Five Minute Friday- Goodbye

 

On Fridays around these parts we stop, drop, and write.

For fun, for love of the sound of words, for play, for delight, for joy and celebration at the art of communication.

For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Unscripted and unedited. We just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

Won’t you join us?

Here are the rules:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

2. Link backhere and invite others to join in.

3. Most importantly: leave a comment for the person who linked up before you – encouraging them in their writing!

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes on:

Today’s prompt is:  Goodbye

Ready? GO!

Today I say, “Goodbye.”

I say goodbye to words spoken out loud, to external processing, to kiddo belly laughs in the living room and begging puppy barks for apples sticky wrapped in peanut butter.  I say goodbye to television and Facebook, and *gasp* my cell phone.  I say goodbye to the neverending noise that I steep my life in.

But only for a little while….I’ll be back soon.

This afternoon, at 3 pm sharp, I will enter into a time of silence with 14 other retreatants.  For three days we will give each other the gift of a community of silence.  Silent, but not alone.

I am excited and I am TERRIFIED.

After all the hustle and bustle of the last two months and the deep community with my church last week, I am already feeling the effects of withdrawal…the sudden margin in my life has left me reeling…a little sad….and jones-ing for another hit of constant togetherness.

But today I say “goodbye” to my earthly community to say “hello” to my God.

I have spent intentional time in silence and prayer before, but never this long.  There are great things moving and swirling around me, and I desperately seek the center of God’s Will.  Will you pray for me this weekend?

STOP!

Just A Little Redemption Story: Reflections from Advanced Captivating

Redemption- the act of purchasing back something previously sold; the recovery of an item previously mortgaged or traded.

“When the Bible tells us that Christ came to “redeem mankind” it offers a whole lot more than forgiveness. To simply forgive a broken man is like telling someone running a marathon, ‘It’s okay that you’ve broken your leg. I won’t hold it against you. Now finish the race.’ That would be cruel, to leave him disabled that way. No, there is so much more to our redemption. The core of Christ’s mission is foretold in Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners, – (v 1)

The Messiah will come, he says, to bind up and heal, to release and set free. What? Your heart.” –John Eldredge, Wild at Heart

I’ve heard this over and over.  I believe it wholeheartedly.  Christ came to heal the brokenhearted, to set the captives free, to release from darkness the prisoners. I believe He came for me.

To heal MY broken heart,

to proclaim MY freedom and

to release ME from darkness.

BUT

I think I always believed that redemption was something Christ was about in the big things in life.  I think I always believed that He wanted to heal the big scars on my heart, the ones that affected my daily life and everyday relationships. I believed He was about healing, even about my healing, but I guess I underestimated what He thought was important enough to recover….to redeem.

Something beautiful happened at Ransomed Heart’s Advanced Captivating Retreat….God set about redeeming all sorts of memories from my past.  Some of them difficult, some of them challenging, some of them were just tiny little pin pricks in my heart- scars I was never aware of until God set about His healing work.  Most of them linked straight back to the spirit of fear in my life.  God set about smashing fears left and right…

 Fear of Heights:

The Screamer, Frontier Life Ranch, Buena Vista, Colorado

 

Fear of new relationships (yep, I said it…the covenant relationship ‘guru’ is afraid to reach out to new people…interesting, huh…I promise to tell this story soon!):

Allison and Ashley…new and very dear friends.

 And probably most significantly a fear of horses (clearly a work in progress-:)

My new friend, Amigo

This fear, the fear of riding, is something I’ve battled for years. When I was fourteen, I spent the weekend at a friend’s farm.  I had always loved to watch horses (but had never been around them), and my friend offered to go riding with me.

Long story short, I was thrown from the horse, was spectacularly banged up, and it set in play a series of events that wounded me deeply. I have struggled with a fear of horses since.  I never really understood it all until God pushed me to sign up for a 2 hour trail ride during this trip. I obeyed.  I leaned into trust that God was working. I leaned into new friendships and prayer. I leaned into a beautiful bay named Amigo who was awesome.

