Mary

I imagine her full with Jesus. Step after step making her way to the census. Joseph by her side.

Did she follow the prophesy of her own Child's coming? 

Did she wonder how he would ever be born in Bethlehem? And did she fill with anticipation learning that caesar's order would take them to the very place...   

I wonder if she truly understood who she was bringing forth, or if the Mother of the Messiah was blessed with a vague understanding of the sacrifice during the swaddling of her first born.

Could she have even held herself up at first sight of her infant, her Savior, if she truly understood that very night? 

When Jesus later asked her, "did you not know I would be in my Father's house?" Did she?

I think about her with no straight iron or washing machine. Traveling with no laptop or cell phone with preferred obstetrician on speed dial. 

No car. 

Not even cart.

God inside of her.

And I want to put everything down and walk away. The blogs and technology, make-up and media, even camera and lights. I want to set out a candle so that all I can see is flame. So that all I can remember is His fire inside me until it is etched habit, like breathing.

But if it weren't for this ".com", would I be here praying for alignment with the Spirit as I write? Would I have found such a path that even my skin can submit to, with my cheeks soaked loving Mary, a woman I've never before considered? 

Without the spurring on of His love for you and my desire to attend the feeding and fanning of flames, wouldn't I still just be writing me on my own pages?

A lot of questions I don't have sure answers for this morning. 

But in my anticipation, in my own waiting on this eve for the coming Christ child, there is one thing I am sure of... I am waiting for what He already knows will be. And in that there is great peace.  

Spirit to spirit to spirit

Knocking, I hear the barking of his dogs inside. Through the pain of glass in the door I see his familiar shape standing in the kitchen. Face down the hallway in my direction he smiles, permitting me to open and enter at my own risk. 

I wait in the entrance for him to quiet and corral the Pulis like I know only he can. 

I look him over... inside-out striped thermal top over t-shirt, sweat pants, socks and rubber shoes.

This is the first time I've seen him without a skull cap since his accident. 

I scan for scars of a head trauma that took his life last year, twice.  

But the only visible marks left are on the inside shining out. The kind of mark only our Creator and Healer can make. 

I remember being in his home for the first time. Taking care of the dogs while he was away, running. I remember God telling me to lay and pray. I cried joy as His love for this friend of mine washed over me... and the layers of intercession filled with whispers of a coming change through healing and refinement.

He turns to the table and returns with a gift in hand. A necklace he bought me from the top of a mountain someplace in Arizona. 

Not safe in a box. We are not either one of us tucked safely in boxes. 

Just fingers holding delicate strands of love and offerings from spirit to spirit to Spirit. 

Father God shines, lighting up the room.

And I look him over again... a man refining, healing. Changed.

My path has not been crossed so many times in so many ways by another. Not any ordinary coincidental happening. This is most definitely an ordained divinely sewn tapestry. 

We talk. Stirring the waters of God within, wading in the mainstream of His will for His children.

And I pray that his real scar, like mine -a religion that tells us we cannot come- will draw him to the scar of the One; a nail shaped covenant that bids us all, come.

We stand together in his living room. 
On the outside we are surrounded by gift boxes. On the inside there lay boxes we've crawled out of, wounded, to face the Maker - and we wait for the celebration of a God who cradled Himself a Son in flesh and manger - A God Who promises to cradle us and clear our path to wholeness and forever. 

The Christmas Gift in Christ is again extended, and I savor deep the Truth that God holds us in his fingers right now. 
Right where we are. 
Just as we are. 
Broken and healed, fallen and rising, hated and still finding love in what's left.

And to Him, through Him, because of Him we are... just right.

here and there...

Please pray for God's continued guidance in the unfolding of these web-journals. I believe things are coming along, but I am stepping cautiously and carefully with a heart to remain in His Will only. 

A Stand Still

I'm not sure what to do in this blog space.

I love this digital scrapbooking. 

I never want to stop making a document of my little boy's life from the heart of his mom. 

I don't feel led to and end.

But something has changed. 

I'd been slightly cocking my bad ear blocking out just enough of God's whisper to pay mind but not to hear close words. I promised, i'm here Father - forgive me some time to fit into these clothes You are holding out to me - me, SO small and dry -   

not   quite   ready for so much water.

