Category: Grace

Shhhhh, Can I Whisper Something in Your Ear?

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 13 Comments

I will whisper because it is so tender and fragile, so the whisper of my heart is a quiet dignity for this and for them.

I will whisper about compassion and Compassion International for now. And the children.

But the cry of my heart is really to shout. And when you see and hear and bend the heart to know more, you may want to shout too. Will you walk over here with me, it means just click and we can go there.

To just pray.

This is what Mark Batterson says in his book “The Circle Maker” about prayer

The hard thing about praying hard is letting God do the heavy lifting. You have to trust the favor of God to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. You have to trust God to change hearts…

Thank you for going there to pray for these children. I will try not to shout. I like it when people speak softly to me too. I like to listen to the gentle.

I like the tender and the soft and the whispers from gentle places.

But the cry of my heart, well its all rumbly and loud. So I may need to ask forgiveness ahead of time for when I scream and yell and get quite loud with the cries of my heart.

Because when I went to choose my child, the one that I sponsor, I wanted to choose the one waiting the longest, and then I wanted to choose two and then I wanted to choose a boy and a girl but I chose a girl. And I wanted to choose the ones with especially special needs. And, well it was hard. But my friend Kris who played a role in bending and breaking my heart for Compassion, she said to me words that were full of grace. She told me to think of it this way, they all need a sponsor, so any one you choose will be right…..well you get the beautiful grace-filled words she spoke to me, in love.

But in the end I chose one little girl in Peru. And I pray that God in His holy math and in His holy name will multiply my smallness.

I am writing a prayer for myself for Compassion International. I will share it with you soon.

But your words and your prayers are much much better. They are your words and your prayers.

Counting my gifts in the quiet of my heart and linking with Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience dot com. You can read about her Compassion trips there.

Linking with Finding Heaven Today dot com

And with Denise in Bloom

Summer Gives Her Window Seat to Fall

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 9 Comments


{Photograph courtesy of H.M. Miller, my friend, her art, a gift. I receive with humility and gratitude.}

Sitting at the edge of change. And a racing heart competes with a flood of salty wet.

Soaking in on the edge of change. And the Beautiful now wrestles with the pregnant possibilities of tomorrow’s new.

Teetering on the edge of change. And the Uncertain and the Unknowing play rock, paper, scissors with the potential outcome.

Dreaming on the edge of change. And Hope and Trust dance together… a beautiful pas de deux of love.

Anchoring the soul on the edge of change. And Faith rests knowing that the days are numbered and the battles are won.

Abiding on the edge of change. And relationship with Him secures the fretting heart and fixes the soul eyes squarely on the One who knows.

Embracing change on the edge. Surrendering to change on the edge. Loving change while tip-toeing around and on the edge.

Sleeping soundly on the edge with Change. While Summer gives her window seat to Autumn. And the window is rolled all the way down.

Linking today with Joy here and here.

Write It All Down

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 21 Comments

“God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people he’s their God. Look! I’m making everything new. Write it all down-each word dependable and accurate.” Revelation 21:3-5

Friends, may you celebrate all the new, all the wonder, all the beautiful, all the God Art. The Beautiful in the broken, the beautiful in the busted. The perfection of the imperfect. The Hope in things to come. And the Promises of His tomorrows, created in Love, created in Mercy, by His hands, the ones that unfurl all that Amazing Grace. And when you see the black the white and the mundane may you look at life through a lense of Hope to see the colors of hopeful beauty washed, splashed, drizzled, splattered and stroked over all that is the right before you. The all that is your world. The all that is your living story.

{Photography courtesy of the lovely and talented H.M.Miller who blesses me with her eye and her heart}


Linking with the Sunday Community, Still Saturdays, and Scripture & a Snapshot.

A Wild Ride

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 16 Comments

She jumps on her keyboard like a kid on his flexible flyer in new white snow and uses what she has, her imperfect hybrid of prose and poetry, a blend of mix of words to communicate her heart, her soul in a five minute race through a life, like the space ship racing back from Mars, with all the stories all the discovery to tell of in a short news blast or bleep or headline, and she realizes that there is a reason she never liked cliff notes, spark notes, condensed telling of long very long beautiful stories.  Stories that tell of chapter after chapter after chapter of the beautiful, the God gifts. She wonders how she could ever, would ever race against a timepiece in her telling of what unimaginable transformation has taken place. She rushes and stumbles and hurries her heart where she knows it would be better to slow and stop and pray and ponder. But she has a short amount of time to tell. So she slows and breaks the chains that tie her like a prisoner to the moving hands of the clock to say that in this place of God created union between the man she knows as husband, the changes…every single last one of them have been the thing, just the thing she needed all along. Each move, each child, each kiss, each hurt. Every sadness, every joy, and every trial. The stress, the loss, the strain, the gain. He knew, the One that brought them out of the sea of humanity into the arms of the other….He knew that she would change Him and He would change Her and that the wild ride down the hill on their flexible flyer would fill them with Joy and a rich rich life of the Beautiful. And they wouldn’t change one thing.

{In full disclosure, I had to CHANGE a letter or two so this piece on Change would not sound like chump change 🙂 I couldn’t let One go uncapitalized when I was talking to well, the One who is Lord. So with one or two minor Changes, this is my five minute Friday writing. Sorry too, that my clock had no hands as it is a computer and that I find it hard to do math in my head while I am racing the clock. GOT GRACE??}

This post is part of a Five-Minute Friday link-up. Today’s word prompt is  CHANGE.

Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker for 5-Minute Fridays at Lisa Jo Baker dot com.