Vulnerability

Steady Now

bravery, courage, Faith, mercy, Prayer, rest, Teaching, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability

My little Gideon

I almost slipped. The floor causing squeaky basketball sounds, “shuffle, shuffle…squat, shuffle, shuffle, squat!”

My right foot almost folded. I paused in the repetition, considered faking injury, dropping out. 

Began again though, doing this push me farther than before thing. 

Getting stronger, not smaller, I’m changing me for the better. 

Inside too, I woke with this song this morning, “O’ Come to the altar…O’ what a Savior…hallelujah !”

Setting the tone, making steady the way I’m walking today. I pray and I say thank you for teaching me to persist. 

I say thank you for fresh perspective, music in my ear and a tiny Bible close to my work with words that my eyes land upon, saying “I’ve got you…you got this!”

A new idea, I’m excited, plans to prosper them! 

Plans, Passages, Prospering

Keep me steady now, Lord.  Day by day, dear Lord I pray. 

Music, scripture, prayer and persistence.

Steady now. 


Linking up with a community of ideas and grace and writing for Five Minute Friday! 

Visit here:  FMF 

Like the Mornin’

courage, Faith, grace, mercy, praise, Prayer, rest, Teaching, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, wonder

I’m gonna do my very best.

I declare. I am. 

Decided, just now, to live more like the morning.

Easy like Sunday or Wednesday or Tuesday,

Mornin’.

Try to live all day “easy peasy” like the thin lines on the blinds becoming silvery gray, drawing me to wake and early, saying let’s go and see.

Morning, takin’  it easy on me.

Time for anticipating, of dark coffee, pink pencil and the corner sofa spot where the tall thin lamp shines down in a quiet welcome, come.

I’m gonna live like morning all day if I can.

To be less frustrated by the unexpected unfriendliness of the day, I’ll turn back to my morning page reread and I’ll decide,

Okay, show me again. I know I read it in your book, underlined, recorded and thought for more than a second…this is God and this is good. This is for me.

No more gettin’ sidetracked by demands and details, brain overloaded from multiple tasks.

I’ve decided to try, too good not to, just try to break the habit of thinkin’ dread and despair and doubt. The things that come out most every middle of the day, like a prisoner breaking out, they’re gonna make their mischief, stir up stuff.

I’m gonna try, here and ready to begin yet again to be unswayed by patterns or people or less than promising plans.

Give me back my morning, no kidding.

I will surely thank me.

If I can live like morning for just a little bit longer like the summer sunrise lingers lazily deciding,  I’m staying up late, I’d surely be more contented come the night.

I’d stretch out my morning mind and soul, establish new ways.

I’m gonna live like the morning, savor it like creamy brown coffee, the color of thick chocolate shake.

I’m gonna cup my cup of morning and do better, I decide.

Less straining towards back home to sigh and declare oh, another day, another day…

Live easy like the mornin’,  yes, so much less me, so much more Him.

“Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭143:8‬ ‭ESV‬‬ 

Discovering this Thursday morning, a beautiful and oh, so timely post about joy and suffering at quietlyreminded.com 

What a pretty place to visit, art and words and grace and truth! 

 
Linking up with Jennifer Dukes Lee as she writes about family.

http://jenniferdukeslee.com/just-needed-someone-love-god-made-family/

The Essence of Days

Abuse Survivor, bravery, courage, Faith, family, grace, mercy, Prayer, rest, Teaching, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, wonder

Forward with Grace

Wouldn’t it be phenomenal to carry around all day…all the day long, 

the little confirmations

epiphanies 

the truths spoken by another

that happen to be gracefully

placed in your lap?

Most especially the ones that ease your mind

lessen the pressing pressure of what next, what now, what if and what if not? 

The ones that make resting and trusting and doing just our small part in this ginormously, great big world more like grace and less like not enough, even drudgery? 

God is for us. God is with us. 

Step easy, Lisa, tell others the same, that 

there are places He is preparing. 

Seemingly insignificant or maybe no step at all; yet, even my planted feet and heart in places I think dull and lowly are privy to the light.

We are not meant to be seen as God’s perfect, bright shining examples, but to be seen as the everyday essence of ordinary life exhibiting the miracle of His grace. 

