Tag: Children

Someday Is One Day Is Today

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the word of Christ – the Message – have the run of the house. — Colossians 3:17

One day the sun will hit the Magnolia leaves just right so that there are glistening greens of every shade and hue, even Moss and Hunter and Crayola’s New Spring Green, all in one tree.

And one day the house in its quiet will hum like a cat’s purr and the still will sound like a beautiful peace covered it in a blanket of goose down insulation. For a moment, cocooned in its own safe place, away from all the world.

And birds will chirp on repeat in their repetitive reset rhythmic cadence like a gentle alarm clock belonging to the Earth itself.

Children will grow while they are sleeping in the quiet space between childhood and adulthood and Thanksgiving and Christmas, dreaming of white lights and decorated homes with roaring crackling orange flamed dancers over the cut wood sturdy logs.

And she will know, that the one day she prayed for and hoped for is actually this day, this today, the day that the Lord has made. And that all the dreaming can now stop because someday sits curled up like contented milk filled baby with sweet bowed lip on the lap of her today.

And its all more than just okay.

Its simple. Its beautiful. And five will stand shoulder to shoulder in church and thank the One who gave her today.

Today.

Joining Deidra and her beautiful Sunday community.

Day 19 – Peace In A Sea of Change

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 10 Comments

Today is Day 19.

{Writer’s Prologue – Strangely my spirit grieves the two/third’s way through, my math mind is icky, or so, I find myself in this Series. It has brought so much richness and fullness and I release to God the Day 32 which is to say the first day without the Series guiding and shaping.  And your eyes and heart here provide me a richness of community. If you would like to receive posts via email click here. The future is full of endless possibility and words beyond this series. Thanks for being a Pilgrim with me. ]

There is what is called the “cushion of the sea.” Down beneath the surface…there is a part of the sea that is never stirred. The peace of God is that eternal calm which, like the cushion of the sea, lies far too deep down to be reached by any external trouble or disturbance…
Dr. A.T. Pierson

Do you know this place where change looms all around. And it feels like sediment stirred up from ocean’s floor. You seek the sieve to filter what of it is good. Perhaps its all. Good. From the God of Good.

Can you hear the seas roar loud like Lion’s roar, a strong bold change.

We sit for long sessions now, The Patient One and I. And there is so much for us it takes my breath away. So much for us to discuss and navigate through. This ship, our lives.

Our church is experiencing deep and wide and profound change. We may make one too as it makes its, change. I walk around with a grievous spirit. And fear that I will weep on Sunday as I serve communion at the rail. I look in eyes that experience a ripping kind of change. Division and confusion. We vote on change.

In our church in days, in our country in days.

And colleges will vote on whether my child comes to them or not. Or maybe its a sweeping decision of a committee of one at these institutions.

But God knows. And he loves. And we desperately seek His will in a sea of change.

For us it may involve boxes and change of address forms, but it may not. That is the way of releasing all to Him. That is the way of abandoning plans while seeking His.

There may be changes in schools and there is a deep desire to seek this path He has for the middle one, the one who looks at schools for art and schools based on Military dictums or simply coming out into the world.

It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean revel in Him.

The Message, Philippians 4:4-7

And maybe peace in a sea of change is handing him the oars, the paddle, the motor, any steering mechanism on board and drifting.

Drifting on the swells of trust into His arms.

And praying for Him to guide and steer and love us.

Into oceans of change. While we release and abandon our compasses, our course.

He the Map Holder. We fall into His arms.

And I weep.

My ocean is one of tears. May they be salted with sweet and savory knowing that His ways roar with excellence and perfection.

And that the cross is squarely in our cross-hairs, our plumb line His horizon.

{Writer’s postscipt- Thankful for a community of tear-catchers. You know who you are}

To read the collective click here. Today is Day 19. I weep. Todays word is Change.

Linking this post with my friend, Shelly at Redemption’s Beauty. She is writing for 31 Days. Can you hear the release in the air.

Redemption Outside The Shadows – A Mighty Fortress

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 12 Comments

Today is Day 18.

There is a book written by a friend.

Her story is her’s but she is brave and bold in her sharing. Her desire for other’s healing.

