I’m giving myself mercy today because I can’t think of anything original or feel like really stringing words together that may be witty or cause one to pause and think.
I keep thinking about Matthew Perry. I know, I know. I don’t know him and he’s a celebrity.
But, I keep wondering if his drowning was intentional or if he passed out from drinking or drugs which would mean he’d fallen backwards
maybe again.
I walked and wondered if it was shame over a slip up that led to him falling too far to get back up.
I wondered about shame in general as I willed myself to get up from my painting desk to get fresh air.
To exhale, inhale, notice life on a solitary close to dark walk.
I thought about shame. I wondered if it can make you ill, physically ill.
I walked on, quietly.
Talked to God in my mind.
Took the long way back home
And saw a dove perched on the street sign on the corner.
Before bed, I read a verse about being cared for. I read that the shepherd takes care of his sheep overnight. Sheep don’t have to worry about being fed, of waking rested and ready.
I woke too early on an “off” and open day. The moment I sat with coffee, a thought came.
I’ll share it here as the “good thing” today.
Morning Thoughts
“What are you building and why when I’ve already established your dwelling place?”
I wrote underneath 10/26/23 and my children’s names in a thick circle, is this question.
I pause to consider why, I question the significance of “dwelling” and I imagine eye rolls and even laughter over the “depth of me”.
The more I thought of this question God gave me, I compared this world we live in, these lives we lead of striving and comparing ourselves just to stay “caught up”.
We don’t have to build ourselves up.
We may topple under the weight of the hurried addition to our first or second floor. We neglect the foundation and we envision mansions that represent our lives, when we’d be better as a quaint little three bedroom with a porch.
After all the building for appearance and to comfort ourselves in being enough, we just might find we don’t want to live here anymore, it’s just too much.
And that’s good
That’s a kindness of God to be shown that you are enough, more than and that although you feel worn thin and the structure of the dwelling of you is feeble and tired, there’s still a little corner that’s waiting for you to find yourself acknowledging the exhaustion.
You matter.
The condition of your body and soul, the place where God dwells even when we can’t find Him in the clutter.
Surprisingly, that’s a sweet place, the most beautiful place you’ve known all along.
Maybe, its name is acceptance.
I think so.
God gave me this today. He wants us both to know. We are enough in our dwelling with Him, we don’t have to wear ourselves out in building, renovating or leveling ourselves in destructive manners because we don’t think our “dwelling” measures up.
God has more than we can fathom in the place of us He long ago established.
“I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.” Isaiah 45:3 NIV
I saw the copper color on the carpet and thought, “penny on heads, yay!”
Instead, it was a piece of cereal, a circle shaped flake.
When I read the parable of the lost coin, I can see myself as the widow. She’s searching every corner, maybe like me had to find her glasses or maybe she resorted to rubbing her hand along the floors, the corners, the spaces where the coin may have landed.
“Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Luke 15:8-10 ESV
I’ve lost many things. I’m sad because a pair of earrings disappeared (twice, one time I found them) and I can’t find the one charm for my bracelet. It’s long lost.
More than those treasures though is the mystery that many events and interactions in my life, I have no recall.
No memory.
Someone told me after all these years, willing myself to remember, sitting in silence trying to recalibrate my brain,
That complex PTSD often results in memory loss. A chronology of hurt has this result.
Now, you may think this is heavy, sad, upsetting, even depressing.
No, it’s a gift, a joy to know that life is an invitation to simply cling to the joyful and to make more joy, if you can.
So, what is joy?
What is found treasure?
It’s found in listening.
Acceptance of every tiny moment.
It’s found in observing. It’s the evidence that who you are now is so much more important than who you were or what hard things happened to steal chunks of remembering.
The widow in the parable rejoiced.
Was it because she was poor?
Was it because she simply celebrated her not giving up her search?
Or even more, because she realized the essence of the truth of Jesus.
She mattered.
She was not one who’d ever be given up on.
Nor am I.
Nor are you.
I know the parable is about Jesus caring about every single lost soul.
To me it’s about joy.
About never giving up on being found by it and by it finding you.
I’m 63 years old with a timeline of trauma. But, not until today did someone say to me, the memory loss is because of what happened to you, it’s really just brain chemistry, neuroscience.
And the truth of that felt like a coin I’d been crawling around on my knees, scouring the floor to see
For a very long time.
