How we can lose our fear

Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand. Isaiah 41:10

He didn’t know it, but when he said he was selling that first painting, I went and looked at my walls for a space. I loved the message…..”You are enough.” So simple and yet so powerful, as if God was speaking from Heaven drawing the eye toward that light, with a message for all the world. And then he said it was sold, but that he would paint one for me. I caught my breath. He did he know? Maybe it was all those “likes” on Facebook. I don’t remember saying I wanted one. But I did.

And it’s anointed, I know that. Because whenever God joins up with us to create something, the message always reaches more than who it’s originally intended for.

In between stammering and searching for words I told him that my Dad painted watercolor and how it was growing up with paints around. How he would put a black “X” through a painting we all thought was perfect but he didn’t.

I told him about how I have always battled fear, always been unsure of my own abilities, always looking for confirmation. But maybe I should be grateful, it’s the one thing that has kept me close to my Father’s side.

When we settled on the quote, I knew it was right. Isaiah is one of my favorite books in all the Bible.

Last night, Elaine stood in the kitchen overwhelmed because so much was over and she was afraid of relaxing; of not knowing where or when the emotion would finally release itself. I said, “At some point when you finally settle down and relax, you will wonder how you ever got through it all.” She said, “Yes, that’s what I’m worried about, that’s when it will hit.”

No more school, no more double duty rest home visits between runs. No more sleeping out on the porch listening to motorcycles cut through the night at all hours, screaming off to who knows where. No more sleeping with ice packs because it’s still 100 degrees and your Mom doesn’t even realize she is sleeping in your old room. No more battles over showers. No more watching her Dad lose his grip on this life and pass into the next.

No more. And it scares her to death. Because now it feels like she just dove off a cliff and forgot her parachute.

Yes, this message is for more than just me. It is for her too, as well as the artist who painted it. Really, it’s a message God wants all of us to get. It’s an open invitation to be inspired to leave our fears behind.

Inspiration, when it starts with God, spreads outward like ripples in a lake. When we create something with our own hands, it’s like He is inviting us into His personal sanctuary. To our surprise, we discover that the transubstantiation that takes place during the creative process actually has the power to give life. Whatever we make then becomes glory for Him.

“Do not fear, for I am with you.” Like a voice in the wilderness it beckons.

Thank you Duane for using your talent for His glory, and thank you Jessica for encouraging this, a little bird told me you did.

When God sounds like a Jewish mother

Days like today it seems like praying amounts to throwing a cup of water into the ocean. All around me, everyone I am close to is in some kind of crisis mode. I don’t mean things like your car wouldn’t start or you didn’t get the grade you thought you deserved on that test. I mean big things. Life altering things. Problems so big they actually swallow everything else up and leave you reeling, trying to catch your breath and recalculate the direction of your life.

Problems that eclipse all the regular normal day-to-day life as you know it.

Right now, if my heart could make a sound, it would be like that dove I hear crying right at this very moment outside this window.

I am in here right now, in my prayer closet. My little shed where so much happens. My back is having some kind of a spasm today and after trying to sit unsuccessfully in this chair, I grasp the table and stagger to my feet.

Suddenly I hear God sounding very much like a Jewish mother in my head. “So quit complaining, already. You just finished saying how great the need was, so you can still kneel right? Is there anything wrong with your knees? Are they broken? Oy vey….these kids I have to deal with.”

This alone proves how much of a healthy sense of humor God has. He had me there.

It’s not that I know much about Jewish mothers mind you, but I have my own Mom who never fails to remind me how good I have it and how others don’t when she catches a whiff of anything close to me feeling sorry for myself.

I glimpse the globe which for a reason that will soon be apparent, didn’t make it to storage. I slid it up to where I was kneeling so I could see it, this world that God so loves. I touched that globe, and then God revealed to me what it was there for in the knot of tears that formed around my throat and threatened to spill over.

Sometimes God uses props. I layed both hands on it then, and I prayed for everyone in my life, and then the world too.

I thought of Moses and his staff, Jeremiah and his linen belt. Me with my forehead now resting on the globe, in this little prayer shed, in this town, on this planet. And then I felt just a little bit like God must feel when He looks down on this earth, knowing He could change it all in an instant, waiting for us to do what we expect Him to. He has given us everything we need to help, to heal the ocean of pain, but too often we look to Him because it’s so much easier to blame someone else.

