Before bed, I read a verse about being cared for. I read that the shepherd takes care of his sheep overnight. Sheep don’t have to worry about being fed, of waking rested and ready.
I woke too early on an “off” and open day. The moment I sat with coffee, a thought came.
I’ll share it here as the “good thing” today.
Morning Thoughts
“What are you building and why when I’ve already established your dwelling place?”
I wrote underneath 10/26/23 and my children’s names in a thick circle, is this question.
I pause to consider why, I question the significance of “dwelling” and I imagine eye rolls and even laughter over the “depth of me”.
The more I thought of this question God gave me, I compared this world we live in, these lives we lead of striving and comparing ourselves just to stay “caught up”.
We don’t have to build ourselves up.
We may topple under the weight of the hurried addition to our first or second floor. We neglect the foundation and we envision mansions that represent our lives, when we’d be better as a quaint little three bedroom with a porch.
After all the building for appearance and to comfort ourselves in being enough, we just might find we don’t want to live here anymore, it’s just too much.
And that’s good
That’s a kindness of God to be shown that you are enough, more than and that although you feel worn thin and the structure of the dwelling of you is feeble and tired, there’s still a little corner that’s waiting for you to find yourself acknowledging the exhaustion.
You matter.
The condition of your body and soul, the place where God dwells even when we can’t find Him in the clutter.
Surprisingly, that’s a sweet place, the most beautiful place you’ve known all along.
Maybe, its name is acceptance.
I think so.
God gave me this today. He wants us both to know. We are enough in our dwelling with Him, we don’t have to wear ourselves out in building, renovating or leveling ourselves in destructive manners because we don’t think our “dwelling” measures up.
God has more than we can fathom in the place of us He long ago established.
“I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.” Isaiah 45:3 NIV
A sentence in my post about “Listening” that was all jumbled up sounding like wisdom but really only just a pretty forming of a sentence.
I answered her.
After rereading the blog post over again.
I’m not sure what I meant…
some sort of metaphor about editing a painting and redeeming the mess(es) you make because you rushed ahead or you were led to doubt because of comparison.
Maybe redemption over our mistakes as well as our challenges comes when we are brave in our approach to life in general.
Acknowledgement of God
When I scurry out to my daughter’s porch to see the morning, I say “Let’s tell God, Good Morning!”
The grandchildren listen, go along, unbeknownst to them, a seed (even if silly in memory) will pop up for them on occasion, maybe as adults, maybe today.
Today, I woke up and thought of bravery, a good thing.
This old dictionary I like says bravery is “the quality of being brave; fearlessness…magnificence.”
Magnificence seemed odd.
I flipped to the “M’s” to see that magnificence is another word for splendor.
Bravery, less than and at the same time so much more than a jaw-clenching choice, a splendid way of living, an opportunity to really believe this life you’re living,
have been given is splendid.
Bravery is accepting slow progress as better than rushing an outcome based on others around you. To be brave is to decide the acknowledgement you need comes every morning when you open your eyes to find the morning.
Bravery is knowing yourself, body and soul, good and not so great and choosing what helps you maintain it over what threatens to wear it down.
Saying no to that second glass of red wine, so pretty in the settling down evening place, end of the day.
Bravery is not having the chocolate pudding topped with salty pecans in your daughter’s pantry…adding crumbled cookies atop a peak of whipped cream.
Bravery is knowing that this innocent indulgence felt like rebellion and subtle self-destruction and that it may not feel the same for others; but, for you it was something other than a treat.
Bravery is attentiveness to the nudge from God’s Spirit inside you that says
“You’re getting too close to the edge, be careful, be still…don’t go on without me.”
Bravery is conversations with others in which you speak your peace and truth, not turn your cheek, close your mouth with just a timid nod, “It’s okay.”
Bravery is delaying good for better.
Bravery is expressing a tender observation to someone you love, knowing they need to hear it. Most often, I’m learning, this is to the adults I cherish, my children.
Bravery is saying,
“I love you.”
And bravery is believing in God, the Creator who chose to give up His Son, Jesus so that we’d spend eternity in what Eden was supposed to be.
Bravery is asking yourself (and others if you have opportunity)
Why are you afraid to believe?
