*Actions really do speak louder than words. Words are quick. They cost us nothing, but actions may change a persons life forever, and from then on, your empty words mean little to me. I'm learning to watch far more closely than I am listening.
*When God hints that it might be time to move on, start packing boxes. I never imagined that a conversation in July would end up where I am in December.
*Never burn all the bridges behind you, you never know when you might have to walk back over one. It almost made me feel guilty that Hunky had three viable job offers within five days of having been let go. It taught me the lesson that how you leave a situation is far more important than how you enter it.
*Whoever said "At least you know who your friends really are" was obviously too glib to have also discovered who their friends really AREN'T. That cleansing has been one of the most painful and most freeing of my life.
*The closeness of some relationships is relative to proximity - and that is what it is. Better to enjoy the time for what it offered than to try to hang on to what isn't going to remain the same.
*Conversely, some relationships deepen with distance, and sometimes these surprising relationships become lifelines to sanity.
*Not all friendships are heart-friends, but that doesn't lessen their value, and there is always room for another heart-friend when the right soul comes along.
*A person who lies in the little things, will lie in the big things (so you better be sure that your actions will back up what you've been saying all your life).
* Feeling love, feeling welcome, feeling wanted will cover a multitude of sins
*Adventures always come with a degree of discomfort- the greater the adventure, the greater the discomfort. Focus on the adventure.
*At the end of the day God is good. I am grateful to the depths of my soul for the blessings He has unendingly poured on me this year.
12.31.2009
12.29.2009
A Time to Every Purpose
The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. G.K. Chesterson
One thing I have pondered long over of late is what to do with this blog. To describe it as inconsistent would be kind, and yet, I can never quite bring myself to give it up. I rather enjoy pouring all my thoughts out and stirring them up, picking out the ones that might become something more than a thought-let and gradually watching it grow. It helps me to pull together purposeful ideas, lists of aspirations, communities of like-minded individuals. It is useful in recording both a beginning point and a journey, in hopes that one day I truly will reach the end.
Over the years the organized me has tried to blog different topics in different places in an attempt to keep things orderly and efficient. What inevitably occurs is that I become overwhelmed with choices and possibilities doing nothing well, and at some point, giving up entirely. That is a pattern I plan to break this year, and the solution is simply this. It's all going to happen right here: reading lists, food thoughts, pictures, home school moments, ramblings, memes, recipes and realizations are all part of the jumble that is my life, why should my blog be any different?
Though few occurrences in my life seem worthy of record, I am constantly wanting to record them, if only because it helps me to assimilate the pieces and make peace with them. Truthfully speaking, it also helps me remember they happened at all (Laugh if you will, but I bought Christmas presents this year, hid them and completely forgot that I purchased them in the first place less than forty-eight hours later...true fact). Perhaps my sporadic attempts at writing this year were merely because you can't put together a puzzle without all the pieces. God has begun a new and mighty chapter for me and my family in our lives, and here we are at the first pages and I once again feel ready to do more than drift along in survival mode.
Waiting, resting and listening all have their proper places, but it is time again for me to be active: to plan, to create, to adjust, to learn. God has planted my feet and my heart in a new place for a new time. That time is now. Exploring what that means for me, to me and in me is a great adventure. I'm ready to get started!
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven-- Ecc. 3:1
One thing I have pondered long over of late is what to do with this blog. To describe it as inconsistent would be kind, and yet, I can never quite bring myself to give it up. I rather enjoy pouring all my thoughts out and stirring them up, picking out the ones that might become something more than a thought-let and gradually watching it grow. It helps me to pull together purposeful ideas, lists of aspirations, communities of like-minded individuals. It is useful in recording both a beginning point and a journey, in hopes that one day I truly will reach the end.
Over the years the organized me has tried to blog different topics in different places in an attempt to keep things orderly and efficient. What inevitably occurs is that I become overwhelmed with choices and possibilities doing nothing well, and at some point, giving up entirely. That is a pattern I plan to break this year, and the solution is simply this. It's all going to happen right here: reading lists, food thoughts, pictures, home school moments, ramblings, memes, recipes and realizations are all part of the jumble that is my life, why should my blog be any different?
