I only have words. worthless words. to offer the One who gives me breath and life and heart and mind. worthless words that have no meaning or value compared to the eternal glory of even Your shadow. and yet, You listen. to every word spoken or groaned or informed. You listen and hear and love these worthless words.

Holy Magnificent King of all kings

Holy Magnificent King of all kings! Redemption fills my heart to sing. Alpha Omega from beginning to end Planned long ago where You would send To a place unknown until recent days Wondrous and Faithful You number my days Why such as me can be blessed with Your plan To give us these children, to hold our right hands So in all our darkness You bring forth the light And shower Your love in a flood day and night OH Holy Magnificent King of all kings Redemption and healing makes my heart sing

Blow the Shofar

Blow the shofar until I am deaf to the world until the noise of discouragement fades to nothing until the sound of grief is no more until only the sweetness of Your words is heard. Blow the shofar to awaken my love for my Redeemer again to blast away the selfish sin caked on my heart to shake my soul until it aches for Your Truth to move me in line with Your will and not mine. Blow the shofar while there is still time while we long for the sound while our hearts bleed for the peace while we gather in Your name. Blow the shofar With the wind 9f Your Spirit with the sound of Your love with the strength of Your power with the desire of Your heart that each of us will hear when You, Lord, Blow the shofar.

Choices

One or two or A or Z Choices staring back at me. Simple ones that matter not, Simply choose whate'er they got. Mumble through from day to day, Grumble through whate'er they say. Red or green or pink or blue - Doesn't matter what you do. Then comes one before your face, It brings you short - you stop the race. There before you - have to choose - Something dear you just might lose. This one matters - this one stands - This one changes all your plans. Choices brought you to this place, Now will you choose His loving grace? Or will you turn to never see How choices change eternity.

Just flowers

It was on my mind during work, on the way home, cooking dinner. The most beautiful carpet that God's nature sows. Full soft purple mats of flowers singing the song announcing spring. And intertwined with this beauty,a noxious weed that I don't know the name of but am all too familiar with. For each spring, bursting forth among this gorgeous phlox carpet are thousands of sprigs of the nasty stuff. My daughter thought they were seedlings of phlox. The twirling, clinging fingerlings of the weed wrap around the plox and choke it, mimicking the flower but only for a brief time. For the weed will choke the flower, then wilt quickly in the sun and heat of the summer. Its roots barely touch the earth and it cannot cling to life with even the faintest hint of drought or overwatering or blistering sun or even dog paws running across it. And yet it continues to strive to strangle the phlox, whose roots are deeper, stronger, inter-connected, who faithfully carpets the floor of the garden with its beauty and fragrance; a gift to everyone and everything around it. Why do I tolerate these toxic weeds that are so opposed to the true flowers? Why do I let them have their season to drop their seeds to continue their battle against the phlox? Why do I let "little" sins choke out the truth and beauty of the Holy Spirit? Why do I allow bitterness and unforgiveness to drop their seeds in our family? Let me go get my garden gloves.........

In between

At this stage of life I thought I would have "it" all in place, in order, planned out. But... I'm in between 60 and 70, in between /almost empty nest, in between two stages - me still working outside the home and hubby "retired" - in between two communities, two churches, two homes in two states even! It might sound very odd to younger people, but 60s are weird (yes, 1960s were weird, too :D!). You have to plan both for the possibility of dying in the next few days/months and for living another 30+ years, contradictory options in many respects. But there are other "in betweens" thrpughput life that are hard, too - in your 20s it seems everyone else is married and you are "in between relationships"; in your 30s you might be trying to conceive and "in between" wanting to be a parent and successfully giving birth or getting that great news from the adoption agency; you might be "in between" a terminal disease announcement with a parent and that final gasping grief of loss; in between joblessness and a job; in between marriage counseling and reconciliation or separation; in between a bad decision and forgiveness and healing; in between surgery and recovery..... life brings some hard - really hard - in betweens. So how do we deal with these? How do I trust God when my ears ring with silence? How can I rest when my world is spinning in unsettled restlessness? How do I keep focused on love. and service. and peace when I am so totally overwhelmed with the uncertainty of all of these in betweens? Psalm 37 says 3 times what to do - wait on the Lord - and 3 times what NOT to do - do not fret. Many scriptures tell us to wait, trust, be patient, but today I went back to Psalm 37 during this hard "in between" to also read the do NOTS - do not fret! Lord, help me trust. wait, but most of all to not fret. Thank You for Your beautiful Psalm to remind me.