God is an easy target.

Sometimes I think we read the verse about how He so loved the world and we leave it right there in that past tense. The truth is, He is actively loving it still. He never stopped.

Each and every day when the sun comes up He proves it all over again.

All these things have to play out in each of our lives. Next year it may be something entirely different, but God will still be the same.

He is after all, the God of yesterday, today and forever.

And even if it sometimes feels useless to pray? It never is.

Because He hears every one.

And sometimes He uses props to prove His point.

Accompanied by Grace

We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps. Proverbs 16:9

This morning the moon led me to work, almost all the way in, and it was like watching a poem. It was one of those big yellow moons. The kind that always take my breath away. I greeted it and then I greeted God.

Sometimes I think He is hiding His face behind it. I can always find the face right away and know which direction he is looking, up down or sideways. This morning he was looking down and to the side, gazing on earth, gazing at me.

If the moon could flirt, he was.

He played peek a boo with me, peering between the big cement beams when I was going under the new overpass. Man can build his buildings but only God can keep this big yellow moon up in the sky. Just then, the London Philharmonic was playing a beautiful rendition in strings of a song I have heard before.

The thought occurred to me that this might be one of those moments I will always remember. The morning the moon and the music and God all worked together to serenade me.

I thought: Remember this right now, because right now the people you love are here, but there will come a time when they are not, and you will think of this moment when the moon and the music and God all worked together.

Yesterday, I called my Mom and Dad just to tell them I loved them. It’s only once you get older that you begin to see the sacrifices they made to raise you….to give you not only what you needed, but many times what you wanted.

While they went without.

As God and the moon dipped below the San Tan mountains I did a little intake of breath. I didn’t think it was possible to get any more beautiful but just then he, she, it did.

Right then she looked like an elegant lady taking her leave in a sequined gown of gold.

Goodbye moon, and thank you for accompanying me on this grace journey today.

I will miss you, but I know you have others to captivate.

Photo credit: google images.

The walks I never took

I have always been a girl who loves a walk. Often, while people are talking and socializing, I will be the one who slips out back. I want to know what’s in the back of the beyond. Even now, sitting at this computer, somewhere I hear the slam of a squeaky screen door and picture myself looking for that path that leads through the woods.

There are so many things you can do just besides the walking on a walk. There’s thinking, ruminating, wondering, discovering hidden treasures, finding God just to name a few.

Walking sets the mind free and takes it off its tether.

On this particular walk not long ago, I found myself wandering out the back door and being let further by a little dot of yellow in a sea of green. It beckoned me closer, and the breeze caused it to nod encouragment, as if I needed it.

Have you ever noticed that flowers and tree’s don’t need to talk? This one beckoned me without saying a word.

I found myself kneeling at the clover looking for the four-leaf……and for a moment I felt like the kid I used to be when I could hear the trees whispering and actually believe that leprechaun’s were hiding behind them.

I wonder, does imagination lose its power, or do we let it go?

And as I leaned in with my camera, she beckoned me closer still. I saw her intricate beauty and I wondered why she was there all alone.

God planted her just He has planted me.

She blooms for His glory all by herself, not even having to try. Maybe she knows something I don’t. Could it possibly be that easy?

I am intrigued with the idea of God walking. I am captivated by the thought that someday God will walk with me in the cool of the evening like He did His first kids.

God walks, imagine that.

And now I am thinking of another very important thought.

Of all the walks I have taken, I have only regretted the ones I didn’t take. It hurts me now to think of times when someone asked me to go and I thought I had better things to do.

I didn’t.

So today, if someone asks you to go or if your spirit tugs at you to step outside and walk down the road?

Whatever you do, don’t say no.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day……Genesis 3:8

Yes, He walks…..that proves it.

Choosing the Scars

If you asked me for proof of whether God exists and whether He works in the lives of people, I would ask you to peer into my life; for I believe its in the story of our lives where He does His best work. If you could have been watching, you would have seen a girl kneeling by her bed, the one with the ruffly pink chenille bedspread, the one our dog always peed on when it was fresh from the laundry, knowing even then that God was listening.

God has His fingerprint on us from the start, and either we are born with someone in our lives who confirms that or denies it. One thing I know, throughout our lives God keeps tapping us on the shoulder, trying to remind us He’s still there.

