Tag: Amazing Grace

Chains – Shake, Rattle and Roll

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 13 Comments

Today I am joining Amber and a few others for a series on an abstraction on concrete words. Today is Day 23 in the Series. Cut yourself loose and go here to read the collective.. Today’s word is Chains.

The words line up like hungry children at Baskin Robbins taking a number and waiting their turn to indulge themselves. They hear there is a series here on words and they are ravenous mongrels eager to have their day.

They cry out in the night and creep in the dreams and state their case of why they are worthy for the time to shine, their day in the sun, their fifteen minutes.

I tell them there is no glory that’s not His and there is no fifteen minutes of fame and if anything its fifteen seconds.

But they shake rattle and roll around in my head and bring their resumes, these words all seem worthy. How do you pick. What’s a mother to do. We don’t play favorites or at least we always try to be even-steven around here.

But I am drawn like a bee on honey over here to this abstraction on chains and I drag my words with me. They aren’t heavy they are just full. They are ripe and ready to burst with their telling.

So I link them up like construction cut-outs glued with Elmer’s on the Christmas Tree in 1969. They are a chain but fragile. Made to lay on the branch, this tree, of life. And not weigh down.

There was a mighty trifecta brewing around like a meteorological nightmare on a Southern summer, hot, humid, and muggy. So they link-up, make a chain. Mercy, Forbearance and Long-suffering, with an extra link of patience.

They rumble around in the brain for days beating to get out and speak their mind. So I release them and let them breathe a bit on the white pages, release them out to have their day in court.

They are game-changers and mood-changers and life-changers. And they are worthy of being lifted up and they need more than a day they need a life-time.

The chains of picking up every single solitary offense is enough to wear a girl down. Learning to let them lie is freedom. The kind that you set off fire-works over. The kind that you stand outside the prison door and greet the captive set free from all those years in a dark cell. In when she could have been free. Languishing in the dark, when she could have been living in the light.

Mercifully released, finally, things are set right. The sunlight is bright, blindingly so.

She breathes deep the fresh air of freedom.

Mercifully mercy finds a place to settle in and settle down, patience works hard at being herself and brings peace and calm with her. And letting things roll off the back when things rolls off a tongue is delightfully different from picking up the offense and picking a fight.

Choosing to release the offense, not taking it up, letting it die on the vine. Letting it go.

Looking the other way, turning the other cheek, breaks chains that bind. And cuts the heavy metal links with the soft shears of His ways.

Chains get rusty when they get old, and clanking sounds grate on a life. Sometimes it doesn’t take a metal cutter to break them, but the soft and gentle trio of Trinity to bust it open and break it loose.

And isn’t it the truth that the more links you add to the chain, the stronger it becomes. You add Mercy linked with Forbearance and Long-suffering and your spirit and your soul gain strength in the beautiful chain of Patience.

Grace is the grease that oils the links and keeps them nimbly ebbing and flowing, bobbing and weaving. You can make a chain of the Good and the Gracious. And the chains keep the wheels rolling on the bike as you peddle down the Grace trail.

Dropping your chains of clover rather than wobbly chains of wrongs done, offenses picked up, hurts accumulated, accumulating dust and rust.

We’re just too busy being bound up in the chains that bind and bruise, hold us back and wrap us up in self and selfish.

They were right, this trio, to demand their day, to link hands and come play on the pages of this series. To bring their light and cheerful spirit with them.

Too long their counterparts have tried to rule greedy, hold emotions and circumstances up, hold us hostage, rule with the iron hand and lay claim to each transgression, offense, small and large. To feel the wound of every word and deed that delt the blow, broke the heart, intentional or not.

Pride and self-righteous indignation, the rule of the day. Elbowing their way into their place of power and authority. Staking a claim while staking the chain to the ground. Burying the life on a short chain of void and empty.

I click the leash and walk the dog, tethered briefly for a moment outside in the air. I can breathe. Ocean rumbles mighty in the dark morning air. I can breathe. I hear the roar and know the power of salt, the strength of water. It reminds me the soul can be refreshed, the chains can be broken, and the life does feel less heavy when we breathe deep the freedom.

I can pick up the promises of His, a chain of linked words and chapters, verses, the beautiful bound Book. Chain it to my heart. Chain it to my soul.

And I hear Aretha singing to my spirit, Chain of Fools, a tribute, an anthem to the old way of living.

And Amazing Grace drops down in the jukebox of my heart and I sing along to a new anthem of my life, a song of Unchained Melody. The sound of freedom.

The words do a victory march across the page, linking hands, making a chain of friendship.

Mercy, Forbearance and Patience.

A new chain, tying  me soft and loose to Freedom.

And angels of Mercy and her friends guard my heart, stand at the door to my soul, keeping watch, breaking the chains before they bind again.

Amens and amens and amens.

