the art of taking note
You are cordially invited to come over to wynnegraceappears on Facebook and bring your joy. Let the conversation of this community continue there. No RSVP required. Just come as you are. And follow along on twitter @graceappears. See you there.
Wishing you 100% chance of weekend JOY,
When I look I see.
When I see I feel.
When I feel what I see when I look is it because the eyes of my heart are soft and tender? Am I looking through the frame of His word? Am I looking through a lense created by His hands, molding and shaping and forming my will and my thoughts.
Whispering gently in my ear is the notion of perspective. It has been for sometime. The title of this blog is viewing life through a lense of grace. So the tapes in my head and the beat of my heart is to the song of perspective. And framing. And viewing.
And yesterday I saw it in a fresh way with a child. It is the children who teach and point and show and bend the heart to truth. It is so often they who press in to the hard places and make them tender, the rough places and make them smooth.
Everytime I hear and respond, I have a choice. And everytime I see and act, I have a choice.
I want to choose well. And so very often I don’t.
But the lessons keep coming and the chances for new mercy and change are ripe for the picking. And I want a basket of juicy and sweet fruit to hang from my arm swaying in sweet love.
One has a challenge with ADHD. So I have a challenge with ADHD. And I can choose the lense of patience, and understanding. If I choose to. And view his heart and life through a beautiful lense of tender mercy, with my momma love.
When I go off into a writer’s imagination and dream, I dream of writing a book on perspective and framing events, and circumstances and the story of our lives with a frame of grace and beauty. Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone. You are the first I have told of this dream. Can you keep it tucked away?
Because each part of the story that has a narrative of pain and challenge, has brought deeper understanding of His charachter and love.In my life. So the eyes that saw hurt or pain or confusion can now frame circumstances in richer understanding. I feel tugs and pulls to write of framing with grace and framing with love. Is it a season for my heart? Most likely. I want to stay there for eternity, so that I can see my world with more compassion, more tenderness, more mercy and more love.
Yesterday I glimpsed with a sharpened lense of grace a child. And a beautiful change. He is Grace. I want to reflect Him more. I want to show more and more and more grace in love to my world. And my child with ADHD is a good starting place. For me.
Because even when I reach down to draw from the springs of empathy and cry out for more empathy and understanding and patience, do I really know the individual struggle and challenges of an ADHD child?But God knows. The number of hairs on his head even, amazing. Amazingly. Beyond a mother’s heart of understanding is the love He has.
Each of us grow and learn down a path that is our very own. I want to go before my child with grace, and sprinkle bread crumbs of patience and understanding on his way.And mark it with compassion. And hem him in with gentleness and mercy. He has one more year at home. I want to end well my journey of his days at home.
I am a miserable failure, broken and banged up on my own.
Mercifully, God goes down these mother roads in tandem with me. And I can look at mothering through the lense of the cross.
And the road of friend, and wife and sister and child. And neighbor and writer and blogger and each and every role He allows me the privilege of playing.
Praying for His grace as we start this “new year” of school and life.
And as always, grateful and privileged to have you on this journey.
And it would be a joy to have you come to my facebook page, wynnegraceappears on FB (scroll to the bottom of this page and click over). Thank you in advance. We can chat over there some too.That would be lovely.
If you are on twitter, I am at @graceappears on twitter.See you there?
This takes up a big space in my memory holder,  the one that holds the childhood treasures. The box where the heart can go and pull out a piece of memory here and there and sit at the feet of dreamy rememberance. The tender box of storage where being a child and learning of life are safely tucked away to look back on with eyes of a seasoned life. With new eyes. With new understanding. On what it is we were learning. And how gently we often learn of the hard. How tenderly He teaches  us of the difficult.
When I grabbed my phone and read the email, the memories began to flood a bit.
We spent hours water skiing. Together. So she speaks a language of the familiar when she asks, I was wondering if you’d consider writing a poem about crossing the wake.
