Be Still and Know...Then and Now

When life fills your cup to overflowing what do you do? I have experienced many times in my life when I felt as if I was truly dwelling in the desert. I also understand that without these times of suffering we can never fully embrace our times of abundance. The key to enduring the sweltering heat, the refining fire and the pruning away is to (during these difficult expanses) keep your eyes focused on where the true source of strength comes from. Now I have to confess to you that there are many days when I shift my focus and take a deep and unsatisfying drink of self pity, when I question why certain things happen, when I try to make sense of the truly unexplainable, when I allow my inner thought to race ahead into the unknown. Herding kittens comes to mind, talk abut a truly impossible task. For me one of the keys to endurance is very simple. Recognition, knowing what I have control over and what I do not. I may want control over a person or a situation, however the reality is that rar...

There are some mornings that it simply does not pay to get out of bed, there are also some evenings where it does not pay to be thirsty. Having these two situations colliding within the span of seven hours is what we will now refer to for future reference as “The Kool -Aide Disaster of 08” The alarm had been set to snooze for the next few moments and I quietly lay in bed letting my morning come awake slowly. I rolled over and stretched. I was strategically awaiting the flip of the light switch in the living room before I would get up, so as not to disturb my husband as he begins his mornings with a word of prayer in the quite darkness of the living room. I looked at the clock and it is 6:25 A.M. Just a few more wonderful moments and then the day and reality will begin. My bed is warm, I actually slept all night, I did not wake up with a headache and I did not have to go to work this morning as it was my day off. Yaaa for me! The next sound I hear is a knocking over of something, whisp...

Well I boxed it up and shipped it off and stood at the window and waved Bye Bye to my laptop. Pray for a speedy return with a brand new motherboard and the best part is it is still covered under the factory warrantee!

Over the last few days I have been taken on a trip down memory lane. The reminiscent memories of childhood things. This for me is a bittersweet journey. There were many happy moments during my youthful years but the majority of them were tainted with brokenness and struggle. Single mothers do the very best they can, but poverty, generational dysfunction and the burdens of life took its toll on our daily existence. As I thought about trying to filter out the sad or the difficult and hone in on the more pleasant things I am challenged, my natural tendency is to focus on all that we did not have, or could no do, but the treasured memories that I have read about in some of my blogging friends do not involve anything beyond a simple trip to the grocery store or a daily trip to the beach with their Mom. As I thought about my treasured memories, of the days when things were good I'm brought back to something very simple as well. When I was a little girl my grandparents lived in Columbus O...

1. I enjoy my Thursday evenings with my accountability sister, my morning coffee, a quiet afternoon when I can take a nap, a thunderstorm, spring, homemade biscuits and gravy and reading a great novel. 2. Life’s unanswerable questions are something I wonder about often lately. Why things happen, the mystery of God’s will and the opposition it receives in the stubborn willful human nature. 3. In your heart, you knew that no matter what God will hold me up, even when I feel my grasp slipping. 4. Take a teenager who thinks their an adult, add a little (a lot) of rebellion and you end up with a mothers bruised and broken heart. 5. Life has gifted me with compassion when it is appropriate to be compassionate, empathy, a willingness to learn and be teachable, discernment, tears, accountability sisters that hold me up when I am about to crumble and faith in an all powerful all mighty God. 6. A cup of hazelnut coffee and a Nonni ’s Turtle Biscotti is an instant vacation. 7. And as for the wee...

It was September, but the gentle breeze through the open window felt like spring. There was a faint fragrance of hibiscus and sea salt curling around her nose as she slowly came awake. The air was full with the awakening of the new growth and the briny sent of the ocean. She sat up in bed and noticed that something was very different, but she was not sure what it was. Her robe lay on the floor and she picked in up and placed it across her shoulders, but this wasn't her robe this one was thick, plush and smelled of lavender and was so brilliantly white it nearly hurt her eyes to look at it and more importantly it didn't have spaghetti stains on the sleeve. She looked around and found things oddly in order, there were no cloths absentmindedly in small piles on the floor. The beside clock read 9:30 A.M. but it was supposed to be set for 6:15 A.M. She felt rested and refreshed. This was not the room she had fallen asleep in last night. The massive four poster bed draped with mosqui...

Words like x component, convert, denominator, whole numbers and their opposites, Y axis, plot, integers …. Compare two fractions by cross multiplying, charting….. cross product, numerator, equivalent, smaller negatives, improper fraction, 12 was supposed to be A and 13 was supposed to be B, absolute values, number line, positive numbers, floating point numbers, truncated, rounded, a given number, Cartesian coordinate, origin…….. I might as well have been in Indonesia for all the sense it made to me, however I was so thankful that my husband understood this foreign language. Exactly what is an improper fraction….. maybe it’s a fraction with poor social skills or bad table manners or maybe it is a naughty fraction with a potty mouth or quite possibly a fraction that is politically incorrect?????????? They sat together in the corner of the living room with pencil, paper and calculator. They talked back and forth discussing the solutions to these math problems and the amazing this is that ...

I pulled my car into a distant spot, the parking lot was full. I made my way up the hill and then up the stairs and walkway. There were strangers dotting the parking lot and children running about. The basketball courts were being utilized and the benches out front were full. The faces I saw were unfamiliar. For the past 20 years I have never walked into what has been my church home and not found someone I knew. This sense of walking past so many unfamiliar faces was a bit strange. All church activities have been cancelled, our weekly bible study was moved to the Presbyterian Church down the road and our church had been activated as a Red Cross Evacuation site. The large road signs lining the surface street directing the evacuees to their destination were at each entrance of the parking lot. There were lager portable signs stationed along side the major thoroughfare pointing the way towards their temporary sanctuary. Portable cots lined the hallways and filled the family center. The pa...