The purple blooming shrub my husband transplanted from his mama’s generous garden has graced the fence border, I believe, for three years.
Now the petals are faded and in the process of brittle decay. Positioned next to the Rose of Sharon with its pods all dried up and closed like little wrinkled up grocery bags, the back yard is changing.
The pool will be covered, the chairs put away. The place for evening sitting will be just a couple of chairs in the corner and from time to time, the metal fire pit I requested.
We will watch Winter come and we will wait.
I pray we will rest.
Rest assured that the tiny purple flowers will explode with renewed growth, the rose bush will go crazy with magenta again and the pool will be reopened after Easter.
I bought a yellow beach ball yesterday with a little face of a baby chick and wings on either side, $1.99.
I thought of next year.
Of laughter around May.
Prayer time this morning conjured up an expression used to make a point, to reassure, to stand firm in your opinion in an argument.
“Rest assured.”
I left the words on the page, under my supplications.
The words that tell me come what may I have assurance.
Assurance of God knowing me and my family. Assurance of them knowing Him.
Rest assured. I can do that today. Mountains move, seas roar, tragic untimely deaths happen, confrontations heighten, animosity threatens.
Rest assured, though. God still calms seas, moves mountains, protects us as He is able against the enemy’s influence, fights for us
Fights for us gently in the call for us to know Him, to notice.
When you see God today, hear Him, you’ll know.
He’s still here and He is still mighty.
Rest assured.
“Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty! Your decrees are very trustworthy; holiness befits your house, O Lord, forevermore.” Psalm 93:4-5 ESV
Rest assured.
You will find Him because He longs to be recalled, to be called upon, to be found again and again by you.
It would be a stretch to say my parents were like Johnny and June. My daddy was small in stature and my mama although very wise, didn’t exhibit a tone of outward patience. Their tolerance for one another came and went, seems it was either battleground or preparing for the coming battles, a rhythm they finally mastered.
As a young woman, I had to move back home. Things happened that led to college being too hard for me. To an outsider, it would appear I gave up or wasn’t college material. Few people knew, most weren’t informed, college was interrupted by unanticipated harm. So, I lived at home in the house by the pond for just a bit, a young woman trying to figure what’s next and ignoring the need to heal.
Most mornings, I lingered lazily in my room. My fascination with art numbed by my sudden incapability.
My parents were in their chairs with coffee. Their singsong exchange in kind conversation captivated me. This is what made me think of Johnny Cash and his longsuffering wife, June.
“This morning, with her, having coffee.” Johnny Cash, when asked his idea of paradise
I cling to the memory of my parents having conquered hopeless days in their marriage and sitting in their morning chairs, calmly talking, planning for possibility.
It occurred to me last week as I thought of my own children, adults navigating marriage, parenting, career in a time such as this, I don’t remember my parents asking one another a question,
“How did we get here with Lisa? Where did we go wrong?”
And my tender heart is so grateful that I was never privy to those conversations.
Another thing I don’t recall hearing was panic over politics or very much talk at all about trouble to be expected here on earth, that earth is not my home, heaven is.
Surely, in different ways they felt similar fear, apathy and distrust of leaders back then.
There was Vietnam, there was integration, there was the President who had an interview in Playboy magazine and there were leaders assassinated and although we were grown by then, there was September 11th.
Funny story, my granddaddy purchased the said magazine and my brother and cousin found it, ran through the field and after enjoying it for a bit buried it in the sand.
I like to think that was one of my grandfather’s biggest and happiest moments, he probably yelled and stomped but I imagine him loving us all back then; but, especially the two rascals that sneaky and scandalous day.
There’s unrest, division, distress. It is palpable.
Someone told me; well, it was my daughter, “You sound so despondent.”
de·spond·ent/dəˈspändənt/ in low spirits from loss of hope or courage.
She called as I painted and repainted a piece. It was not coming together. I told her it was hard, this is new for me. I told her I have to finish so I can move on.
But, it wasn’t a painting for someone that was causing the mood she heard in my voice.
It was the piling on of other things, the dragging on of pandemic, the way the masked faces and isolation are destroying us all in our inners, depleting our reserve of hope.
So, I sit in my morning chair, a chair that belonged to my mama. The pines are dappled with morning sun, the same sun landing on the arm of my mama’s chair.
Saying, morning has come with wellness again. They did what they could and you are well. You’ve done what you could do as well and those you love are well, will be well. You know this is God’s promise.
“It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night,” Psalm 92:1-2 ESV
I did not hear my parents tell me that this world is not forever, there was minimal talk of heaven, even less conversation about our souls or salvation. We absorbed it I suppose from the sporadic other voices.