A google search of crossing the wake reveals the technical best way to approach this journey across. And some of the words and phrases are important. I remember. If you have never skiied, you will remember too.
You remember the moments of relaxing, absorbing, committing without hesitation, and balancing.
About dot com Waterskiing will tell you “One of the scariest things facing a beginning slalom water-skier is having to cross what seems like a huge mound of water behind the boat, better known as the wake. In order to be a successful water-skier, you must tackle the wake head on.”
And she was thinking back, now in her 40’s to the times in her childhood when she did. And she is now. And she knew that I knew tackling head on what seems like a huge mound. A mound worth the crossing. A challenge ripe with reward in the victory. And a life of Joy on the other side.
About dot com continues in its tutorial “…your ski and body must point towards the direction you want to go. Face the wake head on. …Remember to take it slow in the beginning, and as your confidence level increases, so will your ability to tackle the wakes.”
But when we cross over by way of the Cross, we have the love of Jesus there in two directions. The vertical beam of the cross, tethering us to the Father’s love and mercy. And we have the horizontal beam of the cross, tethering  us to a community of believers, sisters in Christ to walk across the mounds with us. Never alone. Always going by way of the cross is the way of Love. Braced and bound, secure and safe. Crossing by way of His painful sacrifice. Relying on His Love, His arms extended crossing each difficult place before us and with us.
And there at the foot a place to lay down fear and doubt.There a repository for the junk that keeps us paralyzed by unknowing outcomes. There a place to lean into Him for strength beyond our own, helping us gain and keep our balance. There a place to stay upright, braced by His love.
Holding the tow rope of our youth, we know the safety and security of that strong nylon rope, connecting us to the power of the motorboat. And we learn to bend our knees, to absorb the bumps of the rocky wake, and lean into the moment of crossing out from the smooth into the rocky. And the wind in our face, muscles and tendons working, heart racing, we look out and see, not the back of the boat, but rather a whole different line of sight from over in the chop. And brave returns. And fear is diminished. And Joy moves into that moment.
The infertility, the bankruptcy, the marriage problems, the adoption of children, the pain of friends, the death of family, the trauma of loss, they are covered by the cross. They are covered and wrapped in His love. And his child is safely tethered to Him, the source of all power and love. And He redeems the hurt. And stills the rough waters. For us. Whom He loves. For us. He bends down and into our lives. Helping us guiding us.
In Love, by way of the cross.
So that crossing the wake is a place of partnership with Him and a community of believers. It is not a lonely skiier on a single slalom ski, behind a boat. But rather a child of Father God walking the rough spots with exhilaration and courage with a boat load of His love. And legion of fellow Jesus followers loving us through the rough and choppy. Drying us off, massaging our sore and tender spots, placing a balm, a salve on the blisters, and loving us through the journey through to the other side.
We cross by way of the cross. We cross with sisters in Christ. We cross with Him and into Him and because He went before. We cross because He has plans and adventure and marvelous abundant life waiting to be lived.
We go through the doubt and unknowing.
Because we know the one thing that matters. We are loved and we are His.
And there was and there is a beautiful cross.
Linking today with Ann, Duane and Jennifer.
And also joining Mary Beth today at New Life Steward and Denise at Denise in Bloom dot com.
She sent me an email and things have not really been the same since.
She stirred the heart up. And the mind joined in. And then the nudges came and the soft tender birthing of words started to form, like a small green tomato appearing on the vine. I held a short vigil over the inspiration and waited.
Waited for it to be red and ripe and juicy.
And then decided that the perfect combination of the thoughts and musings just may not make it on paper.
And that the fuzzy outline and facts may not take shape into an eloquent and thoughtful blog post from me. But that maybe just breathing in Jesus and breathing out fear and taking a first step was really all I was called to do. All we really can ever do.
The subject is a paradox because it is big and looming over me but it is really quite manageable too. And gnawing and chewing on it for days may have been fear of not getting it just right.