“God always makes his grace visible in Christ, who includes us as partners of his endless triumph. Through our yielded lives he spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God everywhere we go.” 2 Corinthians 2:14 TPT
Bravery is telling your redemption story, often rambling and more often grammatically errant.
I saw the copper color on the carpet and thought, “penny on heads, yay!”
Instead, it was a piece of cereal, a circle shaped flake.
When I read the parable of the lost coin, I can see myself as the widow. She’s searching every corner, maybe like me had to find her glasses or maybe she resorted to rubbing her hand along the floors, the corners, the spaces where the coin may have landed.
“Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Luke 15:8-10 ESV
I’ve lost many things. I’m sad because a pair of earrings disappeared (twice, one time I found them) and I can’t find the one charm for my bracelet. It’s long lost.
More than those treasures though is the mystery that many events and interactions in my life, I have no recall.
No memory.
Someone told me after all these years, willing myself to remember, sitting in silence trying to recalibrate my brain,
That complex PTSD often results in memory loss. A chronology of hurt has this result.
Now, you may think this is heavy, sad, upsetting, even depressing.
No, it’s a gift, a joy to know that life is an invitation to simply cling to the joyful and to make more joy, if you can.
So, what is joy?
What is found treasure?
It’s found in listening.
Acceptance of every tiny moment.
It’s found in observing. It’s the evidence that who you are now is so much more important than who you were or what hard things happened to steal chunks of remembering.
The widow in the parable rejoiced.
Was it because she was poor?
Was it because she simply celebrated her not giving up her search?
Or even more, because she realized the essence of the truth of Jesus.
She mattered.
She was not one who’d ever be given up on.
Nor am I.
Nor are you.
I know the parable is about Jesus caring about every single lost soul.
To me it’s about joy.
About never giving up on being found by it and by it finding you.
I’m 63 years old with a timeline of trauma. But, not until today did someone say to me, the memory loss is because of what happened to you, it’s really just brain chemistry, neuroscience.
And the truth of that felt like a coin I’d been crawling around on my knees, scouring the floor to see
For a very long time.
Trying to squeeze the memories from the layers of my brain and all for naught.
Except the realization of the present and the chance to add to memories.
God is so good to me.
I surely don’t deserve it.
There are countless things I’ve agonized over not being able to remember.
I’ll never find those memories.
Maybe, though I can feel deeply the way those crises and celebrations made me feel and I can honor those times and myself by feeling all the feelings now.
There wasn’t time for a deeper conversation. There wasn’t the space nor would the talk about the state of my heart, my mind have been able to find space in all the other chatter.
Someone I love and who loves me and is wise, told me later on the phone…
“You looked so tired that day.”
And I did my best to decide whether to say that I was in fact tired, to share with her all the reasons of how I had just been pushing through
or to wait and see if her observation may have invited
a more beautiful conversation.
If she might have time to listen, if I might be brave to clarify. If she might be courageous enough to share her own heart.
Being honest is risky.
I try to recall that day. Was I exhausted or was I just me at 63?
Likely a combination.
But, wouldn’t it be beneficial in a loving way, I thought if she’d have said,
“How’s your soul, what’s on your mind, what’s causing you to feel unwell, what’s brewing underneath that’s about to boil over and you’re trying to keep it under wraps?”
“What’s the thing under the thing”
Then, I would have sensed an offer of hope.
This morning, before I threw off the covers, responded blurry eyed to a ding on my phone, I thought of this longing…to be seen,
to have a sweet conversation about why she thought I “looked so tired”.
I thought of Martha.
I thought of what Jesus told her and how women especially, decide even if in secret, “Mary was his favorite.”
And we know that Jesus was simple telling her to see her sister’s choice to rest as a better choice and still, I wonder…
Could he have elaborated, could he have spoken with more clarity and could Martha have used different language?
“And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” Luke 10:40 ESV
Could Martha have been more vulnerable?
Could she have simply asked the question that prompted warm tears on my cheeks today?
“Jesus, do you see me?”
We likely don’t know the entire conversation, Jesus beckoning her from the kitchen to sit beside her sister.
What if what he meant was simply…you seem so tired, I know your gifts are serving, working, preparing and fixing…
So, come and rest with your sister and I and if you’d like to tell me more I’ll listen.
Many beautiful conversations have been had with the one who pointed out what she saw as my exhaustion.
