pieces

Pieces floating,
opaque, veiled,
incomplete picture
unknown to me, known to God.

No analyzing,
no configuring,
waiting, watching,
watching, waiting,
for hints of the whole,
for paths to follow,
for markers that lead home.

Trust required,
not logic.

Holding pieces
reverently in my hand,
releasing,
receiving,
as God desires.

I will know when to move,
As surely as I am known.
His plan unfolding now in pieces.

Pieces floating,
Opaque, veiled,
incomplete picture.
Unknown to me,
known to God.


10.2009

Photo by net_ekeft http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheatfields/2193615976/

words

The following is from my journal ~

God –

Beloved and Mystery ~ these are two words that speak to me of You. You are my beloved and I am yours. Beloved expresses to me intimacy and specialness – a closeness and a deep bond.

And mystery – something that will never be completely known, at least not on this side of eternity. I can’t figure it out – can’t figure You out. I can’t predict You or Your ways. Mystery keeps me attentive and watchful. It is not the kind of mystery that is frustrating, where you hide things to make me work or hunt for the right answers. It is beautiful mystery where the veil shrouds that which I do not need to know yet. It is like a wonderful mosaic that it given, one piece at a time as I patiently wait for the picture to come into view.

Thank you for the safety of being the beloved and for the surprise of mystery.


Photo by GaryHall Snaps
http://www.flickr.com/photos/garyhallsnaps/3244998427/

mid-day prayer

O God by whom we are guided in judgment,
And who raises up for us light in the darkness –
grant us, in our doubts and uncertainties,
the grace to ask what you would have us to do,
that your spirit of wisdom may save us
from all false choices and
in your straight path we may not stumble.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord ~
Amen

The Collect for Grace from a Midday Prayer
~ offered at a Ruth Haley Barton weekend, March 2010

melody

“The church fathers [described the] Trinity as a Great Round Dance in which love and power are constantly flowing from One to Another. This divine communication, a deep melody, continues night and day. It is a harmony, timeless and eternal, the music that upholds creation, outside of us but constantly bathing us in sound.”
Emilie Griffin, Small Surrenders – A Lenten Journey

Take time today to listen, with your heart, to the melody that the Trinity is singing over you.

Grace and peace,
Deb
photo by borkur.net http://www.flickr.com/photos/borkurdotnet/378718814/

faithful

“I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.”

Mother Teresa

Have you ever been asked by God to do something that you were not sure you could do? I have. And in those times I take my eyes off God. I look at the circumstances and see why it won’t work. The anxiety of making it successful is a bit overwhelming...the kind of overwhelming where I wake up in the middle of night and can’t get back to sleep.

But then, somehow, someway, God reminds me who is really in control. Why do I always forget that? Why do I always have to be reminded? He really is patient with me. And what He gently takes me back to is that all He wants me to be is faithful. And to leave the rest up to Him. That is a comforting thought. It’s enough to help a girl go back to sleep.

Grace and Peace,
Deb

awareness

Someone pointed out to me
That a pebble and a diamond
Are alike to a blind man.

Maybe I’ve been fingering
Diamonds all this time
Without even realizing it.

The author of this poem, Steven James, makes the point in his book, The Story, that blindness isn’t because of lack of light. That is darkness. Blindness is the inability to see the light that is all around you.

I think my life has been like this. God is always speaking to me, always moving in my life, but I usually don’t see it unless it is huge. I am like a blind woman who is surrounded by light but I am unable to see.

The prayer I pray the most lately is that God would allow me to see Him and to hear Him. I pray for new eyes to see what I have not seen. I ask for new ears to hear what I have not heard. All I want is to be more aware of His presence. My inability to sense or feel Him isn’t because He isn’t here or isn't moving…it’s because I haven’t known how to look for Him.

The more I pray this prayer and keep my intention towards God, the more I notice Him in my everyday life and sense His love for me.

