Where your steps have shown themselves level, your progression easy and sweet.
This is the way.
Keep it easy.
Little landscape Christmas ornament thoughts:
I’ve been asked to teach (I say guide) a landscape workshop and so, today I was thinking of how I’d start…
“Decide what you want bigger, the land or the sky and then we’ll start.”
I recognize that’s simplified, or is it?
Paint from your heart, layer color and take color away. In the end, you’ve painted what is you and yours.
Second thought.
Random, I know.
Someone who loves to play the piano or guitar or gets joy from juggling (yes, I thought this) doesn’t stop playing because no one paid the price of admission to the show.
What shuts down creativity in less than a minute? Me, getting too high and mighty or me, pouting over lack of attention.
“Stay in the middle, middle, middle…” my granddaughter and I made up a song.
Not only to be safe on the country road, but because the view is clear, we get to follow to the end where the sharp curve sheds the straightest beam of light.
We walk to the pretty place, the beautiful completion.
Mid-September mornings are striated light on the thick green floor. The mysterious vine spills over, bent branches scattered with once purple blooms now fading to lavender.
The season is changing, the blooms done with their blooming and I’m torn between acceptance and longing for longer.
Does hope have a season? Will we need to wait for it to make sense again? Will I embrace the soul of hope and not pack it away like a summer dress, move it to the back of the closet, knowing it’s there and yet wondering if it makes sense?
I greeted someone this morning to ask a favor and I began with, “Good morning.” Ready to send the message, I paused and rewrote it
Adding, “I hope you’re feeling hopeful this morning.”
Hope is important to my friend and I.
Weeks ago, I typed a message more like an essay telling someone jolted by bad news that we don’t stop hoping, we don’t give up on hope.
We don’t “put off our hope”, don’t defer it like asking for more time to make good on a debt or commitment.
We don’t procrastinate hoping, I told her because that makes our hearts even more broken.
Instead, we keep hoping and we see the beautiful bloom, the tree of life.
Fulfillment.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12 NIV
I hope you’re feeling hopeful this morning.
“But may all who search for you be filled with joy and gladness in you. May those who love your salvation repeatedly shout, “God is great!” Psalms 70:4 NLT
I hope you remember all the times you’ve seen hoping bring fulfillment and I hope you will believe, believe again or simply start hoping it may just be true.
The older I grow, the more I know smaller things matter most of all.
A quilt your grandma made, a way of prayer that waits instead of begging and a sense of listening only age can grant you.
It’s no secret, I love words and I pay attention to their timing. I write first thought prayers every day.
Today, I thought of sorrow.
A word describing the emotion of heavy grief, loss, regret or dismay.
But, it wasn’t that way, felt softer like another favorite, “melancholy”.
I remembered a time a confident colleague challenged my assertion
“Everyone has a secret sorrow.”
He answered with, “Not me, I had no hardship or regrets at all.”
It puzzled me. I suppose it’s possible.
Not for most of us. Most of us long for different stories, past and present.
I believe it’s good to say so.
To those you love and trust or maybe a safe and objectively trained professional.
Or just a prayer.
Father, I surrender my sorrow. I will walk with my head lifted and my feet steady in your protection, your provision and the fulfilled promise of the redemption and unrelenting grace I know.
Amen
Secret or spoken sorrows become hope and healed joys when we believe it can be so.
What surfaces when you allow yourself to sit a minute in your thoughts?
Surrender what surfaces. We have a God who listens to our private prayers, whether sorrow or song.
Months ago, we reintroduced ourselves in the parking lot. They were a family. She had a baby in her arms and another on her hip. The oldest, a boy was clinging to her legs, locked arms holding with all his little might.
A man stood by. He allowed our brief catching up, listened as she answered timidly, not meeting my eye, that she was okay. I watched all of them pile into a tiny car and slowly drive away.
She was a tough one, struggled to make up her mind that life could be better. She didn’t stay long, only enough time to bring her tiny firstborn into the world.
Then, she left the shelter, starry-eyed over her aims to try to have a “family”.