But God…. leaning into Him for courage and trusting Him for guidance, is all I need. All I will ever really need. But I want to be a good steward of this passion for writing. And I do want to make something beautiful with words. So worry replaces Trust and fear replaces Bravery.
I have tried to go back and find where I read or heard the notion of breathing out fear and breathing in Jesus because I love the feeling of doing just that. Letting go of fear and breathing in the life-giving breath of Jesus.I needed His breath of courage and His help kicking fear under the bus on Sunday. I was fearful  about speaking and reading in public in church. But God allowed my eyes to fall on these words somewhere and they spoke to my soul. And they speak to my soul and infuse courage into my spirit.
So, she sent me an email and things have not really been the same since. And in it she wrote:
“Hoping you might consider writing a poem about “crossing the wake.” I thought about this often this summer. What I mean is having the courage to go in a new direction or face a problem. It actually refers to crossing the wake when water skiing…..It’s easy to stay behind the boat in the safe zone but what about crossing the wake and seeing what happens…..Scary at times but exhiliarating.”
So I told The Patient One, to whom I have been married for almost, almost a quarter of a century and he is a he. So he googled what happens when one crosses the wake. Oh the facts. And the descriptions. And the technical descriptions. I wanted art and feelings to pour out of my fingers as a by-product of reading this email. He suggested I know what REALLY happens when one actually “crosses the wake.” I love him and know to listen to him.
So I stalled out and couldn’t press begin, much less publish and the words didn’t seem to come. And how ironic. How ironic indeed. I stayed behind the wake in the safe zone of inaction where the waters were calm instead of heading out across to the exhilaration of His inspiration. Staying out of the beautiful blue waters of Trust.
So this is the part where I tell you I want to explore this idea with you all. The idea of going across the wake, crossing into the new places which contain challenge and exhilaration. Getting out of the safe zone where the water is smooth as silk.
Because I do really like green tomatoes and sometimes waiting and waiting on them to ripen is only one choice.
I am excited to have partnered with Compassion International as a blogger. It was time to step off the curb and do something for children in poverty. My heart had been broken after reading a recent blog about a friend‘s two Compassion children she sponsors.
So I am privileged to start a journey blogging once or twice a month when Compassion sends me an assignment. I am so excited to learn along with you about these children who need our love and prayers. And I am honored and privileged to advocate for children in poverty.
Please come along with me tomorrow  as I  continue to explore the idea of “crossing the wake.” I will share with you what my husband, The Patient One, encouraged me to learn of this concept. And I will pour myself into exploring more of the art of crossing into the challenging  places in life.
In pursuit of Him, because of Him, and with Him. Not alone, breathing out fear. Going into the bumpy parts and places. Will you come back tomorrow? That would be lovely.
And today I am turning toward a place of gratitude and counting gifts with Ann at A Holy Experience dot com. So much to be grateful for.
* Good news from a school regarding a child. An answered prayer.
*An email from Compassion in my in box and the joy of the new journey.
*For feeling more than okay about submitting my blog for consideration to go on a trip to Peru with Compassion. Feeling brave and leaning into God’s perfect will for the details, for a no, a yes, or a later from the request.
*Special nights with The Patient One watching the Olympics. Just simply being together. Two happy teenagers with lots of friends and nights being away from home and out of school for summer.
*Beautiful words of a Methodist preacher at a funeral on Sunday. Life affirming and Hope offering words from the pulpit.
*Watching my oldest grow into a man and seeing his soft compassionate heart in action.
*For kind words and comments in the in-box here and friends all over this bloggy world.
*For relationships and friendships with other bloggers who encourage and support in love.
*For two extremely kind emails I received that filled me up to over-flowing with their love and support. A blessing that they took the time to write.
*For a little girl in Peru whom I am sponsoring and what I will learn about love from her. Looking forward to corresponding with her and grateful that God brought us together.
Linking up with Ann, Duane, and Jennifer today and/or tomorrow.
elizabeth w. marshall 