I know she sees and saw me.
We’ll talk about it soon.
So, today’s good thing?
Being seen.
Who can I truly see today and in an honest exchange allow them to truly see me and then in a conversation that offers hope.
On Monday, baby Henry was a tiny bit heartbreaking. He’s getting new teeth. He wanted me, wanted to be held.
Our morning walk required holding.
Today, he bounced his little feet and nodded his head. He was very happy in the stroller.
The news broke through regular shows because the President was about to speak in Israel.
I didn’t want Henry to hear it, sense it, see it.
I turned the television off.
Baby settled, we took off strolling.
And he was so very content, I began to filter recent conversations, a wide and varied assortment.
A strange thought came, I embraced it, a question…
If I were to talk as in TedTalk fashion, what could I contribute?
I made a mental list. You should too.
I could talk about:
How to supervise employees with helpful attention and kindness
How not to because you work best alone
How to forgive those who harmed you even though forgetting the wrong is not possible
How to recover from disordered eating and why the recovery is a constant decision not to seek comfort or self-destruction through food. Why it’s complex and invites patience with oneself
Why it’s important to be brave in your conversations with your children, adults or babies or teenagers. Why it’s good to be silent, allow them to throw their words like darts towards you as you sit still,
bravely listening, receiving.
How to look in the mirror, full on when suddenly your eyes are tiny and your body is dramatically shifting
Why rest is golden, why it’s okay to lie down in the middle of the day, why it’s peace
What children have taught me about prayer, always thank you’s, never give me now and hurry
Why I believe in Jesus and how I wonder why others are afraid to just believe.
How I know God is acquainted with every facet of me and the true occurrences that surprised me to say “See, I see.”
How to be brave.
How childhood poverty always makes you feel like you’re dressed in old dresses or too tight pants, inappropriate shoes
I’ve spoken in public on occasion. Honestly, without notes…only my heart for the cause for which I spoke.
It would seem I might be able to speak for and of myself.
Instead, I choose writing and I pray writing keeps choosing me.
It’s hard for me to drive in the dark, mostly the early morning darkness on back roads.
There’s no reason other than me deciding this is hard.
The congested four lane before the interstate, the winding two lane road to the country
Me, traveling out to the wide open space and all the others “goin’ to town” for work.
The headlights that approach, the obnoxious ones, I decide don’t care enough about me to change to dim.
It makes no sense to feel sort of stalked, sort of threatened, sort of unable to be sure of being safe; headlights coming in a way that feels like force always scares me, tells me I’m in danger.
The place that marks the “almost there” this morning beckoned me to glance forward.
A fence with overgrown weeds as borders made the perfect shape of a cross in one section.
My headlights landed there.
I’d never noticed before.
Morning Came
The grey blue sky showing no sign of morning until it suddenly, surprisingly did.
And there I was, safely cradling a baby safely as we stood steady on the porch with lingering love you’s to sister and mama.
And I thought, how sweetly I’ve been guided all my life.
She walked poised and steady in the center of the corridor. She must’ve been done with the testing.
I sat in the in between solo waiting space with just one chair. I heard her steps, anticipated my name being called.
Instead, her eyes met mine.
“Good Morning”, she told me and and I answered her in the same greeting.
She smiled.
Smiled and kept walking.
Carried on.
And I remembered a word that came in reply on a quiet walking prayer.
“It’s gonna be alright.”
The promise, very same promise as this morning in the confident smile of a woman in a corridor, a place for tests.
It’s gonna be alright.
😊
“Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” Proverbs 31:25-26 ESV
Mingled in a dream that included family at the beach as well as unfamiliar children asking to play on a trampoline, I am recalling “Psalm 90”.
The Spirit of God interspersed just that in a dream that included my mama being a given a healing prognosis, “Now, you’ll have a chance to really live!”
Maybe it was the beautiful and educational sermon on Sunday on heaven.
“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Psalm 90:2 ESV
Maybe it was the call from “Aunt Boo” my mama’s sister. She talked about crocheting. Maybe I tucked away the visual of her teaching my mama, the memory of their back and to sister chatter.
Who knows? Around 3, I woke and tossed and then recited mentally, over and over, Psalm 23.
