There was no hurriedness only a little curiosity over the day. The open day with possibilities until evening and then a time to be guests with friends.
Quietly, I lie waiting and watching and saw the little clementine colored circle peaking through the sheer in the open space of the blind.
Saturday is here and it has something to say. Says you’ve made it this far now let’s get going today; but, let’s keep the same pace.
The pace you gave a name to line up with your deciding to commit to being faithful.
Believe and continue, believe and continue.
Like the sunshine’s swaying smoothly shadows, it’s an easy feeling, like the Eagles old song it’s a “peaceful easy feeling”.
Believe and continue, no self-imposed pressure any longer, no succumbing to the doubt of others who may be intrigued by your continuing because all along they suspected you never would or could.
Believing God is with me, His Spirit, Jesus is for me, with me.
I am for Him.
It’s no longer about being worthy. It’s about continuing while believing.
It’s silently seeking and being met by something unexpectedly good.
The sunshine is splendid where I’m sitting, saying Come and see, come and see.
Eyes closed for a little longer and prayers added on, building one upon the other and then more and more that came to mind.
I open them at peace and find patterns now excitedly dancing on the blue places of the rug as if reverence has clearly met relief and together they have birthed belief.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
Matthew 7:7 ESV
Come and see what happens when you continue to believe…continue now with me.
My morning will not be boisterous with unwrapping, celebration won’t come until later.
Children are adults and we’re laid back and flexible, open and accepting. I’m anticipating the day, anticipating spirited appearances, nuanced moments of Jesus in it.
The angels told the shepherds not to be afraid when God’s glory illuminated the sky, an announcement of a Savior.
And Luke ends his beautifully researched compilation with the words of Jesus, again saying fear is something you should never feel.
Of what are you afraid today?
Why are you frightened?” he asked. “Why are your hearts filled with doubt? Luke 24:38 NLT
What are you doubting on Christmas morning?
Everything changes at Christmas except for Jesus.
Jesus stays the same, do not be afraid.
Merry Christmas to you.
Do new things, you can and you will, I’m remembering now my mama, she came to me last night in a dream.
Angelic, she was as she waited for me and without a word guided my continuing, gave approval of my plans.
Finally fading into the distance after nodding, smiling, giving her okay of who I am.
Chapter 15 is a collection of parables. One, well known and no more relatable than the others, just more often told.
Jesus told the tax collectors and the Pharisees, a captive but cynical audience, three stories about loving lost things, maybe hoping they’d all see themselves, realizing they may be caught in a similar story.
They were condescending and doubtful, remarking that he’s the one who welcomes sinners, has dinner with them.
Jesus had their attention. He told of a man who had a hundred sheep and lost one and how he refused to stop looking until that sheep was back in the fold. He told of a woman frantic over losing one coin of her ten, how she swept every corner of her home way into the night until she found it, found that lost coin.
He used both parables to compare God’s joy when one person, just one comes to Him, or decides it is time to come back to Him.
“Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
Luke 15:7 ESV
He told about a brother, one of two, who squandered his share of the father’s riches. That father longed for his son’s return and when he returned, the father ran to him. He ran to him!
“And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”
Luke 15:20 ESV
Every morning, I return to my morning place. I wait for a moment sometimes or I might just sit. I find Him there quite often.
In the way a word from one book or an email will correlate, complement another.
I wait. I listen to His voice through His Spirit in me.
I sometimes find my eyes wet with tears, others I have to let sink in, the important true lessons for the progression of my faith.
I’m awakened and I’m humbled gently over changes I should make.
It’s a good space, my quiet spot.
I’m found here by Him.
Found and found again.
May you find Jesus this Christmas or may you return to one who’s looking for you, arms wide open saying, “Come back home.”
The blaring bong of bell, he stops it and I want to say you could have gone without.
Your wife could have just told you so, quietly and matter of factly, it’s 4:30.
Last night, I prayed the ABC’s 3 times, 78 letters lined up, mostly spontaneously and my prayers had a bend towards gratitude.
Not the same old worry, the correspondence God knows so well of me.
My brain must have been overloaded in a good way because it had stories it refused to leave hanging and they continued all through the night.
Then, I woke up remembering what I wrote hurriedly and just let it be.
This 31 day thing feeling like obligation and nothing more. I could have trashed it, the one that was without flow and didn’t circle back around to make sense.
No matter really, I’m learning to grow.
Ironically, I wrote about not being “good” and the first thing that came to mind when my knees hit the floor in the darkness was.