Consider asking God for greater awareness today. It is a beautiful prayer that will draw you closer to Him.

Grace and Peace,
Deb

eden

East of Eden….I hear this phrase a lot in reference to our estrangement from the garden and the way life was supposed to be.

I try to imagine what Eden was like. What was ‘perfect’ like? What was ‘paradise’ like? What was walking and talking, having perfect fellowship with God like?

What would life be like with no shame, guilt, frustration, pain, sadness, tears, disappointment, AIDS, orphans, widows, sickness, adultery, power plays, low self-esteem, arrogance, terrorism, murder, lying, gossip, war, rejection, addiction, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, anorexia, bulimia, obesity, starvation, car accidents, plane crashes, computer crashes, global warming, arguing over whether or not there is such a thing as global warming, prejudice, racism, ageism, sexism, all the other ism’s, scarcity of resources, drought, famine, oil spills, cancer, heart value surgery, miscarriages, stillborn babies, birth defects, anxiety, depression, mental illness, death, separation from God, etc.? The list goes on and on. I am sure you can add some of your own.

We don’t know what Eden would have been like. We have no context for it, no reference point. All we know is that it was...and will be again. What a wonderful thought. And I am so excited that there is something to look forward to that is so beautiful and perfect that my limited human mind cannot even begin to conceive of it.

Thank you God, for the promise of "Eden restored" when we will once again walk with You in perfect fellowship.

In deepest gratitude,
Deb

mystery

You who are beyond mystery
hear my prayer.
Let wonder loose in my soul.
Let hope begin.
Unwrap the mystery of your presence
for without it, without you,
I am living half a life.
Without wonder,
without hope
my life
is not, will not be
worth living.

~ John Kirvan ~
Silent Hope -
Living with the Mystery of God

mystery

Our intense need to understand
will always be a powerful stumbling block
to our attempts to reach God in simple love,
and must always be overcome.
For if you do not overcome
this need to understand
it will undermine your quest.
It will replace the darkness
which you have pierced to teach God
with clear images of something
which however good,
however beautiful,
however Godlike,
Is not God.

~The Cloud of Unknowing
The 14th Century

Allow yourself the simple, beautiful act of not needing to understand ~

love

“All your love, your stretching out, your hope, your thirst, God is creating in you so that God may fill you…God is on the inside of the longing.”
Maria Boulding

Continuing some of the thoughts from Saturday's post...

This has been a new concept for me to wrap my brain around the past couple of years. I always thought I was the one trying to get closer to God…that it was my idea. When I began to explore contemplative spirituality, I truly thought that I was seeking a closer relationship with God. Now, I look at it differently. I have come to understand that the reason I desire a more intimate relationship with God is because He is stirring that within me. His desire to have intimacy with me is causing my desire to have intimacy with Him. Isn’t that an amazing thought?

In reality, it really isn’t a new thought to me at all. For thirty years of walking with Jesus, I have read and heard this verse:

"We love Him, because He first loved us."
(I John 4:19, Amplified Bible)

It’s like I never really ‘got it’ until recently. It makes perfect sense though doesn’t it? That everything good originates with God. I can only do or want good things because of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life.
I am in awe today, reflecting on the fact that the God of the universe, the creator of all good things, desires to have a deeper, more intimate relationship with me. That makes me want to run to Him, to spend time with Him and to please Him with my life.

He wants that with you too……

Grace and Peace,
Deb

love

“You have loved us first, O God, alas! We speak of it in terms of history as if you loved us first but a single time, rather than that without ceasing You have loved us first many times and everyday and our whole life through. When we wake up in the morning and turn our soul towards You – You are there first – You have loved us first: if I rise at dawn and at that same second turn my soul towards you in prayer, You are there ahead of me, You have loved me first. When I withdraw from the distractions of the day and turn my soul towards You, You are there first and thus forever. And we speak ungratefully as if You have loved us first only once.”
Søren Kierkegaard

Is this something you think about? That He loved you first? That the only reason you love Him is because He drew you to Himself?