But, I saw and heard redemption when I laid quietly in the room that allowed me to be a temporary guest. I heard redemption in the conversation that was shared as they sat with coffee together in their “morning chairs”.
Imperfect love, grace and wisdom pulling me closer to living by faith because of mercy finding me, me finding God, continuously seeking, allowing every moment, my heart to be sought.
I pray your morning brings you the assurance that God is very near and that He is able to make good of all things, soften the hardest heart and redeem the angriest of relationships.
What are you wondering? What are you waiting for, wondering if you’ll ever get through or over it?
What are you waiting to experience, the wonder of a promise that comes true when you weren’t quite sure it would?
“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.” Psalm 62:1 ESV
The begonia in the pot was an afterthought, an extra in the little plastic container, now growing towards the sun.
I wonder why its blooms are fabulous, the others with the caladium have dried up.
I wonder why the women who found the empty tomb, who’d been so grief stricken were scared, uncertain, even seen as crazy.
Were met by skeptics.
Jesus had told them that after three days, you will understand even better the purpose of my violent crucifixion.
It seems as if the women and the disciples had forgotten.
I get that. I’m very much prone to forgetting the promise of good when I’m caught up in the malaise of my waiting.
Or when I don’t see any evidence of just around the bend arrival of it. I act as if pending will never end. I grow weary in waiting.
“…Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee,” Luke 24:6 ESV
Then, like the women bent over by their waiting beside the tomb of Jesus, I’ll get a sense of God’s nearness akin to the angel who told the ladies…
Remember. Remember, God will.
God will bring good again.
What are you waiting for? Is it for grief to subside or to change its grip on your life and your soul?
Grief will change over time. It never goes away, it does change its emotion and the emotion it stirs in you.
What at first and for years and years is bitter, will become sweet.
Here’s why I say this.
A few nights ago, for the first time in decades since she’s been gone, I felt happiness over my memories of my mama.
A Netflix series, “A Chef’s Table”, the first episode, a story of a strong Texan named “Tootsie”.
I was enthralled. I felt I’d never heard a story so like my mama’s. I happily watched the whole show and later told my children, “If you want to watch something that will literally feel like being with your grandma, watch this show.”
I don’t know if they will. But, I will again.
So, here’s to the undeniable mystery of God. Was God aware there’d be a woman named Tootsie who would at last turn my grief to a sweeter thing when I watched a documentary?
I don’t know.
I’m simply accepting that God is good and makes good on His promises.
Promises we only have seen just a glimpse of here.
We are known.
Already known.
We can wait well knowing, the sweetest days are coming.
We canwait in wonder rather than worry.
Because God said so.
Continue and believe.
What are you waiting for?
What, to begin or to end?
Wait in wonder, knowing God knows.
Wonderment, such a pretty word. I’m holding onto it.
I woke up and remembered, I had the very best dream.
I told my grown up children, with me because of our beach vacation.
We were all together the night before. They both know my ways. My son, for years slept across the hall, sometimes heard my night terrors. Morose recollections typically triggered by the slightest unintentional fear created dramas in my sleep.
So, when like a breath of fresh clear air, I had an optimistic dream, I had to tell them.
The night before we’d all sat together around the table. Adult children joining in conversation about Co-Vid, the election, the changing world known as America.
My son-in-law shared a video being shared all around. A county or city meeting somewhere in Florida and an invocation to something, anything other than God that led to six or so people standing and leaving.
The person giving the invocation prayed to nature and the earth and the only mention of Jesus was that he “might” forgive us.
I wasn’t particularly bothered by the video, I’d been in similar meetings, I told them.
I recalled a time I chaired a coalition I initiated to understand the issue of homelessness. I added that a member of the coalition decided each meeting should begin with a “good thought”, a sort of prayer.
I told my family, I never left the room, I simply did not bow my head. I did not join in the prayers that forbade the mention of Jesus.
Then I said to them,
It’s really going to be different for your children, an effort really to keep talking about Jesus.
Then my husband added that it will be okay, our parents probably felt the same worries.
Then we all said goodnight and exhausted from heat and beach went to bed.
I dreamt of a group regathering. I must’ve been invited as if a charter member or ex-officio sort of thing.
Three days after the dream, the details are skewed.
Like a reunion, we all spoke of what we’d been up to.
I stood in front of twenty or so people and I talked about my relationship with Jesus. I told the people who prayed the prayer excluding God and Jesus why I prayed differently.
