daughters

Wisdom Stories

Abuse Survivor, bravery, confidence, contentment, courage, daughters, depression, family, grief, hope, memoir, Peace, Redemption, rest, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waiting, wisdom, wonder
For she is your life. Proverbs 4:13

I watched the soloist in worship, saw timidity in a way that led to her being brave. Fairly new to the stage, I’ve been attentive to her growing. I long to know her story.

Has she always sang so bravely, was it a thing she knew she’d always do? Was it a path that opened before her and at last she agreed she was able?

I watched as her hand held the microphone in its stand. I listened as she told me it’s God’s breath in me that led and leads to my breathing. She opened both hands towards the ceiling as her voice was elevated, “Great are you Lord!” I joined in agreement.

I’d still love to know her faith story. I’d like to know her journey as a woman.

I sat in the white chair later, the chair that was yellow when my mama got it. She had it in her den and I don’t recall her ever sitting there. It was positioned in front of her place for sitting, a place she could simply see it.

It faced the wide windows that opened the view to the field, the skinny lane that announced visitors. My mama lived alone for a bit and her yellow chair is only one of a few things she gave me. The others, ceramic roosters and a bracelet, now broken and not really jewelry, “costume” the jeweler said, “not worth anything”.

The yellow chair now recushioned and covered white, the little roosters and the bracelet, all yard sale discoveries.

My mama had very little.

Her legacy is wisdom. Wisdom and spontaneity, gifting herself with an occasional treat!

I thought of her as I drifted into a nap on Sunday. The yellow chair now creamy white facing my own wide windows.

I found solace in the soft chair, curled like a baby in my mama’s not made for sleeping chair.

I rested in the certainty of her joy when she found the fancy to her yellow chair. I celebrated her deciding she was worth it, something her life had never told her.

No wonder I find comfort in my mama’s yard sale chair.

It’s a side of her story she really didn’t tell. Her story of strength, of being worth something other than what life had shown her. A story of the bravery in believing, to wake to your very own beauty.

To believe in yourself because of God’s plan. I sit in my mama’s humble chair and feel the softness of her wisdom, I feel able to keep believing I am more than what my hard years have told me.

Continue.

Continue and believe.

There is wisdom in quiet joy. There is wisdom in pursuits that are tentative.

There is safety in remembering another’s very own wise path, as far back as when the writer of Proverbs called wisdom a “her”.

“When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you will not stumble. Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life.”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭4:12-13‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I hope to ask her one day, the new solo singer in worship, “How did you get to this place of using your voice to strengthen my faith?” There is wisdom in her journey I’m certain. I long to know why.

Who are the wise women in your life? The humble ones, the overcomers, the singers, the confident business owners, the young mamas, the elderly still with us, the teachers, the artists, the singers?

Life makes us either hard or wise. Stay soft if you can, wisdom comes not from hardening.

What’s your wisdom story?

Where You Are

birds, bravery, Children, contentment, courage, curiousity, daughters, Faith, grace, memoir, painting, Peace, praise, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waiting, wonder

All my days are in you, God.

This thought, my waking one on a free Friday morning.

The Bible says we’re worth more than sparrows and that God knows the number of hairs on our heads.

Still, I find myself wanting to keep it all under control, worry over what I need to do to become what I’m not yet.

A trio of black crows gathered out by the woodpile on Thursday.

I pointed them out to my granddaughter, acknowledging their being so close, not flying above us anymore.

We talk about the birds as we watch from the windows cold to the touch of our hands.

Foggy mornings cold to southern girls like us, cooped up and positioned for curiosity.

We had three days like that.

Then the sun came.

I woke this morning thinking about the sovereignty of God, of peace and of that being a relief.

About realizing that every moment holds peace if we accept that in every circumstance, every craziness or every seemingly unfair lull in meaningful activity, God is in it with us.

Be at peace.

What a relief to accept every single moment as God’s orchestration.

Either of needed rest or of unexpected yet longed for relief.

I’ve often found myself on the edge of a forlorn cliff deciding to sit and be at peace or to jump for relief, either running from my anxiety or demanding evidence of God knowing me, finding me worth knowing.

Truth is found over and over in the quiet place. His Spirit is relief.

Yesterday, I was escorted back home from the winding roads bordered by overgrown splendid trees, bright moss clinging to clay ditches and a wide sky with soft brushstrokes of clouds like meringue.

I noticed the birds.

I decided they were the ones from Tuesday.

