Tag: Healing

A Tree Can Show The Way, If We Look Her Way

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 9 Comments

With division, warring strife
So real and raw through all the world
Penetrating open cracks, the wounds
I want to graft as trees
A heart for sweet surrender,
A spirit found in peaceful living.
Oh Lord, let me go around
In love
Like barked beauty rooted fastened strong.
And leave room for harmony
Like the mighty ones
Whose roots
Hold fast, but trunks and limbs
Bow down in love.
And a tree can teach me this
Love and show me how to bend
Not break
If I only look her way.
Grafting peace
Cutting deep
Bending low in love.
Wrapping as the Cross
All the way around
The struggle and the pain
In a sweet embrace.

Joining Ann counting quiet gifts here, but on my writer’s facebook page moment by moment, this glorious Thanksgiving week.

And with Laura.

Delight, Refresh and Restore – A Trio of Words For Healing

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

Today is Day 24. The collective can be found here by taking a hop, skip and a jump over here.

Yesterday I wrote of the words standing in line with their resumes.

It is as if the words have their own hourglass tipped over measuring the days left in their series. They watch the time slipping like particles of sand and they shout choose me, choose me.

So I do. I choose to bundle some words, package them in prose, let them out to breathe and serve. To  pack them up and let them run with me,  play,  escape. To shout and dance. Release and restore.

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

Twyla Thorp

So I pick and I bundle them  like fresh cuts from the Fresh Market and plop them down to both soak and suck the water through their straws. And to  give life-affirming beauty to the eyes. Even one. And especially His. Because there will be a day for audience. It has been planned since the beginning.

There is a struggle in focusing on the audience of One. Of writing and art making just for Him and Him alone. The day is coming soon for audience.

But today. For today I give the day to delight.

For delighting in the simple. Delighting in the restorative refreshing power of soaking in the absolute remarkable of a single moment.

A memory blazed in blues.

It is worthy of delighting under the microscope.

Viewing it closely, squinting intensely at the art. Peering at it all, while seeking the seemingly unseen beauty in everything.

I see anew when my soul is delighted by beauty. By a walk by the water, splashing childlike, dodging the surf. Seeking the simple in the treasures washed up on shore, strewn like confetti after the ocean threw a party for the world.

I am restored when my eyes wrap around driftwood masterpieces anchored in sand for study. I stand. Feet planted, toes wriggling, in October sand. Bleached and beautiful.Looking at the bleached woods, worn smooth , its limbs of death.

It was waiting to meet me this day, this wood. To meet me in the salt and sea.

With my child, grown, a man – by my side. WIth the dogs laughing, pink tongues wagging, they swim out and back in. Each a furry metaphor for living, the old the young, the brave, the timid. The energetic and the weary.

All in a dance on the shore. All in a restorative time by the blue blending, water with sky, sky with water, inseparable blues, a melange and mix of azures and others.

So the young call me out, and build me up and restore my hope in possibility and longing for living. And we laughed.

And all looks hopeful and healed at the art gallery by the sea.

My soul delights in the beauty of family and blue looks as blue should look. Strong and beautiful, a backdrop, a canvas for the art of simply living.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

—Thomas Merton

Linking with Ann at A Holy Experience dot com and Michelle. And continuing on the 31 Day journey at The Nester.

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Story: Remembering, Praying, Healing

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 17 Comments

“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the intrument as one goes on.” Samuel Butler from Chapter 10 “The Life of a Storyteller” from Annette Simmons “The Story Factor.”

She cuts hair and her words cut my heart.  And I listen to the story. Someone has released a colony of bees in my insides, the buzz and sting compete with the sweet honey making in one stirring moment.

I hear the happy. But I process the other.

There is a man who has walked this earth for close to a half of a century. He just connected with his birthmother. Worlds and emotions collide. And the telling is a beautiful mix of God and man and life and living.

In a flash of living a man with a mother now has two.

Hearts and life and souls and God are on a course moving foward and the lines of grace and redemption criss cross like the tracks of zipper teeth.

A forward moving narrative.

She cuts my hair. Her words cut my heart. Because I have a child with a birth mother. And so I release the possibilities of circumstance and discovery in his life. She cuts my hair and the story cuts deep my momma heart.

And the story is being written.

There are chapters and pages and lines with hurt, in my own. Wet smears the line of the ink still wet. Dries in a blur. But dries nonetheless. And the pages stay in. There is no ripping or removal. It all stays in.

