Category: Grace

Redemption Outside The Shadows – A Mighty Fortress

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 12 Comments

Today is Day 18.

There is a book written by a friend.

Her story is her’s but she is brave and bold in her sharing. Her desire for other’s healing.

Her heart longs for a collective healing from the disease that pounces and robs.

As I work my way through the book, its a work of the heart. I think of the spokes of my life’s wheel, the intersection. The place where broken shows up in our lives.

How the spokes radiate out and poke holes in wholeness. Push through places, bruising flesh, heart, soul, and mind. Our life.

This is a labor of love, this working my way through her words, treading lightly and gently through a fragile piece such as this.

You know that God worked redemptively and tenderly through the hearts of these. So you rush not in, to speak. No quietly with a reverence.

You nod and bend and bow to the boldness. You open up a burning heart for truth.  Hungry for healing. Searching. Longing. Looking for places that reveal God in and all around.

And I am seeing,

How her story is uniquely her’s. It is.

How it intersects my life. It does.

What I am left celebrating in her story. So very much.

I have not completed winding my eyes through the lines of her heart and life, laid out in hope in the telling. I know much from her beautiful book trailer, other’s words about her words, the proclamations of healing on her web sight and on her blog.

A story goes out and forth in its telling, testifiying of a work, magnifying the redemption and hope. Doubles down and  carries on its back those who tell of the wounded’s hope.

Like the pointed metal spokes that roll on rim of traveling tire time, the pointed tips of Emily’s time in shackles rolls right over where we’ve treaded, my co-travellers. Those I love.

I know of  gaunt and rail thin, pushing back from food, leaning in to porcelain rims, throwing out a single calorie breath mint to forgo the stomach-bound disc.

And souls locked in weak weary battle of control. Left wounded, weak. Weary.

But all that’s hurt and broken diminishes in the Light of honest, light of the telling.

Where story walks out new life, while scars are healing, scars close up at the hands of The Great Physician.

My daughter is almost 17 and I look questioning into the eyes and onto the bones and flesh of her friends. Speaking into her beauty, inside and out. Loving the wholeness and relationship with nourishment I see.

She is passionate about life and living and her hopes and dreams for the future. She has not known a weakened war of wills with disease or addiction. But a mother watches and prays and hopes for wholeness in her child of mind, body, and spirit.

The happy faces beam over greens and fruits, protein, sweets, a balance of all the goodness  He provides. The energy drawn from food sources, from the good gifts He gives for nourishment.

And I know the weak and weary from cutting off the calories, reducing down the intake to a slow and painful walk on barely enough. The damage unkown exactly to me. I could ask Emily, ask  a doctor, ask the authorities.

I want my daughter mighty and strong. I want the highest and best for her life.

I long for her to see the beauty and completeness in what God created in her,  formed in her woman flesh. That taking it down and whittling it away to thin frail gaunt is not a life goal. Not an elusive idol, to be rail thin and shadowy.

We women can go and do much in a day, there is loving and living for us, mighty work. God work. God ordained.

Emily is a beautiful friend. I want her words to go forth, her words, a healing ministry.

I long for her words to be available in church libraries, school libraries, counselor’s shelves, on the bedside table of hurting women and teens.

Yesterday Duane wrote a piece you really do not want to miss at his place and at Emily’s
blog. It’s here. It involves the pain and struggle of a teenage boy.

As a mother of boys , I long for healthy body images for them too. Read Emily’s words here:

Chasing Silhouettes is intended to be a spiritual guide to help families redefine body image, as well as to offer insight for caregivers into the minds and hearts of those battling an eating disorder. As someone who battled  anorexia nervosa, both as a child and as an adult, I am here to offer you hope. Our young people, our loved ones, do not have to be defeated by the lies that permeate culture today. But in order to defeat these lies, we need to understand truth.


Please leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for two copies of Emily’s book. You may choose to comment on why you’d like a copy, or simply speak to what’s on your heart on this subject. I will email the winner by week’s end.

To purchase Emily’s book go HERE

Or Here or to Chasing Silhouettes web sight to read more.

From the web sight, read these words of hope:

Chasing Silhouettes: How to Help A Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder is the story of a broken family that finds healing through an eating disorder. It’s the story of how even good Christians need redemption, and how eating disorders pervade all homes- even the seemingly perfect ones.

A unique resource, it addresses the whole of the illness: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, providing shocking insight into the disordered eater’s mind that no other book will offer.

This is Day 18 in a 31 Day Series. To read the collective go here or the 31 Day Series page at the top of the page. Today’s word is Healing.

If you’d like to follow all posts in the series and those published at wynnegraceappears, subscribe to follow by email or in a reader. I post daily in October and several times a week in other months.

Its a JOY to think of having you along on the journey.

Joining Michelle at Thought Provoking Thursdays.

Slow, Slower, Slowest

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 11 Comments

It may have started in nursery school with that game.

Do you remember the one when the music stopped playing you took a seat and if you

were slow you were out.

You had nowhere to sit.

It may have started with races and racing on the playground.

The fast were picked, the slow left out.

It may not matter where it began because it seeped deep into our every fiber.

And it is.

We race, hurry, scurry, fly by, rush, whirling dervish our way down through our days.

And we miss out on the small.

I hear a collective cry and sigh these days.

From women and moms and wives and mothers.

A cry of the heart.

To rest from the weary of the rush.

A cry of the soul to slow the pace.

And a cry of the eyes of the heart to see it all, record and mark.

Save and savor, this life, these days.

And I seek to find a way to slow.