Fears and concerns faded as God so steady stayed and kept in faithfully. I too leaned in, knowing that I wanted nothing more than I want Him, ready or not. 

Then the old sights and sounds began to roll away becoming foreign and cold. And His quiet whisper became the prevalent, more powerful encompassing - familiar and warm, like the sun reflecting off the new moon.

I thought i would feel less power to have my own light fallen. I thought there would be a dark residual feeling of solitude first. Abandoning rock star for rock.

But it turned out The Light touching surface leads to alignment with His master plan. And at that the Truth connection truly began.

All four of us being One; God, Greg, Zeek and I. 

Walking slowly and awestruck I know very little of this newness. But I can follow the seams back with my fingers all the way to the roots of my beginning.

From beginning to Beginning. 

I am listening to my Teacher. my Guide and Counselor. 

I'm waiting on direction, and I won't dare push. 

When I later get down this new list of priorities to "blog" I know that He'll guide me what and when and where...  

Forgive the time. 

I just can't move in here without His Word. 

love and blessings

A Holy Experience

Ann, a complete stranger has literally pastored me for months. 

God's Words and God's Hands... her diligent work in faith.

Her writing fills the spaces in me with Him. 

She has shown me things in a way they have never been offered to me. 

She has read and understood my heart.

She has written to and upon it.

She has taught me how to make a habit of finding Him in my real life.

She led my family to 1,128 (and counting) accounts of Gratefulness, 

and "Walking with Him Wednesdays" on any day.

She led my marriage through transformation,

with her series, "the making of a marriage bed", 

and taught me how to appreciation the quiet of a lifetime love. 

She showed me how to love everything He's made of me

and then how to let it all go.  

She has taught my family to never leave the table without chewing the real bread, satisfying our true hunger.

She brought us back to compassion and showed me the heart of her Guatemala. Brought us to Alexandro. 

to sarah and juan. 

She confirmed His asking to store the Word in our hearts. Committing to memory what quick paced and easy resources have deemed obsolete.

And now, God is moving me here,

as a blogger.

I know, like everything else He's change and healed in me,

this too will soon see change.

Thank You, God, for using Ann and her obedience to speak into this life.

Thank you,  Ann, for letting God use you so.

The Water

I sit up in bed to the dread of it again. the nagging relentless sound of what went from bountiful blessing to steady sentence in what seemed like a blink. 

Somewhere, I stopped stopping to notice and put my head down like a ram, just to get through.

I squeeze tears off the edge of my face and blast that I feel the same exact way I felt when my head hit pillow the night before, knowing I couldn't take one more step without physical rest before loosing my mind.

and I want to blame my son for being in my bed the last five hours, the last five nights, rolling over my hair, waking me. keeping the space I hardly sleep in just under the size of a human sliver, hanging on to the edge for dear life.

my muscles are sore. my head and my heart ache.

But I know that God can make rest out of nothing. So I know that I'm allowed here for a reason. a reason which I'm not to put on my son's shoulders.

I swing a leg over the side and force my weighted foot to the floor.

my kid is "starving", always. and demanding at that. and the morning hour is still in darkness.

Again. 

I can already feel myself breaking away from all restraint. 

I try to remind myself over and over again:

what comes out of the mouth flows from the heart... 

what comes out of the mouth flows from the heart... 

mine's in a sad sad state these days.

I murmur under my breath, "give me a break. really."

more words from a hardened heart swarm around in my head.

And there they will stay, taunting me, deepening my sores. because 30 years of unleashing that dragon too many times to count has at least taught me to fit my fiery tongue with a heavy bit and bridle.

i'm no better off inside.

As I hit the table to do our Bible reading over breakfast I plead silently, God how long will I hold out before I have to make change... change requires an energy of which I have no supply. 

and where will I even begin?

Sure enough, shortly after Matthew 15, two sharp disrespectful little demands and an ungrateful statement resound, and I have the answer to my initial concern.

i. am. done. 

