Tag: Grace

The Path Of Hope

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 14 Comments

{Joing in with Lisa-Jo at The Gypsy Mama for Five-Minute Fridays where we write for 5 minutes on a one word prompt. Today’s word is Path. Go}

Won’t you join me too on my Facebook Page for wynnegraceappears. We can discuss this life of Grace and share inspirations we both discover on this path. The one right there marked at the end of your ten piggies. …..wishing His grace, wynnegraceappears.

And I am over there on the wings of Twitter @graceappears. We can connect there too. It would be so lovely.

I used to think the one ahead was the more important one.

But now I think more and more it is the one behind me.

The one that takes bends and curves, to the right, dips and sways like the hand of the Peach Queen in the fourth of July parade deep down South.

The one that tells the rich story, thick layers like tree bark rough.

Its the one she sees when she turns and looks back over her shoulder, and casts her glance to look at the what before. The girl with the life of over a half century. The girl who is a woman and mother of children.

She looks down at the dark rich soil, wet with tears, the ones of laughter and of the pain. She digs her toes in, digs her heels in,  digs her heart in and writes words of Hope in the path of rich dark soil.

And knows this is the one. Rich in life’s story, the one behind. The path that shapes the one ahead. The one that feeds like a stream into the one for tomorrow.

The path that lead to this day, this point, is the one with step by step footprints that tell loud and clear of the Life of the girl. The woman.

No sweeping off or dusting off the path.

But looking steely-eyed ahead at the one marked with Hope and Joy.

The path for tomorrow cries out “Come walk out all your tomorrows in His Grace and Love on me.”

And take all the bends and turns, twists and turns with Hope.

wynnegraceappears

STOP

Art Bus Project- Brooklyn Phlogg, Chapter One

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

Chapter One (sort of) – A Brooklyn Phlogg

Don’t cry becuase it’s over, smile because it happened”– Dr. Seuss


If things start happening, don’t worry, don’t stew, just go right along and you’ll start happening too.– Dr. Seuss


Eyes To See Like He Sees

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 10 Comments

{Today I am linking up over at Lisa Jo’s for some fun on Friday. Today we are writing for five minutes on the word prompt see. No editing, no over thinking, just writing for five minutes. Come see what the fun is all about at The Gypsy Mama’s blog. Ready, go, write}

I see him there.  Yes right there working through this preparation to go off to camp, no its not off to war.  We had dinner with a friend this week, he’d just gotten that call.  You know the dreaded one, his nephew had just been shot in Afghanistan.  No its not that.

The eyes of my head see the mess, the struggle, the confusion, the ADHD still there tangling up the processes of life.

Messy messes and turmoil.  No organization.  Upheaval.  The eyes of my heart know that it is this.

I have seen this for years now, how it challenges and entangles and strangles.

Today he leaves for camp and I will see through blurry eyes a child soon to be a man, in months now, walking out the door to be a counselor, to help others.

And I know that when he walks back in the door I will see transformation and change. I will see maturity and new talents and experiences that have jumped on his back for the trip back home.

But more than anything while he is gone, I want to learn to see him through the eyes of God.  To see past and through and deeply down into his inner places of hurt and pain, the way God sees.

Kingdom eyes please give me the eyes to see like You.

STOP

The Waiting Rock

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

I am a child.  It is one of my first memories.  I sit on a rock, the one I have named, the waiting rock.

Out in the country at my grandparents home, I am four waiting for my parents to pick me up after a visit.  It is fuzzy, but clear.  It is vague, but sharp.  It is a place I return to when I go back as far as I can. I am calm, expectant, a waiting child, knowing on this rock that my father will come.

A child like name, a simple place. A rock.

I am  on this massive stone which serves as a holding station for my expectant heart.  And I am collecting acorns which I will sell to my father when he arrives to pick me up.

I have busied my heart and my hands.  And dreamed up in my four year old mind, this acorn-selling venture.

A little distraction to ease the wait.

And now past the mid-century mark in years I struggle with waiting.  Sitting in a place of uncertainty, waiting for understanding.  Murky confusion settles in like dense fog on the mountain side where yellow blinking caution lights signal be alert.

I have been here many times before. It is familiar in its pain.  In my spirit I feel I should have earned knowledge, this waiting shouldn’t seem so challenging. I studied  like a student, text book in hand.  My teacher is Unknowing.  My lessons are tough but served in love.  Wait and see.  Be still and know.  Rest in confidence.  I should be further along when the waiting comes and lays heavy, rolls all cement mixer over my Hope and my dreamy childish plans.

I start over and over in a numbing place of pain, needing to re-learn and remediate the lesson, a big one to trust what will come.  To know it will be good.  To rest in the long corridors where the painful echo reverberates…..wait, child.  Wait. And wait some more.

These seasons marked with uncertainty about time-frames, periods of wonder  and questionning bear down hard on the heart.  This is a familiar place.  A seemingly endless black tunnel of dark wait during times of infertility when my lesson plan was Trust.  I learned. I saw the wait produces good. Shaping and molding and softening happen in these periods of unknowing.  A yellow light, not go green or stop red, but yellow signals me to calm down and behold the uncertainy.

The rock is not the waiting rock of my childhood.  It is not benign, offering a soft seat for a child.  The rock is hard and it hurts.  The waiting rock of today is a seat of confusion.

And the child, the one of God must lean on the Rock.  Must cry out to the Rock under which there is protection in the funnel cloud storm of wait.  The touchdown destructive storm of uncertainty that the flesh feels fiercy in the turmoil.  The rock of today is the Rock of Ages.

It is the one so sturdy and strong that nothing can tear it down and under which everyone can find protection.

But the heart and the hands look for acorns to gather. And a loving father to bend down and buy the trinkets that the child lays out in a row to offer.

He does this.  He offers to gather up the crumbs. He is willing  and even longing to wipe the tear. He seeks to  gather up the child in love and bring her to Himself. He gathers up the hurting waiting. He casts a shadow of protection and Security in the hurricane force winds of hurt.

Shelters in His embrace.  Extends a rock of certainty, his  very Love .Offers Hope even now, even here in unknowing.

His Love in the waiting is all that is needed. The weak, the meek and the broken find shelter in the storm of the wait.

And can stay hidden in His love until it passes, when it passes and after it passes.

The lessons of waiting.  They are hard.  I am weak.  But he is strong.

I am a child. Sitting on His lap. He is my waiting rock.  He is The Waiting Rock.

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