Thoughts

I’m sitting under the canopy of sunset sky… listening to the birds warbling, and drinking in each breath of cool spring air.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…

Life holds so many unknowns.

So many things that can distract and consume and draw away from the real purpose and mission of living.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about living this year to the full.

To fullness overflowing.

Chasing dreams.

Embracing the moment by moment beauty of life.

This past week I got an invite to sing with a local ensemble… it’s needless to say that I said yes—but something thrilled through me with that invite—purpose.

A chance.

A chance to embrace life fully right here, right now.

I’ve spent most of my life living in the past or the future.

Sure, the past is good to grow from, and the future is flooded with the hope of dreams, but where is a better time to start living then now?

Living fully will look different for everybody.

For me… it’s singing… and spending time in nature… and pouring into friendships… and taking the time for little things like drinking an ice coffee on a morning walk, or drawing dreams under the sunset.

It’s reading… and having good conversations…

It’s laughing with friends… and recolouring school “no trespassing” signs with my students during math class.

It’s taking deep lungfuls of fresh air… writing words, even when the words won’t come… choosing forgiveness, and life, and love.

It’s reading good books… having the courage to get up and try again… giving a smile to someone who doesn’t have one… getting ice for yet another injured fourth-grader… and taking the time to whisper a thank-you heavenward for each second of life lived.

It’s savouring moments like this one where it’s just me and Jesus out in the evening after-glow.

Yes—truly living is wrapped up out of so many small things… big things… medium sized things…

It’s being fully present. Fully alive. Fully experiencing, embracing, and loving each moment as it comes my way.

Advertisement

All will be Well

In the early hours of Monday morning my little blue car rattled down our lane way, and pulled to a halt in my freshly gravelled parking spot.

The last 72 hours were a whirlwind of a choir-tour.

A blur of beautiful memories.

Goofy bus rides…

Praying with arms linked over each others backs…

Sharing… singing… setting aside life, and just living in the beauty of music and friendship and the presence of God.

Tonight… tonight the words from one song—the theme of our whole program—are spilling over my longing soul: “All will be Well.”

All.

Last week’s messy church meeting.

All the questions, and unknowns, and changes that this next year holds.

All the longings and fears.

All the hopes that flutter like a restless wind rushing over my bared heart.

This world is so full of both beauty and pain.

I love life.

I love my friendships.

My job.

My dreams.

I love the places that I think I’m headed in life—and the promises that I cling to when those paths get dark.

I’m so grateful that when the night feels dark, and the road feels long, and I just wish that I could relieve those laughs on the bus, or the nearness of that tightly held prayer circle in the corner of the lobby… in those moments—all will still be well.

In the moments when you think friends are gonna hate you.

When the present slowly fades into the past and new dreams… new hopes… new fears begin to blossom… when your heart aches because you want to live in the now… and yet you want to move on…

In it all…

Every question…

Everything…

All will be Well.

Because He is good.

The Beauty of Living

The sun is shining on lush green grass, and sparkling blue river.

Life isn’t all idyllic.

Sometimes, it’s just plain hard.

But there’s a thread of the beautiful running through each season, adding it’s glorious sparkle to the quiet shadows around it.

Quiet shadows?

Yes, even unknowns and strifes and hard times can be quiet, tranquil, shadowlands.

My very soul feels like it’s soaking in the sunshine today.

Maybe like a solar powered lamp, soaking up light before the dark comes.

I’m not sure how much I can put into words…. Or how much I even want to if I could…

But I know that the road could be hard.

I know that the pathway might be long.

And I know that in the end—God will make everything worth it.

Everything redeemed

Because no matter what today holds….

No matter what tomorrow brings…

God is good—and the Sonlight will be enough for the dark days ahead.

Little Things… and Fishing

Jack and I went fishing tonight.

Sparkling river… setting sun… birds chirping… beautiful.

I got three bites on my line, and Jack caught some sort of crab-like creature, but that was it.

I’ve forgiven my four-footed friend for having caught something, since he kept me company on the river-bank until the bugs came out.

Oh, and because he only dove at my line once. (which I guess means that I technically did catch something, since I had to work the hook out of a mat on his ear.)

Fish or no fish, it was a beautiful evening.

It still is, as I listen to the frogs trilling, and the birds singing, (and for consistency I suppose I should mention the flies buzzing.)