A trio of hawks led me back to the main road and I held up my phone thinking this is for you from God.

Saying good, see you’re seeing me, Lisa.

I wanted to remember the threesome, the hawks swooping and swaying above me as I turned from my third grandma day back home to paint.

I am learning to live aware of all my moments.

To live peacefully, momentarily.

To remember the things God is saying about His will being found by me.

Be where you are.

Notice God there.

I saw that the grass my daughter picked from the pond had faded and told her I loved it more, the softer color.

She paused, maybe she saw it.

Peace as a centerpiece.

The will of God is found when we accept ourselves in the places He places us, changes us.

When we give fully to every calling, each one of value.

Not anxious over what is unfinished or not even begun yet.

Be where you are.

Life and peace, this is your life and this will be your finding peace.

Life and peace.

Singing “Deep and Wide” to an eight month old and watching her eyes, seeing her awareness of love, her noticing God.

Allowing this captivating exchange.

Treasuring it.

Standing in front of the easel, taking time to nourish this calling. Creating from a closeness with my Creator, not worried over whether someone will want it.

God’s work through your hands, think of it this way and be sweetly, simply amazed to be an artist.

Writing without seeking acceptance, writing your one and only story.

Writing for those God knows need your words. Don’t consider that small, never see that as a small calling.

Listening to my husband who loves lyrics like not passing this way again. He’s so subtle. Aging is a melody, it is best done together.

Be what God has shown me to be for my adult children, available and unrelenting in my belief and God’s in them.

There’s no need for analysis or expert advice.

Keep being their mama!

There’s a peace here, it’s a heart and mind decision, sacred in relationship.

Be who God knows you’re on the cusp of becoming and look for His assurance, not others’.

Be who you are.

Relieved in that acceptance and aligned with the one who made you.

Soar.

See, you are loved.

“So here I am in the place of worship, eyes open, drinking in your strength and glory. In your generous love I am really living at last! My lips brim praises like fountains. I bless you every time I take a breath; My arms wave like banners of praise to you.”

‭‭Psalm‬ ‭63:2-4‬ ‭MSG‬‬

What a gift, I decided.

Relief.

You, where you are.

Continue and believe.

Breakfast with Daddy and Mama

Angels, bravery, Christmas, confidence, contentment, daughters, grace, grief, memoir, mercy, Peace, Stillness, Uncategorized, Vulnerability

Not intentionally, I sat in the section where the older men gather for breakfast.

I didn’t want to sit next to the windows, not cold just chilly.

I’m out with a list of errands, early and sans makeup or shower.

I longed for my daddy as one came and then another.

Comparing ailments, discussing Georgia football, reading the wrong day’s paper they discovered.

I listened.

I had been thinking about Christmases of before, about hard memories, about what Christmas sometimes does to people.

Still, I missed my daddy, he left me too young.

So, I finish my meal and then sip on strong coffee.

I’m listening to their commentary and their kindness as the biscuit maker from the kitchen’s early shift rounds the corner to join them.

They catch up with one another.

The tone is pleasant.

The biscuit maker and I, we belong.

I miss my mama and my daddy at Christmas.

I’ll be attentive to who they may have been had they been allowed to be here still.

My daddy would be talking with the biscuit maker, mama too.

She’d be joining in.

She’d know right away why the biscuits were “too flaky”, what the chef had done wrong with the dough.

The gentlemen are talking behind me now,

I’ll gather my tray and go.

Give them a nod, have a good day.

They’ll wish me the same I believe.

Now I go, I go in peace towards Christmas.

No Notes

Abuse Survivor, bravery, confidence, contentment, courage, daughters, Faith, family, fear, freedom, heaven, hope, memoir, mercy, Peace, Prayer, Redemption, rest, Salvation, surrender, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, wonder, writing

I’ve misplaced yet another good pen. The lead in the mechanical pencil isn’t working, keeps slipping from the cylinder.

Is that what it’s called? Cylinder?

The part, under the pressure of my thumb and an erratic clicking to yield the grey lead?

Probably hid the pen from the puppy, yet another thing inedible eaten.

My journaling ritual,

Habitual or healing?

I barely made a note on this blessed stormy morn, just repeated the word “surrender” and circled, circled, circled.

It’s day 7 of 40. When I get to 41, I’ve decided I’ll circle “surrender” again.

It’s an unending thing.

Not specific. It covers what’s needed, encircles it all.

Twice since yesterday I’ve heard things that are more than enough, simply profound, stand alone philosophy and determined mindset.