Trying to squeeze the memories from the layers of my brain and all for naught.
Except the realization of the present and the chance to add to memories.
God is so good to me.
I surely don’t deserve it.
There are countless things I’ve agonized over not being able to remember.
I’ll never find those memories.
Maybe, though I can feel deeply the way those crises and celebrations made me feel and I can honor those times and myself by feeling all the feelings now.
Most of my life I’ve been nurtured by the pencil in hand, a piece of paper, a margin that invites.
Art sustains me.
A wise Dr. and author, Curt Thompson reminds often of attachment that we as children needed to be “seen, safe, soothed and secure” and that need is innate. We will always be in pursuit.
Embraced By Grace
Interestingly, adding color to paper and hinting at an emotion are when I feel these needs are known most and met.
How about you?
Is it art?
Music?
Prayer?
or something else.
I hope you know this “withness with God” often.
You are loved.
Even if the child in you lacked one of the “s”’s.
She’s still there, self-aware, surrendered and seeking solace in the sweet places she’s found herself
Mingled in a dream that included family at the beach as well as unfamiliar children asking to play on a trampoline, I am recalling “Psalm 90”.
The Spirit of God interspersed just that in a dream that included my mama being a given a healing prognosis, “Now, you’ll have a chance to really live!”
Maybe it was the beautiful and educational sermon on Sunday on heaven.
“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Psalm 90:2 ESV
Maybe it was the call from “Aunt Boo” my mama’s sister. She talked about crocheting. Maybe I tucked away the visual of her teaching my mama, the memory of their back and to sister chatter.
Who knows? Around 3, I woke and tossed and then recited mentally, over and over, Psalm 23.
Imperfectly still, after all these years of using this chapter to calm me. For some reason, portions and not the entire Psalm linger longer than others and I drift off to sleep.
Note the commentary
All my days have been a meandering sort of trail. A pause to consider, I’ve been in the darkness, I’ve lived in the dread, I’ve found myself off course because of conflict or circumstance.
David knew. He did too.
And so, his words aren’t ones of a perfect follower. Instead, a perfect “returner” to the place where he and God dwell together safely.
I used to believe “all the days of my life” meant the actual dwelling place of Jesus…heaven.
Again, instead…David is acknowledging and giving us permission to acknowledge the beauty we can claim as our own here…
As long as my lungs are providing me with breath and my heart is beating…I am dwelling with God, and He with me.
We are together.
I am known. I am seen.
I am invited to keep returning to rest.
Why Psalm 90 mixed in with a captivating dream of life getting another chance for my mama?
Psalm 90 is one penned by Moses.
It opens with this.
“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” Psalm 90:1 ESV
There were other people in the big bright room with my mama, not just my brothers and sister. My children were there too.
Psalm 90 closes with an acknowledgement of what had not and has not been without affliction. Moses offers us his prayer back then as a promise and prayer we can choose today.
“Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” Psalm 90:15-17 ESV
“Favor” here meaning “beauty”.
Return to beauty today.
Embrace grace. More than you expected, the grace you’ve been shown.
The grace that you know.
Continue and believe.
Dwell in peace.
“Now you can begin to live”, the words promised to my mama in my dream.
I wondered as I refreshed my memory on the prophet Jeremiah, why he’d been marked with the identity of the “weeping prophet”.
“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13 ESV
His call was to restore the people he loved to a relationship with God the creator rather than pursuit of other gods and things.
He wasn’t very successful. His success was committed obedience regardless.
Strange Waking Words
Jeremiah asks, “Is there no physician there? Is there no balm in Gilead…why then has the health of my people not been restored?” (Jeremiah 8:18-22)
On Tuesday morning, God woke me with a promise, “there is a balm in Gilead”.
A lingering cough and congestion with no other symptoms caused me to decide I’m getting older and I just don’t bounce back as quickly. Still, it was strange to wake with that very first thought.
Clearly, my heart was in need as well as my body.
Still, strange if it’s difficult to believe what you can’t see…that Jesus lives within us, the Holy Spirit…the comforter.
So, to be told, “Lisa, there is a balm in Gilead.” (just that clearly) was to remind me of the Healer of all my wounds, those already well and those in the process of true wellness.
I had no idea. I understand balm as sort of a salve like Neosporin but no clue about Gilead.
I discovered there’s no verse with this promise, only one that questioned why wasn’t there, why was there no balm?
