Tag: Creator God

A Letter To My Children

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 10 Comments

Dear Kiddo’s,

Since Mother’s Day is coming up in a few days, I thought I would write YOU all a love letter.  I am going to color outside the lines a little bit and make it a love letter, a list of what I want to do to be a better mom, and a list of why you guys are the best kids in the world. There will be some randomness thrown in so that you all know I’ve put my random mark on it, i.e. its not from just any mom, but your mom. (You grammar police go away.  I know I used random twice for emphasis).

So here goes…

You three are really something.  You always have been.  Something beautiful, unique and embedded in my flesh and on the walls of my heart.  (No comments from you three like oh mom you are getting all mushy on us.)  That’s why its my letter.  I get to write my feelings on paper.  But oh what subject matter I have been given. It started with this.  Just Dad and I.  But I have already explained all of that to ya’ll.

And all the moments.The mini-moments and micro moments  and humongous moments have been distinctly ours because we are us.  We are a tribe of five.  All the learning and loving could have only  happened as it did  because of you three.  You restored hope, you were miracles, you increased faith. Each step you took, moment you breathed, emotion you expressed poured you onto the canvas creating this painting . This art. This that is our lives.  Abstract, bold, colorful, screaming love and shouting grace.

Each one of you getting up and doing family every day. Bringing and offering and using  your unique gifts. I chase you around with the eyes of my heart trying to clumsily love you.  I stumble and fall and trip up pressing in a truth and repeating my mistakes, repeating my love. Crying out love.  Doing parenting sloppily, in my less-than-perfectness.  Radically receiving your love every day.   You give it so gentle.  You give it so perfect.  Because you all are life givers and life restorers. You look like miracles to my heart.  You walk out His love and your father’s love and my love with flesh and bones.

And lately I follow you around with my camera.  You shout and hide and say enough is enough.  But capturing you all doing life, eating it up with your passion is now my passion. Swallowing it whole without chewing and running down the good race with endurance like an athlete is my desire. Your lives are  something that should be saved and captured. To hold dear.  And hold on to. For more than split seconds. You are my prize. You are my glory.  You are gift.  You are so much more than I can clumsily say.

If I could make perfect sweet tea, I’d make it by the gallon to show my love.  If I could bite my tongue and never raise my voice to show my love I would.  If I could laugh and smile at every small thing you say and do to show you how much I adore you three I would.  If every favorite shirt and uniform were always clean and folded, all socks matched and every note signed pronto I would give you that. But I cannot go back, can’t bottle up the yuck.  Can’t re-do the what I did.  Can’t wash the dirty down the drain with the dishwater.  It’s just there in the mix, all mixed up with the love and the good intentions to love better and more.

So here is the part where I thank you for your grace, because you give it out and show it well.  Though you learned from one who was flawed and broken and full of sin.  Wrecklessly  extending grace, upon grace.  And tender Mercy.  Like He does.  You all do that well.

And this is the part where I ask forgiveness for my shortcomings and tell you how sorry I am.  And this is where I tell you a funny thing so you will laugh. Because you know I love Pooh and if you don’t you should.  And now you know if you didn’t.

“Oh Tigger where are your manners? I don’t know but I bet they’re having more fun than I am.” (A.A. Milne) There were those hundreds of times I reminded and prodded and begged and browbeat.  You know they are important.  I will never stop telling you so.

I know a wise young girl who told me once, “smile and laugh and we will smile and laugh with you.”  She just happens to be my own precious one.  So wise beyond her years. I can’t wait to do more of that.

I wish some things, in my memory and in my heart.  I wish that I could read “Goodnight Moon” a billion more times, while I breathe in your sweet smells and feel you cozied in on my lap.  You can turn the pages.  I want to dive into “The Very Hungary Caterpillar.’ We can swim from page to page together, with you saying the words in tandem with my breathe. We can read— together, we can go slow there is no need to rush. I will never again say those painful words, can you wait a minute. Because you shouldn’t.  You should have the all of me.

I hope you heard the parts about kindness, honesty, faithfulness, gentleness and doing your best.  I hope you heard me teaching you this when it sounded like preaching.  And when I wasn’t any of these things myself.

When I told you not to take the path of least resistance and mediocre was not acceptable. I hope you know that somewhere hidden in all that was a sliver like the new moon of love.  Me loving you into all good things.  Me wanting for you, all the best.

And now you would say that I didn’t follow the outline. And like when I say grace over the food, its just way too long.  You would say now that it’s time to wind down even though I have a trillion more things to say.  And no, I am not exaggerating.

I didn’t get a chance to say one more time to make good decisions, wear your seat belt, and all my other annoying one liners.

But since it is my letter and I am in control of the keyboard and little else, I can say that you amaze me, you teach me, and that my love for you is deep and wide.  It can never be like His love for us.  He loves you more.  And you should remember that if little else of this mother’s day letter to you, my children. My gifts from the giver of awesome gifts.

You delight, you surprise, you amaze me in so many ways.  This lover of words is out of them now. And to mothers everywhere I say love hard, love deep, love well.  And welcome with outstretched arms the surprises, the tomorrows and the right around the corner moments.

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.

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.