Squawking Ravens

It was one of those perfect sunrises. Gentle waves whispering to the sandy beach, puffy clouds clinging to the blue turning pink horizon. Tiny orange and yellow fingers rising silently above the clouds reaching upward in hopes of the sunburst yet to come. A couple of anchored sailboats rocked to slow rhythms in the distance but not a soul in sight to spoil the beauty of my perfect sunrise and communion with the Creator of this masterpiece. With my eyes and heart fixed on the eastern spectacle, a peace overflowed what seemed to be the whole world. Not living at the coast, an ocean sunrise is a rare joy for me and I breathed in every atom of the whole scene. .....And then.... SQUAWK! SQUAWK! On the pier light above me sat an ugly raven. "Shew!" I cried, waving my arms. Not sure why God created these things to interrupt His beauty. "Shew!!" I cried and waved my arms again, this time dropping my open Bible. By now I had decided that Satan was on the prowl and was in the form of a raven. A big, ugly, bill-to-big-for-his-head raven. Why wouldn't he fly away? I was determined now - the Mama bear in me took over and this creature was going to leave this scene if I had to climb that pole and knock him off. "Shew!" I continued to cry to no avail. Then I noticed it. The sun had risen, even chased away all the puffy, foggy wispy clouds and was continuing its journey. And the point of my joy - watching for the burst of sun onto the blue ocean - had been missed. But it was not the raven who had spoiled the sunrise. It was me. My thoughts, my focus, my attention had been on "my" experience and not the rising of the sun. How often, how very often, God has provided beauty and joy and peace and I have blamed the ravens for missing His blessings. How many times have I lost sight of THE light because I've been so focused on the world's distractions, my own perfectionist expectations of what it "will be"? I focus on the squawks of the world instead of the glow of God's presence and miss His glorious gifts right in front of me. Proverbs 4:25 "Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you." PRAYER: Fix my eyes on Your Glory, O Savior, and flood my soul with the Light of Your Presence. Keep my gaze straight, and deafen my heart to the distractions of this world, knowing that even the "ravens" are in Your control and for Your purpose. Remind me to rejoice always in Your creation, Your beauty and Your blessings all around me. Amen.

Sorrow and Joy. Me too.

Ruth and Naomi. What a paradox, what a story. Recently our Pastor preached from Ruth 1 with perspectives and insights that shook me. A father leading his family away from the promised land because things got hard. 2020 was hard. Then so was 2021. In fact, other years have been hard, some much harder for us personally. How easy to turn away from God's promises and look for worldly solutions when times are hard. Been there, done that. Naomi calulated her self-worth based on her role as a wife, mother to her children, instead of the exquisite value of God's creation as part of HIS special plan for her. When her expectations of what "should be", what she was worth in her own eyes, fell apart, she was filled with bitterness. "Naomi" - bitter. How very much of my life I've done the same. Bitter - me too. Orpah listened to logic and turned back to see if she could find a better solution. This is what the world, relatives, your own heart and mind tell us is the "right" thing to do. Yep, me too. Only Ruth stuck it out and claimed "my God" before she even knew if she would die of hunger and how severe she might be persecuted in a community that she knew would hate her. The heartache of poverty, losing loved ones, moving from home, ring as only distant truths in the depths of sorrow in my soul so I cannot fully understand the hardness of her decision but only know a shadow of it. The joy of knowing that the Lord is in control, has an eternal plan and remains sovereign even in sorrow... I also know only as shadows not having to personally endure such deep sorrow of loss. But still her faith in the midst of severe unknown trials while grieving the loss of a spouse and dire famine yet choosing to remain faithful to rely on, trust in God, those are mountains and valleys that I can see through Ruth's eyes, or in my sisters who have - or right now are - enduring pain of the deepest kind. These circumstances are creating severe sorrow, but also I see their joy in the LORD multiplied through that sorrow. Ruth is mirrored in each of us. And as family, we share these sorrows and these joys. Me too. If we let the Lord water our sorrow with HIS love and words, it will blossom into joy. And we will be part of HIS story - like Ruth - whose hard decisions, love of her family, willingness to trust the Lord - was blessed as one who was an ancestor of the King of Kings Himself! How good the Lord is to take our small lives and use them for HIS eternal, unending glory. Today - right now - let every decision I make be in trust of Your faithfullness like Ruth - let me too.