Sit in this truth today.

Grace and peace,
Deb

photo by cgoldberg89 http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgb_bbear/3082932860/

being

Practicing silence and solitude, journaling, and lectio divina has moved me into a more contemplative relationship with God. These spiritual disciplines have helped me reflect on how I see God moving in my life. They help me deepen my relationship with Him. But…that is not where it ends. If it stays an inner journey and there is no outward evidence of this time spent with God, then what is it for?

Although this time with God is very meaningful to me and I love the solitude, I am called, by God to take what I am learning about myself and about Him and move in the world in a different way. The beauty of spending time with Him, ‘being’, is learning to listen to His voice and discern what He may want me to be ‘doing’.

I invite you to spend time with Him today in solitude and listen to see how He wants you to ‘be’ with others and ‘be’ in the world.

Grace and peace,
Deb

trust

“Rather than avoiding that which frightens us or makes us uncomfortable or seems too beautiful to be true, we have an obligation to write, to live, right into it – because that’s probably where the truth is hiding.”

Rachel Held Evans

What are you afraid of? What makes you uncomfortable? What is too beautiful to be true? If you are like me you almost don’t want to speak it out loud. Because, if you do, it may come true. But, is hiding from it any guarantee that it won’t come true? Yeah, not so much.

I had the opportunity to share one of my fears with a few friends yesterday. It was a setting in which they asked me Spirit-led questions and I waited for the truest answers I could find within myself. Once I spoke about the fear, it lost its strength. Through gentle, probing questions I remembered God’s calling and His leading. And, under that fear is where the truth was hiding. Or maybe better put, where I had buried the truth.

As I was writing this piece, I received an email from a dear friend who is going through her own battle with fear. Circumstances look very bleak. In her email, she was encouraging me…reminding me (I think also in an attempt to grasp it for herself) that God is sovereign no matter what the circumstances.

We don’t need trust when everything looks good and it’s hard to hold onto to trust when things look bad. For me, God has graciously provided friends who trust for me when I am having a hard time trusting myself. And, hopefully I can do the same for them.

So – what are you afraid of? What makes you uncomfortable? What is too beautiful to be true? Find someone to share that with and let them, with God, help you to live into where the truth is hiding.

Grace and peace,
Deb

Photo by richwall100 http://www.flickr.com/photos/richwall100/5786397319/

prayer

“It is of course possible to dance a prayer.”

~Glade Byron Addams

Have you ever considered that prayer could be expressed in a dance? Or in a drawing? Or in a painting? A poem? A sculpture? A collage? Or any other artistic form? I know I didn’t. Until recently, I only thought of prayer as something you did with you hands folded, eyes closed and body still.

But, it makes sense to me that the creativity God gave us can be offered back to Him as prayer. There are those who are wired in such a way that their art is an expression of who they are or what they are thinking or feeling. And what better way to ‘speak’ with God.

Consider using your creativity to speak to Him today. Offer it as a prayer...as an expression of your love to Him. Enjoy.

Blessings,
Deb

Photo by andrea.rose http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrearosephotography/5635321887/

feelings

“Live from the heart, it will never steer you wrong.”

