The Give and The Take

How many times


Have I sat exactly where I am now

Sitting cross-legged inside my own Head
Fingers curled in the sign of Ohmmmmmm.....

Hear it? Closing your eyes can help.

Rather, fingers curled under from the weight of Soul-Pain, Stress, Anxiety, a need to Exhale

Fingernail marks permanently embedded onto long Life lines.



Nope. Kumbyah is not being played on an endless soundtrack

However maybe some Hillsong, some sort of Praise and Grateful and Acknowledging lyrics

Drums and Electric guitars are there, pounding. Yes, 80's come back.



Gratefulness is forward, lean deep into it...heck, fall over into it and wallow a bit

A pathway to better looks good on everyone even if it's rocky and steep and you glisten.



Music. My favorite genre is brain-stimulating melodies that produce His Truth.

Make me dance, Lord
Reckless abandon in you

These inspirations of Truth I need to hear, I need to seek more often than I do

Rejuvenation, peace, clarity

My hands raise, fingers straighten to intertwine with His

We come once again to an understanding that He has understood me

Since the beginning of Time

While my understanding of anything is but foolish

And He loves me

None Less and Nonetheless

But more and more each day.

I cannot begin to understand His love though

Especially His Love for me


Me. 

I say it. Chew it over. Let it settle in for a moment.
I like the taste and I know that I need to Let it settle in for life.
I say it over and over and over
Me. All he was, and is, and forever shall be
For Me.
All praise and Amen incessantly.
High and lifted Up.

He lifts you.

Up and up and up.

Amen.



Just me, sitting here inside my Brain while it talks and while it Listens

Wonderful brain - HOW do you do that crazy stuff

Self therapy of a nutty professor

(I know that's what you're saying, out-loud, right now).

Inside my own head, all sounds logical

Are you mature this time?

Nothing makes sense about Life so how can You? You're talking to yourself, after all.



Why not write this down? These thoughts inside your Head.
Head full of curls...starting to gray, life outside is waning on your body but inside
Life is full, abundant, ever-growing and on Fire. Pass it on. It only takes a Spark.

There's that Kumbyah....*wink*

It's been a long while.

Writing fills you up.

Why did you ever stop?



Why did I ever stop?


Fear. Expectations. Legalism. Controversy. Confrontation. Politics. Others. Timing. Strings.
Falsity. Ignorance. Willful. Sin. Questions. Endless Why's. Tears. Utter Brokenness.

Watching the world. Full of failed Christianity. Christians....SMDH. We suck.

Instead of Listening to Him. Reading Him. Watching Him.

Her Eyes were Watching God.

Watch Him. Just Watch Him. Just Wait.

Utter Amazement. A God-Thing you will See.

Faith. Growth. Love. Trust. Immaculate Father. Hallelujah.


All  Failure is minuscule in comparison to Faithfulness.

Conqueror.

HE SO LOVES HIS CHILDREN

Parents - We know these depths of Human Love

We cannot even begin to understand a FatherGod depth of Love

We are but Fools


He is Faithful to sustain the Gifts he Gave. Faithful to give the thoughts, words, Love in Truth.

Failure is made obsolete with the mention of Your Name.

Revive me. The words. The drive. The courage. The fulfillment.

Make me to write with Truth in Love and Love in Truth - they exist with each other or not at all

Spend me. Make others Wealthy in Soul, that their Eyes See you, Seek you.

Quench the Thirsty tongue. Give the ability to always Speak Your Truth.

Give courage. Give Life. Fulfill dreams.


God-Things.
Do them all.


Place Gratitude within me all the Days of my Life. Remind me every sunrise and sunset.

The Give of You is Greater than The Take of the World

Amen.

Six Degrees of Pumpkin Bread

This time just a short year ago, my Grandma Ellen was still with us. The Docs had already found the Melanoma in her thumb after a kitchen incident where she had slit the corner of a thumb open on a big splinter when replacing the contact paper in her kitchen cabinets. Her thumb became deformed and refused to heal so she finally went to her Doc after a few weeks, and the rest is the story of the end of Grandma's time on earth. Seems so bland, so anti-dramatic, so undeserving as the last chapter of a Grandmother's life.

And yet there it is.

The Docs told Grandma her kitchen fiasco was a lucky thing because it enabled discovery of the cancer early. We all were a little more grateful and festive at Christmas, feeling as though Grandma had the upper hand and unknowing that 2013 would find that so-called luck, gone.

January came and they took Grandma's thumb and all the Melanoma with it, so they thought. There was shock, denial, and a sense of numbness to life when the tests came back to tell a different story - that the cancer had not only already traveled, but had traveled to both lungs.