Imperfectly still, after all these years of using this chapter to calm me. For some reason, portions and not the entire Psalm linger longer than others and I drift off to sleep.
Note the commentary
All my days have been a meandering sort of trail. A pause to consider, I’ve been in the darkness, I’ve lived in the dread, I’ve found myself off course because of conflict or circumstance.
David knew. He did too.
And so, his words aren’t ones of a perfect follower. Instead, a perfect “returner” to the place where he and God dwell together safely.
I used to believe “all the days of my life” meant the actual dwelling place of Jesus…heaven.
Again, instead…David is acknowledging and giving us permission to acknowledge the beauty we can claim as our own here…
As long as my lungs are providing me with breath and my heart is beating…I am dwelling with God, and He with me.
We are together.
I am known. I am seen.
I am invited to keep returning to rest.
Why Psalm 90 mixed in with a captivating dream of life getting another chance for my mama?
Psalm 90 is one penned by Moses.
It opens with this.
“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” Psalm 90:1 ESV
There were other people in the big bright room with my mama, not just my brothers and sister. My children were there too.
Psalm 90 closes with an acknowledgement of what had not and has not been without affliction. Moses offers us his prayer back then as a promise and prayer we can choose today.
“Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” Psalm 90:15-17 ESV
“Favor” here meaning “beauty”.
Return to beauty today.
Embrace grace. More than you expected, the grace you’ve been shown.
The grace that you know.
Continue and believe.
Dwell in peace.
“Now you can begin to live”, the words promised to my mama in my dream.
I wondered as I refreshed my memory on the prophet Jeremiah, why he’d been marked with the identity of the “weeping prophet”.
“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13 ESV
His call was to restore the people he loved to a relationship with God the creator rather than pursuit of other gods and things.
He wasn’t very successful. His success was committed obedience regardless.
Strange Waking Words
Jeremiah asks, “Is there no physician there? Is there no balm in Gilead…why then has the health of my people not been restored?” (Jeremiah 8:18-22)
On Tuesday morning, God woke me with a promise, “there is a balm in Gilead”.
A lingering cough and congestion with no other symptoms caused me to decide I’m getting older and I just don’t bounce back as quickly. Still, it was strange to wake with that very first thought.
Clearly, my heart was in need as well as my body.
Still, strange if it’s difficult to believe what you can’t see…that Jesus lives within us, the Holy Spirit…the comforter.
So, to be told, “Lisa, there is a balm in Gilead.” (just that clearly) was to remind me of the Healer of all my wounds, those already well and those in the process of true wellness.
I had no idea. I understand balm as sort of a salve like Neosporin but no clue about Gilead.
I discovered there’s no verse with this promise, only one that questioned why wasn’t there, why was there no balm?
And old hymn came from this same wondering of someone long ago…
“There Is A Balm In Gilead”
Traditional Spiritual
There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole, there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again. There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole, there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, you can tell the love of Jesus and say, “He died for all.”
So, I sketched a wounded and contemplative woman in the margin, the words alongside her…There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.
Lord, I was near enough to your heart to hear this the other morning. Draw me nearer, I pray. Help me to be a seeker.
Jeremiah penned the verses adorning well wishing cards at graduation, the ones that proclaim we all have a purpose and I wonder; actually, I believe he questioned his purpose when it didn’t pan out, when it seemed it nor he made a difference in his calling.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 ESV
There’s not always a straight path, life circumvents what we hoped would be our future or at least would give us hope.
Jeremiah wondered why there was no healing, no physician, no balm in Gilead and centuries later, someone penned the words to a hymn that promised healing, one that said, there wasn’t a balm then; but, then came Jesus.
And Jesus woke with me the words to that very song.
I had a dream that felt sort of silly. The blip of remembering was simple, I looked in the mirror and saw myself having a day of “good hair”.
My hair is super thin and greying. My hair and I have always had an unhappy relationship.
What an odd dream, likely birthed from two conversations.
The first, a fun exchange, the second an honest answer.
I arrived early for my appointment with the doctor. I had my information and privacy forms completed in advance. The receptionist sort of celebrated that and smiled.
“I need an insurance card and her I.D.” she added. I provided both and she said…
“Tell her to have a seat and we’ll call in a few minutes.” One last question,
“Does she have an emergency contact, is it you?”
