come flooding back like the mighty Merced that cuts a powerful swath through this valley.

If I close my eyes, I can feel the spray of this fall where one day near the top my hat took flight. And leaning over from the guard rail I saw it perched on a ledge below. The wind caught it again before my Dad could rescue it because he almost went. The wind was God that day.

And here is where the coyote trotted through, meandering one day in the hush of a quiet morning. I stopped still and watched him, a living prayer on noiseless feet in his space, in his element, not mine.

And this…….as we walked along the meadow. I had been here for years and never chanced to see this splash of pink. A day in early May when we walked in that dreamlike place. How many years have we walked this meadow and wondered aloud how it would be to live there in one of those little enchanted houses…….as close to Heaven as we would wish for here.

I remember how happy Lauryn was when “Blackie” came out to greet us there on our walk…….there in that frozen time.

Heaven has hoses……and though I smile when I see these, my heart aches, my throat swells with lost time. Yet even so, my heart rests in hope knowing I will be in that place again someday, and maybe soon.

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. 1 Corinthians 13:12

I regret not having my good camera yet that year when we visited Yosemite, but I am glad I got these.

Things I remember…….

Here are some things I remember. Waiting in the car while you ran in to the store, and you always brought a treat. Usually M&Ms, peanuts or a plain Hershey bar. And falling asleep in the theater when I was very small, usually to a James Bond movie. You bought me Flicks candy in the big dark lobby…….I remember the game we always had, the one where I put my hand on the side of your face a certain way and you’d make a growling noise, like you might bite.

I remember stopping at that little roadside store where they had those little “grab bags” in a bin. You always brought us one. I remember begging for stories, the ones you tell Lauryn now. You told wonderful stories you made up about a green light in the dark and a little black kitten. I remember you always complimenting me, whatever I did you were proud.

I remember the fishing trips…..

I remember days at the public pool, the spit pool you called it, and me clinging to the side and you holding your arms out…….you never failed to catch me. I remember how we always used to get in trouble at church for laughing. Mom would give us the glare like you were the kid too. I remember you always the leader on the hiking trail, encouraging us all forward because the view from the top was worth it.

It always was, it still is.

Thank you for filling our home with love and jazz and art and for introducing me to the joys of writing and poetry and haiku. Thank you for years and years worth of walks, and talks.

You will always be our fearless leader, Dad. It’s this guy I still see.

Happy Father’s Day…….From your girl.

Lori's Prayer Closet

"And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done is secret, will reward you……"Matthew 6:6

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