My July newsletter is about hope. It’s more than just a pretty word.
Read here if you like!
curiousity
Willing To Be Filled
Abuse Survivor, contentment, courage, curiousity, freedom, grace, memoir, mercy, Peace, praise, Redemption, Salvation, Teaching, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waiting, wonder
The heavy midnight rain made the grass thick against my feet.
The hem of my pajama pants is damp from my stepping out.
Effervescent, I thought, the rain has made the ground feel like carbonation causing bubbles and a rising up the rim of the earth to cushion my steps.
Generous was the shower.
I look closer at the petals.
Some drooping with the weight of God’s watering.
Resting.
The rain is clinging to rich green leaves and the pure white bloom is radiant.
Satiated, quenched.
Fulfilled.
“The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.””
John 4:15 ESV
Effortless, this summer’s abundant growth of flora it seems.
Waiting expectantly, the good rains have sustained the pretty colors.
When the woman at the well met the stranger, she’d been seeking satisfaction from multiple men. I am curious if she thought Jesus was just another at first.
She considered a new perspective. She was intrigued by possibility.
Jesus changed her.
Change comes that way.
We must be a willing participant, honest with our inventory of past mistakes and then willing to see ourselves in new, often briefly emotionally distressing ways.
We acknowledge what God knows of us. We are satisfied by His knowing.
We are growing as we lift our cups, chipped, stained or soiled from past spiking.
We lift our empty cups and we say.
Fill it, Lord.
Fill my cup.
Come and quench this thirsting in my soul. Fill my cup, Lord. I lift it up.
Linking up with others at FMF, prompted by the word, “willing”.
Inspired
Abuse Survivor, Angels, Art, bravery, courage, curiousity, Faith, freedom, memoir, mercy, Redemption, rest, Stillness, Vulnerability, wonderA call for artists’ submissions to illustrate a poem entitled “Exhale” caused me to sit with paper, pencil, water and color.
Especially the part about
…after waiting so long. Maggie Swofford
I was moved by the image of a jubilant one fleeing.
My illustration was selected by Fathom Magazine. Click here to read the poem and view the other images
It’s not wasted on me that the poet and I connected and that our creativity and maybe similar experiences have been ours.
Flee freely,
Continue and believe.
The Clearing
Abuse Survivor, birds, bravery, confidence, contentment, courage, curiousity, Faith, Forgiveness, freedom, grace, hope, memoir, mercy, obedience, Peace, praise, Prayer, Redemption, Stillness, Trust, Vulnerability, waiting, wonder, writing
Where are you going? Who are you becoming?
What scared you that is not so scary anymore?
Are you on the cusp of you, giving God the corner piece you held in your palm in your lap at the table, leaving your puzzle unfinished.
Were you afraid to give up the missing piece of your story because it’s been incomplete for so very long?
Being complete will be different, do you worry you won’t fit?
The unafraid puzzle of you?
Someone has trimmed the branches, removed the excess growth from the shrubbery.
The walking trail has clean borders, limbs and weeds are stacked in a corner on the curve pile.
I walk and hear the rustling, turn to see the bird.
Not like before, I’m not startled by the rustling, unable to know what was stirring in the brush.
I’d pick up my pace, oddly thinking I was being pursued and I walked as fast as I could from the source of the noise.
But, yesterday the clearing caused my turning, a small rabbit, baby bunny waiting to be seen and a trio of crows happy to have discovered a nest.
The squirrel in the undergrowth scurried up a tree, a cobalt blue butterfly fluttered past my cheek.
The elusive blue bird again made certain it had been seen.
I walked on towards the wide space grateful for the clearing.
In the evening I drove home later than I’d planned and the traffic was easy, the big trucks staying in their lanes.
I considered the wide sky, the 3/4 moon fuzzy from clouds to my left and drove straight into the place that kept me coming.
Beckoning me forward, causing me to want to call my daughter or anyone.
Have you seen this sky?
Knowing every person on earth should see it, the way God welcomes our notice.
The way He takes fear from our paths, the way He widens our walkways and calls us to see.
To see ourselves bravely and more clearly once we step into His clearing.
And continue.
Continue and believe.
“This I declare about the Lord: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him.”