And old hymn came from this same wondering of someone long ago…
“There Is A Balm In Gilead”
Traditional Spiritual
There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole, there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again. There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole, there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, you can tell the love of Jesus and say, “He died for all.”
So, I sketched a wounded and contemplative woman in the margin, the words alongside her…There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.
Lord, I was near enough to your heart to hear this the other morning. Draw me nearer, I pray. Help me to be a seeker.
Jeremiah penned the verses adorning well wishing cards at graduation, the ones that proclaim we all have a purpose and I wonder; actually, I believe he questioned his purpose when it didn’t pan out, when it seemed it nor he made a difference in his calling.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 ESV
There’s not always a straight path, life circumvents what we hoped would be our future or at least would give us hope.
Jeremiah wondered why there was no healing, no physician, no balm in Gilead and centuries later, someone penned the words to a hymn that promised healing, one that said, there wasn’t a balm then; but, then came Jesus.
And Jesus woke with me the words to that very song.
With a tiny bit of trepidation and the need to refresh my memory, I’ve just searched to find a short devotion I submitted for publication that was rejected.
I often am met with puzzled expressions or worse, a squinty eyed and wrinkled forehead over the things I say, the things I think.
I responded to a poll by an author who is studying brain science, how the science of the brain is effected by relational trauma.
I typed…
“I’d love to know if memories of trauma can ever completely go away?”
Once, in a conversation with a clinician friend who is an expert in all things amygdala related, I proposed
One day, what if one day, scientists discover how to surgically remove traumatic memories from the brain?
My friend looked at me, knowing I was serious and it seemed, she was deeply moved by such an imaginative hope.
I realize I’m sometimes too much for some people.
I reread my submitted devotion, maybe too heavy or even “far fetched” over the possibility that Jesus might have a mind like mine. Or maybe, the tone was wrong, less than perfect grammar or perhaps, it was not a fit for a book of 40 days to a stronger, more courageous mind I suppose.
Rejection doesn’t bother me as much as before. I love writing. I’m owning my voice, honesty and all.
So here’s what I wrote:
A Mind Like Mine, Is it Possible?
Lisa Anne Tindal
Key Verse: “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” ‘ But we have the mind of Christ.” I Corinthians 2:16 ESV
Countless days I have felt the unwelcome weight on my chest, the creeping up of vice-like unrest brought on by my thoughts.The recurring nuisance of anxiety for no reason that feels like entrapment.
I pause and question the cause. I say private prayers, take long walks and do something creative with my hands. I clean. I rearrange shelves or entire rooms. I do some stretches. I put my legs against the wall and my hands on my chest.
I remind myself of the most important, although not instantaneous response.
I remind myself that my loving Father would never desire or cause me to feel this way. I recall the promise in II Timothy, written by Paul, a prisoner awaiting execution. I say to myself, “This feeling is not from God.”.
“…for God gave us not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control.” II Timothy 1:7 ESV
I also remind myself of Paul’s words that assert we are able to understand our Father God because we have the mind of Christ. Our minds are changed, comforted, informed by the Holy Spirit in us when we accept Jesus as our Savior.
“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” ‘ But we have the mind of Christ.” I Corinthians 2:16 ESV
The thought of having the mind of Christ captivates me and stirs curiosity over the characteristics that would define such a mind.
So, I created a poll on Instagram, added a little note saying “doin’ some research”. I asked my followers to give me a word to describe the mind of Jesus. There was nary an answer, lots of hearts and likes, but no participation in the poll.
Could it be the question was beyond actually believing that our minds could be “Jesus-like”?
Just last week, questions over a decision prompted questions of God.
“Why the resistance to your call on my life?”
“Have I ever felt that I knew your will without question, or have I spent my whole life making iffy choices that you’ve redeemed?”
“What is your will for me God?” I opened my Bible to search for a verse in Micah. Instead, my eyes met a sketch I’d created on the pages of Joshua.
A woman with a posture of listening and my handwriting reminding, “Incline your heart to the Lord.” ( Joshua 24:23 ESV) and boldly circled verses with the words,sincerity, faithfulness.
Sincerity and faithfulness,
I would insert in the IG poll because I have known my Savior to be sincere in His faithfulness to me.