My grandma used to say “pass and re-pass” meaning get along with others and my mama always said things like “pick your battles”, “turn the page” or “don’t stress”.

It really is a wonder she found words to encourage us. She was tormented by life and at times, my father.

Then there’s my aunt, who is now my mama. “Prayer and Patience”, her answer for life, for everything.

A mother who had a daughter die. She lives by the “2 p’s”.

My father, on the other hand was a man of hardly any words.

He abhorred nasty and condescending puffed up men.

He was kind to the often downtrodden in need of a cheap six-pack on Sunday people.

He always told the truth.

He just kept trying.

Told us “tell one lie, you gonna have to tell another”.

Occurs to me now, this may be why I’m so honest with others, getting better at honesty with myself.

Back to the two things:

1. Fear always stems from and centers itself around what we love most.

2. Strength is found in weakness.

My greatest fears have always been related to the loss of something, usually someone I love greatly.

My weaknesses are ironically where my strengths are after fifty plus years, emerging.

Bursting.

Too sensitive? I don’t think so anymore. I’m owning my sensitivity, calling it observing.

If fear is a result of loving fully, give me fear in abundance because I want to love with all I got from here on.

No notes needed for either.

Know your “weakness” fully engage it and encircle your fears with like a ginormous comforting hug.

That sounds/reads ridiculous.

Oh well, it’s Saturday and I’m too comfy to find a pen for journaling.

Thus, the unraveling is here.

We do not know what life will bring us.

Even Jesus asked His Father God for other options.

Jesus was human amongst humans til his thirties.

He loved fully, knew fear. Taught fairness, non-judgment, honesty and love.

He knew his life had a purpose but hoped there’d be a less tragic demonstration.

He asked to be excused three times from the ultimate demonstration of love.

His disciples were with him in the Garden. His only request of them, stay awake, I will be pleading. I will be asking My Father if my death is His will or if there is some other way to make heaven possible for all.

They slept while he prayed and then he told them again, be vigilant, my death is coming.

It wasn’t His Father’s plan that he avoid a sacrificial death. The bitter cup would be His.

“saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow,”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭22:42-45‬ ‭ESV‬‬

We don’t know what life will bring us, what we will be forced to endure, when freedom from endurance will be delivered.

We only get to choose whether to see fear as a sign of love, weakness as the soil for the strongest seed waiting for water.

Everyone has a story.

This I believe. Will continue.

No notes needed.

I’m not an expert in theology and don’t anticipate late in life education of the seminary sort.

What I know is life is a teacher. God is my life’s author.

I can believe from here.

No notes.

No pen needed.

Words, Promises and Broken Cycles

Abuse Survivor, bravery, Children, confidence, contentment, courage, daughters, Faith, family, grace, hope, memoir, mercy, rest, sons, Stillness, Teaching, Vulnerability, wonder, writing

I’m always surprised when I’m noticed.

My little trendy southern town known for being “best” in “Southern Living” and yet, such a mixture of poverty and riches with people in the in between vying to be noticed and included.

I used to be included.

I was always reluctant.

It was my work and my voice for the issues that got me invites to ladies’ clubs and big civic suit dressed men meetings.

It was that voice that labeled me one who “talked about hard things, a conversation starter”.

I brought things like homelessness, suicide and trauma from abuse to the table.

And then, I went home.

It was my job.

I left the work to do something other.

On a Friday night in our little town, the place where everyone congregates is hoppin’!

Women dressed for early dinners before a big show at our little theatre.

Young people, families, craft beers, pizza, music and chilled Pinot glowing in pretty glasses.

I wait outside until an inside table is ready, humid here I ask for water.

People are watching and talking.

Teenage girls in high heels and fancy dresses for homecoming football, carefully walking on cobblestones.

I’m responding to little dings on my phone, a sweet video of my granddaughter dancing to her daddy’s favorite funny song.

Then another, she’s being fed from a spoon, the first time and she’s a pro.

Sweet Elizabeth Lettie.

My friends arrive, one and then the other.

A couple stands to leave their table and the wife comes over to speak.

She and her husband, long time supporters of the agency I formerly led.

I assume she’s coming to chat with my friend and instead she addresses me.

Asking, how do you like being a grandmother?

I answer and she adds.

I think it’s so very nice, that you kept your promise. VS

I smiled, no, I’d say I was beaming.

No question about adjusting to not working or have you heard about this or that or the other…

All that’s happened in the wake of your retirement?