I like chocolate. I really like dark chocolate. Dove dark chocolate. And, not only do I get great chocolate – I get a cool saying to ponder. So, today, I was woofing down some dark chocolate and the quote above was on the inside of my wrapper. It made me stop and think….so much that I fished the wrapper out of the trash to come home and blog about it. I know – you must think I am desperate for material. Not so. I am just always aware of how God might speak. Yes – there is always the Bible, but God can use a candy wrapper too.
At first glance, it seems right. But if you look a little longer, you can begin to see the flaw. Think you know where I am going, huh? I’ve been taught, in the past, that as a Christian, I cannot trust my feelings. They will lead me astray. Then I began to hear another teaching. God gave me my emotions. They are part of who I am. Can they lead me astray? You bet they can…and they have. But does that mean they cannot be good and beautiful? No. Just like food. It is a part of my life…I need it to live. I can enjoy food – or – I can abuse it. Isn’t this true with almost anything?
Why are we are so quick to throw the baby out with the bath water? Why do we need to deny a part of our humanity? Because it frightens us. Because we have seen the damage that can be done when people run with their feelings without regard to God. Scripture is full of examples of human emotion…both good and bad. Even in David’s case, we are allowed to witness both extremes; his unbridled, impulsive desire for Bathsheba, which he acted on with disastrous consequences and his equally unbridled and unrestrained joy as he danced in worship before God. And…where did we get the notion that, as Christians, we can choose to feel only the ‘good’ feelings and bury the bad???
So, after pondering the quote, I believe it is true….if your heart is surrendered to God. If you are open and surrendered to God, you need not fear your feelings. Even those feelings that we may label as negative, can, if processed well, lead us into a deeper understanding of ourselves and those places in us that may not be yielded. They can also into a deeper relationship with God, as we come to Him in complete and total honesty.
I would even suggest that to say feelings cannot be trusted is as much a fallacy as saying ‘do whatever feels good’. The truth is not in either of those extremes but is some messy place in the middle. Sorry. It is always easier when it is black and white but this is one of those grey areas.
Did this post stress you out? Go have a Dove chocolate and ponder deeply the message inside the wrapper. And feel.
Grace and peace,
Deb
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gcfairch/4426720918/
Photo by gcjairch

rest

The last couple of days, I have had conversations with women who are just plain tired. They are so busy…taking care of their families, doing ministry, working, trying to make time for friends. They feel overwhelmed, stressed and sometimes, even ill.

This is not the way it was meant to be. God didn’t design us to ‘just keep going” like the Energizer bunny. He means for us to rest, to slow down, so we can listen to Him.

Often we confuse ‘doing’ with ‘being’. All the things we are busy doing are good things. It’s just too much of them. We don’t have any energy left for truly being present to God. Spending time with Him seems like just one more thing to do.

As women, we (and I include myself in this) need to purposely slow down. We need to allow our ‘doing’ to emerge from our ‘being’. What do we hear God saying to us? What does he want us to be involved in? What does He want us to say no to?

Take some time today….yes… take some time …to spend with God and just ‘be’. Know that the world won’t fall off its axis if you slow down. Try it…sit down, close your eyes and offer up five minutes to God.

Breathe s l o w l y and r e s t.

Peacefully,
Deb

any difference??

Can people look at my life and say “That life would not make sense if God didn’t exist"?

Let that sink in for a few minutes. If we are believers, shouldn’t our lives reflect that? Shouldn’t something look different? If people can’t tell the difference, what is the point?

I cannot tell you how many times I have gotten a soda out of a machine and the machine has given me too much change back. I always take it into the store and give it to them. They are shocked. Or, if I notice that a clerk charged me too little, I tell them. Again, they look at me as if I’ve grown two heads.

Don’t be misled. I have more than my share of times of falling way short of the person I want to be. I just pray that I recognize it and I work to redeem it. Because if people can’t say that there is something different about me, than I am not living fully into this life in God.

Peace,
Deb

Photo by iluvcocacola http://www.flickr.com/photos/iluvcocacola/3737132004/

reality

“I believe in the sun when it isn’t shining.

I believe in love even when I can’t feel it.

I believe in God even when He is silent.”


Barlow Girls

Have you ever been on a plane taking off on a cloudy day? Everything is gray. Then as you move up through the clouds, all of a sudden, you breakthrough to sunshine. Then it dawns on you that it has been shining all the time whether you have been able to see it or not.

I think it has been like that in my spiritual life as well. It can, at times, seem gray. It can seem overcast and I can’t feel God, I can’t hear God. But, just like the sun, He is there, He is present. My inability to hear Him is no more an indication of Him not being there than me not being able to see the air I breathe.