Though few occurrences in my life seem worthy of record, I am constantly wanting to record them, if only because it helps me to assimilate the pieces and make peace with them. Truthfully speaking, it also helps me remember they happened at all (Laugh if you will, but I bought Christmas presents this year, hid them and completely forgot that I purchased them in the first place less than forty-eight hours later...true fact). Perhaps my sporadic attempts at writing this year were merely because you can't put together a puzzle without all the pieces. God has begun a new and mighty chapter for me and my family in our lives, and here we are at the first pages and I once again feel ready to do more than drift along in survival mode.
Waiting, resting and listening all have their proper places, but it is time again for me to be active: to plan, to create, to adjust, to learn. God has planted my feet and my heart in a new place for a new time. That time is now. Exploring what that means for me, to me and in me is a great adventure. I'm ready to get started!
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven-- Ecc. 3:1
12.27.2009
This Page Intentionally Left Blank.
"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day." ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce
For those of you who are new to my life, or my blog, you should know that I become inordinately, childishly, deliriously delighted over New Year's. I simply adore the concepts of unwritten pages, blank canvases, unsung songs on the precipice of our lips. The words, colors, textures just waiting, so generously gravid, to give birth to....anything we want. Potentiality is a concept with which I am fully enamored, and no time of year seems more fraught with it than now.
What you may also need to know, if the next week's blogs are to have any meaning whatsoever, is that for the past seven or eight years, God has spoken to me year-to-year with themes. I've had a variety ( last year's is here ) and will be speaking more on this year's theme in the days to come. God is doing something a little differently with me this year because He isn't through yet with working on last year's lessons, and may not be for the rest of this lifetime, truth be told. However, this is the first time that a theme has carried over. I wonder if this means I am getting dumber and slower, or if it means that as I deepen my relationship with God He moves more slowly to ensure that the patterns and rhythms are deeply integrated to the point of brilliant familiarity. Maybe an amalgamation of both is closer to the truth.
But I digress.
This year is drawing to close. I cannot think of one that has been harder, involved more loss, cut more deeply. Yet Hunky and I both agree that this year is our best year. God has turned ugliness and harm into something...so scintillating that I still dare not pass a day without simply whispering prayers of wordless gratitude, wishing I could be more eloquent. Restoration is a beautiful, amazing process, but it is a process that cannot begin without first being stripped. There is a depth, a richness to the grain of my life that is being revealed. God's loving hand is turning me into someone I never dreamed I could be, down a path I would never have willingly chosen, in a place that I never knew existed.
I have learned many things, so many things, too many things to begin listing but perhaps most apparent is that God doesn't need New Year's to begin a great new thing. Each day, each moment is filled with potentiality. Whether it be January 17, May 12, or August 24, God's very essence is pregnant with possibility. He is merely waiting for us to say yes to each new rebirth.
For those of you who are new to my life, or my blog, you should know that I become inordinately, childishly, deliriously delighted over New Year's. I simply adore the concepts of unwritten pages, blank canvases, unsung songs on the precipice of our lips. The words, colors, textures just waiting, so generously gravid, to give birth to....anything we want. Potentiality is a concept with which I am fully enamored, and no time of year seems more fraught with it than now.
What you may also need to know, if the next week's blogs are to have any meaning whatsoever, is that for the past seven or eight years, God has spoken to me year-to-year with themes. I've had a variety ( last year's is here ) and will be speaking more on this year's theme in the days to come. God is doing something a little differently with me this year because He isn't through yet with working on last year's lessons, and may not be for the rest of this lifetime, truth be told. However, this is the first time that a theme has carried over. I wonder if this means I am getting dumber and slower, or if it means that as I deepen my relationship with God He moves more slowly to ensure that the patterns and rhythms are deeply integrated to the point of brilliant familiarity. Maybe an amalgamation of both is closer to the truth.