The next time I saw her, she was running the register and she saw me before I saw her. Face down and eyes of a child who’d been discovered in the wrong, she tentatively said hello.
Again, “Is everything okay?”
“Yes.”
“I’m working here now and I like it and the babies are okay.”
Smiles and see you soons were exchanged.
Yesterday, she sat on a pale pink bicycle, its basket loaded with groceries. I hurried up to see her. We talked about her bike, how much I loved it, old fashioned cruiser, no gears, simple and sort of cool.
She told me she needed it for work and how she’s not too far away but had been missing work, just came back after her daddy passed away.
Her face was stoic. He had been in a bad car accident and he never got better. I told her I was sorry.
I noticed the box of “Nutty Buddies” and thought she better get home, but she kept talking and the resolve despite her grief and trials was in her eyes, meeting mine and wide opening up with determination.
She told me she’d seen another of the shelter’s residents, this woman I thought had successfully moved on in work and raising her daughter.
She told me, “No, I don’t know what happened.”
“Well, I hope I see her too.” I said as I thought of how I wished she’d been able to stay stable, to stay in the “better than before”.
We said goodbye and I watched her cross four lanes of traffic towards her home.
I wondered about the man/father of the babies. I wondered about the other woman who has fallen back into hardship. I wondered if I should have driven her home.
For a second, I thought about the one I thought would make it, the old language of programmatic inputs and outcomes and for another second, I felt I’d failed her.
Then thought of a word God woke me with a few days ago, “shifting” and how everyone grows and then maybe dries up, withers and then along comes a little grace and rain and look it’s breaking through the hard earth, the left alone to rest soil.
Growth.
We shift to better in a moment, an hour, a day or sometimes after a long hard season of barrenness or mistakes of our making.
Acquiescence, a beautiful (even if reluctant) acceptance that may not make sense to others, but brings light and peace, resilience to our faces.
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7 ESV
“Blue Ribbon Girl” was painted a few years ago to remember the college girl who left art and after a bit of life and shifts, is finally home.”
Last week, the horizon greeted me like a welcome rescue as I turned to the skinny road from the wider, more busy highway.
Both frustrated by my anxiety over the big white ghost of a Tahoe with headlights like a cat following me closely all the way and determined to breathe and be okay, thumbs on the places 4 and 8.
So, the sun rising wide over my granddaughter’s home?
Redemption. Relief.
A whisper, a sigh.
I could go on.
“Dew on the Roses”, 2019
Thoughts rose up from an article or post I’d skimmed over, the question posed,
What is your Gethsemane?
Meaning, I supposed,
What did you ask God not to allow that He did anyway?
At first, I thought, how can we dare to compare our falling apart and asking to be spared with the request of Jesus?
Then, the mental list developed.
And then, another in contrast.
“Things that happened despite the things that happened”.
Angela’s Bible
I turned the ancient wisp of pages to Mark 14 in the Bible with penciled “sermons to self”. Angela, an educator from Bibb County, Ga. added her wisdom and thoughts back in 1937, became mine because of an estate sale.
Curiously, a page is torn down the middle.
I think now of the veil torn in two.
The darkness midday.
The verses that describe Jesus being anointed with a costly ointment by a woman who was chastised is no longer here. Neither, the Lord’s Supper.
The garden scene is preserved, the plea of Jesus face down in broken supplication remains.
And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that if it be possible, the hour might pass from him. Mark 14:34 , KJV, Oxford
And we know what happened next, the agony, the death and the resurrection.
We know what happened because of and despite the fear in the garden.
What are your “Gethsemane moments”?
What is “scaring you to death”?
Look up, redemption will find you
And, in time pale in comparison to the unwanted anguish.
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” e.e. cummings
Photo by Drake White
Last month, I noticed a new follow on Instagram. A talented photographer with an affinity for capturing beauty in found objects fresh or ancient and in spaces you’d think too battered, but made brilliant.
His images compelled me, their stories.
An invitation came to be photographed.
Surprised. I was surprised.