Even if you can’t feel Him today, even if you don’t hear His voice or sense His presence, He is there all the same. If you are in a place right now, where He is silent, gently remind yourself of that truth....that reality.

Grace and peace,
Deb

character

"Character is what you are in the dark."

~ Unknown

What does the dark illuminate in me? What do I know about me that no one else does….no one else but God? The knowledge that He loves me in spite of my bent character …in spite of who I am in the dark, brings me to my knees. That kind of love un-does me and makes me want to continue to surrender to His transforming work in my life, to bring more and more of His light into my character, so that in the light …or in the dark, I am the same.

Grace and Peace,
Deb

Photo by adamned.age http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanne_exurban/4330782283/

grey

I can remember when I first became a believer that there was this definite line drawn in my new life. There was black, which was all I had left behind…the world and all it holds and then there was white…the new ‘spiritual’ world I had walked into. As I grew in my faith, that line got bolder and bolder. It seemed pretty easy to tell what activity, what behavior belonged where. There were secular activities and sacred activities. The secular included certain kinds of music, certain kinds of movies, certain kinds of books, behaviors, activities, etc. These were on the ‘black’ side of the line. On the white side of the line were different types of music, movies, books, behaviors, and activities. I was ok as long I chose the ‘white’ side. It made being a Christian easier. Most things could be categorized as either secular or sacred, non-Christian or Christian, black or white. Most things included people. I regret to say that sometimes I felt some superiority being on the ‘right’ side.

As God often does, He shook up my world. He took His big eraser and blurred the lines. The black blurred into the white, the white blurred into the black and there was this large area of grey. Great. Now how do I tell which is which? How do I categorize?

I think Jesus was showing me that he is the one who determines what is black and what is white. Everything belongs to him…all is his and he is the one who sees the heart. Things aren’t always as they seem. For example, Pharisees ~ white, harlots ~ black, right? But Jesus saw it differently. It wasn’t so easy, so simple, so obvious.

There is black and there is white but there is so much more grey. I’m becoming more comfortable with grey.

Peace,
Deb

love

“Solitude eventually offers a quiet gift of grace, a gift that comes whenever we are able to face ourselves honestly; the gift of acceptance, of compassion, for who we are, as we are. As we allow ourselves to be known in solitude, we discover that we are known by love. Beyond the pain of self-discovery there is a love that does not condemn us but calls us to itself. This love receives us as we are.”
Parker Palmer

Spend some time today pondering this quote. Do you know you are ‘known by love’? Have you experienced the love that “calls us to itself”? The love that “receives us as we are”? Rest in that beautiful thought.

Peace,
Deb

inside-out

The longer I follow Jesus the more I realize how much I have to work on. One would think the longer they work at something the better they would become at it. For quite a while I was confident that I was progressing in this journey. I think I based that on the external “biggies" if you know what I mean. I don’t steal, I don’t murder, I don’t covet…ok maybe I still covet, but I try not to. I think that might count. On the outside, for the most part, I look and act like a Christian. And, I thought, for a long time, that I had ‘arrived’.

Several years ago, I realized that no matter what I was able to portray on the outside, there was stuff on the inside I hadn’t noticed, let alone addressed. Issues like feelings of jealously, bitterness, envy, or behaviors like manipulation or control. I realized that my motives and attitudes were not as pure as I had hoped. I just never had thought about it before. When I realized this, it was a rude awakening. I mean…how in the world would I ever be able to get a grip on my thoughts, my motives, my attitudes? Working on those areas of my life were/are not easy and it’s difficult to measure how I’m doing.