Psalms 91:2 NLT
linking up with other writers who are writing about goals.
My goal?
Faithfulness to continue on brave new paths.
The Road Blurry
Abuse Survivor, Art, bravery, confidence, contentment, courage, curiousity, daughters, Faith, fear, grace, memoir, painting, Prayer, rest, Stillness, Teaching, Trust, Truth, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waiting, writing
Maybe knowing God is better than knowing me.
I found this accidental photo just now.
Funny how it happens, happenstance making sense.
Last night the air cooled slightly after just a showering of a misty rain.
I walked, listening again to informative content on the number of me, the Enneagram 4.
I finished up my walk, showered, ate, settled on the sofa and with nothing else worth my time, watched college softball’s big game.
I’d seen a young woman earlier, she made it to collegiate level and now she tells me she’s expecting her third baby.
She continues to ask how I’m doing, what I’m doing,
how I’m feeling in my new role, “#goingbygrandmanow”
I tell her it has been an adjustment, some things not easy.
I add when I see baby Elizabeth all of my anxiety fades.
She smiles. “Oh, I forgot something!” she says in her excited and bubbly way.
We are standing in the crowded post office and she begins to talk about church.
She tells me about their sermon series and how it was suggested everyone find a “spiritual mentor”.
She has chosen me, says I was her first choice.
Of course I said yes and I’d call her for coffee and yes, we can talk about Jesus.
I was not prepared at all.
Should I have answered no, I wonder?
Should I have said “Oh, I’m not the one, you just don’t know!”?
Because I’m not feeling so suitable for such a place in another’s life now.
I walked and thought again about validation, understanding my tendencies a little more and thinking I should ask a professional…
Is this a breakthrough for me? Have I figured out something transformative and new?
Do I seek not only the validation of the positive of me but, also habitually choose the patterns I know that sustain the negative of me?
Thereby destroying any possibility that life can be different, can be better?
Is this typical I wonder, for anyone approaching 59, knowing 60 is just up ahead?
I believe we’re inundated with advisors and we are at a loss over whose truth to soak in.
Someone wants to edit my website, has a proposal she wants to present, claims she can make me more visible, increase sales, build my numbers.
A creative has seen my art, beckons me to join her next series of marketing courses. I consider, almost jumping in, signing up for yet another hope that feels false after a bit.
They’re a business after all, I tell myself.
I unjoined a writing community, yet the content continues to come.
And yet, writing and painting don’t hold the same place in my heart as before.
Have become like a chore.
This morning I made a list of concerns lined up with contentment, two columns, thing is nothing was listed under contentment at all.
Yesterday, I heard a mom talk of her little girl’s big girl dreams and goals. I smiled as I listened to how she was schooling her own mama in teaching her marketing strategy.
This child already knowing the value in believing she is capable and she can do anything when she combines her confidence with her courageous talent and selling of her self.
But, maybe it’s different for some.
Maybe I’m one of the some.
Maybe nothing more than now is the best place for me. Maybe I’ve blinded myself of the goodness of God by seeking what everyone else says is better.
What if we overwhelm ourselves with so many virtual mentors we lose ourselves in their midst?
God spoke to me this morning saying it is okay to consider the wisdom of others but you must never forget the wisdom you’ve found of me.
Your one story is now shelved because you have filled your mind with the details of so many others’.
Your fear has unintentionally buffered your courage.
So, there comes a choice to be made, slow down and take a breath.
Eliminate the unnecessary content.
Listen to God more than anything or anyone else.
It happens when you don’t deny the evidence of that.
A friend of your daughter says be my spiritual mentor and unknowingly prompts your return the place you had left.
The place where one person in this great big world sees you face to face and says I want to know the Jesus you know.
“Is that possible, do you think?” she asks.
And I answer, “Yes.”
It is possible.
I’m thinking of my grandmother this morning who was industrious and talented but rarely talked about her craft.
She created intricate Christmas ornaments from discarded jewelry. She boxed her creations up in big flat boxes and her work room was a dresser and a bed.
She made deliveries to people who paid her and I suppose she was known for her creations.
But, I never remember anyone encouraging her to go bigger, maybe put a sign up in the IGA or even an ad in the Statesboro Herald.
