Tag: Family

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.

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.

The Simple

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

When Hurt and Pain and Death play hopscotch on your very life road,

The heart circles all pumping blood flow back to the vital. To the very critical need.

The life blood, crimson seeks to triage the need and it deems it is the need to see the simple.

Simply see the joy in the simplest. Of gifts, of life.

To circle back and gather round, all the heart beats round the life givers. Life enhancers.

A word, The Word, bread, The bread. Feasting on the written, feasting on the life bread. Feasting on His gifts.

A  Feast is pumpkin bread grilled cheese, say grace around the simple. Feasting senses on the just enough. Not more. Satisfied by simple.

All bells and whistles, accoutrement and clutter cast off for the bare boned simple.

Allowing simple to sing her song of lovely, sing her song of living. She leads us to her simple stream, a trickle flow enough.

Return of beet red male bird at the feeder, he who fights with self on glass. He beautiful. He a one man performance teetering eating seed. Act One, a simple show on window.

Art, the paint. Art, the song. Art, the page. Art, the wiper of the dusty dirty off the soiled  soul places. Art, the interchange of actors in the play of living.

Art, life’s extravagant simple embellishment. Art, worship. Art, creative man gifts back to Creator God. Simply seeing art in all.

And love in all its four greek meaning forms, the greatest though of these simply love.

He serves in small trips to the market, long trips eight hours round trip to provide for us.She speaks simple I love you. He calls, he smiles, he thanks.

All wrapped up in beautiful family love. Love, simple poetry.

And simple takes the chalk out of the hand of that hopscotch threesome on the life-road,

Writes instead we love here, love lives here, cursive on the black asphalt.

So all who drive, see simply, love.

See simple living, savoring of the gifts. Breathing deep the fullness, hope-filled breathes.

Simple  signs her name on the last line of the day, it is beautiful, isimply beautiful.

An alleluia chorus on an amen day.

This is Day 11. I am joining 31 Dayers at The Nester’s place for this series. 

And I am linking with Michelle.

 

When The Tail Wags The Dog (Or When Things Get A Little Crazy)

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 9 Comments

Today is Day 10 and it is not your imagination that there was no Day 9. So this is 9-10 and now you know why today’s word is CRAZY.

[This post is a part of a continuing series on Wonderful Words.
 The Nester is hosting this 31 Day Series. And I am joining Sarah Mae for her What I Know Now Series with this post.)

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Did I hear that a time or two. Or am I mixing metaphors. Oh, joy. And there is this. Too many balls in the air and irons in the fire and does this sound familiar? There is this indicator, you text a text for a child to a friend and question marks come back. And you back track. And you cover your tracks. And you feel for all the world that the tail is wagging the dog.

And all the crazy making feels like disobedience to you. Because haven’t you learned this lesson so many times before,to breathe. And pause. And, those wide margins. Those wide margins of white space and calm and peace and what happened to that and those.

And though the list is long of people in pain and hurt and need, don’t you know. You is me. Me is I. Sometimes we write a corrective word to self and think there may be one who knows this too.

All the eyes on the stove are on high, the flame red- hot, the flame dances high, taunting its orange red and none can be reduced to simmer.

How the list is long and day is short, but the day is not because He designed the day and His day is the perfect length.

How the balls in the air are bricks and if you drop even one the consequences are dire, dropping the other shoe would be softer and less painful, but you don’t want to drop anything.

When it all seems pressing and all feels pressing and the needs are all great and you want to say get in line take a number. But all you want to do is write. And writing soothes the soul like a balm. And writing feels obedient and after that it all may be okay. After the obedience, all will simmer down and the boiling hot places may cool off.

And the woman-child-sister-wife- mother-friend-church- volunteer-child sponsor- mother- of- college -bound -child- soccer- player- volleyball- player- grown -child -girlfriend- has- an- interview-today hat is heavy like lead. And its all good, except for the parent  in excrutiating pain. And the parent, the caregiver is struggling too.

And one more hyphen may cut you in two like a blade. And the mail needs to be opened and sorted, so the CEO of the house needs to sit at her desk. And the hyphens keep coming.

But isn’t that when the full armor of God goes on.

Isn’t that when you yoke up with Him.

Isn’t that when you breathe a little deeper and sigh. Sigh deeper, longer.

And remember what you knew all along.

That chaos isn’t of Him. And that He doesn’t spin you like a top and chase you like a hungry wolf. That He is Gentle and He is Peace-Maker.

And your church is turning upside down too. Wasn’t that suppose to be a plumb line for stability. Wasn’t that The Rock. And there is uncertainty in her future. And you will welcome on Sunday but your heart is heavy at the uncertainty. But its not. Because really, He knows. He knows.

That this was never Him and this is never how He loves. He intended the dog to wag his own tail. His plan was for order.

So this is when you lay it down and lay it aside and say no thank you to crazy, I want no part. Knock on someone else’s door. Or better yet. Leave us all alone, Crazy. Leave us all alone.

And there’s a debate or two and an election and more uncertainty. But is it really? He is Certain. He is Sure. He is Reigning.

So this is when you say, nice try Tricky One. I want no part of that.

I remember whose I am and who I am in Him and send crazy-making out the door, the back door. No place of honor through the front door. That is reserved for the King. Who is welcome anytime, on any day, to order and restore.

He is the Restorer of Order.

And thankfully, the dog can way his own tail.

And she can breathe again.

So she goes looking for the dull, the mundane, the white noise places in her life and gives Him all her balls.

After all, He has always been a better juggler than she.

He holds the universe. Juggles the planets, moon and stars.

So  she  simply holds his hand. And pets the dog who wags his  very own tail.

Joining Emily, Ann, Duane, Jennifer, Eileen , Mary Beth, Joy and The Nester