Grateful to be joining these wonderful writers today too at their place: Jen, Heather,and Eileen. And to Jennifer,Joy,  Ann and Emily

Window Panes -Day 8

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

She played a game in chilhood. Two raindrops run down window pane, of car of home. She mans the race, Olympic judge of water racing.
Window pane the venue for drops that run like tears.
Eyes the weary travellers, raindrop snails,they wind their way down fogged glass, make and mark a watery zig and zag trail.
Who shall win a rainy droplet race? Which blue ribbon champion wins the rainy dual.
Winner puddles in a pile. Child’s play at the window for awhile.
And she sees the cross, a brace in pane, of wood. Horizontal setting gaze, vertical completes a frame.
Bracing life, and framing view.
Always holding, shaping, marking perimeters of a life view,
The eyes’ view, the looking out and looking past.
Stretching toward the future.
Seeing forward, looking out, a window on her world.
A perfect frame the crossed pane glass, always quartering life.
The pieces become bite-sized manageable. In fours, and eights or more the crossed-paned windows.
Her windcow on the world.

There was the childhood window, bedroom high, peering down below.
Scared of what she didn’t know.
Of monsters underneath the bed and in the closet too.
She sees a hundred stars and moons, the window frames the world.
There were the stained glass windows too.
Sunday sanctuary, art. An early primer into holy beauty.
Gazing off in wonder, with child’s eyes gazing in a trance toward glass,
In jewel toned beauty,
Blood red crimson, beauty contained, beauty framed, worship through the windows.
A gallery of art,young men, the Christ friends stand in solidarity, Peter and the rest.
Sun shines through Sunday windows, panes, azure blue, emerald green.
A thousand Sundays of window art, a portal to her God.
She stares while preacher preaches, lost in beauty, lost in art.
Bold window panes, a masterpiece of glass, windows to a wounded world of which the preacher preached.

And now she looks to frame the world without a windowpane.
Just plane and simple life view lense, with words, a window to her world.
A lense of grace, a lense of love, a lense of paneless gazing
On life, with hope,
All through the blood soaked cross-barred pane.
As much a she is able.

Counting gifts

*Hope for healing wounds of the body and soul
*Joy of family
*Joy of progress with middle man/child’s college plan
*Receiving a hundred dollars for my Compassion Child for a post a wrote. Thank you Compassion, I can’t imagine how my sponsored child will spend one hundred dollars
*More and more and more precious friends in community in this bloggy writing world.
*A increased hope and dream of a book one day
*Safe arrival of travelling loved ones
*Time spent back in my mountain cottage to write and wake to cold mountain air.
*A flat tire, yes in the right place
*My AAA tow truck operator was humorous and kind, good natured, and wearing a cross of our Lord on his neck.
*Seeing my sisters all in one room

Writing in community with The Nester, Ann, Laura and L.L. Barkat

Delicate Balance – Days 6 & 7

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

Who has not lived that doesn’t know that dance, the one of in and out, a bob and a weave of a clumsy waltz. Like a prize fighter penned in the corner. The bob and weave in the ring of life. A punch, one two, of difficulty, pain.
Who is not part of this commonman, every man, every woman club, begun by Eve and Adam. Thank you very much.
Who does not struggle to make sense out of the hard and the rough, to soften them down and smooth them out with words and love.
Who has not found a limb or two, maybe all four tangled in a web, sticky, ensnaring our hearts our lives, in confusion and hurt.

And who has not cried out, flailing hands towards the heavens and yelled like a child in the throws of a tantrum at God and asked why?

Is there one who has not sought restoration and reconciliation from broken life, like shards of glass, shattered into pieces sharp, pieces which cut through, bleeding life drips droplets puddle.

It is all that He wants to mend the cut, and cup the chin, and wipe the tear.

It is what He longs to do for child of Eve and Adam too. To mend, restore, the balance so delicate. The delicate pieces and places, He knows.

And in the wailing and crying there is Hope. And when the relationship slips to a place where balance is lost, like life’s level and equilibrum hang in the loss of balance.

Think on these things. Rest in His arms. And look to the Restorer to re-order, rebuild and realign.

The Carpenter, Builder, The Restorer of Hope, Rebuilder of Lives,

The Delicate Restorer of Balance, He mends the lives of the broken.

What Amazing Grace, what Amazing Grace indeed.

Writing in community today with Deidra and The Nester for the continuing series of 31 Days of Wonderful Words.

This is Day 6 and Day 7 of the 31 Day Series which we are a part of at The Nester’s. There a community of bloggers is writing for 31 days in October. If you would like to back journey on this blog and read previous posts in the series please do. Previous posts have included Ordinary, Savor, Hope, The Poetic, and Dancing.

If you would like to subscribe by receiving Wynnegraceappears, please scroll down and subscribe either via email or in your reader. It would be lovely to have you along on the journey.

We are also on facebook and would love to have you connect there. And don’t be fooled by the we because it is just me. And I would love to have you reading here. Please know that I appreciate your presence on these pages and I love to hear your words in the comments. That is a wonderful thing.

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