Honestly, it was hard to start.  I was terrified in the beginning (mostly when we were waiting, and it was up to me to keep my horse from doing things he wasn’t supposed to). Ashley and Allison prayed- over our time, over our horses, over our hearts—and I felt peace start to seep in.

As we rode out onto the trail, through the aspens and over streams…I was transported…God’s presence was so real in those moments.  I could sense God’s healing touch like soothing balm to wounds that I had lived with so long I didn’t remember I had.  Wounds that didn’t seem like a big deal, that didn’t seem like something so important that God would go about healing, wounds I had discounted.

Why did’nt He?

Because Christ is about healing my heart….all of it.

 

This song….oh, man this song, has been such an encouragement to me during the “re-entry” process (you know- the coming home from an awesome, real time experience with God to the busyness and craziness of our daily lives?). This song so reminds me…I am more than these ashes say….I am the rose…I am the Bride…

In God’s Heart I am….Blessed

Each Tuesday for the next several weeks my friend, Holley Gerth, is inviting us to share with her the answer to the statement “In God’s Heart I am….” Today’s word is BLESSED. 

I could write for days on the blessings God showers on me, but I have been trying something a little different with these prompts. Instead of writing a new post each week, I am resurrecting an old post.  What’s been awesome about this exercise is the opportunity to go back and see growth (both in my writing and my faith) and to also see each of these posts as a kind ‘eucharisteo’ in its own right.  It has been a wonderful journey thus far, and tonight is no different.

I went WAY back to 2007 for tonight’s post.  It is one of my very first blog posts, back in the day when I still thought myspace was cool. It chronicles the story of our first trip to the hospital with our son. It was a turning point in our lives.  A great blessing in disguise…without this trip we might have taken years to figure out that he was actually suffering from a rare allergic disorder called Eosiniphilic Esophagitis. The day I wrote this I was grateful for so many blessings–it is only now though that I can see truly what I blessing experience was. Enjoy…

Thank You for the Morning Glories

10/12/2007

Have you ever tried to get rid of a morning glory?  It is not easy.  Just when you think that you have weeded them out, here sprouts a new one, weaving its vines all over your favorite Hibiscus bush  and letting you know just how not in control of your environment you are.

Life is like that too, isn’t it?  There are just some things in life that keep coming back to you until you finally stop fighting them and embrace them.  Sometimes, you have to stop trying to weed out the things you don’t want to be there and be thankful for the experiences.

Take this week for example.  Tuesday morning, my son woke up about4:30 amthrowing up.  I thought, “great…stomach virus…not what I need today.”  I was scheduled to teach dissection to the 5-8th graders at his school at 1, Charlie was on pager, work was piled high on my desk and I had just come back from a three day trip with the kids out of town.  What I did not need was a sick child to try to work around.  So, as I am running around, trying to come up with some antidote to his illness, trying to work out in my mind some way to get it all done, Xander goes running past me to the bathroom again, and again…and again….by the fourth trip to the bathroom in less than an hour, all that worrying about how I was going to fit everything else into my day was replaced with how do I keep fluids down my son.  By7 am, I had passed worry and anxiety to plain ole scared.  By 830, we were at the doctor’s (still vomiting every 15 min, and at this point having to be wheeled around in a wheelchair because he was too weak to walk).   By 915, we were admitted to the hospital with no idea what was wrong.  After a night in the hospital on IV fluids, Xander is doing much better, but we are still home from school.

I guess the point is, I did not want this little trip to the hospital or the 4 days off work, or the 4 days stuck at home, inside with a stir crazy boy and an even more stir crazy me.  But it has made me slow down and appreciate some things a little more.  I am really thankful for my son and his improved health. I am thankful for our health insurance (even though I am always complaining about how crappy it is). I am thankful for our house (even thought right now I feel trapped inside it).  I am thankful for my job that keeps me from being trapped inside the house (even though I have been complaining about never having enough time). But, I am especially thankful for the morning glories that greeted me and my son with their unassuming blue smiles when we came home from the hospital (even though they are climbing all over my hibiscus and petunias)…..