I’m good, God. I’m good.
The reality of a sleepless night and a day that has the likelihood of stressful situations, wasn’t about to phase me, I felt sure.
Because I woke refreshed, unbelievably so and assured.
All is well.
I’m good.
God is so that way.
Oh, how I love His subtle ways.
All will be good.
All is well.
At the close of a meeting of minds trying to be correctly succinct and with draft three or four of some set of bylaws, there was a lull in the banter.
I looked down towards the gentleman who is in charge of the weekly soup kitchen.
Asked Jim, “How’s your friend?” He smiled and told me he saw him on Saturday, they all celebrated his 70th over soup.
“I still have the ring he made me.” I added, happily.
Remembering the day we were charged with counting the homeless and a pleasant man on a bike met us in the park to talk. He magically, meticulously folded a dollar bill and presented it to me, a ring!
Give me times like that Lord, more of these moments that set me back on track.
That remind me trials are common to us all, that we’re not different ever in your sight.
That your goodness is common to us all.
“The poor and the oppressor have this in common: The Lord gives sight to the eyes of both.”
I concoct purposeful and passionate scenarios of diligent sticking to something and going long and hard without a break.
I imagine myself contentedly uninterrupted, a book in my lap.
But, both elude me.
Both take practice, commitment, a chance to see the benefit.
Going ahead without allowing hesitation or giving myself reprieve, permission to chill.
I’m sitting home alone, it’s Sunday and it’s sunny. The cool air of the night before has the rooms faintly fresher and the shift of the season quite clear.
Captivated by the book in my lap, “Becoming Mrs. Lewis” by Patti Callahan and tea in a pretty cup, I told myself read a chapter and then go, write a chapter.
Seemed like a good plan, inspirational, my content might flow more freely.
But, I’m three chapters in and still reading. This is a gift, this is a pleasure I’d long thought gone, being pulled in and unable to set a thick book aside.
Now, I’m rethinking the ambition of writing new chapters or layering abstracted thick color on a new something I started.
Instead, I’ll keep reading and when my eyes get heavy, I might dose or I may rise to walk the trail before the sneaking up of sunset.
I may look for them again, the tiny blackbirds up high in an old oak or the surprise sighting of seven or so cardinals all gathered together, red dots bouncing and bobbing against the green.
What I have started I will finish, I’ll come back and I’ll continue.
Fearlessly, faithfully what has begun will continue.
“Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.”
Jude 1:2 NIV
Giving myself a little mercy, peace and love on a sunny Sunday.
If the sun where you rose today was even half the spectacle of mine.
Then, like me you’ve got cause to continue.
We were both in the presence of sublime.
There is joy on our horizons or for you, already, by this time.
God is with us.
On earth sometimes as it is, as it shall be for us.
In heaven.
Saying, notice now, ask of me what you’d like to see, trust and be attentive.
You will see.
Wait and see.
“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
The air, obviously different this morning, I walked as quietly as possible thinking my aunt was still sleeping.
The back door was open wide and I saw her nowhere. The laundry room, slightly lit by the light marking the dryer’s cycle and a shifting noise was ever faint.
I decided it must be a load of towels. I turned to start the coffee, turned back and there she was. Smiling and nodding at me, her hair all messy and loose and her hands already working, determined and sure.
“Well, hey.” she said, “I’ve gotten behind on my laundry.”
She smiled and added “get you some coffee” and so, I did.
I didn’t tell her I’d been looking for her, that I’d gone out on the patio and thought I might find her watering or working already in her yard.
I didn’t tell her how the sweetest aroma I’ve ever known caused me to stand still, surveying the impatiens, the begonia, the ferns, turning and tilting and trying to find the mysterious source.
We sat with our coffee and fig newtons and we caught up quietly.
And then I asked her what the scent was that captured me, the one so enveloping.
She asked me if I’d noticed that all the blooms are reaching out wider, brighter, more fully. They know the season’s about to change, she informed.
Then she told me that it was the ginger lilies who sent the morning scent my way.
“Must’ve been the slight breeze this morning, it’ll bring ’em right up to the porch.”
I looked over the wide green carpet of her sloping yard, way past the little house my grandma lived before and thought I’d never have figured it out had she not told me, the massive lilies, so far in the swampy distance, bordering the woods.
“Oh, yeah.” she added as we walked down to see, “these lilies live long, they’re strong, they keep holding on.”
Then we plundered around and she showed us the elephant ears she’d discovered and she took us around back to the tiny purple blooms running wild and free.
