The Promenade

⁶"Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of wickedness,
   to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
   and to break every yoke?
⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
   and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
    and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
⁸ Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
    the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
⁹Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
   you shall cry, and he will say, 'Here I am.'
If you take away the yoke from your midst,
    the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
¹⁰ if you pour yourself out for the hungry
   and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
   and your gloom be as the noonday.
¹¹And the LORD will guide you continually
   and satisfy your desire in scorched places
   and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
   like a spring of water,
   whose waters do not fail.
¹² And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
   you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
   the restorer of streets to dwell in.
Isaiah 58 6-12

My self is not bent towards God's Ways. I want things to go my own way. Wonder why I am not happy? fulfilled?  walking in love? and faithfulness.... It's not going to happen according to my agenda. This here is the Lord's idea of life lived. This life I long to live must be lived His way.  The peace. The healing. It is there. That feeling I long for. My Creator's way. If I am going to find all that fills, I must go to the well. I must drink deep of a life called. Reach outside me. Hushing selfish desires and endless consuming passions. I look to love. Will I touch another with the same loving kindness I long for? I smile. He is here. He knows my heart. He wants to use me. He is such a lover. He loves me. He woos me to His goodness with His kindness. With red sky tonight. I look in awe. The evergreen in porch pots. I inhale the scent and savor. The cherub's grin. I Thank God and snuggle her neck. I find blessing in giving blessing. I am thankfulness. I become it.

Guiding Hand

The Father is working His good work. Today I see the fruit of Faithfulness. Not that I have done different, but I have focused on His faithfulness. In return I see my own faithfulness giving way like tsunami wave. Crashing down. Destroying pride, anger, and frustrations of daily rejection and misunderstanding. It is beautiful. In that strange way that natural disaster is awesome in power yet leaves devastation in it's wake. There is destroying. It is as deep and as mighty as the ocean. myself. It is being crucified. It is wonderful.
I am hurt, I love. I am rejected, I give. I am called upon, I serve. I am isolated, I pray. These lessons that I am learning I believe are not for a time. In younger year I would study and take the exam and forget. Not these lessons. They are written on the frame of myself. They erase old experiences that taught me wrong. On scratch markings and scars there are words beyond what I could write today. (Ps. 100:5, Rom 8:37, 2 Thes 2:16, and Rv 1:5) He is jealous God. He desires you and I to trust Him. I learned young that people could not be trusted. They desert you, reject you, use you, and laugh at you until  you are wounded and raw. The Father's desire is not to leave one of his precious creation lacking anything. (ps 34:10) He has the awesome power of turning all things for good! It is His will that we walk a road that makes us more and more like Emmanuel. God is with us. How beautiful is that? That He would allow things to happen. Hard things to happen. And in the end I become more like him.
This is what I am seeing. The more I trust Father's faithfulness to work it's good in me, (Rom 8:28) the more I am free in myself to love and live! Here and now in every trial.I can see his blessings in this mist. My life. Yes, there is pain, frustration, unanswered wondering, but I am not alone. He is here and I trust his guiding hand. (ps 139:10)

Two Pilgrims Apart

Togetherness. Some would bend to pity upon knowing.We gathered today as lovers and their children. A soft sadness of missing extended family and friends. Then I see with my living goggles. Freckled, smiling girl at sink washing delicate heirloom dishes. Man In Waiting laughing with dish towel in hand. Peaked Boy curled up on the couch nearby. Sunshine Daughter skipping around the circle of our gathering spaces. Wee one is asleep in the sunshine for his afternoon nap as we prepare  for our Thanksgiving feast. Husband Lover has come home and is carving the large turkey that was to be provisions for the twenty-five people we hoped to have over before time stood still.
Sickness has become our blessing today. It has created for us a vacation from the going and coming that a holiday can bring. I have found such joy and togetherness here with these gifts. Grace fills our home with expectancy as everyone is actively awaiting our time around the table. The lists are hung. Each one full of twenty blessings and the smell is enough to drive our hungry appetites mad. The table is set. The baby awakes. The laughter starts. We snap pictures, we laugh, we toast many blessing and drink down sparkling grape juice.
I look over and Peaked Boy sits holding an antique glass with a great-sailed ship on the side. Is that You, Father? The first Thanksgiving Day would not have happened without a ship. Ship full of pilgrims. Here I am blogging my own sacred pilgrimage. And this Thanksgiving Day, the one I have prepared in my heart for. Weeks and weeks seeking things that show me a bit more of who You are. And here I am now. In the upper room. Breaking bread. Praying.
I feel tears. A thankfulness comes over me I have yet to know. I am filled with the spirit. I understand Jesus pain more. I am in the Upper Room. Jesus is here. There is a union among us. The familiarity is thick, yet I am sensing a new thing. Did Jesus use the upper room to foretell many things? I call out blessings to my children. I speak of the richness they bring. We dream of future feasting together. I have never been so thankful. The Father's grace fills my day once again. Here in our home where plans were canceled. I am thankfulness. The Father knows better. I trust Him and find joy. He makes life out of this mist.
 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"-yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring, What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought  to say, "If the Lord wills, we will do this or that."James 4:13-15