And it looks a lot like poetry to me.

The fewer the simpler the spaces for breathing.

The shorter.

A place for the eyes and mind to meander down line, weaving along slowly

The words, the life, the road.

I long to be more the tortoise in the story now.

I was the hare, it sounds like harried to me now.

And missing the chair in child’s game seems sweet

Sitting cross-legged on the floor down low,

Slowly I embrace that too.

And of all the slow I now know

Makes us winners

almost every time

Slow to speak and quick to listen, love

 guard the tongue

Slowly slowly this I know,

Release the tongue, the words, the thought

Slowly slowly this I know.

Row row row your boat gently, merrily, slowly,

See the child’s play in the day

With eyes wide open

slow, slower, slowest.

See you at the finish line

Last one there wins.


Today is Day 13 in the series. I am joining others at The Nester. To read the collective click here or go to the page link entitled 31 Days on my home page.

Writing in community with Sandra Heska King

And now its time for your words. I long to hear from you. Jump in and join the conversation. There is more JOY when you speak too. Leave a Comment at the top of the page is waiting for your words. Click, write, speak, join this community. You may wish to subscribe and follow all the posts here.

Letting Go Of Worry

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 6 Comments

We had a meeting recently. One of many. Too many to count. And we discussed the problem on the table. The one of worry.

I shared of how it comes in the night sometimes. And  that capturing the thoughts is harder than putting active preschool twin boys to bed on time. They don’t want to settle down and just go to sleep. Worry is a wild toddler running through the aisles of Walmart.

Its like picking up the headphones at the UN to listen in and you pick up the wrong ones. The words keep coming, you wrestle, but cannot take them to the mat. The thoughts filled with worry. You cannot glean understanding and crack the code to the gnawing  nagging gibberish.

Three a.m. is not a good time to translate worry into a cogent plan, wrapping understanding around a problem.

And at the meeting I apologized to them, the Trinity. They were there, are there. Lovingly listening. Listening in love. I pour out my confession of my I know we’ve been through this before.

This letting go of worry.

And there is nothing worse and its not of Him. And yes we often go back to Release It To Me 101.

And how in this world do you solve a problem at three a.m. or any time of day or night without this highly esteemed omnipotent One who is available to love you through the thick fog of worry.

All you long to do is find the cold side of the pillow and snuggle like a pea in the pod of fluffy white down comforter and crisp clean sheets but worry runs roughshod over you like raging bulls.

Letting go of worry means capturing the thoughts and ushering them out of the mind’s door, saying nice try you wile ones, you are out of here.

I have confidence in Him.

You have no place in this life abundant, life transforming, life renewing. Life set free.

So tomorrow night, when the sweet black-blue indigo skies turn jet- black as coal. The night noises will come out to lullaby this girl to sleep with  a chorus of cicadas and crickets, hum of sleepy slumber night

And tomorrow night, the  cool side of the pillow  will hold the sleepy head and worry will be released in a pre-bedtime moment.

She’ll capture and release the foggy cloud of worry and let it go like fireflies in the night.

Good night my Day, you were good to me. Hello my Night, I am glad you are here.

Sleep tight, good night, don’t let the bed bugs bite.

And The Lover of Her Soul ushers her off into the land of wink-n-blink-n-and-nod.

And worry is no more.

This is Day 12. 

Click on the Tab on the homepage entitled 31 Days to journey through this series, the collective.  Or  simply click here. I am joining The Nester for the month of October and Shelly Miller at Redemption’s Beauty today for her series entitled Letting Go.

Joining Beholding Glory dot com on this Friday too.

The Simple

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

When Hurt and Pain and Death play hopscotch on your very life road,

The heart circles all pumping blood flow back to the vital. To the very critical need.

The life blood, crimson seeks to triage the need and it deems it is the need to see the simple.

Simply see the joy in the simplest. Of gifts, of life.

To circle back and gather round, all the heart beats round the life givers. Life enhancers.

A word, The Word, bread, The bread. Feasting on the written, feasting on the life bread. Feasting on His gifts.

A  Feast is pumpkin bread grilled cheese, say grace around the simple. Feasting senses on the just enough. Not more. Satisfied by simple.

All bells and whistles, accoutrement and clutter cast off for the bare boned simple.

Allowing simple to sing her song of lovely, sing her song of living. She leads us to her simple stream, a trickle flow enough.

Return of beet red male bird at the feeder, he who fights with self on glass. He beautiful. He a one man performance teetering eating seed. Act One, a simple show on window.

Art, the paint. Art, the song. Art, the page. Art, the wiper of the dusty dirty off the soiled  soul places. Art, the interchange of actors in the play of living.

Art, life’s extravagant simple embellishment. Art, worship. Art, creative man gifts back to Creator God. Simply seeing art in all.

And love in all its four greek meaning forms, the greatest though of these simply love.

He serves in small trips to the market, long trips eight hours round trip to provide for us.She speaks simple I love you. He calls, he smiles, he thanks.

All wrapped up in beautiful family love. Love, simple poetry.

And simple takes the chalk out of the hand of that hopscotch threesome on the life-road,

Writes instead we love here, love lives here, cursive on the black asphalt.

So all who drive, see simply, love.

See simple living, savoring of the gifts. Breathing deep the fullness, hope-filled breathes.

Simple  signs her name on the last line of the day, it is beautiful, isimply beautiful.

An alleluia chorus on an amen day.

This is Day 11. I am joining 31 Dayers at The Nester’s place for this series. 

And I am linking with Michelle.