Alexander said, “Mom, look God made these new flowers grow here.  I like them, they are my favorite color. Aren’t they pretty?”

Thank You, God, for those morning glories!  I think they may just be my new favorite flower.

On Love and being Loved….

“This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.” – C.S. Lewis

Photos by Melton Microfilms

I am ever amazed at the love that grows for someone that I have spent so much of my life with.  We are so different in so many ways and yet God is perfectly crafting us for one another.

We are a work unfinished….but…ah the beauty of love…and of being loved…a (somewhat tarnished) mirror of the love our Father has for us.  A love that sees through to the heart of us and loves us nonetheless.

And with each new day, an opportunity to mirror that love to others.

And in doing so, taste the richness of life.

This post is part of a weekly link up over at Holley Gerth’s place talking about different words that answer the question “In God’s heart I am…” This week’s word was loved.  If you’d like to join us, head on over to www.holleygerth.com

How Time Heals

I receive a daily feed from The Henri Nouwen Society (he’s one of my favorite authors) and love the way he makes me step back and view the world from a perspective I other than my own.  Today’s post struck me as aptly timed in light of all the cries of injustice coming out of the Casey Anthony trial and the state of relationships as a whole these days.

Photo courtesy of www.folkslisten.blogspot.com

I hear so often the words “forgive and forget.” I love what Henri says in this passage.

“That is not realing healing; it is simply ignoring reality.”

Healing takes more work than memory loss.  Forgiveness is not about forgetting, it’s about rebuilding.

“Time heals,” people often say.  This is not true when it means that we will eventually forget the wounds inflicted on us and be able to live on as if nothing happened.  That is not really healing;  it is simply ignoring reality.  But when the expression “time heals” means that faithfulness in a difficult relationship can lead us to a deeper understanding of the ways we have hurt each other, then there is much truth in it.  “Time heals” implies not passively waiting but actively working with our pain and trusting in the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation.

 

 

What do you think? Can you forgive AND forget?

Check out another great post on forgiveness here at Folks, Listen!

Do you have one? Share your link in the comments! I’d love to read them!

Listening to the Heart

3. I will listen for my friend’s heart more than her talk. I will not be afraid to listen to her struggles.

“As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.”

- Proverbs 27:19 (NIV)

 

Communication goes well beyond what we say with our words.

Research shows that when we are under stress, less than seven percent of our communication comes from our words. The rest of the communication cues we send out come from our tone (38%) and our body language (55%).

How often have you had a conversation with someone close to you and, despite the fact that everything she was saying to you was upbeat, you knew something was wrong? Did you know that our brains are set to scan systematically the people we talk with for visual, auditory and tactile cues to establish trustworthiness?  We automatically sense and register when someone’s words don’t match what the rest of that person is saying.

That’s because God created us to communicate through many more avenues than just the spoken word. Much of the meaning of our verbal communication is expressed beyond our words, through body language. Through our bodily posture, motion, countenance, gestures, tone and volume of voice, we express feelings that words may fail to reveal. Our eyes and ears are consistently scanning situations for incongruity between the words that are being spoken and the message that is being sent by the heart.

When you are listening to your friend, listen with more than your ears. Engage your eyes and other senses, and trust your intuition when you feel something is off. This part is not difficult. God designed us to connect to one another this way-to “click in” with each other and understand one another from a place beyond the physical – from our hearts. We each have this ability and do it every day.

The hard part, the part we run from, is the next step.

Once we sense this incongruity, we must reach beyond our safe cocoon of indifference to extend support to our friend. This can be as simple as asking “Are you ok?” and being prepared to hold your ground if floodgates open and emotional issues come up.

In her poem, “The Invitation,” Oriah Mountain Dreamer writes:

It doesn’t interest me who you know

Or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

In the center of the fire

With me

And not shrink back.

That sums it up, doesn’t it?