Her heart longs for a collective healing from the disease that pounces and robs.

As I work my way through the book, its a work of the heart. I think of the spokes of my life’s wheel, the intersection. The place where broken shows up in our lives.

How the spokes radiate out and poke holes in wholeness. Push through places, bruising flesh, heart, soul, and mind. Our life.

This is a labor of love, this working my way through her words, treading lightly and gently through a fragile piece such as this.

You know that God worked redemptively and tenderly through the hearts of these. So you rush not in, to speak. No quietly with a reverence.

You nod and bend and bow to the boldness. You open up a burning heart for truth.  Hungry for healing. Searching. Longing. Looking for places that reveal God in and all around.

And I am seeing,

How her story is uniquely her’s. It is.

How it intersects my life. It does.

What I am left celebrating in her story. So very much.

I have not completed winding my eyes through the lines of her heart and life, laid out in hope in the telling. I know much from her beautiful book trailer, other’s words about her words, the proclamations of healing on her web sight and on her blog.

A story goes out and forth in its telling, testifiying of a work, magnifying the redemption and hope. Doubles down and  carries on its back those who tell of the wounded’s hope.

Like the pointed metal spokes that roll on rim of traveling tire time, the pointed tips of Emily’s time in shackles rolls right over where we’ve treaded, my co-travellers. Those I love.

I know of  gaunt and rail thin, pushing back from food, leaning in to porcelain rims, throwing out a single calorie breath mint to forgo the stomach-bound disc.

And souls locked in weak weary battle of control. Left wounded, weak. Weary.

But all that’s hurt and broken diminishes in the Light of honest, light of the telling.

Where story walks out new life, while scars are healing, scars close up at the hands of The Great Physician.

My daughter is almost 17 and I look questioning into the eyes and onto the bones and flesh of her friends. Speaking into her beauty, inside and out. Loving the wholeness and relationship with nourishment I see.

She is passionate about life and living and her hopes and dreams for the future. She has not known a weakened war of wills with disease or addiction. But a mother watches and prays and hopes for wholeness in her child of mind, body, and spirit.

The happy faces beam over greens and fruits, protein, sweets, a balance of all the goodness  He provides. The energy drawn from food sources, from the good gifts He gives for nourishment.

And I know the weak and weary from cutting off the calories, reducing down the intake to a slow and painful walk on barely enough. The damage unkown exactly to me. I could ask Emily, ask  a doctor, ask the authorities.

I want my daughter mighty and strong. I want the highest and best for her life.

I long for her to see the beauty and completeness in what God created in her,  formed in her woman flesh. That taking it down and whittling it away to thin frail gaunt is not a life goal. Not an elusive idol, to be rail thin and shadowy.

We women can go and do much in a day, there is loving and living for us, mighty work. God work. God ordained.

Emily is a beautiful friend. I want her words to go forth, her words, a healing ministry.

I long for her words to be available in church libraries, school libraries, counselor’s shelves, on the bedside table of hurting women and teens.

Yesterday Duane wrote a piece you really do not want to miss at his place and at Emily’s
blog. It’s here. It involves the pain and struggle of a teenage boy.

As a mother of boys , I long for healthy body images for them too. Read Emily’s words here:

Chasing Silhouettes is intended to be a spiritual guide to help families redefine body image, as well as to offer insight for caregivers into the minds and hearts of those battling an eating disorder. As someone who battled  anorexia nervosa, both as a child and as an adult, I am here to offer you hope. Our young people, our loved ones, do not have to be defeated by the lies that permeate culture today. But in order to defeat these lies, we need to understand truth.


Please leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for two copies of Emily’s book. You may choose to comment on why you’d like a copy, or simply speak to what’s on your heart on this subject. I will email the winner by week’s end.

To purchase Emily’s book go HERE

Or Here or to Chasing Silhouettes web sight to read more.

From the web sight, read these words of hope:

Chasing Silhouettes: How to Help A Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder is the story of a broken family that finds healing through an eating disorder. It’s the story of how even good Christians need redemption, and how eating disorders pervade all homes- even the seemingly perfect ones.

A unique resource, it addresses the whole of the illness: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, providing shocking insight into the disordered eater’s mind that no other book will offer.

