When I’m feeling hurried and stressed by the demands that I think the world is projecting onto me and I think I will explode if I’m slowed down by one more obstacle…
…He opens up the heavens and reminds me that He knows and He cares…
this is not my home…and red lights aren’t always a bad thing.
I stumbled upon this passage by Channing and I love the excerpt below.
I think it quite fitting for a Monday as I begin a new day and a new week.
I hope you find this encouraging and motivating.
It’s so easy to get caught up in what the world values. Just remember that it’s fleeting.
I long to focus on what matters…what is lasting…that which is eternal.
“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden, and unconscious grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.”
(William Henry Channing, 1810-1884, US clergyman and philosopher.)
How about you? What is your symphony?
In the peacefulness of early morning
before even the sun has dispelled the darkness of night
there is praise on my lips.
It is You who wakes me from sleep
beckoning me
to embrace the stillness and quiet
while listening for Your voice.
God,
make me acutely aware of Your presence
in my coming in and going out
in each conversation in which I engage.
May You always be at the forefront of my mind
first in my heart
anchoring my soul and stirring my spirit.
Calm my anxious thoughts
dissolve my fear
with the gentle reminders of Your faithfulness.
Expose my lack of faith
so that the light may extinguish its power
search me, know me
completely and fully.
Your will is not my will
compared to You
I am but a vapor.
How can I not trust
how can I not believe
how can I not call on You in the early hours of morning
throughout the day and
into the evening.
When this world is everything but
You are grace
You are hope
You are light
You are life
Your magnificence is all around me
and yet, at times, it is as if I am blind
open my eyes to Your splendor.
Open my ears to the sounds of creation
Your creation
filling the earth with songs to You.
When I seek solace in things of this world
draw me back to You
my Provider, Protector, Comforter
my Resting Place.
Let me not seek out grandiose events
but rather delight in each moment
may everything I do
everything I am
be pleasing to You.
Take captive every thought
and before it becomes a word
may it be gratifying to You
before it becomes an action
may it honor and glorify You.
Lord, in whom I put my trust
You do not leave me here in the silence
You are everywhere I look
If only I had faith like a child.
Look at the work of Your hands
You are in every detail
nature screams of Your divine providence
evidence of You cannot be ignored
Even in my grieving
I find comfort
in the undeniable truth that
You are in all things.
Before time began
as centuries have passed
now and in the future
You remain unchanged.
Less of me
more of You
this life is fragile
I don’t want to waste a moment.
Even so, I know that this earth is not my home
help me make eternal investments
in the time that I have
until I am made complete
when in Your presence
And by Your power
all is made well.
___________________________________________________________________________________
“Beauty”
“Praise”
“Childlike wonder”
“Splendor”
“Grace”
“Faithfulness”
“Master Creator”
While trying to come up with an incredibly deep and meaningful title for this post, that would be sure to grab the attention of anyone who glanced my way, the one word that kept coming to mind was, “Love.”
My mind will not slow down long enough for me to write something that expresses what is happening in my heart. As I think of my friend, her body being ravaged by cancer, I want to vomit. I don’t know what else to do, but come to this blank page and start thinking out loud.
At the same time, selfishly, I want to give you something that will leave you thinking that I’m brilliant. Something that will touch you so deeply that on your death bed you will think of this post and find peace. Crazy, right?! I know!
God forbid I just admit to the fact that everything I have written in the last 24 hours has sucked! I’m a work in progress. Egomaniac with an inferiority complex remember?! I want you to like me even if I don’t like you…and yahdee yahdah.
Funny (and not in a haha sorta way) thing is, I cannot put 5 words together to form anything worth your time it will take to read it.
As I sat upon my pitty pot of self-delusion, I did what anyone else would do in my situation…I checked my email. Forget actually trying to sleep. I may get an update on my friend’s condition and I cannot miss that…or wait until morning to read it!
