Tag: Blessings

Leaving Quite An Impression

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

Counting gifts with Ann over at a holy experience dot com. This is a beautiful way to start a Monday.  A day of new mercies.   Before counting gifts, and there are many, I want to express my gratitude to readers.  Thank you that you are here. Thank you for your encouragement.  You bless me with your feedback.  I look over my shoulder and see and hear you there, on this journey.  I am praying for each of you, may His grace mark your day with a deep groove of the holy on this day in the midst of May.  May the landscape of your life be touched by His Mercy, in the joy, in the hard, in the soft, and in the muck.  In the mundane middles,  in the fresh new starts, and in crossing the finish lines.

Looking down the bridge of this nose on this face and counting the right smack here gifts in this very messy living. This life.  The one  with the bumps and the bruises, the turns and twists, the highs and the lows, the peaks and valleys and the ebbs and flows. The gifts are underfoot and might even get stepped on if we don’t step lightly and walk softly through the very messy living.

Counting the multitudes on monday:

middle son’s weight loss, still amazed and impressed by his determination(90 pounds is a lot to register on this momma’s heart)

sweet unexpected surprise in my comment box from my daughter, love in the words, love in her heart

kayak’s and how they offer a way to quietly see life, slow paddling with The Patient One and sitting for hours in solitude while the kiddos took the SAT

Our favorite worship song in church yesterday led by beautiful voices and an elbow in the rib from sweet girl of mine, followed by her singing loudly her praises….grace IS an ocean…..

Going to take home communion yesterday as a trainee –shifting the lense of life and seeing the bread and the wine bless one who is bound by a wheelchair.  

My Head In The Clouds

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

I had my head in the clouds this weekend.  Resting in quiet.  Resting in light.  Resting under the clouds and  studying their beauty.

I, student of art under white moving design.  Gallery of blue backdrop, moving exhibit of puffy perfection.  Creation on display. He, Creator God, designer of beauty.  Loving presenter of beauty. I watch them move and drift, change and delight. I grateful.  I throw out a line of love to catch the light, catch a piece of heaven’s rays, heaven’s brilliance.

The Patient one fishes. I study.  We rest.  Under a blanket of heaven.  Grateful for all that He gives, graciously, lovingly, gratefully.

Place your head in the clouds, and rest in Him.  Rest in His love.  Rest in His beauty.  Rest in His loving arms this day.

His new Mercies wait around the corner on the morning after this evening.  Gift. Bowed up in love.

Seek.  See.  Thank.

What Grace.  What Love.  What a gallery of perfection all puffy and floating we see when we look up into the light.

Five Things A Field Trip To A Mexican Restaurant Will Teach You about LIFE

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

{wynnegraceappears.com has its own facebook page.   It would be a gift if you would pop over and “like it” on FB or you can scroll down to the bottom of the blog home page.  Thank you for that.}

I am amazed at where and when I learn some of the most important truthes.

How God can take  and use the mundane, gray, ordinary. Turn it into a way to grab hold of the eyes of my heart.  Hold firm to my jawline in love and say “See this, right here.”  I love you too much for you to miss it.

How sparks of sweet knowledge fly off the life pages, there.  In the everyday.  In the messy, the plain, the simple. How sparks of knowing and seeing shoot out and turn the head like walking into a firestorm of shooting stars.

Life is messy.  Life is loud.  People are hurting.
I sit and catch up with an oldish friend.( She is  a decade younger so its not she that is oldish, it is this thing in our life which is a friendship). We have done life together for quite awhile but we often go for long periods without having heart chats.  Linking up and digging deep.

But in the middle of the loud and the messy, over the guac and the chips I hear the remarkable.  I hear about God’s love lately in her life.  I sit with what feels like one hundred loud high school students buzzing around us  and press in to hear about her son. How God is doing a loving work in his special life.  The waitress buzzes, the kids are rocking the place with their energy, but God’s mark on his life in the last few days is soft and sweet and deep and wide. One special teacher choosen for one special child.  An amazing choreography in this dance of life–connecting two, partnering up a child with one to walk through life as friend, mentor, teacher guide for a long season.  He loves so deeply, this God of ours.