I wonder how my fear, anxiety and resistance might fade if I dared to believe that because I have the mind of Christ, with humble grace I could say in time, “His mind is like mine.”
What a beautiful thought worth embracing.
I can be sincere, and I can choose faithfulness. My mind can be without torment.
My mind can be changed by my heart’s position. My mind can be gently faithful and with sincerity, become more content, less shaken.
Confidently, “more me”.
A Prayer:
Lord, you understand our minds unrelentingly. You lead us to be questioners in your Will. You answer. You calm. You strengthen our minds. You help us see ourselves from your perspective. You help our minds to connect with our hearts and to be still, to know what is good, acceptable and perfect according to you.Incline us to your heart, Lord. We will trust that our minds will follow.
I’m not sure I’m a devotion writer. I’m not sure about writing at all. I’m only sure that as I write, as I grow.
I’m less bothered by this “enigmatic” mind of mine.
Continue and believe.
With sincerity and faithfulness, you are deeply loved.
I love the sound of “August”, the sounds of it. The excitement for new things like a school year, a settledness from summer things that sometimes feel like “have to do’s” more than want to’s.
Last year’s calendar came to be when I considered the gift of a dove’s meaning, the nearness of God, the invitation to be a believer in and a seeker of peace.
Maybe August comes with an invitation to change the way we’re walking, sort of reroute our navigation.
I discovered the Biblical meaning of August being themes like new beginnings, reset, and one I especially love, “restoration” and I for one, am happy the day is here…the very first day to move courageously (even if again or against the wind) toward beautiful yet to be seen ways that God is a God of restoration.
Nine paintings of women came to life as I thought about the courage that comes from allowing and aligning with God’s restorative love and discipline.
“Restoration”
He’s making us new, leading us who are listening, noticing and recalling just how far we’ve coming.
Our colors are changing, no longer hidden.
We’re vibrant.
“And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.” Isaiah 30:21 ESV
So, watch and notice. Pay attention. August is ready to bring restoration, to continue in ways that felt new, or to begin anew.
Next year’s calendar?
I’m thinking “transformation” as its theme.
Butterflies as art.
“Restoration” pieces will be live on my website (www.lisaannetindal.me) in just TWO Days!
One wilted rose remains. It’s wound its way among the limelight hydrangeas. I’ve been greeted by the beauty every morning this week. Soon, the petals will drop and not so long away, the green will be dried up by Autumn air and the tiny rose will just be a memory, but also a hope.
Could it be as simple as choosing forward looking more often than back?
Could this be the blessing over the curse?
“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse—” Deuteronomy 11:26 NIV
How we see things matters. Interactions, relationships and our part in the ugliness or beauty of them.
Exchanges linger in our hearts even if we’ve been long separated from the person or people.
We are marked by ugliness and yet, we can choose not to be forever marred.
We can choose to see the joy and lightness in looking forward.
I was frozen in the driver’s seat. I could hurry to catch up and engage in casual talk or I could sit and wait, not have the guts to simply be near her.
“How are you?” might be my question or maybe they’d go first.
Or there might be no words offered, no interaction for the sake of one another, just a layer of stifled breath between us.
And that’s quite okay.
Because hurt lingers long in the hearts of one betrayed, cast aside or used for another’s climbing the ladder advantage.
There was a time when my face was well known, known for the work I represented and recognized in the “right” circles.
Now, I’m just “someone people used to know” becoming the woman not needing to be “known”, just me being me.
I’m not sure what prompted the thought, the realization.
I’m sort of okay with this new “imageless” image. Maybe all the other roles, women I tried hard to be were actually in a way
Imaginary.
This morning, I read a review by Michele Morin of a book by Christine Caine, “Don’t Look Back”.
Caine writes of the ways we can get stuck in our tracks (turn to an immovable block of salt like Lot’s wife) when we continue to look back.
Maybe looking back is good if we use it as a choice to decide.
To look back and see the distance you’ve gotten in your healing from hurt, to look back and think for a minute before reacting, I’m better, stronger, wiser on this forward facing side of that person’s hurt.
To look back, not stuck and staring but to look back and confidently reposition our gaze, to view the harm of our pasts as a reflection of our empowered decisions…
What was meant to harm us will not destroy us.
What was bad is on its way to more very good.
Decide to believe in the good you’ve already seen. Choose a sort of self-assessing.
Quietly measure the sense in your soul that keeps saying to you
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 