A first-time-ever full day grounding to the bedroom feels best. safest. As for whose grounded and to whose room, I consider for a brief moment...

aren't i raising him? isn't he five? didn't he learn how to talk and walk and spit and spat and roll over the top of me somewhere?

wasn't it me?

but the same as I try to convince him, I am the adult who's responsible to guide him. 

Even if though I do fail 90% of the time.

So it's his mouth and his stomping feet that head off to his bedroom for the day.

And happy as can be he plays and reads and does his best school work to date.

And guilty and shamed, angry and hurt, blaming and lost as can be I loath and creep away to cry deep and call my best women with convulsions of confessions. 

A day of pouring out failures and fears over steaming iron, mop and dish towel... 

we are parents of single, multiple, biological and adopted children, all in a similar boat, learning how to row at the same time dipping buckets of water leaked and heaving them over and out.

I wanted a new boat.

I wanted it badly enough that I took the pills. 

and it felt good for awhile. I felt "normal". For awhile.

I stepped up my homemaker role a notch...

and that was about it.

but I heard Him in that bathroom 200 miles from home. I heard His call and I trembled at the echo in my heart. my unwilling, unready heart.

I've since dipped a finger or four into that water. the water He led me to the bank of one year ago. the water where at first response I slid a rickety excuse for a craft into, with me safely atop gripping broken oars. the water He's asking me to scale this hull I've clung to and drop straight into today. 

His water. 

I've been returning my inner workings/hormones/body to it's prior state, in ruins as it was. No more crutches. Shifting weight from man-made solutions back through me, back over to Him.

I'm warm and washed into the tall thick of the bluff. I would call it shipwrecked if my ship were worthy, but it's proven otherwise, again. 

I can feel the water rolling over the tops of my feet. I can hear the whisper and the same song segment that has broadcast interruption and run through my spirit a thousand times these past weeks...

"if only i could get lost in His ocean. 

surviving on the thought of loving You.

He's just like the water..."

This is not a test. This is the real thing. 

i have to let go and get in.

God, please.

Just Like the Water- Lauryn Hill 

What am I doing here?

There's a constant discontentment in my spirit.

At first I didn’t realize the importance of it.
I just chalked it up to more of the "crazy jesusfreak" in me and figured it would pass.

Years ago I tried to cry through it. The way I could cry through a bad break up, or a falling out with my Dad.

The ache stood.
I tried to balance. Everyone says we should balance.

And I gained skill in walking the wire in that tension.

With a standing aching heart hidden under piles of ironed clothes, behind menu plans on the backs of cupboard doors, inside a stemmed glass of a mama drink with a side of chocolate, I balanced wife, mom, homeschooler, friend, housekeeper with an A-type edge, God lover, Christ follower...

I'd work that balancing act until He'd tip the scales again and again.
And the ache would become a pounding, resounding discontentment and demand that I couldn’t deny weighed more than anything I could pile on the other side of the scale. 

And then she wrote, and I read: 

...when someone takes me out for dinner on a riverboat at dusk. I look up at stars. And think of stars over Xiomara, the dump. I’ve lost my appetite. What am I doing here? When one day I’ll stand before Jesus... 
And about what shaun told her: 

“The world, your community.. even your family — they are going to try to push you back to the middle. North America feels pretty comfortable in the middle. Balance, everyone says. I don’t know what Jesus is going to say to you.. How He might direct your life now…  just don’t assume He wants you to live in the middle. Be open to the possibility of something radically different.” 

...and this all goes back to my beginning with Him. Hand in hand for the first time grown, almost 10 years ago. 

And now, where am I different from just weeks ago? The morning in the kitchen corner with "Jose and Sarah" and the biggest pot. 

The pot that fills the space He told me I could shine my ache into, empty.

The drawers are full and I am brimming with ache. 

There are NO pots missing from my life. 

Only questions, guilt, and second guessing.

And my list? 

My priorities? 

My concerns?
homeschooling additions. friendship upkeep. favorite season relishing. photo editing. base board cleaning. healing my stomach. cleaning my car. getting to my windows. leaf maintenance. turning the yard in for snow....

What am I doing here?

We need less and we keep obtaining more.