It was one of those days when you get way more done then you imagining possible.

SCMC bookwork… half of the youth-choir brochure designed… a dress sewn for the mother… multiple books read to Small… laundry pulled in off the line and folded in all it’s crisp summery sweetness… giving under-doggies on the swings… reading… colouring in my journaling Bible… loving life… oh, and fishing.

Yes, it’s been a good day.

Last night we planted some garden.

Walking barefoot along freshly tilled rows, feet sinking into the soft earth, pressing onions into the ground—maybe I’m crazy, but I love it!

The trees are budding—silhouettes stencilled black against the twilight sky.

I don’t know where all God is going to lead me in life…

Yesterday one of my dear sweet students put a little card on my desk—inside she’d written this: “Believe what God put in your heart”.

Okay.

Deep breath.

She didn’t tell me I need to find a way to work out everything God has filled my heart with.

She didn’t say to manipulate life, or worry about how to make things happen.

She said to believe.

God keeps telling me “wait”.

That my timeline is what He wants me to surrender.

That I’m called to know Him—not to know my future.

Believe.

Believe what He put in my heart.

Each bit of it.

Each yes, and each no.

Each wait, and each someday.

Tonight I stood beside the river, and I fished.

Somehow I’ve linked something idealistic to fishing.

Somehow hoping to find God at the river, just like the disciples found Him catching fish on the Sea of Galilee.

Yes, it’s a beautiful reminder—a quiet time to connect with Him…

But fishing isn’t what this is really about.

He came to them as they toiled in the work they daily had yo fulfill. As they were doing the next right thing.

That’s what’s been ringing in my ears these past few weeks.

“Just do the next right thing.”

I heard it over a year ago in a sermon—and it’s been burned into my heart.

“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful also in large things…” – Luke 16:10a

The disciples were doing the next right thing.

Doing the simple—menial—work that they had been given to do.

And it was while doing that, that He called them.

Doing the next right thing is where He wants to find me.

Faithful here, first.

Yes, His timing is best.

And He is always faithful.

Two Years… My Miracle

It’s been two years.

Two years today since my life hit rock-bottom and then started the slow journey up.

I remember sending that text message on Saturday morning. The message that said that I really wasn’t doing well.

Stress was twisting knots in my stomach.

I wasn’t sleeping.

I was losing weight.

And now… three days before the ministry was going to meet with my parents and explain my decision to leave—now, I couldn’t hold on any longer.

I remember each moment so vividly.

Like a video replaying within my mind.

Dragging myself down the hall.

Gasping and struggling and choking from anxiety.

I. Just. Couldn’t. Do. This. Any. Longer.

God brings our greatest miracles into our greatest pain.

That morning, when I just couldn’t do it any longer, my minister’s wife came and picked me up.

And took me away from the only life I had ever known.

Ten days later, I would find myself in a home, that has become my home. With a family, that has become my family.

Those ten days were awful.

Actually, the first year was pretty awful.

Memories of moments I’ve wished I could forget jump out of shadows and envelope my thoughts.

You can’t live a lifetime and forget it in two years.

I don’t know that I can put my miracle into words….

But for me—for the first time in my life, I’m free.

Free from the criticism and abuse that shut my life down.

I’m not saying that the first twenty years of my life were all bad…

I am saying that in these two years I’ve found freedom. Healing. A life I hardly dared to dream could ever be mine.

Day by day I’m relearning what is reality, and what is just a trauma response.

Slowly I’m learning to trust. Learning that I can even trust men.

Slowly I’m realizing that I’m actually worth being loved. Slowly learning how to accept the love around me.

Sometimes the miles I still have to travel look so long.

Sometimes I’m just so tired. So tired of fighting memories. So tired of being surprised by triggers. So tired of having my worst nightmares spring to my mind when I least expect it.

But I realize too what a miracle these last two years have been.

I’ve come from the only life I’ve known, to a life that I never imagined could be mine.

When I drive my blue car home from a week of teaching school I sometimes struggle to grasp the reality of it all.

Two years ago, I didn’t have my licence.

Two years ago I thought I’d never be able to teach school.

Two years ago I stayed up in my room and waited to get up until I was sure no one was downstairs.