Photo by Drake White
I studied his work, admired the portraits of others and felt drawn to each of them through his retelling of their time together, their stories of being themselves, artists.
He must be observant, a good listener I decided.
And so, I said yes to this beautiful surprising invitation to sit and be captured through his eye and his lens.
He listened as I responded to how I began painting. Then, he listened some more to the story of the ill-fitting art scholarship recipient who lost her chance and her way because of hardship, horror and harm-filled days.
Then, the always answer to my return to painting came.
Photo by Drake White
“It began with the gift of a Bible in 2016. Subtle sketches in the margins of women who understood me and I, them.”
And I sat for him twice, occasionally worried I’d overshared and yet, deciding that’s not for me to say.
It’s up to the listener.
The photographer.
The artist.
The capturer of me now, the shadow of the old fading to barely there grey.
I am grateful.
And surprised.
Courageously.
In quietness and confidence shall be your strength…Isaiah 30:15
Follow Drake White on Instagram to view the other artists’ portraits and his website to view his other work.
Pay attention to the thoughts that surface, bubble up to overflow in private.
Certainties.
Morning Song
Yesterday morning, I closed the door and prayed on the bathroom floor.
No magic, no set expectation, just a plea that was private.
I humbled myself and asked for ease, for help.
Humbled, but not afraid, not cornered by my delay in praying nor in my honest admission of asking for help, for grace.
And, my prayer was answered. I was without pain, still am.
But none says, “Where is my Maker, who gives songs in the night?” Job 35:10
Around 3:00 a.m, I turned and wondered, why did I stop praying as much as before?
Praying in private, mostly.
Again, humbled by the tender realization, but not all the feeling of being punished or afraid.
More like, “I miss praying. I miss the peace of honesty and of talking to God about others and things that only we know”.
I miss me, humbled and yet, unafraid.
And so, God told me so. Told me in a way, I suppose,
I miss our conversations,
I miss the heart of you.
Painting Crosses
I delivered a painted cross yesterday, a housewarming gift that according to my friend was “extra”, other gifts and favors already given. I told her I’d like to gift another, for her office.
She gave me permission to choose the color, she’d be fine with white, she offered.
I’m thinking now about the depth in her eyes, pools of thought and kindness.
Does he not see my ways and number all my steps? Job 31:4 ESV
A family of seven walked the trail together. Up ahead they kept in a slow rhythm, a man, a toddler, a few adolescents and a woman with a stroller.
One looked back, heard my catching up to them. The man smiled and commented on the humidity. The woman pushing the stroller I noticed was empty, corrected one of the children about something. Her voice was loud, her face so serious.
I smiled and looked back at the group, told them,
“My children laughed when I tried to be mean, I was never good at getting their attention that way.”
The girls and boys looked at me and stayed in step with their mama who added in a way that her children know she can be “mean”.
Not in a fearful or threatening way, I sensed the children understood.
It’s a matter of how we’re made, how we convey our truth.
Job argued defensively with his friends and with God for whole chapters and yet, never disrespected or disavowed his Father.
He was quiet, but strong.
Distraught, but not demanding.
Frail, but not frightened.
The Book of Job is poetry for the introspective and honest. It is comfort amidst woe.
It is quietly strong.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” 1 Corinthians 13:1 ESV
Quietly strong, a tone I love.
In the mornings, I find a smoothly writing pen and I write the names of my children side by side, circle them on their own and then add an embrace of a larger encircling together.
A quiet practice.
Strong and soft, unwaveringly committed.
A way of trust.
The way I know.
Wisdom found in quiet confidence.
“God understands the way to it, and he knows its place.” Job 28:23 ESV
I cried because the mean old thing called fear has been catching up, wrapping its arms around me like a stranglehold suffocating and silencing my wildest, most wonderful hopes.
I cried a little on the trip to find shelves to organize my paint (again).
Tears that said “not again”.
I’ve been hoping I was wrong about what I giddily decided was just right for right now.
I cried because my jaded conclusions drawn because of past hurts, harms, manipulative grooming and demands is putting me in the corner again.