I’d been with these people before. This time I felt welcome.
I felt free to be me.
I spoke with clarity. They were enthralled and actively listened. In the dream, there were men and women encircling me, attentive.
I recalled my days of being afraid of God, of being certain of my unworthiness, my days of working hard as a teenage peddler of paper booklets called tracts. I convincingly told of my God whom I believe in.
Someone, a well-dressed theologian sort asked,
“When did you decide to believe in God?”
In the dream I answered “about twenty years ago”.
And the questioner added, “that’s a long time, a long time…where are you now” as if I shouldn’t still be increasing my believing.
And I answered.
I’m just still growing and I’ll keep growing in my knowing of God.
It was the best dream. I’d been in meetings, spoken to large crowds, detailed our need for support and hinted occasionally of my faith.
But only hinted.
Tonight after unpacking sandy beach coolers, clothes and stuff, I had a good walk and thought of the dream that sang of freedom.
As I walked, I opened my palm easily upward to heaven and I thought, prophetic dream.
Not having a clue if that’s a possibility of me…for me.
Prophetic? Me?
My friend says these are not the days to lean into Jesus, rather these are the days to press ourselves to Him.
I couldn’t help but think of impression, allowing God’s impression to be made on me.
No longer overthinking it, not being afraid of it not being true.
Simply believing that it is just as Jesus said, He is the way. He is the answer to His Father’s plan so we have hope, experience peace and eternity with Him.
Google the sinner’s prayer or search the Bible or if you’re fortunate like me, a kind voice will tell you if you ask how it can be…
“Just pray for mercy.” they may answer.
Understand you were born a sinner, admit it. Confess that realization in a prayer to your Creator and then believe in Jesus and keep believing despite the world finding it irrational or a silly offensive fairy tale.
“Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 NLT
Allow Jesus to begin your transformation, as you press in.
Left forever, that mark like a print from an original masterpiece making.
Four days without journaling other than scribble marks with the baby, I read my Bible this evening.
“Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.” Deuteronomy 13:4 KJV
These are old words with timely discovering by me.
Cleave, to unwaveringly believe.
Cleave, not a word you might use usually.
This is me. This was me in my happy dream, being brave and contentedly certain of being loved by God, cleaving.
I saw God today in the tiny hand that reached for mine, the searching and saying “yellow” as we spotted leaves lying in late summer sand ready for new season.
My morning drive, an early one considering the four months of no rushing necessary, was a good one. A podcast I love on Tuesdays, ended with a gentle recitation of Psalm 23, The Message version.
“GOD, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction.
Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty shepherd’s crook makes me feel secure. You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing. Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of GOD for the rest of my life.” Psalm 23:1-6 MSG
Today included some garden hose water play followed by chalk art on the porch and then coloring with fat crayons on an old cardboard box.
Then lunch, then counting the seventeen stair steps together, then a book and then her midday slumber.
Then, quiet.
A house so quiet.
I remembered a time when the phrase was common, a question meant to bring self-assessment.
Where did you see God today?
I knew for sure I’d seen God in the sweet sleepy eyes of Elizabeth and in the light landing on the wild fuzzy fern. I saw God first thing as I drove up the hill to their home, listening to the 23rd Psalm.
I had lowered the window to capture the sunbeams through the lean early morning trees.
Later realizing that wasn’t the most beautiful thing.
The most beautiful sight captured was the little image of the mirror and the winding road behind me, the place I’d come from on my way to where I was going.
Beauty and love have been chasing after me all the days of my life.
The sound of a riding mower doesn’t obstruct the birdsong. The birds in the big high palm outside the window with my view have done their daily thing.
They’ve made sure that I have seen them before they go their way.
Off kilter because of allowing myself to go back to slumber, my mind is struggling through the mud it seems my soul is in.
Not quick to journal or to read my dailies, I just sit with coffee heavy with cream and honey.
That.
That sitting, I allow myself to see, that sort of sitting is not idle.
Sitting in slow silence with God and morning.
It is joy.
“You will live in joy and peace. The mountains and hills will burst into song, and the trees of the field will clap their hands!” Isaiah 55:12 NLT
The birds in the back are now excited. The lawn mower has moved to the far corner of the next door yard.
I step out to do what my mama taught. On hot days I water the plants before the sun is high in the sky and later, just as it fades.
I love the little things she gave me.
The man on the lawn mower is from one house away. He is cutting the widow’s grass perhaps unrequested. It seems an unspoken agreement that began when her husband got suddenly sick and then sooner than expected went to heaven.
We all were together in communication through texting as he grew closer to passing away.