The beautiful bound spine can contain both and.

Remember,  praying, while healing.

And the violin solo, played in public only gets more beautiful with each note, with grace like resin on the squeeky bow.  With grace like resin smoothing the out of tune and the parts that sound off key, seeming beautiful in the learning of the living. Seeming beautiful in the practice done on the life stage. There is no rehearsal.

And yesterday’s story and today’s story are bound in guilded gold, saved and savored, while remembering, praying and healing.

The same salt that enhances flavor and adds to, can rub in a wound, or help make an icy road passable. Or bring a non-believer toward a Jesus Follower questionning the beautiful, questionning the story, seeking to know more.

Or in excess make us thirsty, with a thirst that feels unquenchable in the longing for wet to hit the parched, the dry, the brittle.

Releasing the thoughts of my adoptive son seeking his birth mother in a one day page of his story, and hoping that when that chapter is written on our pages, we will pray, while remembering, pray while healing, and pray in our  forward living.

And God,  tosses mercy, like coins in the velvet-lined violin case of the sidewalk city  soloist. His gentle affirmation, His constant love. He listens in love. And finds the story of the soloist, beautiful. And sings the chorus of grace.

Amazing, how sweet, it saves.

Linking with Heather and Jen and Eileen and Jennifer, Duane, and Ann. As well as Courtney

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Broken: Simply A Story of Hope

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 21 Comments

Something in my world  was broken.

Injured. Wounded. Hurting.

It looked as though all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put something back together again.

Broken beyond repair.

To many. To most. To the world.

Hope was fading.Hope was dim. There were days when hope was gone.

And hearts were hurting, aching, bruised. Hearts were busted. Tears ran down the cheeks of man.

They ran hard, they ran fast, and they ran wet.

And they flowed, these tears.They flowed long. They flowed steady.

They delivered the sting of grief to the puddled places of the pained.

And the words flew all around.

While the sting of pain seared red hot mad.

Hope  slipped away. Despair settled in.

For some, hope was no more.

Until God.

Until God the Healer breathed His healing breath into the brokeness.

Until God the restorer of Hope touched the broken.

The hard is made soft. The tough turns to tender. The Light shines in the dark.

The broken begins to show signs of healing where Light pierces the charcoal black,
the pit dark, the ebony shadows of hurt.

God’s touch brings new life. Restores the busted.

Delivers change. Re-builds hope. And rebuilds lives.

Restores souls.

And God writes the  change. He writes the story new. He bold proclaims the title changed, to one with Him, of Hope.

With each new page, Healing stands up and stands strong in the middle of the mess.

With each new day, Love pours out and finds a home in the heart of the hurting.

And broken mends at the hands of the Healer. And pain fades dim while Hope shines bright.

And man looks on and says, this is miracle to me. This is  miracle to us.

The story is told anew by The Author of Hope.

An ending is rewritten, for today. An ending of Hope and Healing.

And man stands in awe of God. A witness to His  work of love in lives, in hearts, in hurt.

And the King of Kings puts all the broken pieces back together again.

And man tells of this change. And of these things. And speaks of the work of The Re-creator. In his life. And in his heart.

While Hope grows strong and steady.

Where hope was lost, new songs  now sing from the lips of man.

The eyes see, anew. The ears  hear anew. The heart is witness. And will never forget.

The Broken fades and the Healing continues.

The wounded reach out to the Healer and hang on, with Hope, in Love.

Tears dry. And happy has a place to be. And Joy moves in and finds her home among the hearts of the once-broken.

And God delights in the renewal of the Hope, of the Love, of the Wounded Heart.

He binds up the broken, with restorative Love.

He wipes the eye and clears the tear again and again.

And the Human heart sees. And the lips give Praise. And tell. And show.

And the life tells its new story.

Of God, of Love and of the Healed.

Lives point to  Him who  is Good and Him who is Great.

And the Broken are mended in love, once again.

And the lips and the words and the lives tell of this.

And the restored cannot keep quiet. And the healed cannot sit silent.

So they tell of the Editor and Author of Grace.

That God’s Grace and Love poured out into the cracks and healed the broken shards.

And  lives were restored, with God Love.

To the Healer be Glory. Forever and ever Amen.

The beginning. NOT the end.

Because He writes these stories for all.

And the power in the telling of one gives Hope to the stories of many.

What’s your story of God’s restored Hope and Healing? 

Linking with Duane and Jennifer and Ann today.