Day 19 I am that wretch....

Nothing makes you feel it quite like realizing you've been acting like a spoiled brat in the face of the God of love and sacrifice. Nothing can mask the shame you feel after spitting on the blessings of a King to His servant. And to know on top of all the shame there is the stinging truth of the cross. A truth that is so evident to me right now on my face at the foot of it that all my tears can't wash it away, my heart is so heavy with sorrow.

You lift me up even through the tantrums, you carry me through the closed doors, you protect my safety while I'm cursing your name. And all of this because you love a wretch like me?

It is so overwhelming, so disturbing, so earth shattering to me. Your peace rocks me out of comfort and into a new light once again. This goes to prove again you speak loud and clear and with out hesitation through the distractions and straight to my heart and when I finally am stunned by your grace and I am quiet enough to hear the booming words " I love you, I love you, I love you" it brings me to my knees. Wash me.

Love,

me

Day 18 So much noise...

Did you ever wonder why life is so distracting? I have been the last 48 hours because I've had so much less distracted than usual. There is the obvious stress of my dad facing risky surgery, but the normal distractions- namely Josiah & Libby- aren't here with me. They are my favorite little distractions:) They keep me busy playing, hugging, thinking, cleaning, etc... These last couple days has me looking inward for lack of anything else to do, and I'll tell you it's scary in there!

Most of us try to keep ourselves busy to avoid this sort of thinking I would guess because it makes us so uncomfortable. So many regrets, so many open doors, so much hurt left unhealed- letting light into those dark rooms allows us to see all those things we've thrown into the closet and hoped to forget about.

Disappointment ranks pretty high on that list for me. Feeling like I could have done more, said more, been more... If I think on it too long it starts to crush me like a thousand stones on my back. A little while ago I heard something that in my 20 plus years of being a Christian and going to church I never heard. God is never disappointed in me.

This was such a foreign concept that it still stuns me. If you think about it though it's true- it is impossible for God to be disappointed. Disappointment happens when an expectation is not met. If God were to have been disappointed in us He would have to expect something different than what we did. Do we suprise God? Certainly not! He knows every hair on our head, there's nothing about our character that is going to catch Him off guard.

So sitting alone here I'm letting God take each stone from my back one by one because that's the best I can do for now, and that's ok.

Love,

me

Day 16 I can't hear you!

The house is so quiet this morning....except for deep restful breaths from my love curled up on the couch asleep. As excited as I am to get on the road and start our little mini-vaca I'm just as stressed and tied up in knots over my dad's impending surgery. I've been at this place too many times to count. Since I was 3 years old my dad has had heart attacks, strokes, DVT, flown to Geisinger, shocked back to life on several occasions, and now a major thoracic surgery.

I know he needs it, the latest trip to the ER nailed for me... the doctors were trying to find out if my dad had been in a bad car accident because his organs were so messed up. You see he had a hyetal hernia about 12 years ago that his heart wasn't strong enough to operate on and it's ended up that half his digestive system is now in his chest cavity encroaching on his lungs and heart.

We call my dad Robo-Pop, partly because of his Pacer/Cardio Defibrillator and partly because he seems invincible. From the first heart attack he said God spoke to him and told him nothing could hurt him, not while God still wanted him here. That's given my dad peace for almost 30 years and continues to hold him together through all of this.

Wish I could hear him speak to me, but it's hard to hear over all my doubt and stress. God, speak to me please, let your peace rest in me.

Love,

me

Day 15 A little poetry for a rainy day...

The rain is cold it makes me so tired and there's no sunshine to bask, just mud to be mired in.

Roots are stretching and leaves are swollen, grass is saturated with water drops fallen.

The wind is curling around every limb, through every space that you see blue in.

The warmth is all gone, the bitterness lingers, like evil outstretched witches fingers.

Oh how my desire for warmth consumes me, come like a blanket and send your peace through me.

Surround all my thoughts with the glow of your laughter, fill up my mind from the floor to the rafters.

The scent of new growth invades my senses as sunshine from the east reflects of the fences.

How is it that rain that brought on such cold have proven to fertilize colors so bold?

Love,

me

Day 14 Uh-oh, Jesus forgot something!

Children are unrelenting balls of energy with their own personalities, agendas, and hearts bursting with joy. Their imaginations never stop, until stifled. I do everything in my power to encourage creativity and free thinking in my kids. I aim to never just shut them up, but hear them out no matter how crazy it sounds to me. They are a little person and deserve to be heard just as much as I do... maybe even more.

You see, when they have an idea nothing stops them them from blurting it out- we tend to censor ourselves and that particular part of a kids brain doesn't exist until they are tainted by the world and made to think that what they have to say isn't as important to everyone else. I hope my kids know that what they have to say and think is of utmost importance to me. That way when they get older they have a good sense of themselves, free to express and articulate the way the feel and think inside.

I was walking Josiah to school one day and we passed by a church with a wooden cross displayed in the front yard. The cross had a white piece of cloth draped over it, which to us Christians symbolizes hope of the reserrection. For Josiah initially it meant nothing, but he stopped and stared at it. He said "Mom! Jesus forgot his scarf- we'll have to take it to Him in Heaven." I said "Don't worry Joey, He'll be back for it." "Cool, mom", yeah, really cool.

Love,

me

Day 14 Shoot for the moon, but you won't land on it.

Ugh... I feel unmotivated, tired, lazy, and stuck. My house is a disaster after the yard sale, nothing is in it's place and I'm way behind on housework. It's easy to feel like a failure isn't it?

It's not as easy to feel like a success. I'd like to think I'm awesome, but the truth is I don't. I feel like I fail at lots of things in life. Why is that? Well, I've come to realize in my life I shoot for perfection- which isn't all bad, but expecting perfection is unrealistic.

I loved Physics class. It didn't love me- but it was so interesting. Mostly at the end because our teacher would let us challenge him by asking him anything we could think of to be explained by physics. One of the things we learned about was the path of trajectory. In order to hit a target you have to account for gravity pulling down the path of the object you are hurling toward your target.... because of gravity you aim slightly higher.

In life, there is gravity-lot's of things pull down our best efforts-sometimes its circumstances, other people, or time. We try our hardest and sometimes we still miss our mark. It's frustrating and depressing. But why isn't it exciting? I mean we are learning what to do next time we try. Changing my perceptions has been the hardest thing about this new life in Christ, but there is freedom in it and for that I'm thankful.

Love,

me

Day 13.5 Second try:)

I love being an artist. I use that term loosely, I'm no professional. Actually, I think all of us are artists. God made us in His image and he is the ultimate creative being. Absolutely everyone I have ever met has a way to express themselves, whether it's talking, singing, painting, creating with wood, clay, wire, or metal... and that is art.

With every stroke of my brush I release my self onto the canvas, I think even more so when I sing. I am able to express emotions in songs that I could never portray in spoken words. God can be so different to me from day to day... my perception that is. I was staring at a mountain this afternoon and I thought- gee how many times do I look at the mountain and say "what a beautiful mountain" but if I were on the mountain looking down I would most definitely say "look at that view, it's breathtaking"... I guess it's where you are in life. Like I had mentioned in an earlier post about Monet's works of art. Everyone knows that up close they look like a smattering of color carelessly thrown on canvas, but if you back up you start to see the spots of color form shapes that make sense to our brains. It's something we can now grasp and understand.

There are periods in my life that are a mess and I don't think I'll ever get "far away" from them to see them make sense, and the truth is it may never make sense to me in this lifetime. I wonder if that's why heaven feels so far away, maybe it will take all that distance to see this divine tapestry's beauty.

Love,

me