There, in my email was a picture of a handwritten note from my daughter. Ironically enough, it was talking about love. Now, I realize that she is a lovestruck teenager who daydreams about her knight in shining armor, in other words, Justin Bieber, but I love what she wrote. Simple. To the point. True.
I love this kid! Her heart is so deep, her motives so pure and her faith so beautiful.
She doesn’t believe that. She thinks she is a nuisance. Now that may change tomorrow, but for tonight, she sees herself as something to be tolerated. What?! How is that possible?!
She told me between sobs what was troubling her. It made me ache. I want to fix it. I can’t.
“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” ~Mother Teresa
Sometimes it feels as if all I am doing in love is hurting, while other times it is pure bliss. As I try desperately to get to my vague point, here is what I have been thinking about love since speaking with my Bella;
How do you find it? Does it find you?
Once you find it, or it finds you, how do you keep it?
While keeping it, how do you explain it to others?
Simple, but not easy…You live it.
In every thought.
Every word.
Every deed.
Every action.
Every response.
Don’t see this as an impossible feat. See it as an inspiring challenge…to love without getting tired.
Take every thought captive.
Think before uttering a word.
Act from a place of kindness.
Love really is the root of it all…or it should be anyway.
It’s where the adventure begins.
Once the search has begun, it is a lifelong journey, there is no going back.
It’s going to hurt and
It’s gonna be messy
but
It will also be wonderful and filled with purpose.
I’m going to be okay…
Bella will be okay…
You…will be okay.
“Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self.” ~Mother Teresa
I heard something today that broke my heart
Shook me to my core
Turned my world upside down
Made me question everything I have ever known
Evoked feelings of anger, sadness, remorse, disgust, angst
I wanted to go into the bathroom stall and puke my guts up until I felt better
Until my insides were numb
Until I made this raw, scraping feeling in the pit of my stomach go away
I knew that kind of relief is temporary and soon fleeting
I also knew that
I didn’t want to feel the way that I felt
For those of us who have been through a season of escapism
and come out on the other side
We are fully aware that the only way to remain mentally, emotionally and spiritually sound is to sit in our feelings
No matter how difficult
No matter how long it takes
Acceptance is key
I find at times that remaining physically sober is much easier than
maintaining and nurturing spiritual, mental and emotional sobriety
These are the places where the atrocities begin
sometimes long before the action ever happens
If I do not face, sort and squash things where they originate
the outcome is always one of tragedy, personal or otherwise
Thankfully, I have an incredible network of individuals who know me
The real me
The person who is broken time and time again
Flawed and scarred
Those amazing souls
Living and passed
Some whose voice I hear audibly
Others I must feel with my heart and recall in my memory
A girl like me, has to surround herself with truth
Light that dispels the darkness
Wisdom of others who have gone before me
One of my favorite speakers is Jud WIlhite
I will frequently go to iTunes and listen to past talks of his
Today was no different
I needed to be quiet and listen
There was one thing he said in this session that struck me as deeply as the painful news I had heard just hours before, only it brought hope instead of harm
It was his response to a friend who had walked through a season of darkness and at the time engaged in a lot of self-injury
Now on the other side of it, she asked him how she would one day explain the scars to her daughter.
His response was this, “All you need to do is look her in the eye and say, these scars mean one thing these scars mean that your mommy survived by the grace of God and he’s done a work of healing in my life.”
So today, right now, in this moment
I choose recovery
I choose life
I choose truth
I choose hope
I choose love
I choose grace
How could I not?!
After all, that is what has been shown to me
Over and over and over and over again
“Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.” Ephesians 5:1-2
If you would like to hear the message that I listened to today from Jud Wilhite click here
As I sit in this waiting room of only women, In a sea of blue cotton robes, with the “opening in the front” (of course), I cannot help but look around, observe and judge.
Yes, I said it, JUDGE.
“But I didn’t think Christians were supposed to do that?” you say.
When one becomes a follower of Christ, one does not cease being human.
