A Book of Hope- Day 3

Oh you are here. That’s so lovely. Shoulder to shoulder on this 31 Day mini jaunt through some of my favorite words. If you missed day 1 on ordinary and day 2 on savor you can skip over here and here and do a catch up of sorts.

She wants to fill a word container, like she’d fill a vase with fresh cut garden beauties, a loose arrangement.

She wants to fill a word container up with words stuck in the inner places waiting at the end of the que, patient as the English. Not their time, not their turn. The waiting sweetens, the waiting improves with age, like cheese and wine and marriage. A trio of age improved elements. Add her word container to the mix and make it a foursome.

They can play tennis, golf, cards these four.

Her container is named small h hope, her book. The one on Hope is written and is bound in the Holy, with words, sacred, words God-breathed. Red letters and words from the Trinity.

But her book of hope will spill words on the page. They will run like rabbits, down  trails of hold on, cease worry, end despair,  look for tomorrow, see through the wormholes in today.

She will release them on the white crisp paper and let them flow like riverlets. Jumping the beaver dams of apathy and malcontent and run unobstructed to deliver buckets of hope. Wet the pages with words kicking and screaming there is always hope.

She will draw from His book of hope and lean into Him.  Ask for words, humbly and meekly. Give me words to scatter that tell of hope. Its linked by hyphens to trust and to knowing and faith.

She knows He knows of all her days, her hours.Where she and Hope have been together. When she loosed her hands and held less firm. When her threadbare rope looked like a string to her and him and they.

She can only tell her story, shaky, story, brave, story. Stammering, stuttering, hers.

But better bound in leather in its imperfect state than bound in her. He, the editor knows when to publish and release. She has lips and a mouth and a tongue to tell. The paper is just one place the words can buckle up and ride off. Buckle up and face forward. Wheels on the ground. They roll.

When loosed and left to flap unfettered, like drying sheets drape over backyard cord, breathing, flailing, singing sweet in green grass breeze. They point to new.

And new looks mercifully on the past and says stay, sit, heel. I will toss you a biscuit stay right there. Hope is on the way. Hope infuses her brilliant radiant joyous spirit in the from here forward.

But bound in leather, not by chains of pain, or links of past.

The book of little h hope, waiting in the que.

Until her day comes.

Writing in community with these fine folks, Jennifer, Ann, Duane, Amber and Emily

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When The Oh So Ordinary Looks Extraordinary- Day 1

Joining The Nester and hundreds of others for a 31 Days of… series. Joyfully reading there and writing here for 31 Days. Would you join me? It would be a gift.

Yesterday I wrote an introduction of sorts for this series. You can read about it here.

Ordinary. Ooh la la ordinary. A new ordinary. Different but same, changed in the blink, because of the eyes.

The eyes of the heart.

In the monday, small case, days and the plain and mundane. There is no such thing.

You turn a monday, small case day on its head and shake it gently until the coins fall from the pockets. And the sparkle is revealed. The something of value is discovered.

Discovered because it sat there all along. Stumbled upon, tripping you up in the wonder of it all. The plain turns to fancy and the ordinary becomes extra so extra-ordinary.

Small is grand and simple is elegant, and the lense turns the world upside down. Its wild and wonderful.

Its an ordinary day in an ordinary life.

The dull becomes bright. The eyes frame the mundane with the frame of wonder and discovery.

And there in the middle of the mundane small case monday, is the height of the unspeakable beautiful.

She walks her monday walk and she breathes her monday air and she turns her monday corner.

And with nothing more than a change in perspective, of measuring the abundant and marking the glass to the line of the full, not half, not whole, but spilling over, she sees her black and white before oz world turned upside down as the colors are thrown on the life canvas.

With reckless abandon.

She sees the ordinary, beautiful.

She hears the ordinary, beautiful.

She comes to see all in the ordinary. Seeing as Alice saw. Wonderful whimsy in the cat and the child and the tea-cup.

A laugh is eeked out. The imagination is sparked.

But it was really there, all along. No imagination is needed. Not really.

The life-art pops and Wonder and Glory are revealed. Just everywhere.

If you look close.

When a dandelion is as a peony or a rose. Beautiful is in the plain.

Simple looks exquisite and marvelously faceted because her lense of love and thanks compounds the what just simply is.

Brown is sepia, dinner is fellowship, a friend, a life-giver in a conversation dipped in grace.

A spider-web is art, a pile of mess is the heart beat of the home.