This is Day 18 in a 31 Day Series. To read the collective go here or the 31 Day Series page at the top of the page. Today’s word is Healing.

If you’d like to follow all posts in the series and those published at wynnegraceappears, subscribe to follow by email or in a reader. I post daily in October and several times a week in other months.

Its a JOY to think of having you along on the journey.

Joining Michelle at Thought Provoking Thursdays.

Fear

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 21 Comments

Today is Day 16. The collective can be read here. I am joining The Nester for the remainder of October with other 31 Dayer’s .

I don’t even want for fear to have its own title, headline, place in bold, upfront in this series.

I want nothing to do with fear, for I have given enough space and time and energy to it already.

Writing about it is even painful.

But isn’t that giving in. Letting fear sap energy. Tremble knees. Shake confidence. Rattle senses. Muss up the mind.

Isn’t fear numbing and paralyzing when it gets any room in a life.

It is greedy and boorish. Demanding and a bully. It saps Joy, drains the good, pulls the plug and lets hope rush down the drain like dirty bath water filled with bubbles of maybe.

Just maybe writing of fear, restores Hope. Writing of fear and meeting it head on pushes it back, meets it head on, faces it down.

Fear has erased days and bound me up. It has named seasons. It has defined seasons of  unknowing, of infertility and waiting years to add children to a family, by birth and adoption.

It has crippled in seasons of waiting for a husband to return, after a season of separation, marked the days dark and long. Tried to wrangle all life out of the days of healing, to rename me the one whose husband left. Fear says failure and brokenness rather than Hope and Security.

Fear takes the good plans of God for redemption and restoration and leaves you frozen in unknowing, hopeless, hope dwindling and the self demanding an answer now, the self commanding and controlling outcomes.

Fear robs the days left with a child at home, when the self chooses to demand to know the future, and it demands to know it will be labeled good by the world’s standards, good by the description of the self-focused soul.

Fear teams up with frozen and frightened and steals the hours and days of a life with a power that is unbroken, but for Jesus.

When healing and His redemptive love restore a Hopeful, Trusting Heart, the fire of fear is doused and diminished. And the pile of ashes is blown anew with a Spirit of new-life and radiant restorative re-birth.

The days of waiting on children’s birth, marriages restored and even financial struggles to end are marked by a wholeness from leaning hard into Him and softening the stone-cold places that fear and trembling have made tough as a frozen tundra. Made life-less.

Anxiety and worry have fueled enough days, with OCD re-routing a life ,bound it up in chains, set the heart on a new gear worthy of a NASCAR winner. Chased me round and round,  like a pack of rapid dogs. Spun me round, dizzy, like a child on a playground whirly gig until nausea and fatigue take the weary spirit to the ground.

Fear fuels the tongue and raises the volume and chooses the words. Takes control when control feels lost. Shouts orders demands her way. Raises the blood pressure, raises the stakes, reddens the face, and raises the roof.

Who wins when fear is in charge and shouts at the top of her fearful lungs and blow her battle weary bugle – CHARGE. Who falls in line, follows? Who feels called in love to go her way. There are no winners when fear leads  the weary into the unknown places.

And slips into the night, commands the dreams and rattles the sleepy, gets you up to pace the floors at night, creaking lonely in the midnight hour, draining the life from a tomorrow. Re-naming the days to come as weary and hopeless.

Fear gets the title here. Fear gets a word in this 31 Day Series of Words, but only because Fear gives Hope an opportunity to do her best work, to come in and breathe a breath of new living and redemptions glory.

The reigns are dropped, the bridled grip on frozen frightened doubt and worry loosed, and Hope and Trust ride off on wings of eagles, bound for a life lived with glimpses of the glory of heaven.

Today I am joining the lovely Nacole at Six In The Sticks. She is writing on fear for 31 Days at The Nester. You can read more of her hope-filled writing there. And I will not let fear cripple my attempts to workout the technical glitches to guest post there. Still Hopeful. See you at Nacole’s, but still here.

Joining Eileen and Jen and Emily

Thank you for adding to the conversation by adding your beautiful words to the discussion. You bring so much more when your words are apart of this community.