With each name called that isn’t mine I want to charge up to the front desk and say, “I can’t wait any longer! I have things to do today! (Like sitting around in my pajamas. It’s my day off! My ‘Nobody tell me what to do’ day.)”
Of course I don’t do that, do I?
Nope! This appointment has been on the calendar for 6 months. I’m not just going to walk out now! No way. I’ll show them and stay another hour if I have too!
Wait…what?
My inner monologue is suddenly interrupted by the familiar sound of a chip bag opening. “Oh, I’m so hungry. Why didn’t I bring a snack?!” “Duh, because they are going to weigh me!” (Clearly still deceived by the notion that I will weigh less having not eaten today. I don’t mean a few ounces less, I mean 10 lbs.)
So…here I am…waiting. As I have been for the last 82 minutes.
I can’t tell if the woman beside me has an issue with her jaw or is popping gum. It’s really loud. Really. Loud.
Oh good, now she’s taking a call on her cell. The popping is replaced by her inquiries about dry cleaning and whether or not her dog has been walked and if it had pooped or peed on the walk because, that’s important. (What part of the sign “NO CELLPHONES” does she not understand?!)
The nurse emerges and calls her back. “Thank the Lord in heaven!” (is my extremely loud thought.)
As I continue an inner monologue about how I would never be as obnoxious as this woman, a word in a conversation to my right catches my attention.
Metastasized.
That’s the word. The one word that snapped me out of my self righteous, internal ranting.
There were 5 ladies, strangers from what I could tell, sharing their stories. For the young woman who had just been diagnosed, she was asking the other woman who had been cancer free since 2009, what to expect.
“What kind of pajamas do they allow in the hospital?”
“Will I lose my hair?”
“How long does chemo take?”
“Does everyone throw up after?”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“What stage was yours?”
“Did you have radiation?”
“Do you drink regular milk or organic?”
The older woman was compassionate in her answers.
I don’t have cancer.
I don’t know the answer to any of her questions. I am here, as I will be every 6 months for the rest of my life because I am “high risk.” Female cancer dominates both sides of my family. I am no stranger to the word metastasized, as that word alone awakens many feelings that have been silent until several months ago when it became a reality again with the news of my beautiful friend, now fighting for her life against a relentless form of ovarian cancer.
I actually made it a priority to schedule my annual appointment with my gyno because of her. He insisted that I have the genetic testing done to see if I carried the cancer gene. He called with the results. All tests were negative. I do not carry the gene.
So why am I sitting here. Why will I spend half of my day off, sitting here with strangers, when I could be with my boys?
Fear?
Prevention?
Is there really a difference between the two?
Regardless, here I am. Waiting…
I’m guessing that the young girl asking all the questions is in the fear stage. I can’t say that for sure and now I’m judging again. (Why am I acting so priggish?!) If anything I should be falling down before the Father in praise several times a day that I emerged from the darkness in which I was living, relatively unscathed.
However, here I sit. Annoyed by the smallest of things. Remember my motto…”Progress not Perfection.” Some days (like today), progress is even a stretch.
The lady beside me takes out her emory board to file her nails. (Insert inner scream here). Noooooooooooo! Forget the sound! What makes her think I want to breathe in her fingernail dust? And there’s no escaping it! Its flying everywhere.
The door opens, here comes the nurse, she’s calling my name.
Clarification: There are few things in this life that I can say with all of the passion I can muster that I detest. Cancer is one of those things. It is a devil of sorts. Often times it is silent in its deadly pursuit until its victim is left ravaged and face to face with death. I am in no way trying to make light of this disease in this post. I am simply giving you, the reader, a glimpse in to my perception, warped as it may be at times. Usually, for me, this all points back to fear. Thankfully I have been given the tools to face it and move on. I feel beyond blessed to only be going in for rechecks. I am on the maintenance plan while many are fighting for their life.
Even A Girl Like Me 