Wisdom from Oswald Chambers

The seemingly useless steps are taking us to places we’ll be a light, maybe be warmed by the light of another. Then, round the corner and look back, enlightened. 

I believe this. 

I am trusting this as truth. 

I just keep taking the next step knowing there’s no call for standing in the crowd and recounting my failures, there’s no retribution that demands I shrug off the notice of the works of my hands. 

There’s no need to deny or lessen the good by stepping back into my wanderings to tell of the bad. 

There’s grace in the ordinary life I live that just needs to live, knowing it’s all miracle, all of this beautiful stuff every morning. 

All the days long. 

A wise man I read as often as possible shares occasionally, using the phrase “Miracle, All of It” and gracious his words are beautiful and true examples! 

The everyday essence. Bird nests discovered, things coming through, us being children of God, dogs snoring, eyes waking, happenstance meetings to discover “me too”. 

No accidental occurrences. 

Miracles

of grace. 

And us happy all the day because of them. 

This is God’s desire,

I believe. 

The Tide

bravery, courage, Faith, grace, mercy, rest, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, wonder

I’m not at all a deep water person. I see my family riding the waves when I sit all alone and I’m the watchtower one, keeping head count, strong shoulders popping up from the deep.

They’ll stand and talk, drift away. I glance towards my book, but not for long. I hurry to take account of them again, my family out in deep, dark water hoping for strong waves to ride.

I’ll join them sometimes; but, only for the sake of taking part. The pull back towards the unknown keeps me near the shore. The way the water causes me to plant my feet and pause makes me uncertain.

Still, every summer I get a little closer to letting the tide take me where it may, a little more adrift, a gradual and deeper depth.

As a little girl, I almost drowned and it seemed no one noticed soon enough.

This is why I’m hesitant to go too deep. I resist the pull of let’s go farther out, let’s explore new places and experience new opportunities and challenges.

Take more chances.

I worry over the steadiness of my feet.

Lately,  I took some chances and went out to ride the waves, played around in the deep with other brave and happy swimmers; but, decided no, you should just sit it out.

You’re not quite ready, head back to shore and think about this a little while longer, maybe you can try again.

So, like finding my place from the water amongst all the bodies and chairs, I headed back towards safety.

Stopping where the tide hit the backs of my calves and nearly knocked me down, I braced myself for a minute lest I fall embarrassed by my lingering and dropping back.

I stepped from the cool water and back to my place, the place of feeling safe but, wishing I’d have gone farther.

I settled apart from the others, the sea teasing and taunting me for my lack of courage.

There’s a song Mark Hall and Casting Crowns sings called “That was Then”… Goes on to say “This is Now”.

Standing at the water’s edge
I dropped my dreams when I dropped my nets
No hesitation, no regrets
I followed You
But that was then
And this is now

Now is when you forget how strong you were before because you forgot the one who made you believe you could.

Or maybe now is when you ventured out all cocky without your soul tethered to your anchor.

This morning, I’m acknowledging my progress.

I’d love to say “finally” as if it might never happen again; but I know I’m new at swimming in this ocean.

I can’t ever stay steady focused or brave in my stepping  out on my own.

This is my 499th post and regardless of where I’m going in this writing journey, where I’ve been and who I am now seems to be most relevant to me this morning.

Because, more than becoming a better writer, a more polished and creatively appealing assembler of words, I have grown in my understanding of God in this thing I still call my uncovered treasure from tiny God-planted seed.

I stop now, because I sense my rambling, my lack of creative and skilled elimination of repetition. Apologies, my work is in progress.

I wonder again though, just how far God might take me, how much farther out he might point my steps if I’d stop reminding him that I can’t swim.

Yesterday, I prayed “Lord, thank you for slowing down my success. Thank you for drawing me back. Give me strength to stay near.”

I’ve had some special opportunities in writing and painting happen for me.

Yet, I got caught up in the excitement looking for the next big wave.

Then, the river seemed to dry up, stopped its flow.

So, I prayed.

By day’s end someone commissioned five paintings.

I returned to “boot camp” to continue my commitment to make my body an acceptable living sacrifice and in between these two steps I had the courage to ask for writing help and signed up for a mentor.

Trusting the tide.