The neighbors who are black and have two spunky twin girls and are expecting a third baby I believe very, very soon.
The mama watches out for me as I walk towards the safer place. She cautions me on the sharp curve knowing people avoiding the main road use our road as a hidden cut through.
Occasionally, the little girls will wave as they see me. Then they’ll wave again and again as if our waving towards each other is the happiest part of our days.
It always feels that way to me at least.
Excited, we are, to encounter each other. The mama and I talk about our children. We talk about our city. We talk about God. We talk about how we’re glad in a crisis that we know it’s mutual, the phone call away if we need anything.
It had been a while since I’d heard the giggling, the girls playing in their backyards on the fort their daddy built them. I hadn’t seen them at the driveway nor had I walked by and seen the mama taking care of her flowers.
I thought of walking to the back door. I’d done that before when the puppy got out or to drop off something.
I wanted to see my neighbor.
I longed for connection. Told myself, I’d stop that day, the day when most people changed their screens to just black.
Instead, I sent a message and I asked for her honesty. I asked just one question and said take your time with your answer.
I wanted to ask this of someone and I knew I could trust you to be honest.
I asked, “Have you ever felt my kindness to your family to be insincere?”
She answered that I should continue to be the person I’ve shown her, kindhearted and spiritual.
Then, she thanked me for being open minded and willing to have a candid conversation.
I felt she was thanking me to care enough about our differences of which neither of us had any control, to ask an honest question and then accept her answer.
You won’t find me joining in political dialogue. You won’t find me following the bandwagon of others. You won’t find me defending myself in an argument that doesn’t include a perspective I know.
Because none of us can ever know fully the heart of another.
Yesterday, I arrived early for grandma duty. I was worried my daughter would notice I’d been crying. I was serenaded by a song all the way down the long road before her road.
It’s a song about how I want to be remembered, to be remembered that I knew nobody on this earth had or would be able to love me like Jesus.
It’s a song about a legacy of that being enough. I’m so very far from that but so much closer to it than before.
Watering the plants this morning with the kind neighbor circling the widow’s yard, I notice the bright bloom stretching up from the grey leaves I only added to the pot on a whim. Brilliant yellow little flowers have grown from the hard soil of a given up on plant.
What good will come?
What good can come from all of this halfway through 2020 distress?
Maybe, we should change the question slightly.
What good has already come?
I pray you find all sorts of little evidences of that.
I pray you know you’ve been cared for by Jesus all the way, his faithful hand.
I pray you find your joy alone in Him. I pray it for me too.
Continue and believe.
We are one in Jesus. No one here on earth will ever love us His way, only be our example to follow.
Here’s a granddaughter inspired post about “wonder” I wrote a few weeks ago.
Today is her 1st birthday. I call her “morning glory” among other little things. A baby who changes a day from gray to blue, a baby girl who has changed our world. Happy Birthday, sweet little curious thinker, “ELB”. We thank you for making us so much more sure of every single thing. You cause me to rest. You increase my joy. You are a gift. You are the embodiment of certain hope. You are silly, you are wise.
What We See
The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both. Proverbs 20:12 ESV
As if our bodies were synchronized, our necks craned and faces tilted towards heaven, we stared through the sheer drapery and we tried to find the opening. We wondered if it was as tiny as the point of a pin. We longed to see and were left questioning, “What is up there, what is causing the lingering of her stare?” We were fascinated. We were perplexed.
The baby was tiny then. We decided the veil must surely be thinner between babies and heaven. Occasionally, as her mama cradled her after feeding and before sleep, she raised her tiny arm towards the ceiling in a newborn hello wave. Something was there, someone, a presence only baby girl was capable of seeing. We were captivated by her vision. We researched angelic explanations and discovered mystical and somewhat biblical explanation. My daughter and I agreed, she is in awe of her new world, she sees either angel, God or we hoped, her great-grandma.
Then, she began to grow and curiosity for other was all about what she could touch, feel, manipulate, and discover. We noticed her looking towards heaven less often. She became more fascinated with the cool earth beneath her knees and feet.
Her longing for understanding seemed to be bigger than simply seeing. I watched as she discovered discovering.
I began to discover again.
We sat together in the cool grass of Spring. I watched her fascination with leaves, pine straw, and the big dog.
We sat together.
So serene. I braided the pinestraw in a way I may braid her soft hair one day. She watched me and her chubby fingers tried the same.
“Bird”, I said and she looked at me and then towards the sky. For a moment or two she was enthralled, we looked up together. I held her hand and we sat still.