I am changed in the knowing.  My Faith gets a re-boot.  As she Mom- proud raises her ipad to the table and shares the pictures of him running the good race, then standing on the podium at the Special Olympics, I glimpse a mother’s heart hard at work navigating through life, seeking the best always for her precious son.

Life is unorganized.
There are three of us now.  Talking, sharing, remarking, reviewing, observing life and our children and how crazy this field trip scene appears in its many facets of planning. How they move from Point A to Point B and all the logistics.

But I know now that what seemed like an excessive amout of time away from school was carved out for fellowship and community.  I know that their hours and their days lived out in the halls can be burden.  Can wear heavy mundane.  Can stiffle in the routine of the everyday.  But change the scene and joy pours out like notes from a saxaphone all happy wafting out, inspiring and infusing music and grace notes on the pages of their day.

I know that long expanses of time where we feel stuck and caught are really times to capture community and catch up in fellowship with each other, on life.

Drowning happily in story and shared experience. Freeze framing life, capturing it in one still-frame on one Monday in the middle of messy living.

Life is learned outside of books.
I know that they are learning about sixteen.  They are learning how to order in Spanish and pay the bill too.  But they are learning more I know it about friendship and fellowship.  Because it was there in all caps and all bold.  The things we learn when we heart listen to others.  The sad and the happy, the joy and the pain come out off the shelves when we listen.  When we invite.  When we ask the life story to come tell it all.

Life is best lived when slowed down and there is no agenda.
She calls me from school to co-ordinate my coming on the field trip and I grumble.  Who eats lunch at a Mexican restaurant at 10:30 in the morning.  I pass on a complaint to a child, allowing her to be exposed to my disease, its contagious, of grumbling, whining.  Not a proud parent momment, this, in hindsight.  But when there my heart delights in the energy.  It catches the happy and the smiling while chip dipping and straw sucking diet coke.  Where in the world would I rather be than smack dab deep down in the middle of salsa and chips and children on a Monday morning

Because we can count now, on a couple of fingers, the time that they are here now with us.  We discuss SAT and school and college and futures as Dentists and all such.  And I look with one eye at the Joy of these girls. They were there at the Special Olympics cheering, they were there in pre-school a yesterday ago, they are here and this is now and it is raw and real. This group, these girls, becoming women soon.  Learning Spanish and much more right here on a Monday.  And it smells like spicey, mexican restaurant Grace.

Agenda robs, and steals, and obfuscates the present. And who doesn’t love chips and dip and fellowship all cozied in on a gray day at a long table of giggling girls with their happy spread from one end of the room to the other.

I hug and say good bye and that I must press on down the very short to-do list.  By my design, I keep them short now.  It must be an over 50 charachter trait.  But I leave and I take giggly Joy with me.  And I smell all day like the memories built here with friends, with teenagers, in the middle of a very long lunch catching up on three of  the most important things in life– community, friends, and matters of the heart.

And Counting Gifts, this Monday, with Ann @ A  Holy Experience.

*for running into a friend on the beach.  Catching up and hearing how a gift I gave her years ago is still being used.  How our lives intersecting in the past was a good thing–for us both.  Realizing how I am the blessed one to have had her and to re-connect.

*time on the beach with The Patient One to bask in the sun and just be

*an email, sweet so sweet, from a friend of a friend who was sent here, to check out this blog.  Unexpected Grace on a Monday.

*News of improving health for college man-child and counting the days until he is under this roof again, for a short season.

*Sweet projects around this nest that I am dreaming of, inspired by a big project and garden undertaken by The Patient One over the weekend.