What happens if after "Going Home" you "Leave Home..."

Recently I was brought back to this old blog and was shocked at how different my life is now compared to 7 or 10 or more years ago. Of course, now it's 2022 and everyone's life has changed due to COVID and all its ripple effects. Six years ago I went back to work. After COVID working from home, everyone is talking about, and doing studies on "Return to Work" or "Return to Office" (RTW/RTO). After being sure I was to "Go Home and Tell" many years ago - a beautiful season of life - it became clear in 2015 that I was to "Leave Home and Go Back", "Return to Work". Back to work, back to the non-family mission field, back to having to worry about hair, and clothes and things that I know don't matter for eternity but unfortunately do matter in the workplace. I was very frustrated - again "my" plans had been sidetracked - didn't the Lord call me home? Didn't HE call me to pour my life into my husband, family, community, church, ministering to those around me? Why in the world would HE call me to go back into "Egypt"? Or did HE............ maybe HE is calling me to be obedient to HIS timing, HIS calling, HIS place of service, once again taking me out of my comfort zone and putting me back into a place I did not choose. In the past six plus years, I am back face-to-face with my old demons, my old fears of not being "successful", my old frustrations of inequalities, injustices, incentive tempations to push my way through. Had I not grown any in the Lord and knowledge of who HE was, who I was, how to rely totally on HIM alone? Had I not learned to trust Him and His timing and ways at all during those years when I went home to tell? On top of that, some of those precious children are now grown and have chosen to walk away from the love of Christ. Talk about feeling like a failure. Feeling like years and tears have been wasted and now I have to return back to the old dog-eat-dog-I'll-never-be-good-enough work world and face all of my fears and frustrations. Oh, ouch - "I", "me", "my" keeps ringing in my ears (and evident in those sentences above!). Was I sure that I was being called back into the work world and being obedient or was it just our financial needs (wants) of the "I" "me" "my"s? I'm not sure. At some point, though, I have learned one thing - GOD is bigger than my choices - good, bad and ugly ones. And so I trust that even if the reason I "Left Home" to go back was the wrong reason, HE knew that before I did and if I seek to be a vessel for HIM, HE will use that decision anyway. How do I know this? Well, years in to this "new" journey I see now that HE has brought across my path at work many with broken marriages, estranged children, a father whose son was murdered in mistaken identity as a drug dealer, a 52 year old wife who lost 4 children to miscarriage and then lost her love-of-her-life husband unexpectedly to an anuerysm, a 9/11 NY twin towers survivor still dealing with the guilt of surviving, two single Moms at totally different stages of life, two different Muslim women from other countries, an MK who had lost his zeal for Christ, several managers who have had very negative experiences with "church" and therefore sadly do not understand the true love of Christ and the cross, and some beautiful sweet sisters in Christ who encourage me in my wobbly walk. Someone once said even a small, quick matchlight penetrates the deepest darkness to bring light and hope. And the LIGHT OF THE WORLD has promised to be with us, no matter where we are. That's one sweet promise.