I am thinking now, posing a question, sermon to self-type evaluation, “Where will you see God today, Lisa?” because it has been something I’ve been wondering in this pandemic. I have taken stock of the things God has not stopped. Babies are born. Birds are cavorting. Even the wind seems more melodic. The flowers are brilliant. The clouds are puffed and fully inflated. I find it confusing these spectacular symbols of living in a time of speculation and dread of death.
How is there such splendor in such a time of fear? How is my wonder over such beauty so fulfilling? What is God’s intention in this juxtaposition of grief and beauty? Are we to hold both, one hand clutching uncertainty and the other, splendor? Possibly, I believe. Perhaps wonder is simply faith we see only through childlike eyes.
The baby will be here momentarily. I’ll spread an old quilt on the grass in the back corner. All the toys will be toted out and she’ll play until she is bored with blocks and colors. Then she and I will look and listen. We will mimic the crow. We will toss the ball to the dog and we may sing her favorite song, “Deep and Wide”. She’ll guide my hands because she knows the words now. She’ll remember long ago when her grandma opened her arms, deep and then wide and sang to her over and over about the fountain flowing, one full of love for her and me.
We will look together. We will listen and then have a lunch of sweet potato. I’ll be attentive to her seeing and she will be to mine. We will look in wonder for God today, the sweet baby girl, and I will remember our creator, the one who gave us our eyes and our ears and our favorite thing of all, our wonder.
Where will you see God today?
May your seeing be as mysteriously clear as a baby’s.
Happy 1st birthday, Elizabeth Lettie, we love you more than any words can express. We love you for changing our seeing. We love you for increasing our wonder.
Wisdom from my aunt. I’ve written about her before. We call her “Aunt Boo”. Her name is Sue Nell when it truly should be Grace or Vivian or maybe Jacquelyn she’s so timeless in beauty.
When she calls, I need an hour and it’s the best hour I’ll ever spend.
This morning, my phone rang and I talked to “Aunt Boo” who said I was heavy on her heart and asked me how I was feeling. When I told her I wasn’t having a good morning, she said, Oh, Lisa…me neither and then we took turns telling how this time is scaring us. By the end of the call, she said she felt better. I did too. Even though she didn’t once say “prayer and patience”, she said plenty even better.
She said, “I’m not a psychologist and I don’t read books; but, I just think God made some hearts to feel things much harder than others and that’s me and you.” 💕
She talked about family and the way my granddaddy was so rowdy and yet, had the heart of a baby, he cried over lots of things. He did some things he shouldn’t have, she told me, but oh he had a tender heart.
We talked about wisdom, how things you don’t think you can survive are meant to show you that you can and are meant to make you trust God forever. We talked about my cousin and how long it had been since she passed away but how everybody in the family still remembers her from her “good days” not her bad times. She reminded me, family forgets the hard, holds on to the good.
She told me “Women are just different than men, the way we react to life and hard times.” Keep moving, she shared her solution or anxiety will put you down.
Then she told me to do something for her.
She said, “I want you and Greg to sit and hold hands.” I laughed. She was quiet. I forgot about it until I went outside. “Aunt Boo wants me to hold your hand and send her a picture.”
“Okay” he said.
And it didn’t really hit me until I looked back at the photo, the wisdom in this one small thing. In a time of isolation and talking to friends from a distance, sterilizing everything AND the kitchen sink. Whose hand can you hold? Who will be with you because they’re already here?
So, thanks Aunt Boo for the possible handholding you’re gonna inspire.
Get yourself an Aunt Boo, someone who’s just enough gentle faith, honest commentary and wisdom, enough for generations.
Last night, the first star was out, the one some wish on, the one that makes me think of my mama. The Lab and I sit outside in our spot til dark. I saw two stars shoot by the first one and I just sat waiting for night.
My son and I talked earlier, not long and drawn out, just acknowledged this time like one neither of us had ever known. He listed his unknowns, calmly gave worst case scenarios of his future, defined this time as limbo. I agreed. Limbo that’s an acceptance you can’t really fight against, you just are in it. I mentioned God and the power of prayer, said I believe this time will be remembered by prayer, God will be remembered by many, newly recognized by some. These are my certain convictions. My hope.
The 6th chapter of Deuteronomy contains the greatest commandment and it closes with Moses telling the people what to tell their children when they ask about God’s rescue of them in times to come.
“When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.” Deuteronomy 6:20-21 ESV
God would want us to remember just as Moses told them. To remember the palpable fear and uncertain dread in this time of limbo, to remember that God was aware.
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.
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 