No, it was words to acknowledge me keeping my promise to my daughter.

Before I left my career, the paper and a local magazine did a piece on my leaving.

Both, I made sure, contained

I’m honoring a promise I made long ago to my daughter, I’ll be helping with her baby.

My friends and I caught up on lives with spouses, small talk and talk about what’s been newsworthy for our small town.

One friend who’d been aligned wholeheartedly with me in my ten year tenure in mental health expressed a longing that the work the way it used to be would continue.

She added it feels like “wasted time” all the years she put in.

“Oh, no, I’m not letting either of you own that!” announced my feisty second friend.

Adding that there are countless lives of women and children whose cycles of abuse and homelessness, depression and worthlessness have been broken!

I thought “ripple effect”.

They then asked about my children, both of them childless.

I shared how they’re doing and recent conversations with both that left me in awe over their strength…them being so much stronger than the me at their age.

My friend added,

you’ve broken the cycle you knew.

I thought of my children.

I accepted that. Yes, I have.

Yes, thank God; with God, I have.

Friday night reflections on Saturday morning:

You’ll hear what you need from others when you need it and while the encounters may be few, you will be noticed for being you.

No other reason.

Just you, being you.

A quiet strong.

Lord, may this be my legacy.

The choices I made and make, the ripple effect, like the settled waters of a quiet creek.

They come back.

Back to me.

I am thankful.

“I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭37:25‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Glorious Name

Children, contentment, courage, daughters, Faith, family, grace, mercy, Peace, praise, Prayer, Stillness, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waiting, wonder

Before I saw them, before we began our regular thing.

A morning walk.

Morning glories everywhere!

In the beginning, I cupped her in the crook of my arm, turned her face to where we were going

Talked to God

And she listened.

She looked up curiously towards the wide sky.

Every day she’s so learning.

I’m walking stronger, she’s moved from my arms to the independence of her stroller.

Too soon, no…she’s sweetly ready.

Happy there, more free to turn and notice, stretch her arms toward heaven.

Glory!

So am I.

I call her “morning glory” because of the way as a newborn she greeted the day with a smile.

I call her “morning glory” because she’s a teacher of good, she illuminates my world, causes me to cherish morning and walks and her round rosy cheek on my shoulder.

The morning glories on the country path are spread wider every morning.

Pops of tender blue increasing on their vines, crawling up the edges of the deep overgrown ditches.

Looking up.

Looking up, curious for God.

Certain of new morning glories tomorrow and beyond.

I call her “morning glory”, she causes my heart’s new bloom.

…now we thank you, praise your glorious name.

‭‭I Chronicles 29:13

Protected Child

birds, bravery, Children, confidence, contentment, courage, daughters, Faith, family, fear, grace, hope, love, marriage, memoir, mercy, Motherhood, Peace, rest, Teaching, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waiting, wonder

I watched the shifting sky, the colors filtered and spread wide.

I’m with my granddaughter on our morning walk, earlier this time.

The sky beckoning her gaze.

I capture her profile, her mama and daddy’s home in the background.

Her cheeks are full and full of joy and their blush is the same as what God has mixed in with the sky.

We walk.

I hold tight, shift her weight, careful not to have my arms press in to her tiny frame.

She welcomes my hold.

She regularly tilts her sweet face in awe of the trees, the sky.

I pray out loud, sing songs that include her name and other crazy things.

I love her. What a sweet thing.

Someone from the coast asked for my thoughts yesterday,

What do you say to your storms? DH

I answered.

I tell the storm, “I’m protected.”

This morning, I think of my children, my family and I have a moment of new and needed clarity.

If I’m protected, are not my children protected as well?

I journal my thoughts on a morning that God woke me at 4 and I decided, get up anyway.

I thought about God’s all encompassing immense and protective love.

How he loves them even more than I ever could be able.

God, you’re their protector just as you are mine.

I don’t have to “stay on top of things”.

I don’t have to anxiously remind you in my prayers to keep things under control.

Ha! Wow!

Me, reminding you of your role?!

I don’t have to watch from a distance so far that I squint to hope to see what’s going on, strain to hear, concentrate or calculate the endings of stories of their books when they are barely a chapter in.

And that you, not I, have already written.

I can set aside my book, my syllabus of reading between the lines, leaning toward tragic stories over beautiful and memorable autobiographies.

Like mine.

Yes.

I can know they are protected.

“No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”

‭‭1 John‬ ‭4:12‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I can love more fully than I’ve ever loved.