Valentine Thoughts

Here it is again.  That silly holiday that everyone agrees was pushed on us by card and flower companies, but we keep it up anyway since it is another break from the routine, and an excuse to stop and say those words that we often forget to say in the regularness of life.  But that's not my point.  I wanted to remind everyone that your husband - wife - "special friend" (my MIL's favorite term) or whatever term you use - will never make you happy.  Now before you start cyber-egging me, hear me out.  No one person can ever, ever make you happy.  No matter how amazing and great and thoughtful and kind and caring and.... they are.  I should know - I am married to one of those kind!  If you are single and looking for your "soul mate" to make you happy, I am sorry but it just ain't gonna happen.  And if you are constantly disappointed with your spouse, same thing.  Because you see at the end of the day, it is only YOU who can make yourself happy - or content - or joyful - or - - [insert favorite emotion here].  Now, this doesn't mean to make yourself an ego maniac.  That will definitely not lead to true, meaningful happiness or any other good emotion.  But what I am saying is we have a choice.  Every moment of every day.  My grandfather had a hard life, abandoned at age 6, barely being fed or clothed, and yet I never saw or heard bitterness or envy in him.  He chose to be content, to be bitter-free, to be a light in a dark world.  He chose happiness.  I know my grandmother did things to make his life better, to show her love for him, to be a true helpmate, to be a vessel of joy and contentment to be poured into their lives together.  But he still had to chose happiness.  So if you are looking for a gift, a card or flowers, or date night, or just time with your hubby to make you happy you will be disappointed.  On the other hand, if you look for joy in those things, for gratitude for what you do have, and for the bad you do not have, you will be choosing happiness no matter the circumstances.  Through our choices we can allow the peace and true happiness of Christ to takeover and take hold of every hope of happiness.  Take it from one who has spent decades doing it the wrong way, looking for happiness in all the wrong places, and who will have to reread this herself often to not forget happiness is a choice.  Happy Valentines and Happy Happiness :) !

Thanksgiving Thoughts

This Thanksgiving two of our children were in other states.  Actually a state.  Pretty far from home, but close in our hearts like many, many other families were experiencing for a multitude of reasons.  Two others were  celebrating  elsewhere and not able to come.  But this Thanksgiving also brought extended family here to us for the first time - for their first Thanksgiving from halfway around the world.  And it reminded me that each day, holiday or not, provides new opportunities for me to relate to new and old friends and family.  Instead of wishing for the time when all the children were "under foot" and we were all together (yes, every Mom's wish!), I realized that one of the blessings of grown children is that your family keeps growing in numbers.  Even if you don't have grandchildren being born, the grown ones are making new friends, getting married and adding "in-loves" to the family, connecting with new coworkers or roommates or classmates.  And it dawned on me this Thanksgiving that I am thankful for new connections.  New opportunities to pray for, and with, and about, wonderful, unique, beautifully created people that just last Thanksgiving I didn't know, or knew to a lesser extent.  What a wonderful gift.  The gift of new connections.  The gift of opportunity to share life and share heartaches and share laughter and share memories with old friends and new alike.  As a young girl scout we used to sing this song on the camp bus, "Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold."  How very true.  But for the believer, it also has a deeper meaning.  Connection with fellow believers brings deeper ties than even the best friendship - it brings true sisterhood and brotherhood that is eternal.  It brings a shared purpose for ourselves, a shared burden for others, a shared joy in Christ, and a shared beautiful, wonderful, amazing perspective on the true meaning and value of life itself.

Thank you, Jesus Christ, for this day, for these many days, where You have added to that treasure in my heart called fellowship.  Thank you for Your Salvation, Your guidance, Your love that blossoms in that sweet temporary fellowship that is only a glimpse of the perfect fellowship to come.  Help us, O Lord and Master, to seize the opportunity to expand the fellowship in whatever way you put before us.  Help us not to get caught up in the temporary filling of our bellies with worldly things but to keep our eyes on the beauty of the eternal, so that none will be left out of the feast to come.  -Amen.