She provided what was requested of her. She was compensated, yes; but, only enough for what she needed.
She was content in the act of creating, it was her independent venture that I saw, that instilled in me the truth of possibility.
My grandmother taught me that being yourself is all you need.
Is there a book in me?
Will a gallery be inclined to display my art?
Will I be a better me or finally decide I’m enough as I am?
Content in the waiting as I rest in what comes not forced or rushed and be amazed by paths crossing and opportunities that unfold unexpectedly.
Next week or the next I’ll have an iced coffee with “Sam”.
I may tell her what a mess I was when I saw her or I won’t.
I may just tell her what I was learning on that and any other day.
Learning that the advice I need is found in the quiet place beside my bed or in the wide sky, the bending road or in the palms of my beautiful granddaughter’s hands.
God is everywhere, I will tell her.
Continue and believe, I might add.
Knowing God is better than better knowing me.
Learn as you go.
I’m on the morning road to my daughter’s, her husband’s, Elizabeth’s home.
The fog is lifting.
Remembering the thing that God just told me, an awakening of sorts and how one day I may tell Elizabeth or not.
How her grandma began to come into her own…
Maybe just live it intentionally for her to see.
Rest in this self awareness you’ve so keenly acquired and continue now easily into the you God has always known.
Discard all calculations to change your course or set new direction.
Become who you were becoming the very day you were born, God’s unique and capable child.
It is well with your soul.
It is well.
Retrospective Perspective
Abuse Survivor, bravery, confidence, contentment, curiousity, Forgiveness, freedom, grace, memoir, Redemption, Vulnerability, waiting, wonder, writing
I can’t stop loving the little tiny yellow petals that fell easily from the sturdy lantana stem.
I don’t think lantana is meant for little jars or pretty vases.
It must be meant to spread its growth and simply keep growing in the ground in which it lives.
But, I needed bright for pale hydrangea and it wasn’t intentional to have the discarded pieces there, still it was to me so beautiful, the falling away and remaining a bloom.
If you pay attention to the answers you give to others, the words you offer in a conversation, you’ll see that these are the truths that God is revealing in you.
I am growing.
On more than a couple of occasions I’ve offered up “God is changing me. I am growing.”
June’s newsletter will be about just that: How redemption isn’t fully experienced until we believe we are worthy, until we believe our lives can change from victim to victor.
That we are certainly redeemed by our acceptance of Jesus; yet, we are still walking around in our sorrowful and afraid stances until we begin to see…life can be good for me, I can live and breathe redeemed.
Redemption becomes more than a word from a verse in your Bible that you only say you believe.
Redemption keeps growing until it brings healing.
You can subscribe here: Visit our page: https://mailchi.mp/8aace4f5e35a/redemptionseries
(Maybe you or someone you know is ready to move from sort of believing to knowing fully that life can be hopeful, forward not always focused on before.)
Maybe we have similar stories.
What will you do in June or maybe, what will June do in you?
Maybe you’ve started growing in some way and you are sort of excited over the possibility of new views of you, seeing yourself in a new way.
Maybe less striving and more sitting back to see.
Maybe it becomes easier like an all of a sudden realization of “Oh, it’s been a while since I felt my old way.”
I didn’t expect the past three months or so to teach me so much. I never expected to be so optimistic over my future with really no tangible reason.
Maybe it’s because optimism and hope are inward things.
Yes.
Paul wrote letters about how Jesus changed him. His only hope was to be as certain what he left behind changed others. His words are for change, for growth, for grace.
“May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.”
2 Thessalonians 3:5 ESV
I pray June brings continued growth as I intentionally pursue it.
May it be the same for you.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. II Thessalonians 3:18
#quietconfidenceartandword #hellojune #thecolorsofmybible
Knowing More
Abuse Survivor, bravery, confidence, contentment, courage, curiousity, freedom, grace, hope, memoir, mercy, Peace, praise, Prayer, Redemption, Teaching, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waiting, wonder, writing
I am not a singer.
I mean I don’t ever sing with unleashed joy in the car or even in the shower.
I do love music and I’m fascinated by those who sing freely.
No surprise, music and lyrics just somehow seem to live in me.