Strong Wait

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord. (Isaiah 40:31)Bread rises as we wait for the smell, done baking. I wait for husband-father to come home. I wait for cherubs loud feet to bring them to the table upon dinner ready. I wait for Father to reveal another something that I miss if I wait not. And I see! That is the purpose of the waiting. It brings the living. You receive what you wait for. The best this life has to offer can come with the longest waits. The waiting brings empowerment to receive.Father has all good things. We walk in them. We walk in the waiting. We live. Rise, feed, school, hug, hurt,love, cry, all encompassing living in waiting. A never done walk of life giving and taking. As I wait I will chose expectancy. The kind of waiting when life will be brought forth from your womb. The waiting that brings new seasons of the heart and the earth. The waiting that says life does not begin when things come. The kind of waiting that purposes life lived now. Truly living, loving, feeling, seeing, hearing, knowing. I am thankful. I wait on the Lord. His strength fills me. I am satisfied in Him.

Holy Sense

Today again I am challenged with my appreciation of seven senses. The first five: tasting, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling.  I also give thanks for the Spirit who gives a knowing and direction beyond these five. For mother sense. Mother sense knows the baby is awake before she does, and mother sense alerts my child is hurt, but they are out of five sense reach.
All in all I am amazed by the gift that these are. Our senses are the starting place. The pivotal need for any pleasure to take place. If the Lord had not given us such blessing there would be no desire of the infant to suckle the breast for nourishment or in the late stages to find peace. We would live in a pot, void, empty.
These musings came tonight upon completeing a short biography of the life of Helen Keller to my children. I enjoyed the children's minds turning. I could see looks on cherub faces as the story unfolded.
I unfolded in the sacrifice of Teacher Annie Sullivan. My, how we underrate the work that no one sees. It was Annie's faithfulness who unlocked Helen from darkness, bitterness, and anger. From a prison called loneliness, misunderstanding. How often Father calls me to be Teacher and I underestimate my duty and my impact. We have all heard, "Enjoy these years they go by too fast." I am afraid they are truth. That surrendering to the things that Father chooses often happens late. We look back and see the joy and sweet fellowship we allowed to pass by. "Holy God, come fresh into our lives. Show us the things we are seeing not, feeling not, tasting not, smelling not, hearing not. Show us the people and purposes we are overlooking."
Helen overcame darkness, isolation, and discouragement. She drove on with intention and will. Teacher leading her daily. Teacher acting as her language bridge. Be it so. Make me a bridge. I set my self to bend to needs and make connection between small child and vast world. I extend myself over scripture to instruct living. I seek holiness to emulate it for senses following. I am Thankfulness for this lifetime of prunning taking place. Being made plentiful for Your glory. I pray my children will be strong healthy olive shoots around our table.
(Psalm 128)

"The best and most beautiful things in the world can not be seen or even touched.

They must be felt with the heart."

-Helen Keller

Sustaining Stamina

The thought can completely overtake me. Every night I fall into my most luxurious, white, down topped bed. I proceed to the unconscious for approx 4-8 hours. I suddenly awake. Return to knowing and start my day of sewing and reaping.  The part that really tickles me is that everyday my body works. My blood flows, my eyes focus, my legs carry, my arms hold, my senses take in, and on and on, day after day. Who needs a miracle? Who needs a sign? We all know that our flesh is not who we are. We don't pick it and there is a large a bulk of our flesh that most of us would trade right in! My how different we would be if the Creator would have given us a little conference on the matter...I would have spoke up! A little less of this a little bit more of that. But today...reviewing my innermost parts on the screen of ultrasound machine stirred me. So much is going on in me all the time. Conscious or not. Mind would surge and billow if it had to consciously run itself. Can you imagine? Training your heart to pump like you train to ride a bike? No time for blogging.
Then I found His Goodness again. It surprised me once more. He wanted us to have time. He has given us all the time we need to enjoy the expanse of this world he has given us. He could of kept us so assiduously focused running our own flesh that relationship and enjoyment would have been out of the question. Hubots instead of humans.
He chooses relationship. I speculate that this time is to be taken up by relationships. He provides a moment by moment miracle. A breath by breath miracle and we are able to enjoy. (Matthew 6:26) Only man sews and reaps in this world. The Lord takes care of us all. How he longs to meet us where our needs are. Just as he provides for every creature in this great globe, He provides for us. In doing so we can then take glory time. Time to converge with Our Father and the work He is doing to reveal himself to the world He loves. Oh how He loves us. Thankfulness fills me. Who and I that He would call my name. mmmm....that's a Good, Miracle Giving God.

Reciprocity

She who is forgiven much loves much.(Luke 7:47) I know that to be true in the openness I find in my dear friend. When the darkness rolls and the storm in my mind rages on. When I plead for peace and can't seem to escape from the turmoil in me. There my friend is. With a compassion and a prayer that transcend frustrations welt up. Where the freedom to feel flows in and stillness in raging is found.
I pour myself out like cider turned. Sweet to the first sip, but leaving that frothy sour after taste. Then it is there. The tender eyes, the half grin. The look that says you will make it through. Then the miracle comes. I believe. I know tomorrow will be a better day. I can see that God is good and he is making all things new. His mercy is new again today. My perspective changes and I can again set my feet on the solid ground. My faith again is restored to sure and steady. I am Thankful for friend. I will love more.