Tag: Amazing Grace

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 Frame, A Lense, And The Eyes of The Heart

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 18 Comments

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?

Crossing The Wake – Part Two

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 12 Comments

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.

If I Were An Olympic Judge

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 26 Comments

I see the tears and anguish and want to console each one. Walk through the big screen and give a long embrace.

I want to tell them you are not your shortcomings. You are not defined by your loss.

I watch them come up short of a medal, these Olympic athletics and I long to console them. Wipe their tears, dry their eyes.

After all the training and all the effort and the blood sweat and tears, they fail to win big on the world stage.

This outcome, this turn of events, these results are not their Plan A.

And it hurts, it stings and it feels like defeat.

You are so much more than this one competition, though often your life and certainly your training have built up to this, lead to this, I long to say to the losers. The ones who fail to win the medals.

Because in my eyes, they are winners.

They and their stories are gold medal winners. And I’d give them each a medal for their humanity. Their humaneness on display for the world to see. Those who struggled and trained and gave it their all, but fell short. Or made a costly mistake. Or stumbled. Or botched the routine. Or simply had an off day. Or who ran out of steam.

Those Olympians whose stories are ripe with over-coming hardship and difficulty. Those whose story wins the medal for its tender perserverance, its victory over life’s rocky places take up big spaces in my heart.

They are the all of us so often. So very often.

They are raw and human and hurting. They feel loss and disappointment. And they are humbled by their shortcomings.

They are you. They are me. They are everyman living and struggling before our eyes. Though they wear an Olympic uniform we have walked where they are.

We know that sting. We know that pain. We know that deep hurt.

If I were an Olympic judge, they would get the medal for being there. For practicing hard and showing up to compete. For being a human. For being human. For being.

Because they look like winners to me. They wear their ache like a medal of bravery for being man.

And I know that more often than not, they can turn their disappointment into good and for the good.

They can take the moment of defeat and tease lessons from the trials. Wrap it into a future Hope for tomorrow. Take the loss and build on it, learn from it.

And change because of it.

The lessons from loss and disappointment so often bring big victories in charachter. They layer lessons of life on us like new skin, tougher smarter wiser layers of humanity.

They give us a humility. And they teach in a way that out and out winning the gold simply does not.

Because the lessons from difficulty teach from an entirely different book. And the lessons from suffering and pain are the ones that make us more human, more tender and more able to help and serve a hurting world.

And we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God- those whom he has called… Romans 8:28.

But don’t we know how profoundly they are suffering when they stumble and fall and go home empty from these events. Don’t we know. Can’t we suffer alongside them, in our common humanity. In our shared state of being human and frail, vulnerable.

Don’t we feel deep in our bones and in our flesh and in our soul, the bruising and banging of the hurt. Of the falling just short, or very short, or way way off the mark entirely.

Don’t we long to change the story. Change their story. Edit, re-write the parts of hurt and suffering.

Don’t we long to re-wind the tape and turn the tide back for them. And let them start again afresh, anew. A second time. Don’t we want for them a do-over.

Don’t we want for them to win what they came for.

But their stories, when they stumble will be beautiful in loss.

And their stories will wear a crown of victory if they let them. And all the hurt and pain can be written into something beautiful in the end.

And the moments of hurt and pain can be redeemed. By Him who makes all things new.

If I were an Olympic judge I would give them gold for being a participant in the event. In this event of living this always wonderful always beautiful, sometimes difficult life.

And as they reach their hand for the medal I would say always remember” His mercies are new everyday.”

Now get back out there and finish your story. Your beautiful story that is your life.

Joining with Jennifer today at GDWJ.

And with Duane at Unwrapping His Promises and also for the first time here as well……