Like most every single thing, songs become thoughts.
I sometimes wonder how there’s enough space for all the swimmers in my ever growing pool of deep thinking.
Seriously.
I wake with words lots of mornings, a hymn or an old Southern song…
Kinda crazy, ’cause you won’t find “The Gaithers” on my Pandora.
But, the room was cool this morning and I woke with ease and thought of
“What can I learn about myself today God, to help me see the Lisa you know?”
Then, the tune, a swaying sort of call…
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…there’s just something about that name.
So, I rose and began my day in search of wisdom.
A mind more aware of God’s helping and of me. This I seek.
I landed in Proverbs before the second Thessalonian letter and circled back to Psalm 120.
Proverbs gave me this kernel, my interpretation of verses 5-8 of the fourth chapter.
Wisdom comes when the dust of the lesson settles.
I’m fascinated now by the Enneagram, only vaguely interested before.
Once I realized I most accurately lined up with “4” I wanted to say, oh, no more.
It was too much me, too clearly conveying my responses to life and most everything.
I wanted to abandon the idea of me, the one who looks back not forward and the one who likes to play pretend in response to hard things and therefore, just sort of fairy tale them away.
Or write tragically stories with scary ending, never a mediocre story, always unrealistically happy scenes or worst case scenarios. Reading this truth of me makes me cringe.
But, acceptance is the first step to healing I believe.
Oh, so me, bravely honest in calling myself out.
Or the one who anxiously seeks to be known and understood, the one who feels most everything in ways that make no sense to anyone else at all.
Unless, they’re a 4.
I was unhappy with the spot on “fourness” of me.
But with understanding comes the prize of a well guarded friend named wisdom.
“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly, and she will exalt you; she will honor you if you embrace her.”
Proverbs 4:5-8 ESV
Knowledge comes when we are quiet and willing seekers, open to learning more in every situation and in every day.
“In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.”
Psalms 120:1 ESV
Who am I to say where learning comes from?
Intelligent researchers and compelled understanders who were open to learning created a list of nine personalities, perspectives called stances.
I am open to seeing myself from their perspective because I am open to becoming a student of me.
Strange it may seem that a book about numbers could bring clarity to what I consider my calling, that the progress I’ve made towards healing might be complemented by wisdom compiled by humans.
Not really, we’re all here on earth to be helpers one of another.
Helpers towards the place our creator will most clearly be seen through the works of our minds, hands and the peaceful countenance in our eyes.
Clarity seekers.
Clarity in increments.
Helpers everywhere.
“…that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 ESV
Heavenly wisdom and earthly knowledge working together to make me more of what God sees.
If you sense I’m still a little tentative in my Enneagram quest for knowledge, you’re quite right.
Still, as the prophet Isaiah taught, God places teachers everywhere to remind us that the bread of our adversity only serves to guide and teach us and that others on our road have insight we should know.
Learn every day.
Continue and believe.
Believe and continue.
Jesus, what can I learn today to be the Lisa you know?
I am open to knowing now.
To asking, calling, singing softly every day…
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
Let all Heaven and earth proclaim
Kings and kingdoms will all pass away
But there’s something about that name.”
Grace Awaits
confidence, contentment, courage, curiousity, Faith, family, grace, hope, Labradors, memoir, mercy, obedience, Stillness, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waitingWe walked in the heat and kept going until we found shade.
We didn’t stop to rest.
Colt, my “grand dog”
We kept going because we know the pattern. We know where there is sun there will be shade.
We kept walking because the grassy field borders the man made trail, the one where the strong roots are revealing their tenacity.
They’ve broken through as if knowing it will cause our steps to favor the earth, the grass.
To remind us, it is hard here; nevertheless, the soft places remain.
“For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”
John 1:16 ESV
The old hymn with the sway in its notes
Reminds me of an old chair moaning as I rock.
I’m sitting on a big back porch and the breeze although warm too early this year is steady and sweeps softly on my cheek.
The chair is old.
I want to repair it, have it dressed in new fabric, have someone who knows how make the seat and back not so noisy from the pressure of its sitter.
Still, it allows my sitting, it allows me to settle there and it tests my tolerance for the noise unpleasantly necessary.