“Keep steady my steps according to your promise, and let no iniquity get dominion over me.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭119:133‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Linking up with Jennifer Dukes Lee. her post challenges us to think of what lies we are telling ourselves about ourselves. A very timely one for me.

Read here: http://jenniferdukeslee.com/six-words-can-make-difference/

Little Whiles

courage, Faith, family, grace, Prayer, rest, Trust, Vulnerability, wonder

I stopped in at the art store, the time of the month to collect on any art sold. 


I looked towards “my wall” and there they were, “all my girls”. 

We talked of business being slow and of shoppers being a little scarce. I listened, and for a second drifted towards the pity place. I turned to leave and said ” See you soon.” Then stopped, turned back and she looked up from her work to hear me announce…

“It’s never been up to me, what happens with the paintings. I’ll keep painting and see where God takes them next.”

No reply from the shop owner just a nod that said “I know, Lisa. I know this because I know you.”

What I expect gets all messed up in the mix of what comes true. You’d not believe the number of angel paintings I’ve sold or given as gifts if I could recount . You might not believe either that God led me to love writing, rekindled two flames from tough times. 

You might, no should believe there have been days marred by thoughts of others thinking I think too much of myself, my words, my canvas. 

You would be correct. Certainly days that prideful and glorious expectation took all the joy away and made it prideful pursuit to sustain my worth instead of gentle and humble, happy revelation of  what God could do through my hands and thoughts. 

Yes, plenty of moments of “too much Lisa”, not enough Jesus. 

So, he causes a pause in the fury of it all, the addiction of being praised and noticed. 

I’ve learned to love the pause; I know it’s wisdom and wonder and wonderful. 

That I’m writing and painting and waiting seems to be my place now, a slight lull, a place of a simmer.  

So, I know, the embers are there and I’m expecting God will decide when and how the fires will burn, burn for Him. 

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”

‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭5:10‬ ‭ESV‬‬

http://www.fiveminutefriday.com

Linking up with others to write prompted by “expect” . 

Hard Words and Hope

bravery, courage, Faith, grace, Prayer, rest, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability


A particular line, a verse in the passage I’m studying, caused me to be cautionary. 

Again today, a word with a serious tone, unpleasant, almost intimidating. 

in·so·lent

ˈinsələnt/

adjective

showing a rude and arrogant lack of respect.

“she hated the insolent tone of his voice”
I walked away slowly thinking of my prayer. “Give me grace, help me give grace.”

I’d prayed before encounter, will be praying again. Conflict resolution, doing hard things, handling unavoidable resolutions I’m responsible for…I cower. 

I don’t feel strong.  

Weak, I feel weak. 

So, I’m looking towards my feet and I’m proceeding with thoughts and patient steps towards what will be my next step.

Sometimes like a “heads up” a feeling will linger, taking its time to be tangible, maybe pointing out the concern I already knew. 

People are not always kind; in fact, when faced with desperation they might be downright insolent. 

I had to look it up, the word “insolent” seemed so important for me to grasp, an angry sounding word shouting out of a Psalm, saying, “Listen up, Lisa; be aware.”

“Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word. You are good and do good; teach me your statutes. The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts; their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law. It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭119:66-71‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Me, the one who still maintains people are good, it’s just stuff that happens to them that makes them not so “good” or good hearted. 

When my children were little,  they’d tell me about a mean boy or girl, a bully or an arrogant peer. 

I’d caution them not to label, saying “Something must be bad at home.” 

I believe they believed me. 

Grown up children carrying scars all around, I notice the negative directed towards me and decide, most likely,  “Something bad must have happened or is happening now to cause their behavior.”

I look at the faces on the “jail report” and have to look away, it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen, a newspaper with mugshots of people who lost their way and committed crimes.  Their expressions either lost or stoically arrogant and accepting of their label.

 I don’t allow myself to gawk over another’s distress. I look away wondering “their story” and think what a sad commentary on our society that people purchase this like glossy fashion magazine or news. 

They print this publication in color, the faces jump out from convenience store cover. 

Somewhere along the line misfortune tainted their choice to walk a straight line. 

I choose to believe, still. 

We all stumble in many ways. James 3:2


Empaths like me try to see the other side, still we’re blindsided at times when compassion doesn’t set things right and we encounter ugly face to face. 

When we’re forced to accept that our compassion is not always enough. 