Are you willing to:

1) ask the question when you know the answer might take time to wade through,

and

2) stand at the center of the fire and not be afraid of what you might see when the mask comes off and someone’s heart is revealed?

Don’t be afraid to listen to your friend’s struggles.

Next time you are in conversation with a friend, ask her specifically, “What’s challenging you right now?” Don’t push, just listen and provide support unless and until she asks for help.

“The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, ‘What are you going through?’”

- Simone Weil

The preceding was a excerpt from the book Living Life with Strings Attached.  

Why I love kids camp…

Church camp is a brand new experience for me. I never went to away camp as a child, so the experience of counseling eight 5th and 6th grade girls through this adventure has been full of lessons.

Lesson #1:

Girls are NEVER quiet!

As I sit and look at this sentence I think about the ironic application in my life. Most of my post-motherhood adult life has been a search for a moment of silence to steal. I’ve been on a mission to teach women to seek and find these quiet moments with God. And as I watch these young ladies flit to and fro like manic bumblebees, I realize that I might have inappropriately diagnosed our “lack of quiet” problem as a function of our busyness. Perhaps this need for chatter is truly something we are born with…a “girl thing.”

As I sit here in this quiet spot tucked away from the swimming pool and basketball court, this bench in the shade overlooking the lake, I am joined only by boys who come away for a moment or two of stillness.

The girls walk in groups of two or four chit-chatting and giggling, swatting at bugs and barely noticing the beauty of this place. The boys break away for just a moment to feel the breeze and gaze over the peaceful waters of the lake before running off to join their friends in play.

It’s not all fun, the girls can and do broach serious topics, but even in their silence-they are never quiet. No wonder I struggle to silence my own inner chatter…I have lived with noise for as long as I can remember.

Lesson #2:

As quick as the pace is here, God stops the world sometimes.

So far there have been moments, a couple of them, where time seemed to stand still. Moments where I pray I lived up to the title of “Counselor.” Moments of connection that made camp wonderful. In those times when a student reaches out for God’s answer, I am blessed to be able to come alongside and point the way. In those moments, it seems, the chatter quiets, time stands still and the world stops.

I am sure that there were LOADS of other lessons…some that will come out in the days to come…others that are still unknown to me. Suffice it to say I had a blast! (Every kid should go to camp–even if they have to wait until they’re grown!)

On Planting Seeds…(thanks Miss Holley)

I have been hemming and hawing around what to do today…caught between what I should be doing and what I oughta be doing and what I wanna be doing. Throw in there a little of what God wants me to do and you know what happens?

NOTHING.

Yep…nothing….no laundry, no writing, no fun day at the pool with kids and a myriad of other seeds I didn’t plant today.

And then I sat down at my laptop to do more of nothing (read: check Facebook) and found myself reading a couple of blogs that really got me thinking.

The first, Jon Acuff’s blog about blogging, “Why People Don’t Read Your Blog,” got all up in my kitchen. The gist? “Why should I loyally read your blog, if you won’t loyally write?” 

Ouch…(ps I haven’t exactly been loyal in the posting here….forgive me?)

And then, while I was still reeling from that stinging blow and already beginning with the excuses as to why I can’t post regularly- which really all come back to the fear that if I write everyday I will stop providing value and hope and start providing mindless drivel.

Then I read this, from my sweet friend Holley Gerth:

I carry them home to my heart and think, “Yes! I will plant my seeds.”

And then life gets busy.

Can anyone relate?

The good news is–it’s not too late.

(You should read the rest of the post here….really you should. )

It’s not too late.

Did you hear that? It’s not too late! Oh, thank you my sweet friend for reminding me that it’s not too late…I needed that gentle heart tug today.

And so here I am, planting a tiny seed. The truth is that somedays I will have deep thoughts to share and sometimes I will have mindless drivel.  I hope that you will bear with the latter. As for my part, I am letting go of my idea of the perfect post and praying that the simple practice of writing daily will bear fruit. This is a start, a small one, but without the starting you can’t be about the finishing can you?

What seed will you plant today?