We were told we had four months, maybe a bit longer, to have our Grandma.

Living hours and hours away, the entire illness was surreal to me because my life was changing drastically at the same time that hers was ending. I rarely saw Grandma, but when I did, she never really looked "sick". She still laughed, smiled, and had that quick and wicked wit. She looked softer though, as though cancer was slowly deflating her, much like a balloon slowly loses helium; or room temperature imperceptibly melts a stick of butter. Then came the last few, quick weeks.

She was not my Grandma in body, only in her stubborn, feisty spirit when I arrived at her bedside in August. When we all had gathered previously at her house July Fourth, which was the normal, holiday tradition, she had just started oxygen full-time and had then looked a bit thin and pale to me, but I couldn't have guessed how quickly things would change.

I often wish I had a life that would allow for me to go, sit and interview people, much like in the movies or books. I would've loved to ask my grandma many things before she passed on...

*what's it like to lose your other half after fifty years?
•is it lonely every single night?
•what did you love most about grandpa?


Grandma received the diagnosis in January and I didn't see her until Easter. She looked the same at Easter, but she didn't look the same. I just wonder if the remainder of her life was surreal from the point of diagnosis. What began to matter and what stopped? I can guess a few things from what she left behind for certain people, a few crochet and cross-stitch projects she finished, and a few she tried but couldn't that other people finished for her after she left this earth. A baby blanket for her first great-great grandbaby; a 50th wedding anniversary cross-stitched piece for an anniversary a few years away still. These things mattered to her.

Family. Babies. Marriage. And the order those happened wasn't the most important. That's grace.

Now it's Christmas. The first without my Mother's father nor mother. A tough one.

Memories abound.

One thing Grandma always did was make two loaves of Pumpkin Bread for each child's and grand child's family at Christmas. Nobody picked up that task this year. I'm not sure any of us could do justice to Grandma's Pumpkin Bread recipe filled with her love. Made in her old, white, gas oven. Inside the foil pans she bought Family Dollar out of every year. A few of us talked about it. Just talk. Missing Grandma. And that regular plain pumpkin bread. Wrapped in cheap foil.

Nobody took up the task this first year. Too much pain.

As God works, there's been a teacher that has twice sent home a loaf of Pumpkin Bread with Gerald. It's yummy but it's not Grandmas. And that's not important. If only the teacher knew it makes me cry. It's a good thing. Cathartic.

That's the six degrees of Pumpkin Bread. Who would guess how much Pumpkin Bread matters?

Think about that the next time you think some small gift you bring doesn't matter. God's prompting doesn't matter. Food is full of comfort because it contains memories, life, and sustenance.

Gifts matter. Ripple in the pond.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

LOST

You brought Grateful to my doorstep, Lord, and You left it there for me to find.

I stepped over it, and around, for many a day.

One day I wasn't looking, and I rounded a corner to find it standing in my path and staring me straight through in the heart.

You, Lord, transplanted me into the midst of another sea. I was determined to just start building my survival raft, wait for the storm, and then hang on tight.

But the place You led me is wholly different. This place beats Your heartbeat, possesses Your eyes - eyes which see that which You see; they looked, and what they saw was me.

Me.
Just me.
Only me.
Alone in the dark.

They came to me, and they reached out to care for the wounds they intuited. They sensed my uneasiness to not anchor too quickly. They did no harm.

They offered friendship.
And there were no strings.

They offered help.
And it was without motive.

They offered quiet to let me be.
To just rest.

They surrounded me with unbeknownst silent hedges of lips to Your ear, Lord, whispers to Heaven. They gave me space,
and time,
and time,
and time,
and smiles.

Lord, I thought You plunged me into a sea - the one where I would certainly be lost once again.

Instead, You have surrounded me with women who are me.

I am them and they are me.

You gave me women who have traveled my road. You gave me women who knew how to trod gently and tenderly into this garden and slowly water this dehydrated heart in order that, I would not just be, rather that I would thrive within this new and unfamiliar soil with assurance and joy.

I see that I am not alone and cold in a lost and lonely sea; I've been placed exactly where I need to be - with my feet on solid ground, in the middle of a beautiful, mature, lush garden.

You brought me Gratitude, and laid it at my doorstep.

The Mandate

There are days

Days on end

Countless Moments

Big and SMALL

That I've missed

Countless Days

Not even looking

Completely unaware

Eyes closed

Blessings lost

 

                                                                                                                   photo credit: bing images

Today

At this Moment

No more missing

Days count

Looking

Completely aware

Eyes open

Blessings captured

Blessings Released