It’s the bane of my work, do the best, let God do the rest and then “rest in that”. 

This, one of many what I call a “Lisaisms”.

I suppose there’s a reason God brings struggle to our lives, causes us to struggle with the hard things like unfairness, disappointment, disrespect and struggling people who put us in places that require us to stand firm in kindness. 

When being hard makes sense. 

To defer to imagining how we might feel in their place. 

Surely it’s important for me to know that I might encounter people I can’t change. Two days in a row, the word “insolent” in my verses. 

“Let the insolent be put to shame, because they have wronged me with falsehood; as for me, I will meditate on your precepts.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭119:78‬ ‭ESV 

So, you speak truth in a way that you can maintain because bending one way or another will make it harder to hold onto you and your hope. 

You know yourself, important to hold fast. 

Because hope is bigger than insolence. Integrity more sustaining than offense and I believe God’s faithfulness more pervasive than the perverse of those whose actions are perverse. 

I’ve read and left in draft this post, thinking too dark.  

I’m cautious over readers who might turn away, the content just too contentious. 

But, we live in a difficult world. We’re surrounded by people with difficulties who are difficult. 

We ourselves are these who lean towards the ugly at times. We have to keep ourselves leaning or better yet, upright. 

Knees down, hands open, face to God. 

Someone said to me the other day, as we were talking of a loss of life, young stolen by drugs and then mental illness, incarceration and finally homelessness. 

 “We are all just a circumstance from the bottom.” Vickie

So, let me not grow hard Lord, keep as my philosophy the “but, for the grace God” thingy I say. 

Let me not become someone other than me because of hard faces or insolent words, trampled on hearts. 

Help me help others rejoice. 

“Those who fear you shall see me and rejoice, because I have hoped in your word.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭119:74‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Linking up with Jennifer Dukes Lee as she shares some solid motivation for us with fitness goals, boot camp, et al. 🙂

http://jenniferdukeslee.com/start-chain-reaction-good-habits/

Living Creative

grace, rest, Vulnerability

Expression is joy.  It reminds me of its bliss each time I succumb to take the apron from the nail, loop it over my head and tighten its strings around my waist. 

Smoothing it down and a little pert pat, and I sit to contemplate color and creation. 


I’ve two pieces of new old wood. I’ll layer them in buff as background and then free flow sketch shape of female form, angelic. 

I’ll say “thank you Lord” later, or maybe during too as I sing along to lilting blue lyrics a’la AlisonKrauss. 

My happy way of life. 

Words and Art, fill my cup to full. 

Five Minute Friday: Future

bravery, Faith, grace, Teaching, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability

Writing for five minutes, hoping to get it right, to not let age and deficits in tech savvy cause me to abandon the five minute rule and say “oh well!”

Here go thoughts on future and the year I named “breakthrough” feeling only like stepping towards if not just peeking in. 


I don’t lay out my clothes and don’t shop by grocery list planned ahead for meals. 

I’m not sure what I’ll have as mood to match my blouse, my shoes, my day. 

I can’t think far enough ahead to say oh, a roast on Sunday or a ham or oh, well, I’ll just do spaghetti. 

And worklife requires such things, projections, successions and sustainability.

I figure my clothes and meals can at least not be confined to demands of planning.

Now, as far as my future, I do best to live daily and am horrible at goal setting, writing, painting and all. 

I’ve been hearing the navigational command and I’m veering that way; but, more like a wanderer than a traveling soul headed towards a destination.

“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, thank you Friday prompt for prompting this self-examination. 

I need an itinerary for my future, I’ve haphazardly gone without with only vague sense of direction far too long. 

I’ll get focused on future, lest I discard the things I believe God keeps nudging me towards. 

‘Cause I heard about faith in a new way last week, too. 

It’s not emotion, it’s motion. 

It’s evidence, action, not just talk or thought. 

The Bloom on the Ground

bravery, courage, Faith, grace, rest, Trust, Uncategorized, Vulnerability


When I saw it there, a cream colored snowball size object, I was careful to drive around. 

I paused and then stopped, opened the door and walked back behind the car to see. 

A magnolia bloom, petals curved in towards themselves as if to comfort.

This feeling we know, the striving for awhile then close to falling apart, pulling knees up to chest and then lying still, waiting to pick ourselves up again. 