Two years ago I spent my life hiding. Hiding everything that I could about myself because I just didn’t want to be hurt one more time.

Looking back brings a choking sensation again to my throat even as it brings a grateful throb to my heart.

God has been so good to me.

I’ll probably never understand why I had twenty years before He brought me to a place where I feel so safe…

I’ll probably never know why He has given me these two incredible years of freedom…

But I can know this—God is good in the nightmares, and in the promises fulfilled.

God will redeem.

Day by day, He is working.

Yes, these last two years have been a miracle.

Every day is a miracle that God has granted me the freedom to live.

Sunshine and the Cross

Darkness over the whole land.

Raindrops patterning against the windows of Good Friday’s in my memory.

Today… a fresh sunrise washing over the earth met my morning gaze as it filtered through the window curtains.

Earth made new once again.

Another miracle of another morning.

I used to find the gloom of a rainy Good Friday fitting.

Today… today I see the beauty of new life.

The greatest sacrifice was all about Redemption.

“Dear woman, why are you crying… who are you looking for?”

He asks my heart as I stand beside a tomb that has been empty these 2,000 years.

Yes, today we remember.

We remember that no matter the cost… the suffering… the pain… He knows each moment of it—He has shared each moment of it… and each moment of pain is worth it for the redemption that follows the pain.

The greatest redemption the human soul has ever known was bought at the greatest suffering that God-made-flesh could have conceived to endure.

I’ve been in the fire.

A fire so small by comparison to His…

A fire that He endured as a mere part of the blaze He walked through.

Friend, if you’re walking through the flames… He walked these very flames. Suffered each burn-scar that is been seared into the fibres of your tender heart.

And He rose.

You will rise!

Redemption will come.

It has already been bought.

Payed in the life-blood He shed.

Redemption is spilling across the world this morning in fresh rays of sunlight.

Drink deep of the fresh air He has breathed onto this day.

Soak up the sunshine.

In Him—today is a glimpse of redemption.

Today is about life my friend.

Redemption.

Hope.

Let your soul live and thrive in the depths of joy that His blood spilled onto the dried out, cracked soil of your heart.

I’m not a Super-Hero

I guess it’s in our DNA.

This in grained teacher-drive to be a super-hero.

Today… well, I don’t feel like a super-hero.

I feel like a very average twenty-two-year-old with a sore throat and cold-headache.

I don’t feel like a teacher who knows the answers.

I don’t feel like I know how to make spelling curriculum decisions.

I’m not sure how to decide between a curriculum that my students think was written in another continent it’s questions are worded so badly, with a curriculum that makes sense, but has harder words!

I’m not sure how to teach, ignore my headache, answer Mr. Busy’s questions, block out the girls whispered chatter, mark papers, and stay sane all at the same time.

“Do the next right thing.”

It rings in my ears over and over again.

The next test on the pile might be almost illegible.

The weather might be gloomy and the clouds lowring.

This afternoon might be a noisy science-fair right outside my classroom door.

And I might be tired.

But I’m blessed.

Blessed by my dream job.

Blessed by two beautiful years of discovering the beauty of God and of life.

Blessed that I’m not called to be a super-hero even though it IS in my teacher DNA.

Yes, I feel very blessed.

… okay, if I’m honest, blessed and still tired!

Nail-scared Whole

Somewhere out there… there’s the words I’m looking for.

Words I can’t seem to find, for thoughts I can’t seem to express.

I’m so tired of pain.

Physical… emotional…

The ache of searing lungs… the choke of regrets encircling my throat.

I feel like I’m holding heartbreak and joy in the same hands.

Just longing to release my weariness is a flood that refuses to come.

I trace the “whys” that are engraved on my heart.

Run the fingers of my mind over my scars…

Over the jagged mendings cross crossing my heart.

I see myself as a child in the hand of God.

In my frailty grasping for a hand-hold… and finding one in the imprint of the nails.

A place to trust my arms through and hold on tight.

My heart pressed close to His scars.

And somehow the lifeblood that poured from those scars pours into the wounds in my own chest.

I grieve for a world of hurt.

My own…

My dads…

Every child who has suffered since the beginning of time.

My heart wails against the brokenness of a world where children are shot. Children the age of my own students.

A world where people are raped, and beaten.

A world of injustice and sneering cruelty.

And I see light.

Light pouring from those nail scars.