I answered yes and sat back down.
In a minute or two, I went back to the counter and in a sort of hushed tone I said…
“I’m Lisa.” And she was clearly puzzled.
I added quietly still, “You said “she” and “her” and I’m just curious why…is this a new protocol?”
And then to my surprise, she raised her eyebrows and mouthed an “Oh”.
She didn’t think I was the patient, she did not think I was 63 years old.
We both smiled and continued to chat about age and wrinkles and I told her so excitedly, she had “made my day”.
To know that I had been seen in a different way was the sweetest thing.
The kindest conversation.
Not like one that questions your age in a flattering way; no, one with sincere surprise that I was the patient, not the companion to an elderly parent.
“Lisa” they called and I was escorted to the scales. I slipped my shoes off, had to step off and on twice, the nurse said the scales were “being difficult”.
Mismatch Socks
I acknowledged the seemingly unchangeable number was the same at home and casually said, “Good to know.”
And I had my check-up, scheduled another and went on with my day.
I bought a new bathing suit, one size smaller but seemed it may fit, lined in lavender and covered with painterly abstract flowers.
It was a bargain, really pretty.
Bought groceries, caught up with a friend and her husband who are grandparents to their second, a two-week old.
Then home to cook supper.
Decided to ask my husband a question, a sort of curiously brave wondering.
Not sure why, he’s super late to the game and needed a little education, but he decided to create a Facebook profile.
Now, he’s all in.
I warned him, it’ll draw you in. It seems he’s reviewed as far back as a few years ago, all of my posts, all of my content.
No worries, he’s often read this blog and he knows I can be a little deep, sometimes pitiful and I hope, always honest.
He mentioned a particular post of him recording a little song for one of our granddaughters on her little karaoke toy.
It was sweet. It was a few years ago.
Knowing he was familiar with my Facebook presence, I asked
“I post a lot about my faith, my struggles, my hopes, my learning to trust…The things I post are mostly about faith.
When you read those things, do you say to yourself, they don’t know the real Lisa, or she’s not really that way?”
Brave, right?
He answered, “No, not at all. It’s good that you’re that way. It’s good.”
Grace, right?
Just last night, I complained about something trivial and apologized for being “hateful” right away.
And last week, I came clean about my in general self-centeredness. The me that had become miserable and often, mean.
I’m learning to catch it quickly, see it for what it is, the enemy trying to taint the essence of me so that my light is too dim for others to see,
my story fading back to grim rather than walking towards the brilliance of light and living water worth sharing.
Healing from old mindsets is not a snap of the finger,
(I hope you know that)
It is a choice to choose the work of being a participant in healing, not a parader of our trauma as a reason to be hopeless or an excuse to be hateful, the darker side of you enveloping you.
A meal, a sort of gesture
When I bought groceries on the day my age was mistaken, I had in mind a gesture.
I cooked a meal for my daughter’s family, the meal (one of them) my mama was famous for.
My grandson and I sampled it.
It was lovely.
It was a small thing.
It came from that reservoir of grace God placed in my soul, the bubbling brook of mercy I don’t deserve, and the meandering path of my beautiful inheritance through salvation that I sometimes veer from because I get caught up in the before of me rather than the moment, the day.
And I find myself by the slightest ugly little pull, questioning the details of my life and I focus on what I don’t want to accept, the dark days of me and I’m prone to plop down in that dark dank place of not remembering good, only horrific
until I pray and count the gifts of today.
And I walk in the light, the place where my story, the lightness of it may give a little light to others on my way. And I notice and cherish unexpected light that came my way.
I felt old, a stranger blessed my day.
I felt hopelessly overweight, I was met by my own acceptance and a bathing suit that fit.
I felt ashamed of my self-centeredness. I apologized quickly and I cooked a meal with a nine-month old playing “drums” with a spoon at my feet.
All of my life, I have been loved.
I’ve often slipped and come close to falling.
I’ve been kept.
This is my story.
“The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.” Psalm 121:5 ESV
we run away from our discomfort... but it doesn't leave us. to heal we need to turn around and face it, experience it and once we truly do we are out of it. We heal and we grow.
2 Timothy 1:7-8 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. This blog is about my Christian walk. Join me for the adventure.
Lisa Anne Tindal 