One of the awesome things about God is that He shows me what I need to work on, when He is ready for me to work on it. And…I have also discovered that He is really the one doing the work. I open myself to that work but it isn’t work I can do on my own. I know that because I’ve tried, for years, to change some of those things without significant results. Now I am learning to rest in the work God wants to do in me. I can see some changes, but I think I have a much more realistic view of how long this work is going to take. It will never be finished this side of heaven. Just knowing that allows me to not be so hard on myself but I also know I never want to settle for just an ‘outside’ kinda faith.

Peace,
Deb

Photo by jenny downing http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenny-pics/2671988564/

splinters

i could leap over the sky
and float through the stars

if only i weren’t weighed down
with this thing called regret.
Steven James


Regret. I don’t like the way regret feels. For me, it feels like a heavy load I am carrying. I just want it to go away. It’s like getting a splinter. I chastise myself for whatever it is that I was doing when I got the splinter, hoping to avoid that situation ever again. Then, I need to deal with the splinter. I would like to ignore it but splinters just won’t be ignored. Every time you use the affected body part, Mr. Splinter reminds you he is still there. I hate splinters. I also hate the process of getting it out. It’s always a blessing when the splinter is sticking out, easily seen, and simply grasped by the tweezers. But, at least for me, I usually don’t get those types of splinters…I get the ones that are invisible. You can’t see them…you can only find them by touching the area again and again. How are you supposed to pull it out if you can’t even see it? That’s where the needle comes in. I hate needles. I know you are not surprised by that fact.

When Jeff, my husband, gets a splinter, he will take a needle and start digging, as if he has no nerve endings. I, on the other hand, have very well developed nerve endings and needles hurt. It just doesn’t make sense to me. You have a sharp object lodged in your extremity and …let’s see…how about we use another sharp object to dig around and find it! Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I hate splinters. But I cannot tell you the relief I feel when it is finally out. It is like that limb is born again.

For some reason, I am making a connection between splinters and regret. When I am feeling regret, I think about the situation that led to me feeling that way and try to figure out how I can avoid that situation again. I don’t like the way it feels. But, usually, I need to carry it around awhile. I go about my life and then I remember it and I feel it again. Like a splinter, I need to work it out….make apologies, change behavior, etc. Guess those are the needles. Then it passes and life feels right again.

I hate splinters and I hate the feeling of regret.

But…I’m going to love heaven. I’ll love heaven ’cause I am pretty sure there are no splinters there and no regret. Yeah – I’ll love heaven.

Hope yours is a day with no splinters and no regrets.

Peace,
Deb

Photo by deovolenti http://www.flickr.com/photos/klif/3513596949/

and even more beauty ~

I hope you don’t mind me spending extra time on Margaret Becker’s reflections. I just think, especially as women, most of us struggle with this issue so I want to give it the attention it deserves. We left off yesterday with what, from Margaret’s point of view, the cost is of not living fully, in the moment….what really is that all about?

She calls it – sin. This is how she says it:

“God created us in His image. He created us individually to be part of both a central and an individual purpose. When we feel uncomfortable in our own skin, it is as if we are saying that God made a mistake. We are not right somehow. The end result is that we are then judging God – His handiwork- and then we are God and He is not."


Wow! Those are tough words. Those words cut me to the quick. How many times have I questioned how I was made? I won’t bore you with listing the struggles I had and still have. There are plenty of them. But, when I do that, I am questioning God and the way He created me.

Margaret says that this thought brought her to her knees and this is the prayer she offered to God:



Forgive me, God. Forgive my idols. Forgive my stupidity. Show me what is real. Teach me what is beautiful. Rend the veil on my soul. Help me to live to the outer limits of my senses, unedited, free in your grace.

This is my prayer. I want to live today, to the outer limits of my senses, unedited and free in God’s grace. This is my prayer for you as well. What would this look like in your life? Consider that today and invite God to show you how to live this life a different way.

I would encourage you to pick up a copy of Coming Up for Air. It is a beautiful read, full of truth and hope. Thank you, Ms. Becker!!

Peace,
Deb

photo by khrawlings http://www.flickr.com/photos/khrawlings/3806195170/