Light flooding over the world that God once declared “good”.

The breaking and the mending… they’re intertwined like a chord.

Redemption circling through the very worst moments that this world has to offer.

I can’t find the words.

But I can find the Saviour.

I trace again the scars on my heart.

Reminders that I have never been forsaken.

I don’t understand.

Can’t grasp the why for the bad or the good that has laced my life.

But I know that each scar will be redeemed.

Each tear, will be collected in Heaven.

I know that God has cried with me—and with those I have cried for.

I know that God has grieved every heartache… every war… every divorce… every abortion… every time someone decided that the good and the beautiful we’re not worth fighting for.

I wish I could change the world.

Take away all the heartache.

But I realize that in God’s eternity of time—He already has.

Our world just hasn’t caught up with the command yet.

Someday…

Someday, there will be words.

Words bigger then the pain.

Words deeper then the joy.

Wounds that give life being bared to the world who cause them… and now clings to them as their only lifeline.

Some stories grow old.

His never does.

Some pain is forgotten.

He never forgets… and His sacrifice will be remembered forever.

Because it cost blood to purchase redemption.

And some scars are worth it…

Yes—each scar can find wholeness in the nail marks on His hands.

Holding Grace

The sky and river are painted a pale purply-pink.

Peace floods my soul like the rippling waters outside.

Deep—rich—flowing free.

It’s not a peace without ripples… but it’s a peace of family and warmth and sunset and the presence of God.

I’ve often wondered what open hands means.

I mean… what can you hold with open hands?

Surely not emptiness?!

I’ve been realizing that open hands are the total opposite of that.

Open hands are the epitome of fullness.

Grace—overflowing—spilling out of the palms raised heavenward and pouring over all of life.

Like a satiating rain after a drought.

Grace.

God’s grace isn’t rationed.

Like rain it pours into anything opened to fill it.

And like water-filled hands we can only keep as much grace as we keep our hands open.

Clench your hands, and their ability to hold water splashes out in a compression of loss.

Clench your heart around dreams you tell God our untouchable, and you compress your soul—splashing out oceans of grace—leaving a loss incomprehensibly as deep as the grace shut out.

My heart is full of dreams.

Pulsing with hopes and visions that leave my eyes starry, and my heart beating fast.

Dreams that leave me aching for the safety and longings unanswered in my soul.

They’re beautiful dreams.

Dreams that when I hold open handed are drenched in God’s grace and love.

Each dream like a tiny water-drop—both lost and multiplied in the abundance of His grace.

I know if I close my fists I will lose it all—the dreams… the peace… the grace…

The goodness of living lost in God.

Slowly the beauty of open hands is beginning to make sense.

Slowly I’m grasping that it’s by not grasping that we gain.

It’s by opening that we live.

Live in the vulnerability and fullness of God.

Thank You, Jesus!

Thank You for dreams… and for grace deep enough to drown them in the richness of Your timeline and Your plan.

All Will Be Well

The sunrise is painting the clouds outside my window.

Like a breath of hope stamped across the sky.

This thing we call life?

It’s beautiful, and complicated.

Golden sun dances across the ceiling from the open window.

I want h the clouds float, and I draw a deep breath of God’s gift of air.

And I wonder… am I drinking equally deep of His grace. His love. His commitment.

Life is too short to try to write your own story.

God has the pen—and He will script a perfect ending.

I’m not saying that the ending will be “happily ever after on this earth.”

In my favourite novel the main character dies at the 3/4 mark.

It’s still the best story I’ve ever read.

God has promised us a happily ever after—up in glory with Him. Walking the new earth with Him. Drinking in the songs of the birds, and the wealth of untroubled relationships with Him.

That’s our happily ever after.

And it’s guarantied.

The sky has shifted to a beautiful morning outside. Vying with the birds calls as both give praise to their Maker.

And me?

I’m letting go.

Tossing away my pen.

Giving God my timeline.

Just choosing to live day-by-day in the security of His love.

Riding whatever waves He may send… because He’s promised to ride them with me.

While words from my youth choir float through my head like an echoing amen to my choice…

All will be well and all will be well,
all manner of things will be well.

Give us the faith to trust in your love,
when things are concealed from our view

All will be well and all will be well,
all manner of things will be well.

Julian of Norwich