Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Patience is not my virtue

I asked my friend and pastor to pray with me, to pray with me for patience, once. That was more than enough. That was spring 2008.

I expected a gift-wrapped package of patience. God as delivery-boy? A sprinkling of stardust to change me instantaneously. My Creator as fairy-god-mother?

I now realize that when I pray for patience, God answers. God gives me situations that cultivate and grow this virtue, challenge me, stretch me, embrace me, slowing down the places within me that rush into life without appreciating the beauty and the depth.

Patience is a deep and quiet, like diving into a pool of water and moving beneath the surface, instead of skipping a stone from the shore.


What does patience feel like?

It’s a subtle unfolding with time as your ally. You feel relaxed and trust
that it will all work out, even if in this very moment,
there’s no clear path to the end.

It feels like the subtle uneasiness of allowing
all you’re uncomfortable with
to be exactly as it is.

Jackson Kiddard

The Roots of She


I used the word Predator a couple days ago. I practiced patience ...

... then I picked up and threw a stone.


... the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, 
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control ...  
--Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

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Photo Credit: fairy with pink wings by miszaqq

Monday, March 5, 2012

Significant?

Significant? Or Obedient?

In my Wounded Heart journey one of the weaknesses God is revealing is my affinity for my own voice, the way I write, pull words together, communicate my story. Manipulate it? In Week 3 of this Wounded Heart journey, we were asked to share our stories, within the parameter of 10 minutes each. I sat down and wrote 22 pages. 44 minutes? I asked Morning Glory to listen, to help me with editing. I really didn't want to delete a single word and I knew she had the courage to invite me to integrity, to expect accountability.

She gently encouraged me to focus on the tears, the words that made me cry.


I want to believe that every word is important, significant. And God says yes, my daughter,
you are significant. Then God says no, the words are not always significant, sometimes
all those words get in the way of the story
that matters, your story, My Truth.

Too many words mask what is Significant.


Listening to a podcast from my faith community, again I am moved to tears:

"I identified at the end of November my desire to be significant and ... I found God was not asking me to be significant. That's not in my power or in definition. God was asking me to be obedient. He was asking me to follow after Him, regardless of wind or weather, regardless of image and what it might look like, and regardless of what people might say." —Mike Rambo, 2012.01.29 Fellowshipcf.org



Rejoice over her fate, O heaven
and people of God and apostles and prophets!
For at last God has judged her
for your sakes.
Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a huge millstone.
He threw it into the ocean and shouted,
“Just like this, the great city Babylon
will be thrown down with violence
and will never be found again.
The sound of harps, singers, flutes, and trumpets
will never be heard in you again.
No craftsmen and no trades
will ever be found in you again.
The sound of the mill
will never be heard in you again.
The light of a lamp
will never shine in you again.
The happy voices of brides and grooms
will never be heard in you again.
For your merchants were the greatest in the world,
and you deceived the nations with your sorceries.
In your streets flowed the blood of the prophets and of God’s holy people
and the blood of people slaughtered all over the world.”

—Revelation 18:20-24 NLT

I need and desire to embrace obedience, let God determine what is significant, the things that will Shine!

Rw
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Sunday, March 4, 2012

Rush Limbaugh is a Predator

Two people in the past 48 hours have asked me, "Did you hear what Rush Limbaugh said?"

No. I must admit, I don't listen to Rush. I googled him this morning, just to figure out how to spell his surname. I put him in the closet years ago, relegated to the purgatory of inconsequential to my consciousness, he is that in-human to me.

I prefer to fill my mind with light and Light, to focus on those who build up humanity, who actually put forth solutions, those who risk failure and find the courage to put forth more solutions.

I find restoration today in the words of Shane Hipps:

"There are people here ...
who would rather work
with a Muslim to eradicate AIDS
than spend any amount of time
debating how you get to heaven."
—from A VISION, Shane Hipps' teaching on Acts 10 more

And I am inspired at the unlimited potential God is putting in the hands of those who would crush the evil of predatory practices, an APP that exposes predators:


Rush is a product without a barcode. I'll need to do a little leg work myself, send pieces of duct tape to his sponsors and advertisers, help them quiet the voice of one predator.

I am feeling more than a little vindictive today.

Rw
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p.s. and God asks me to pray, to cut a tiny piece of duct tape, stick it to my monitor, reminding me to pray for Rush a tiny little bit, as difficult as that might be for me ...

Friday, March 2, 2012

My Eulogy

Renee wanted us to remember the
5th grader, the girl deeply wounded and passionately driven.

A young woman who refused to accept the idea, "I can't. I can't because I'm a girl."

A habitual speeder, a magnet for traffic citations. A woman who had trouble relinquishing the steering wheel to God.

A woman for whom wisdom and a quiet spirit was an uphill battle.

A woman who left this world HAVING it all.

Having:
changed lives, a handful of lives,
the lives and hearts God asked her to touch.

Having:
loved and served God,
loved and cherished her husband, the man God designed to be her closest friend,
loved and mentored and comforted her children,
while hoping and praying she was teaching her children to love.

Having:
lived with authenticity,
stretched herself,
challenged us to something greater, helped us to stretch and reach.

Having:
embraced grief and joy on her earthly journey,
living her life in a way that left no doubt that God is with us.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may
 be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
 
—John 15:11-13 NIV

My Legacy read more

My Manifesto read more

Me? read more

My Heartbeat read more

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Thursday, March 1, 2012

Daughters... do not weep for me

As I read the blog of a friend - Journey to Love: Hannah's love more - I am reminded how difficult this life is for women, God's daughters, earthly mothers.

Peggy's motherhood story is extraordinary, taking her from the children she loves here at home to the children who hold her heart on another continent - a journey she couldn't have imagined just a few short years ago. A journey expanding like a sunrise. more

My journey here at home is darker, like an eclipse of the sun. It is often inward into my soul and backward in time across the decades of my life, a search for God in the torment inflicted by human brokenness, the pain in my own life and the lives of the women closest to me: the whispered hopes volunteers and the women working in the strip clubs.

As Peggy prepares for her third trip to Liberia I am awed by her strength and her courage.

And I am deeply touched by Jesus words: Daughters ... do not weep for me.

A large number of people followed him, including women
who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them,
Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me;
weep for yourselves and for your children.
For the time will come when you will say,
‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore
and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “‘they will say
to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’
—Luke 23:27-30 NIV

Every morning I wake knowing God is here and there, within the community of Fellowship that connects me with Peggy and in Liberia where she embraces one child, mourns another, and reaches out to help so many more.

Her journey holds a mirror to mine, assuring me that GOD IS HERE today with me, within whispered hopes - and GOD IS THERE in the journey inward and backward into my Wounded Heart - that God holds all daughters and sons as precious, that Jesus is witness and comforter to those who mourn and wail.

Your search for true healing will be a suffering search.
Many tears still need to be shed.

—Henri Nowen, The Inner Voice of Love pg 109

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