Point more clearly towards hope.

Be strong so that my strength is what they admire.

Yes, love.

Love is the protection, mine to freely give.

Best I can offer.

Protection is yours.

Belief in Prayer

bravery, Children, contentment, courage, daughters, Faith, family, grace, hope, memoir, mercy, Motherhood, Peace, Prayer, sons, Teaching, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, wonder

Some evenings I walk and I recall some instruction from some time ago reminding me to use the strength of my core, the power in my legs.

I may have turned a corner at the place on the path that my muscles are less tight and resistant and so, my walk becomes a flow, an easy assurance to go on.

Other times, the heavy weight of me goes uneased and I consider turning back for home but never do.

I walk on.

And I lean forward although it’s not the best look or posture, I bend my head towards the ground and I slump a little over into the heart of my fatigue, the core of my concern.

I walk on. Music or calming advisor in my ear, I’m absorbing information that is for naught now but always surfaces later.

I’m thinking about compassion today because someone and I talked about it a few days ago, the demonstration of it, the innate trait of knowing how to make it known.

Compassion, I read is “to suffer together” with others.

Like leaning into their distressing situation and through your presence you’re invited to listen or through your unknown prayers unrelenting.

It’s being in a tough season with someone knowing you can’t comprehend their seasonal distress, nor can you walk them through it, instruct them to walk forward in a certain way.

You’ve got no measurement for their trip, your only traction for their footing is your alignment through prayer.

John, Peter and James trekked up the mountain with Jesus. They’d been in His presence, had observed all of his healing, all of the furor over his being God’s Son, the speculative conversations disputing His purpose, Redeemer.

They’d seen Jesus walk on water, they saw Him have compassion on the hungry, the deaf, the ones brave and desperate enough to draw near.

They climbed up to the mountain aligned with Jesus and there they saw Him transfigured in the presence of Elijah and Moses, with God. Peter didn’t really understand. They were terrified by the ghostly presence. At the same time, Peter’s heart was settled. God was near.

“And Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.””

‭‭Mark‬ ‭9:5‬ ‭ESV

My children are entering new phases. They are stepping into new challenges, emotional and other. My daughter, a 1st grade teacher will nurture and then teach a new group of children.

Yet, she’ll be challenged beyond comprehension as she leaves her precious newborn, Elizabeth, at home with the grandmothers, still she will be leaving her, separated and in our care.

The emotions are palpable as I listen to her talking of being prepared. I agree. I listen. I will pray.

My son will begin the final leg of his academic journey. He’s pressed on quite consistently and has arrived in a pivotal and challenging finish line, approaching stretch of the journey. He will be challenged by numbers and so many yet to be seen things in his steady path towards God’s purpose and career.

Much like the disciples who longed to heal for themselves the son presented to them by a distraught father.

Seizure afflicted for so many years, Jesus told them why their interventions wouldn’t bring healing.

Only the father’s prayer would do. We don’t read of whether he’d been praying for years or whether he never considered it,

The irrefutable power of a parent who aligns themself with Jesus and thus, God the Father, through prayer.

The son was healed. Jesus gave all the credit to the father’s cry.

I don’t want the significance of this gift of my morning Bible to be wasted.

Picture yourself in the presence of Jesus and you’re at the end of your rope, the last of your wit and your sense and he says don’t you go deciding on your own what is possible and what is not!

“And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!””

‭‭Mark‬ ‭9:21-24‬ ‭ESV‬‬

To pray for your children is to lean in to God.

It is to stand on the safer shore you’ve come to know because of age and experience and be content as background material, consultant over companion.

It is to glance their departure into a distant and new sea.

It is to know that they know you’re praying at every turn and transition into the unexpectedly hard places.

It is a prayer that remembers their toddler frames that required you supporting their falls and becomes support in a more solid way, the visits of grace to them unexpected because you are diligent and persistent in your new compassionate role.

Hands off, heart all in.

You become constant in your prayers.

You pray for alignment of them with you. You pray that the tough times grow them when those times require physical and emotional endurance only God can give.

Not a parent.

No, your part is prayer, the believing kind. Your part is compassion that aligns with Jesus, agrees with God.

Your part is prayer that allows you in to their personal places, leaves all your worries, your hopes, your exaggerated stories on the table, sat next to the Savior to be shared with the Father.

Knowing grace is sufficient and being unwaveringly convinced that grace is good and it’s a gift to your children they never have to fight for, it is mercy that endures.