To be picked up, cradled, and redeemed. 
No one around to see me that morning, the oddity of me caring for the fallen bloom and the way I found happiness in deciding to place it on my desk. 

It wasn’t my concern, the connection some find strange, the one with sky and feather or flower. 

I cupped it in my hand and it unfolded gently and began to fall apart in my lap. 


The tiny matchstick-like stamens scattered out on my car seat and I collected them gently, so many and so fragile, I thought. 

I let them rest inside the hollow place in the center of the flower, the place where growth had begun before.

Where the bloom had been made to grow big and glorious. 

Only to have fallen from up high in strong and ancient tree onto the hard gravel path. 

Then the storm came and morning left it face down and alone. 

To be found by me.

I thought about faith and transgressions and falling because of failure.

If I’m honest, because of falter. 

The broken bloom in white bowl on my desk all day, a testament to being broken and still beautiful. 

The creamy white petal tips now tinged even more rusty apart from the tree.

The cone of flower holding fast to its center, knowing it wasn’t time yet for flower’s fading, too soon to have fallen away from grace. 

Beauty in the fallen and the fragile.

“If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭139:11-14‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Grace, grace, that a fallen magnolia bloom intent because of God, might catch my eye and slow me down, turn my thoughts, remind my heart of beauty even in broken. 

Broken, yet, still beautiful. 

God is everywhere.  Don’t forget to notice. 

I got so very much off track this week that I forgot what I wanted to remember most, this beautiful prayer, perhaps prompting my thoughts and joy over the fallen flower. 

So, a little late linking up with Jennifer Dukes Lee here: 

http://jenniferdukeslee.com/memorial-day-six-ways-find-peace-hectic-world/

Grief and Stories

bravery, courage, Faith, grace, grief, mercy, Prayer, rest, Salvation, Vulnerability


If you asked me the favorite story of my daddy, it wouldn’t be the times I rested my head on his lap as he drove us all home from my grandma’s in the dark night, on a dark empty highway. 

It would be the one my aunt tells.  Weak and frail, he’d visit her, my mama’s only sister. 

Her telling of the way he was then would light up her face, she beams with the comfort of their time together. 

He’d visit her, pull up in his little truck for as long as he was able to drive. 

He’d talk long and longingly with her about the wrongs he’d done, the longing he had to undo some days and do it all untouched by mistake and struggle. 

Mostly, he made known his love.

 It was his daily task, a calling. 

Yesterday, I had a chance to think of my daddy, how he beat cancer; but, a tiny germ took root in his feeble lungs and it just grew fertilized by the lack of immune system. 

And the doctors took forever trying to figure it out, what on earth is this tiny bacteria that is ravaging him?

They discovered a rare thing, it had come from the dirt. We were all confounded, defeated and distraught over deciding to let him go.

And I thought, dirt somehow got in there, maybe he’d walked towards my house, drove with windows down through the lane cutting through the cornfields, dirt, the earth had infected his lungs. 

Oh, the tragic irony! 

But, time and grace came and over time 

Changed my reading of the story. 

Became a fitting comfort because of the annual garden, the potatoes we dug up, my children dressed in overalls, their hineys resting at the end of a row, my daughter clutching her baby brother. 

I have a picture of the scene, my daddy’s feet planted in the cool autumn dirt, my babies in the foreground. 

I know some people now with news of illness and some, I know in places marked by faithful  and powerful prayer and responses from God less than hopeful. 

And God has placed on my path someone whose father has cancer. She can’t visit now, his immune system not allowing.

 I listened and remembered and I did my best, although, not surely enough to comfort. 

When words aren’t there, or the listener not strong enough to hear them,  listening is a comfort. 

And is enough, more than sometimes. 

Because I understand, almost twenty years later, I understand and I think we get all out of sorts when we see another facing diagnosis or bleak prognosis. 

We look for right words or we avoid, afraid to let our recall of fear be reflected on our faces. 

When comfort, I believe, is no more than simply saying I have been where you are and here I am now. 

To comfort another is to open our book on grief and share the story the reader might be longing to hear. 

One of a similar tragic time and one or two or so many more of the stories time used to refine them 

And us. 

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭1:3-4‬ ‭ESV