But I digress.
This year is drawing to close. I cannot think of one that has been harder, involved more loss, cut more deeply. Yet Hunky and I both agree that this year is our best year. God has turned ugliness and harm into something...so scintillating that I still dare not pass a day without simply whispering prayers of wordless gratitude, wishing I could be more eloquent. Restoration is a beautiful, amazing process, but it is a process that cannot begin without first being stripped. There is a depth, a richness to the grain of my life that is being revealed. God's loving hand is turning me into someone I never dreamed I could be, down a path I would never have willingly chosen, in a place that I never knew existed.
I have learned many things, so many things, too many things to begin listing but perhaps most apparent is that God doesn't need New Year's to begin a great new thing. Each day, each moment is filled with potentiality. Whether it be January 17, May 12, or August 24, God's very essence is pregnant with possibility. He is merely waiting for us to say yes to each new rebirth.
12.26.2009
Good Tidings and Great Joy
Expectations can be exhausting can't they? People disappoint, plans fall through and there's never as much money as you would be comfortable with. It always seems shinier and more sparkly in your mind than it turns out in real life. I sometimes think this is why people are so exhausted by the holidays. We expect too much of ourselves, of the season, of the trappings, of the stores, of the parties and of our families and somehow it all never quite makes the measure.
I was given a great gift this year: a year with really no expectations for Christmas. For the first time ever in my life, Christmas was an all new entity. I'll be honest, not ever knowing what to expect is a faith building experience of monumental proportions for me. I'm a planner, a lister, a look-aheader. Taking life moment by moment exactly as it comes is as scary a prospect as I can imagine many days. Yet, this Christmas God had things to show me and God never disappoints, ever. It is we (or at least I ) who get in the way of God working by wanting things to be this way, or simply knowing it could have been better had it gone that way rather than just letting it go God's way and being caught up in the wonder of it all.
God has given me pause and cause to stop and simply wonder this year, wonder at His hand, His plan, His gifts of pain and joy. I found that when I approached everything as being wrapped in wonder, everything was indeed shinier, sparklier more magical than it had ever been before. God's love painted the ugly in beautiful broad strokes of grace. His mercy draped over every day things with the beauty of twinkling lights alighting an inner glow. His joy filled in the cracks and wounds of my heart, and I found that the cracks enabled me to draw even more deeply on the wellspring of His peace.
The mud and blood of a stable, the mess and madness of my life are all contained under the brilliant light of the Christmas star, and they are wonderful, beautiful and beyond understanding because they are all part of a Great Passion, His plan.
Fear not, for behold He brings you good tidings of great joy, still.
I was given a great gift this year: a year with really no expectations for Christmas. For the first time ever in my life, Christmas was an all new entity. I'll be honest, not ever knowing what to expect is a faith building experience of monumental proportions for me. I'm a planner, a lister, a look-aheader. Taking life moment by moment exactly as it comes is as scary a prospect as I can imagine many days. Yet, this Christmas God had things to show me and God never disappoints, ever. It is we (or at least I ) who get in the way of God working by wanting things to be this way, or simply knowing it could have been better had it gone that way rather than just letting it go God's way and being caught up in the wonder of it all.
God has given me pause and cause to stop and simply wonder this year, wonder at His hand, His plan, His gifts of pain and joy. I found that when I approached everything as being wrapped in wonder, everything was indeed shinier, sparklier more magical than it had ever been before. God's love painted the ugly in beautiful broad strokes of grace. His mercy draped over every day things with the beauty of twinkling lights alighting an inner glow. His joy filled in the cracks and wounds of my heart, and I found that the cracks enabled me to draw even more deeply on the wellspring of His peace.
The mud and blood of a stable, the mess and madness of my life are all contained under the brilliant light of the Christmas star, and they are wonderful, beautiful and beyond understanding because they are all part of a Great Passion, His plan.
Fear not, for behold He brings you good tidings of great joy, still.
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