Mercy like the prayer of a mama, it’ll never be taken off the table, it won’t be a rescinded invitation.

It’ll be like grace, an enabling spirit, a compass positioned towards healing.

Prayer, the power of a parent’s prayer.

Incomprehensible!

“Afterward, when Jesus was alone in the house with his disciples, they asked him, “Why couldn’t we cast out that evil spirit?” Jesus replied, “This kind can be cast out only by prayer. ””

‭‭Mark‬ ‭9:28-29‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Maybe the sweetest thing I can do is to pray my children

Continue and believe.

More sweeter even is that they see me continue towards believing in God and in them with no need for constant checking in.

Yes, continuing to believe.

To believe in God with them.

A prayer for our children?

To have them unexpectedly experience that God is near.

God stay near, the cry of a parental prayer.

I’m linking up with Mary Geisen and other storytellers here:

https://marygeisen.com/if-you-knew-me-when/

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.

Give Not Get

Abuse Survivor, bravery, contentment, courage, daughters, eating disorder, fear, grace, memoir, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, waiting

Today I give you a story you might never know.

Were it not for me reading three books at a time, one called The God Dare by Kate Battistelli, a second called Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist and the third, the book called Ephesians written by Paul.

I’ve just finished a just right omelette, fluffy pillow of egg with the soft insides of spinach and melty oozing cheese. On the side a good tomato as if straight from the vine, peppered generously. Enjoyed every bit, a mellowed out mug of coffee with cream to complement.

I gaze over at the empty plate and think to finish Ephesians but remind myself of the three words that came in light of getting on with my life, vocation of some sort, art, writing and family.

Give not Get.

I thought again.

I’m brave now, hearing God daring me to pay attention and say things He has for me to say.

There was a time I ate everything I could get and then ritualistically and yet uncontrollably used my unwell techniques to get rid of it all quickly.

I was not well then.

I’m close to weighing the same as my husband. I felt lighter yesterday, paused to see the flatness of my belly in the bathroom mirror and took a chance…decided to step on the scale.

Wrong!

You weigh the same, the same as last week and more than last month but not as much as that one time before.

I remembered the book about the bread and wine and not a mention three chapters in of calories or gluten or exercise.

Only stories of times around tables and splendid descriptions of food eaten with abandon, life and love.

Food freely given, not grasped for or grabbed to be hidden, hoarded in a get it now or never again kind of way.

Stories like my story this morning, a quiet acknowledgment of noticing my finished breakfast.

Oh, this is good…this life I get to live, have been given, it is good.

Given not taken.

We get new chances every day, to pick up where we left off, to make choices not to go back to old ways.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,”

‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭2:8‬ ‭ESV‬‬

To live as grace givers, savoring, trusting the flow of good things and graces.

We have known the gift so that others might know.

We give what we’ve been shown.

My “God Dare” today?

Writing about not eating, about not keeping what I ate because that was all I felt I could control.

A sum total of about 10 years of my life given to anorexia and bulimia.

Close to 25 years now, not thin but healthy.

What’s in front of you that feels insurmountable, that lessens your existence, that self-imposed struggle that sickens your body and soul?

We are created as God’s workmanship, we inhabit His spirit.

He gives life, life meant to be unfathomable in measure, the width, breadth and depth of it all.

I picked up Bread and Wine from the back stack of bargain books and already it has given me more than any book on diet or grace or shame has ever given.

Like its author, pregnancy (thank you, HB!) changed me, pregnancy saved me from my disordered eating.

I wish the change had come sooner, my hard fought recovery not at all sudden or easy, but cushioned by God’s grace.

It took becoming pregnant to finally say to the world, I’m hungry. My first pregnancy shifted so many aspects of my understanding of my body and with it, shifted my view of hunger…I could claim hunger on behalf of my baby, and that small step might as well have been a mile for all it unlocked inside me. Shauna Niequist, Bread and Wine, a love letter to life around the table with recipes

In the book, is the question, What’s your last supper?

Mine?

Spaghetti thick with basil sauced tomatoes galore sprinkled with freshly shaved parmesan and bordered by thick buttered bread.

My cousin Vickie’s salad I can’t replicate on the side.

A glass of red wine as we recline and later gelato, the real kind that tastes like a coffee with just enough chocolate, a dollop of whipped cream to crown it!

Now, what’s for lunch? What’s for supper? Are the good watermelons ready?

Will we be fancy today, my daughter and I or will it be Chick Fil A?