I’m looking. Searching so hard for what He’s trying to say.
And everything keeps reminding me that He’s not worried like I am that I’ll miss it. I just have to stay in the water.
Hear the call.

When I look around and ask why He brought us here to this home with five bedrooms and one kid... when I start to waver in wonder why He would give us such excess right before asking us not to grow, and ripening our hearts to the widow and the orphan, I have to consider: 

I've most clearly reacted to the aching of my longing spirit when given the option of living in the contentment of abundance. 

And I can't help but ask, just like Ann has, who is really the poor one here?

MI

I sit on a mattress on the floor in an empty apartment home 200 feet from where I'd rather be, and 200 miles from where I belong.

I look around. Not in the dark room with the big black and pink comforter hanging in the window blocking the grey cloudy morning outside the window. i look around inside my heart. at my life. Searching the face of God.

What are You telling me?

When each night came to an end Zeek and I shuffled over to this place. I double checked each door leading out, and then closed us into the corner of a bathroom bedroom area with the latch locks inside. I pulled out our own blankets, stuffed animals, and comforts of the small entourage of an Apple store inventory we carry with us when we travel.

Something... anything to break the silence in where I hear His warning sound. Again.

This couldn't be. But I know it is.

People live like this, and less. Much much less. 

I pray out loud as my little boy soaks in the duck taped tub with a jar opener for a drain cover. i pray for our night, our hearts, our health and safety and full rest. 

Then I pray the clearing of any lurking evil in each room. I claim Him and call in all that He will send. Jesus, Holy Spirit, Angels, hedges, protection, peace, security, health... all the while, in the back of my head layering prayers of forgiveness and covering in the case that I might be freaking out the future of my son. I beg the One Living God that my kid will not be cut with the same jaded edge I've seen on the masks of a Levi I love so deeply... and a Tony, and an Eric. Wounded by the misrepresentation of the body, walking a shaded path through pain and perceived abandonment dealt by the hands of the men/spiritual leaders they've entrusted themselves to.

  

I Plead that Truth will be solid to Ezekiel all the days of his life. 

Truth. That his mother could call on Jesus out loud, first and foremost, in the darkness. 

Truth. That Jesus is there. 

That she could arm herself and her child in His promises and see out preying demons in the name of Jesus. And that demons who would have otherwise spent the night hit the streets running. 

That we can have night after night of safety, peace, and full rest in Him, one after the next.

And I feel the Water running over me again. 

This could be. This is. What garbage dump parents cling to, and so much more.

I look in the mirror above a plastic vanity in the bathroom and I hear the words my Dad spoke the night before; 

"...when you look in the mirror and you are shocked to see that old person standing there..."

and I am shocked to see that broken, tear streaked, swollen faced, slowly becoming woman of God, standing here.

And I ask it again. What are You telling me?

As i'm anticipating the falling death of the star in me,

trusting Him to take me out as gently as can be,

I pinch-check that I am still where I vowed to remain these past days.

Waiting and listening, as movable as I can leave my stubborn self to the hands of a Master extreme vessel renovator.

I am good and solid broken.

moving me

I was sitting at the table, having some unusual computer issues.

I sighed and half jokingly exasperated,

"what is going on in my life right now?"

Zeek, who was sitting at the far end of the table 

looked up at me and sweetly, gently reminded,

"God says, 'be thankful in every circumstance...'" 

And this has been a time when God has shown that to us.

Sowed that into our hearts.

First, what it looked like to be grateful.

And now, with the orphan and the widow (James1:27) in the forefront 

of our minds there is a different direction tugging.

In every decision. With every move we make.

There is a head-in-the-sand element to my lifestyle.

And I see His prints all over the pieces of our past few months.

I feel His writing on my skin.

I breathe the aftertaste of what He's been feeding us.

And we are heads moving.

__________________________________________

Treat yourself to "a holy experience" and read

this woman on her journey of faith and love as she visits 

her sponsored daughter in Guatemala this week.

Read her past entries back to the post where

her nine year old son tried on (as a size reference) 

the pink dress his mother chose for his Guatemalan sister, Xiomara.

Her ministry is always moving me

away from sand and into Son.

Blessings