I could sit still, I could not encourage the back push and the forward pull of the place behind my knees that leads to the rocking.
But, I don’t.
I sit in my aunt’s old hand me down chair and I rock.
And it allows me to continue there.
Grace is that way.
Grace knows we might be annoyed by things and others that we keep responding to in the way that causes even more annoyance.
Grace waits for us to settle down, stop the thing we do that brings frustrations we could so easily let go.
Or accept them and notice less the noise and more the joy.
Grace awaits.
It never leaves us.
Grace stays.
Continue and believe.
Linking up with other story tellers here:
These thoughts on fear are so very true!
5 Women Redeemed
Abuse Survivor, Angels, Art, confidence, contentment, courage, curiousity, daughters, hope, Motherhood, Peace, Stillness, Vulnerability, waiting, writingMy May Newsletter is all about choices we make to allow God to redeem your messy and or miserable situations. Use the little pop up form to sign up and read more. I learn as I write and I am learning as I go.
We are never unaccepted by Jesus.
His offer is redemption. Our choices are our own. This month rather than focus on one certain story, I happened upon five and each story of a Jesus encounter came with a chance to make a choice. …
Stubborn Minded Me
Abuse Survivor, bravery, confidence, contentment, courage, curiousity, Faith, family, freedom, grace, love, memoir, mercy, Peace, Prayer, pride, Redemption, Stillness, Teaching, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waiting, wonder“He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad that the waters were quiet,
He brought them to their desired haven.”
Psalms 107:29-30 ESV
My daddy used to say I would argue with a stump, I was as stubborn as they came. I wanted to have the last word.
Quiet child who watched and only spoke up when I saw something wrong or someone about to be wronged…maybe, me.
That quiet stubbornness got silenced and I lost my voice for a long time, lost my defense mechanism, my stubborn belief that it mattered, pointing out right over wrong.
Now that I’ve found it again, my challenge is to appropriately use it, pull it back, keep it reeled in, learn to control it.
Not allow it to control me.
Stubborn me doesn’t wait well, I want to jump up and tackle wrong to the ground, demand an answer for whatever anxiety it has caused.
Even if the anxiety is oh so small. At least I’m self aware.
I’m losing it slowly, the need to anticipate wrong, letting go the power of my manipulative mind set on preparation and safety of my mind and soul.
I ask why of others less often. I wait to be shown not told.
To be shown there was no threat after all, there was never a plot to harm you being calculated while you looked away.
It was just your imagination running away with you.
I’m an Enneagram 4 (Romantic) with a 5 (Observer) wing. I’m no expert on this popular assessment that so many are embracing.
I assure you though, the test got this right with me!
I write vivid stories. I romanticize right or wrong depending upon my careful and constant observation.
My personality traits can work for or against me.
Today, I’m leaning towards the “for”.
Because I almost picked it back up yesterday and then again this morning. I wanted to confront, stomp my feet and ask why someone responded to me in such a way I didn’t deserve.
They most likely have forgotten by now and there’s really no need to know.
It is over. Let it go.
I sat in the quiet with wisdom all around me, the Psalms of David, the integrity of Job, the quiet worship of Mary.
I told myself if there is asking of why,
Ask God.
The answer will come when it does or it may never come at all, just the need to know taken gently away, eased from the shelf I’ve set it down on waiting to be picked back up again.
I won’t miss it. God will replace it with new things.
Things like a settled mind, a sense of Him.
Ask God and wait for His peaceful reply.
It will not likely come until you’ve shut down the chatter in your analytically bitter and questioning mind.
The answer more sufficiently simple than all the “romantical” conjuring and contriving of explanations your mind could ever tell.
God will be thrilled by our return to Him, He waits for the forfeiting of our frustrated rationalizations for the freedom of His will and His way.
He welcomes our questions.
Ask God.
Settle your stubborn mind.
Find rest for your soul.
He is jealous for me. Love’s like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy. When all of a sudden I am unaware of this affliction eclipsed by glory…David Crowder, How He Loves
Oh, how he loves us!
I’m linking up with others who are telling stories that God gives them to share. Join in here: Tell His Story
Lisa Anne Tindal 