I thought about her love, her faith, her quiet hope and I watched her as we shared a current stressful worry or two.
She nodded again, folded her hands to pray and with no words or a prayer at all, we heard.
“Prayer and patience…”
and hope now too, I know she always hopes.
I want a wide and full hope like hers in my changing seasons, all stored up for now, being so very confident there will always be more.
I made it to the top of the hill and the rain showered my cheeks in a whipping wash.
The storm brought rain mostly and a time to wait, and trust, and to stop depending on the weather or the man to begin, or to stay, to go.
Go, go with the flow. Go slow if you struggle, still go.
So, today the wind said no use for that hat and I set out to walk, to run into the wind with Alison Krauss singing of maybe one day maybe and a simple love like that and please read the letter that I wrote.
Tiny leaves all around, torn from the trees still green and one large maple between two pines is sparsely scattered with yellow now amongst the still lively greens.
Saying time is changing, you are changing. It is time.
So, I passed a couple walking separate but together, moved uphill running to the opposite and not even a nod did I offer.
For I was moving steady and thinking now about the times against the wind and how that song used to slow me but, now feels quite fine.
Like a letter you write that needs new correspondence because this is now and that was then. You open the mail to find an invitation to enter a literary competition, to submit again like last year before and you tuck it away knowing already the story, the one about changing names.
There’s just something about God’s ways that cause the constant return to quiet.
“Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.”
Psalms 25:4 ESV
When you’ve had and have so many irons in the fire and you’re persisting, persisting, persisting because you believe not persisting would be giving up and well giving up might be quitting altogether once and for all.
And then you’d have to fake being fine with the oh, well I tried and it wasn’t meant to be for me facade.
I’ve been creating like crazy, so much that there’s no more space for my pieces and a crazy little children’s table I’m determined I’m gonna be stuck with because, no one thinks it’s worth what I’ve put into it and oh,
Well, you’re not really an artist, Lisa. You have talent but you don’t have what it takes to take you anywhere.
And you’re not really a writer except that people actually like your words and you like sharing them and a few people take something with them from their reading. And they tell you and you smile, thinking oh that’s kind of you but I wish I could be more, more, more.
Because you’ve got five or six possible places and ideas and they’re absolutely all over the place and all overdue soon.
You fathom a community changing idea for suicide prevention but you’re naive to believe you can do it your own and you know that so that knowledge joins in the conversation and question of them all.
Give up or try?
Then you realize, just stop.
Just stop for a day or maybe two.
Stop and remember your why that got crowded out by your what if and why not me or the big one for me, “How can I, How should I and mostly How could I not?
Because there’s always the place inside that won’t let you forget God told you these things are your purpose, He made you for these.
Landscapes were painted because the angels seemed less charming, amateurish, I discerned.
Others wanted color, I adjusted my technique and my brushes.
I wrote bravely and hurriedly to comply with a deadline and four days later reread the folded and put away copy and found a sentence that made no sense, a whole paragraph that had no flow.
Obsessively checking emails to see if they chose to publish it anyway. Crazy!
Crazy ever seeking more for me.
Too much, Lisa. Too much Lisa.
Grace upon Grace
You lost your why again.
Art had become a chore, my quiet space an obligation, counting down time ’til I was done with one and then finish three more to be complete, a series I called “Spirit”.
I suppose such is life when you’re teetering over deciding your worth from what you create instead of from your creator.
The things that have always been your sweet spot of comfort become a frantic and frazzled focus, an ever futile challenge.
It is miserable when you veer off the path of what had become your peaceable and pretty place.
So, you take a break, maybe just an hour, a day or two and you ask God to speak before you close your eyes.
You wake and there’s barely light outside, the soft and gradual I’m not gonna overwhelm you revelation of day.
Feels like God saying,
Come now, let’s begin again.
This time be disciplined. Be disciplined not in your doing.
But, be disciplined in your believing.
Make things of beauty because I’ve given you the ability, the hands, the thoughts, the words.
Make them for me, allow me to take them where they belong.
I’ve begun a new piece, returned to my beginning place, the quiet pieces resting on lyrics from old hymnal pages. The works I call “my girls” and some have called my ministry.
I’m at peace again.
Back to my soul.
I’m linking up with the Tell His Story community along with Mary Geisen and this beautiful story: https://marygeisen.com/there-goes-my-heart/
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.
There’s just something about God’s ways that cause the constant return to quiet.
Lisa Anne Tindal 