I’ve been hoping I’ll hear they decided it was not right for me to paint and speak after all.
Then, I can sigh and sit quietly hidden in the identity that is me after all.
Alone and isolated, but safe on my own terms.
So, once the quiet tears stopped on their own, I reread the invitation to be photographed and have my artwork possibly featured with others in a future exhibit.
I reread, researched and respected the questioner, trusted it and him.
I said yes because my tears were not from fear, instead from fear that I may again be trapped in my decision to hide and that would mean
I wouldn’t go on.
Again.
It would mean ignoring how far God has brought me and that would be dishonorable.
Dishonoring myself and the one who made me to walk through doors I didn’t even knock on,
“You were not made to cower. You were made to create and to share what you make. You were made to be authentically brave.” me
Why do I write about such things, things like declining invitations because trauma triggers say “stay safe, stay humble, stay nothing, be nothing other than afraid and small”?
Because tears on the way to Target may be sweeter than you think, might be a tender gift.
Good tears, friends, very good.
I write because it helps me see the tears on the way to Target were not sad tears at all, rather than were cleansing, clarity, another swash of the trauma residual slate washed clean.
Tears that say okay, now
Take a breath, check your mascara, dab a little color on your lips.
Take a breath, say a secret prayer.
Go on.
You can.
I assembled the shelves from Target remembering the time I felt so excited. I put the bed frame together for my newly relocated to Colorado son. He’d gone to run some sort of errands, returned to realize I’d done it all wrong.
This son of mine who invited his mama to accompany him cross country, the gift of this will not, does not, has not escaped me.
I lined all my pastels, pencils, watercolor acrylic and oil tubes of paint in their own places and threw the dried up paint away.
Then, I painted.
Not as planned or expected, but I painted.
I’ll paint tomorrow.
I’ll keep on.
“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” Romans 8:15 KJV
“He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” Psalm 23:3 ESV
I woke with thoughts of Peter, the one who sat with the skeptics, naysayers and contrivers to crucify Jesus and said “Hey, I don’t know him, I’m not one of “those”.
So, I thought “Peter had a lot of stops and starts”.
I can relate. No big deal, you might think; but, I went very light on dinner and then caved around 10 because I really wanted my favorite comfort yummy thing.
Crunchy peanut butter on slightly toasted grainy yet soft bread and a tiny dollop of jelly, folded over, cold milk on the side.
And I slept like a baby only to wake with regret and “start again, start again, jiggity jig little fat pig!”
Regret.
Imagine if Jesus told Peter “I’ve had it with you! I mean, I even told you that you’d cave under pressure. You’d deny knowing me.”
You’d decide this calling I called you for was not possible. You’d deem yourself incapable.
Peter’s life wasn’t defined by regret.
Nor is ours. We are marked by love, by beginning again and continuing.
By redemption.
Creamy coffee in hand, I open my emails to see a reply. An online magazine is asking for photos of my art, specifically the Psalm 23 collection from over a year ago along with a newer piece, “Pool Party”.
The publication requires a bio and they pointed out what must have been a typo in the original submission.
The bio you added is pretty short – and also a little confusing? I think there’s a typo. It reads:
Artist and Author, hoping to regret redemption and hope through my words and artwork.
I smiled.
Smiled because they didn’t disqualify me because of a typo, smiled because I could never regret my redemption.
I mean, I’d be long gone, succumbed to regrets long, long ago.
It’s my redemption that calls me forward, beckons me to keep trying, put myself in places that invite my story.
Mostly, I’m smiling because all of this “reflects” the redemption and grace of God.
(Reflect not regret, the typo)
Clearly, I am imperfect; but, not unable.
Starts and stops, I can’t even begin to tell you how many.
Beginning again and again.
This is my wondrous story.
I was lost, but Jesus found me Found the sheep that went astray Raised me up and gently led me Back into the narrow way
Yes, I’ll sing the wondrous story Of the Christ who died for me. Frances H. Rowley, 1886
Only one of the five “Psalm 23” series sold. One is in my den, three are packed away and one is on display in a restaurant.
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 