Pry Open my Heart of Stone

Some listen with their ears.
Some listen with their eyes
Please, dear Lord Jesus, teach me
To listen with my heart,
To write YOU on my soul
So that the heart I’m listening with
Is YOURS.

There is hatred in this world, 

Anger on every street.

Yelling, fighting, marching,

"I'm right!" "You're wrong" "Defeat!"

On ballfields around this nation

Two teams compete with rare a fight

But fans return to neighborhoods

Shouting politics into the night.

And quiet souls who show respect

Regardless of their stance

Are battered with words and visions of hate

Their silent respect has no chance.

For anger and hatred and marches and shouts

Get stages and photos and fame,

But those whose hearts are at peace with God

Care little how much they're defamed.

No changes how large or widespread done

Will make eternity different

So stop, my child, learn to hear the small voice

That changes a HEART that will listen.

Prayer crayon scribbles

If you’re a Mom, there are some at your house no matter how old or young your children are. Crayon scribblings. On walls, or paper, or furniture, and most of all in your memories. They are meaningless, worthless to anyone else but you know which child drew them, and when, and even the details of that time together. Why do we keep theses scribbles? Tonight I was thinking about my prayers - self-centered, broken, childish, scribbled-with-no-skill prayers. And I was overwhelmed to realize they are more precious to God than my children’s drawings. Not because I ask (draw) rightly or perfectly. Not because I am a master pray-er (artist), know the right words (colors), stay in the lines, or even make sense with my pleas and cries. But because HE loves me.  HE, the God of all, is more in love with this child than I am with my crayon coloring bundles of joy. No words can describe, no art can convey, no planet contain His love. And that love turns my scribbled mess of a prayer into something beloved.

LaoLao’s Concert

Today for several hours I listened to the most beautiful music this side of heaven. No love song by Dion and Bocelli, no piano concert by Horowitz, no guitar solo by Jimi Hendrix, no folk balad by Emmylou Harris, no country crooning by Carrie Underwood, no pop hit by Michael Jackson could ever compare to the beauty of this afternoon’s concert. The fast rhythm was a soft drumming of pattering feet across my living room floor.  The crescendo exploded at the end of each stanza with giggles.  Soft, loud, occasional and frequent bursts of “LaoLao” “I Loves You”, “Hugs”,”Up” and “Ai-ne (Chinese for I love you)  created this heavenly music that left this LaoLao (Grandma) in tears of gratitude for the music of grandchildren. Heavenly music for sure.

Mother’s Day Letter to My Children

You shower me with love and gifts of all kinds.
Not just today.
But every day.
So I have to explain, point out, reiterarate, shout out something to you, my children.
Please forgive me.
You deserve more love than I could ever give.
You deserve a better life than I could ever make for you.
You deserve more patience, more care, less judgement,
More empathy and understanding,
More good and less evil
Than I can ever make happen.
So forgive me.
I could lie and say I did my best
But there is always room to do better.
I could gloss over the times you
“Got on my last nerve”
And I acted or spoke out of frustration.
I could pretend that I never lost my temper,
Never set my expectations too high for you,
And never spoke too sharply.
But I did.
Probably times you remember that I don’t.
Probably doing things that hurt you that maybe neither of us even realize.
So please forgive me.
Not because I deserve it but because you deserve it.
The weight of  unforgiveness is a burden I want you to escape.
So forgive me.
My love for you has been, and will always be, imperfect.
But it is never ending.
It is constant.
It is deep and indescribable.
And it grows with each day we both have breath.
You are my child and my heart.
You are loved.