My life has been shot through with miracle after miracle, and so has yours. I was born 3 months early in a time when that was a real emergency. If we hadn’t been visiting my Aunt, who lived very close to Stanford Hospital when my Mom went into labor, I may have been returned to sender even before I took a breath.

Flash forward to aged 12 where I sat in the dermatologist office for the first time, a curtain of hair hanging in front of a face marred with early onset adult cystic acne. Around that same time, I walked down the church aisle and gave my life to the Lord, because I knew I needed saving in more ways than one.

If you took a slice out of my life during the ensuing years, you would see many good times doing things together as a family, but you would also see hard days when my Dad hated his job, and mornings when my Mom had to literally pray me out the door before the onslaught of the school day.

And even all these years later I can still feel her hand in mine and hear her voice when she prayed those prayers in the mornings by the light of the fire.

Those prayers carried me through High School where I so much wanted to belong but remained locked inside myself because I didn’t know how to be friends with myself let alone anyone else. Every now and then the acne was not as bad, and I almost felt free, but then it would come back and I would retreat again, inside my music and the dark scrawling in the notebook I carried wherever I went.

All those years the Spirit held me close, but those years also left scars that I didn’t let Him heal and because the mirror I used to view myself was a distorted one, I never saw the beauty that others saw, I just saw the scars.

Then, I went on a diet and lost a few pounds and got a few compliments. I became intoxicated with something I could actually control and I found that when I refused food that I really liked I felt a power I had never felt before.

I became my own superhero and 83 pounds was still not thin enough.

But God still held me fast. He heard the tearful prayers of my parents. One night I had a dream that was suffused with a golden light and when I awoke the next morning I knew that the demon had lost and God had won. I ate forbidden scrambled eggs and then the real work started.

In the dark mornings, God and I would get up and run when no one else could see me. Later, my Dad and I (and God) ran together. Rain or shine, we were out there. In the eighties, I joined the throng of women wearing “Flashdance” sweatshirts and leg warmers and traded one addiction for another.

And all these years later when I hear that song on the radio? I smile and remember those days when I got my health back and felt beautiful for the first time in my life ever.

And knowing God was with me all along.

Today, if you’ve ever wondered if there was a God I challenge you to look at your own life and count up all the things you’ve come through.

You are here friend, because He wanted you here.

Right now today where you stand, wherever you stand, He loves you. He has already partnered with you, all you have to do is accept His invitation to partner with Him. Years later, when you are looking back at your life the way I am looking at mine now, and trust me on this, it is the one thing you will never, ever regret.

And if my scars made the difference between knowing Him and not knowing Him? I would choose the scars every single time.

in Just-spring

By E. E. Cummings 1894–1962

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it’s

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s

spring

and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

When I first heard this poem by ee cummings I was so struck by the imagery of it, I never forgot it. I don’t remember what class I was sitting in or what teacher it was that made it come alive when they read it aloud but I do remember feeling like he got it just right.

I remember walking home from school in February or March after a cold spring rain, walking through puddles and seeing daffodils and tulips bowing under the weight of the water, and then how vibrant and alive the world turned when the sun came out. Each time, I would remember this poem, and the little lame balloon man. In my mind I could see him part walking, part listing from side to side with his big bunch of balloons for sale.

Good poetry, like good art or good music wakes us up, stuns us with the beauty of the world. That’s because it is God inspired. Great music….great art…..great poetry or writing, has the power to lift us beyond ourselves. If it is truly good, it makes us better.

It’s why people gasp and fall silent when they first see a true Masterpiece in an art gallery. Like nature, it wiggles you down to the core……takes your breath away and makes the world stop for just a moment.

Because just for an instant you almost believe you’ve found God’s pulse.

Thomas Merton, Psalm

The forms and individual characters of living and growing things, of inanimate beings, of animals and flowers and all nature, constitute their holiness in the sight of God. Their inscape is their sanctity. It is the imprint of His wisdom and His reality in them.

The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God by His own creative wisdom and it declares the glory of God. The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints.

The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God. This leaf has its own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonized by their beauty and their strength.

The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God’s saints. There is no other like Him. He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way. That is his sanctity.

But what about you? What about me?

Thomas Merton, Psalm

New Seeds of Contemplation

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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