Summer morning breeze
Busy, round, fuzzy bumblebee
Hungry chirping baby birds
Deep purple and golden-yellow pansies with faces tilted up to the sun
Yellow-green leaves rustling
Pesky chipmunks scurrying, digging and munching
Giant cotton ball clouds lazily floating
and me.
Join in and praise God who made you!
Bless God, all creatures, wherever you are—
everything and everyone made by God.
And you, O my soul, bless God! Psalm 103:22 The Message
I know you have them, too. Those deep thoughts about the meaning of life and the way things are and why they’re the way they are. The thoughts and questions that, if you dwell on them too long, start to make you feel anxious or weird or small. While I was driving to work yesterday, watching the sun grow brighter and then seeing colorful purple and pink clouds spreading away from that rising sun as I drove over a hill, my mind started asking some of those questions – the questions with no answers. Continue reading
As I talked with her in the parking lot after we boogied and sweated together in Zumba class, I was tickled by her enthusiasm and joy. Sometimes in these conversations I can see her becoming a woman and blossoming right there in front of me. I couldn’t help smiling as my firstborn gushed about all the awesome things God is doing in her life and the exciting opportunities for ministry coming her way. As she spoke, God spoke very clearly to me, “See my handiwork? Isn’t this much more valuable than any house, paycheck, or material thing?”
Years ago when the girls were little, they loved to help us with projects. Continue reading
When I woke up, honestly my first thought was that Jesus was coming back. I slept in the top bunk in the staff dormitory at Forest Home Family Camp in the San Bernardino mountains that summer. It was the middle of the night and my bed was jolting forward and backward so severely that all I could do was grip the sides of the bed and look over to see my roommates standing in the middle of the room clutching each other and screaming while bottles and brushes slid off the bathroom counter. It was my first earthquake experience and was quite the eye-opener! The rest of the night we all huddled together on sleeping bags on the floor, stiffening a little each time an aftershock rumbled under the floor. More than any other time before then, I felt very small. Continue reading
Years ago during one of my brother’s visits we bought some modeling clay and, on the back porch, sitting at the fisher-price plastic picnic table, made little animals and creatures with my girls. It was a lot of fun. One reason being that the girls, who were really young at the time, were tickled with each little thing we made. My brother especially enjoyed making his little animals and dinosaurs detailed using toothpicks to draw smiles, poke pupils in eyes, add finishing touches. We must have played that way for a couple of hours, enjoying giggles and squishing the gooey colorful clay together. Continue reading
(I’ve lost track of which day I’m on. I missed one here and there so no more numbered days on post titles! I’m still fasting from facebook until Easter.)
Driving to work was cheering today since instead of gray foggy heaviness there was a wide open blue sky. I so enjoy the artwork of God! Many times the beauty of what He’s made draws me closer to Him and causes me to worship. A few wispy clouds gathered around the bright orange disc of a sun, almost as if they were coaxing it to come up – up through God’s watercolor splash of soft orange fading to warm apricot then to faint pink then to clear aqua blue. It was stunning.
I didn’t even pull my visor down but actually enjoyed the piercing light of the sun in my eyes, as it rose now fully awake, big and bold and enjoying its task of announcing a new day had begun. New. That word became my mind’s sole focus for the next few moments as I kept driving…driving into a new day. “This IS a new day,” I could hear God say to my heart. Continue reading
I started reading a book called “The Me I Want to Be” by John Ortberg and it’s really good. Of course, it takes me a long time to read books because I start them and then don’t often sit still long enough to read them again or finish them. I have a lot of books by my bed that have been started and not finished yet, with little paper bookmarks sticking up between pages about 1/3 of the way from the beginning. That’s just one of my weird quirks I guess. There have been some stories that were so good I’d take the book with me everywhere and read every spare moment I could get. That hasn’t happened too often, though.
You know what else is weird about me? When walking on square tile or linoleum floors I often step in every other square in a pattern. When sitting, I almost always twitch my toes in a rhythm. I pop my thumbs all the time. My girls think that is hilarious and strange. It’s almost subconscious. I have a round, red nose caused by a condition called “rhinophyma” which is what W. C. Fields had. It’s typically found in males who are alcoholics, which I am neither so go figure. I love people and get energized by spending time with friends but also feel like an introvert sometimes and want to be alone. I’m perfectionistic, impulsive, too silly sometimes, sensitive and emotional, love easily, pretty patient most of the time, too quick to act sometimes, selfish, can be obsessive…the list goes on. I’m learning to be comfortable in my own skin, though. Continue reading
Along the Narrow Path 