That stubborn sticker

You know the kind. You pull at at, scrape it with your fingernail, wet and rub it, peel at it and it just refuses to come off. Stubborn sticky sticker. So you just ignore it and finally forget it's there. Until suddenly one day the slightest corner reaches up and adheres to your new dress. Or your newly painted nails.  Or your freshly pressed tablecloth to impress the new neighbors. And you realize you never really, genuinely spent the time and energy to deal with it when you first inherited that stupid sticker along with the item you desired and bought. Grief. Like a stupid sticker gets picked at and half-heartedly rubbed, but it just keeps sticking back up and reminding you of its scar, it's ugly presence, at the worst times in life.
Grief. I thought I knew it. The ache in my heart was as big as Hoover Dam, holding back the floodgates of tears and emotions buried deep beneath my pride and hurt and fear. But it just keeps sticking back up, collecting grime around it, irritating and dirtying everything it touches.
And then one day a friend shares her "secret" with you. Oil.  The beautiful, fragrant oil of shared grief  healed by the Holy Spirit that so easily removes that stubborn sticker.  And as the unwanted slips away, you see the glorious shine of everlasting love left behind. Sweet fragrance of memories clinging to beautiful glossy hope.

The Hospital

Once upon a time a few days ago
In a village far, far away just next door,
There was an epidemic of lost and dying people who called themselves healthy.
A great and wonderful man had paid for and built an amazing healing hospital
Where everyone was invited to go to receive perfect healing for free.

But the other patients put themselves in charge,
And blocked the entrance by standing in the doorways
Arguing about who could or could not come in,
What those who entered had to look like, or do, or say,
And which of them was the best person to be in charge.

These patients had forgotten that it was not their hospital
They had forgotten the One to whom it belonged.
They had forgotten that they had once been hopeless, and despairing and sick.

Who will remember?  Who will admit his or her selfishness and
humble themselves to move aside,
to take hold of the crippled,
to hold open the door,
to welcome the blind,
to feed the sick,
to act more like the Hospital owner?
Help me today, O Lord, to remember.

100Years from now

There was a story I read a long time ago about a man bragging to his friend about all of the land and possessions he owned. “See what I own?” he bragged. His friend looked over the fields, meadows, and even a lake with a beautiful home beside it, and replied, ”Do you really own it?  For whose will it be in 100 years?”  That story has always stuck with me, maybe because it is such a hard struggle for me to completely open everything in my heart and hands and hold it out for God to use as He alone sees fit, rather than holding it tightly in my fists for “my plans”. But lately I’ve been thinking of this fact not just regarding material possessions, but my whole life - time, energy, effort, thoughts, ides, dreams.....  for what will any of those matter in 100 years either?  And it is really amazing, sort of “upside down thinking” if I honestly apply it to my whole life. It will not be the “stuff” that matters in one, two, three generations. It will not be my dreams, hopes, or ideas. It won’t be my work, effort, or “accomplishments”. It will only be my love, my character, the “little” things like faithfulness, persistence, compassion, faith in God and His Word lived out Day to Day, that will be passed from one generation to the next to the next...  Even then those values will be changed, dropped, added, revised...  but I think we have lost a sense of the true inheritance given to us, and squandered it like pigs stomping on pearls.  Our forefathers shaped us much more than just genetically or culturally or through family ties. And each of us can choose to add beauty, compassion, forgiveness, love, and a multitude of valuable assets into the “bank” or we can squander our inheritance and bankrupt the next generation. Debt, literal and figurative debt, is a chain of slavery from which I want my children to be free.

Help us, O Lord of the harvest, Lord of our hearts and minds, Lord of all creation and Lord of time, to pass along the things that truly matter and let go of all of the rest, leaving a pure and beautifully rich inheritance for the next generations. Amen.

You say it offends you.....

You say it offends you......
But how can a drowning man
fail to sing the praises
Of the lifeguard that rescued him?
How can the mother whose
baby was snatched out of a fire
Not shout the name of the rescuer?
How can the prisoner not tell
Of the wonderful Counselor
Who led him to true freedom?
How can the dying patient
Be silent about the Healer
Of heartbreak and deep terminal wounds?
How could she whose home was
Shattered by her own foolishness
Not proclaim the wonders
Of Him who repaired and restored
and paid for it all Himself?
So I cannot keep silent.
I must declare the name of the One
who does more than all
Of these put together
Not to offend you
But to share His love with you
And to glorify His name.