point of view

sometimes it's all blurry like the moon tonight warm and sleepy and yet there's restlessness and hunger to know this is not really  home and that means THANK YOU thank You that I get to be where I am wading in the messiness of human hearts and many mistakes and the fathomless depths of Your Words stars spoken in a treasure chest with beat-up leather covers.   it's so not the neat and tidy I am comfortable with but somehow I love that because You're rearranging my heart and there is no good symphony built of resolved chords and the best music is the beautiful tension, You transforming dark chaos into the light of hope and in these moments of  sweat and elbow grease, blood and baby skin  empty arms and full, full hearts somehow even the ache can be beautiful because even though I will always mourn my little ones and all the loved ones too far to touch my heart continues to swell and stretch,  and I never knew I co...

It's been a really long time since I did a gifts post!  Since last spring, in fact...  Here are a few from here and there. #3516  A Mom phone call #3535  Christ, today #3539  "I trust you" #3551 A spontaneous trip to WaWa exclusively for gummy worms #3573  My brother & his girlfriend sitting together in church and the text he sends to his friend's mom "It's official" and her phone isn't on silent #3589 Opa Brink and his "coffee klaar?" #3628 Rippled plains #3634 Evenings of Dutch Blitz and laughter #3635  That precious weight and the privilege of soothing a frightened baby back to sleep #3636  Making dinner with the shelter ladies #3638  Being asked to paint a quilt square for the quilt that kept her hands busy and her resolve strong #3640  A sweet girl playing Veggie Tale clips again and again and again #3641  The impossible conversation that happens  #3643 So much...

will you stay up and listen to the rain with me? silver-gold streets, pulsing, purring drain-spouts and the here and there traffic sloshes gloriously we don't have to venture out but we could blinking in it all wet all through the edges of my worn-out comfy shoes or we could slide open the windows let it spatter in a little either way, let's revel in it's music smell the concoction of fall and fresh and midnight the world is humming content will you soak it in with me?

how can I explain this so that you understand how it picked up my world and spun it dizzy til, now, I see everything differently? how can I reduce to a mere few words something that still keeps me up nights lately the tears are so close to the surface and the weirdest things will break the dam it won't make sense to tell you that I still keep thinking of the vodka bottle in the middle of the road why I want to learn to dance well how much I miss the  warm fuzzy-headed weight on my chest? words fall so flat if I tell you what I saw and heard you might be shocked,  might say "how awful!" and you'd be right (though you probably won't feel it the way we did) but  that's not the point. image source  

say yes to love, my friend it steals in, frightens you with it's call to be Loved and to love always in that order always. It'll be inconvenient but that's the good stuff you'll have to learn how to steward your resources because they're never ever yours. It'll pull you places you didn't want to go sit you down with souls you turned your nose up at who you never noticed who freak you out a hand over hand tug of war "give up comfort, die to self, learn how to pray, really pray" because they are you and Love pushes you until you have to say "i need help." haha!  Who would have known. You opened yourself to give love and all the while you were learning how to receive it. image courtesy of Google

So I can be a little sentimental at times.  I like that I wrote a blog post last year on my birthday, because it was fun to look back on today.  So I am going to write another in order to have something to read next year.  =D   Last year right around my birthday was the beginning of an exciting adventure.  (I won't recap because you can read what I wrote on the link above.)  It was harder than I expected in some ways - but doesn't everyone end up saying that.  It has also been far better than I ever expected, and my Lord has been shaping and teaching me in ways I never knew existed.  It's still a little hard for me to put a finger on some of what I've been learning.  When 2014 began, I wrote about freedom , and it's good for me to look back on that as well.  Because what I see when I look at this past year is a God who brought me to things I thought I couldn't do and to places I thought I couldn't go and said "I am...

I need Thee every hour Because I can't live without Life, without Hope or Love Most gracious Lord Without You, Christ, I stand against a tsunami of holy goodness that should burn my dirty self away No tender voice like Thine can peace afford Because it's costly, that peace, so precious that no voice but the Divine can speak it into my days - and You do I need Thee, Oh I need Thee I need to know that You bought that Peace, it was already Yours but You bought it for me Every hour I need Thee Studying, working, job-hunting, cooking, chatting, cleaning, loving, losing, missing, hoping Oh bless me now, my Savior I'm terrified but You've promised it a thousand different ways so Pursued by Your love, teach me to yield I come to Thee