*Laughing often at a new blog I have discovered.  I will provide the link soon.  She is fun, she is funny, and she is passionate about life and the Lord (its contagious).

*New friends

*Old friends

*A month of birthdays and celebrations for people I love.

*A summer plan coming together
 


 

How A Bird’s Song Can Lighten The Heart Of Man ( And Other Gifts In The Mix)

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

Answering Ann’s call at A Holy Experience dot com after reading her book One Thousand  Gifts, A  Dare To Live Fully Right Where You Are, today I am counting gifts of the week.

In a prosey sort of poetic sort of my own weird way.  Just writing gratitude.  Just writing words of a grateful heart.  Just diving in with thanks.

Because when we are up-close pressing hard against the store-front windows of this life, nose cold, nose pushed down with a bit of pain, the focus is a blurry kind of not quite right. Sometimes just too raw in the moment, present yes, but needing a freshening of perspective.  Stepping back.  Looking back.  Past the big window pane of the right now, into the sweet days back. Looking back for gift counting.  For today. And then thanking for this day.

We sit together after the curtain has come down on the stage of his work day.  Club chair facing club chair, mano-a-mano, but not really.  And we are still.  Cracked open wide window, spring air wafting in, and he says, “Do you hear that?”  “She or he is doing his repertoire for someone.”  And we listen mesmorized by the mockingbird running through all that she knows and all that she’s learned and all that she can give– one delightfully perfect song of something in her world after the other.  She mimics baby birds, and he laughs.  He is tired and he is very gray and the day was long.  But the mockingbird singing like baby birds brings child-like wonder to his face. “Do you hear that, now she’s doing a song bird.”  And whatever has transpired in his day in the before this moment, pales beside this moment of wonderment.  Of resting on birdsong.  And she is so loud.  And she is so very determined.  I listen to him listen to her.  I study his face while I listen to her.  He says it may be a male showing off for a female.  And the romantic in me measures the sweetness of how invested he is, this bird, in this moment.  How such volume can come from a creature so small.  And it is oh so simply sweet and then its over.

It is quiet and he is worn out, both bird and man.  I wait hoping this is a much needed break and that he will return with the second act of his beautiful performance.  But it is night and he is tired and he has run through at least once, all that he knows and delivered it, performed it, with all of his power and might.

But he reminds me that we will have all summer with this mockingbird.  I am grateful.  We will park our tired selves by the cracked open window again and wait to be sweetly entertained by one who pours out his gifts and talents with reckless abandon. And the baby bird imitation will always be my favorite.

And I am grateful for this child who took big steps this week farther into his life as a man.  And for his interview next week.  God knows His plan and it will be good and it is a gift to watch Him match up a career to a young man’s heart.  A man who will need provision for a wife and children in the one day off.  Who loves home and nesting like the male mockingbird.  Singing loud after life, about life. Always turning up the story of life with passion on the dial of life.

I see a child sweetly nurturing friendships after desert times, and dry seasons in this arena of his world stage.  Broken and busted up times in the past, healed with the sweet balm of good, kind friends.  Walking in all happy strided after the fellowship.  Calling to report that he’s just being with them.  Learning how to be a good one and invest in others.  Bending an ear to the need of them.  His little tribe, his little community.  Grateful.

Grateful for washing dishes with friends after a luncheon celebrating a community bible study.  The drudgery of dishes and sink and wet sloppy washing can take on new meaning when there is community and there has been such sweet laughter and roasting in love.  Flowers, and fellowship and food and celebration are justified rejoicing–we know God and His word deeper and different after this season of study, of community dwelling in His word.

Today will write her story as she unfolds.  And it will be good.  With its surprise, and mystery and delight.  Its twists its turns, its delightful birdsong.

The bellowing out and proclaiming will be done tonight, looking back on today. The nose pressed  against the glass, looking hard at this today. And counting gifts………

Listening for the birdsong, listening for the JOY. Wrapping it in a word of gratitude.