Five Minute Friday- On Forgetting

I needed this this morning.  Please forgive my absence of late, there’s been a lot of stuff going down ’round these parts.

I process through words and so need to write, but the voice inside me is so still right now, so quiet….and so….silent here where we meet.

Two weeks ago, my father had minor heart attack that landed him in the hospital. Given the condition of his heart and kidneys, his prognosis for medical treatment is pretty bleak, but he is here with us, he is home and he is as ornery as ever.  I have one more day, hour, minute and second to let no love go unsaid.

The same week, Strings Attached Ministries held the 3 retreat in the Practicing Your Path series, Embracing the Call, and it was a great success.  It was also a highly emotionally charged message for me to present and I found myself completely drained by Saturday last.

Saturday evening I learned that one of my closest friends’ father collapsed after a massive heart attack and was in a coma.  He passed away last night at 6 pm.  I am broken hearted for her and for her family.

On Sunday evening a massive tornado hit the community of Joplin, MO–about an hour north of here. The devastation blows me away.  The outpouring of our community with help and relief aid blows me away.

So it’s been a bit of rollercoaster this week….I’ll be honest, I wasn’t going to participate this week (thus the Saturday posting of a Friday prompting), but when I saw the prompt, I knew that my Great Counselor was working healing in my heart. So here goes…..

Here are the rules to play:

Got five minutes? Here’s a great way to spend them.

1. Write for 5 minutes flat without editing your voice.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Pony up the comment love for the five minuter who linked up before you.

Today’s prompt is “On Forgetting..”-

GO

All I have learned this past few days can be summed up simply: never let love go unsaid.

Don’t forget that tomorrow isn’t promised any of us.

Don’t forget that this breath right now could be your last.

Don’t forget that the person sitting across from you is worth the risk of rejection, the snort of laughter when you get all sappy, the sometimes uncomfortable silence when you blurt out, “I just love you….no, really, I do…”

Why are we so afraid of those words?

Don’t forget to hug the ones you love.

Don’t forget to call far away friends and family, to write Grandmas and Great Aunts, to send pictures and share life even when you can’t be physically there.

Don’t forget that we are all just passing through this world.

Don’t forget to say goodbye.

Don’t forget.

STOP

This post is dedicated to the memory of Rick Dial. Please pray for my friend, Heather Todd and her family as they move forward after his loss.  Heaven is a better place today, but the hole he leaves here is tremendous.

Rick Dial

Five Minute Friday- If You Met Me

“Got five minutes? Let’s write. Let’s write in shades of real and true and unscripted.
Let’s just write and not worry if it’s just right or not.”- Lisa-Jo

GO

If you met me, you might be taken aback by my propensity for hugging…even strangers…right away…I’m from the South, you know? I’d like to think it’s what we do.

We would sit and talk and I would gesture wildly with my hands (I do that when I get really excited…who am I kidding…I just do that.) You might even wonder (as most of my friends do at some point) if I could form sentences without waving my hands about erratically…ummmm….the answer is no.

If you met me we would talk about kids and life and crazy busy workdays and following dreams and living with passion. We would talk about offering every moment as worship worthy of God the Creator of the Universe and Lord of my life. We would talk about making deep connections and how to foster those in the age of Facebook and sitting safely behind a one-way window to the world.

If you met me you might love me, until I put my foot in my mouth or challenged you for an answer on some deeply held belief. I hope you would still love me after I offered a quirky apology for stepping on your heart.

If you met me I would try to understand and view the world through the same lens you do, if for just a little while….striving to understand the world from as many perspectives as possible while holding true to my own.

If you met me we would eat…something wildly healthy, of course, like gluten free vegan lasagna or quinoa with roasted brussel sprouts and pine nuts and then feast our senses on a decadent dessert made with rich chocolate…

If you met me, I pray you would tell me your story and you would hear mine…because that’s really what life is all about anyway.

STOP

I’m linking up with Lisa-Jo over at thegypsymama.com for    five-minute friday. Why don’t you join us? There’s a giveaway involved.