The weary spirit is we lived with zest in celebration of a marriage.

And the owl and the pussycat take a ring from the nose of a pig. Its grace. It’s all they need.

Well that and honey. And Christopher Robin has bear. And the woods. A friend and a forest seem simply enough.

While a note, a call, a word, a smile carry extravagant small case monday love. Notes of grace, sing a song to the aching broken.

Shine light in the dark shadowy.

Steady a shakey gaping wound. With a word, a whisper.

For you and her and they and we and the ones who walk down-trodden and dejected.

In the black and white, seemingly graceless places of pain. Where you can color it Hope and color it Healed when you speak the words He gave.

She wipes the tear that cleared the way. After the poured out sorrow. And sees the river of joy, wet streams of Living Joy, running rapidly right behind.

And all the burlap, rough brown ragged wrapping of the moments right there,

They shine like silk, soft and beautiful, wrapped around the small case monday,

Through the lense of the not so ordinary after all.

And she continues counting, quietly today, but counting…. the gifts in the ordinary that really are extraordinary.

After all. If you count it all Joy.

linking with Ann and Laura.

We’ve Switched Places

What would you do? What would you say to an assignment from Compassion International to write. After you had stepped up to serve.

Would you say “No”. Would you say “not now.” Would you say “wait.”

I can’t not write. And if you speak, or teach, or sing, or fundraise, or rally, or inspire or move out, or impassion others. Go do that. Go do that passion that burns deep. Go use the gift. Go do the thing that keeps you up and stirs your heart.

Now would be a good time to push delete, now would be a good time to file away, these words, or unsubscribe to this blog. Now may be a good time not to read. If you are weary of Compassion. I am looking away because I will miss you if you leave.

Oh good you came back. Or you stayed. But you are here. I see you there and I am grateful.

I can’t not write this Part 2 in my final series. (If you missed Part  1, here is the link.) But you friend don’t have to read. The following is a letter to my sponsored Compassion child. I have traded places with my child, Erlita. This is the one in which I have switched places  and I am now living in Peru, adjusting to the shock, adjusting to life in poverty. Thank you for grace. Thank you for sharing this on your facebook pages and on twitter. Thank you for emailing to others. If you choose to cast a net of words for change in the lives of empoverished children, you might share these words.May God bless my words, may God be glorified.

Dear Erlita,

Your country is so very beautiful and I am overjoyed to be here in your home. Erlita, I think of you, sweet child in my home with my family. I know they love you and I know they are showing you all the places they love. Do you love the ocean, just a short walk from our home, as much as they. Did you see the funny shorebirds running around in the frenzied pace, we laugh and giggle at them and those pelicans. Erlita, they are big and graceful. God designed their pouch with perfection to scoop up the fish. He is an amazing creator. And you will have frozen yogurt and pizza and walks with our silly trio of dogs.

Sweet precious one, my heart dances at the thought of you there. You and my daughter will play volleyball, the game you love so much. Two girls, giggling and laughing, knowing no wall of words, she’ll teach you her Southern English and you
will teach her your beautiful Peruvian Spanish.

And love is the language of girl friends.
Love is the great language that bridges the gap of culture.

Erlita, they will love you well. And you will teach them much.

And I am here in your beautiful Peru. You are surrounded by the beauty of the God created. When I see the mountains and the moon out your window I dream of you, Erlita and your nights here before we switched. And I feel where you were cold. And I smell where you smelled fear. And I hear where you heard crying. And I shiver where you once shivered when the wind whipped and the hearts cried. I see the worn and the torn and places ragged.And the worn out hope and worn down pride. 

I see the sacrifice of parents who choose hunger so a child can eat, in love, out of love, for love. I share your longing, now that I am here, in a way I couldn’t before I came. My empathy, sheer thin like your bedsheets, before, but now. But now my empathy and compassion compounded in the walking here, walking out your life, where you did, child. Where you do child.

You share your home, your bed and I share mine. So I must share my honest heart.  I wish I had come sooner. And I wish I had sponsored sooner. And I wish that I had written you sooner, sent encouragement in a letter sooner. Known your birthday so I could celebrate your life with you sooner.

And as you are in my home and I am in yours, there is no room for things left unsaid, in our world now. That we share family and home.

So I say, forgive me Erlita. Forgive me for not coming sooner. For missing  the joy of knowing you, sooner. For not bending my heart and stretching my abundance, my gracious plenty into the places of your need, your empty your longing, sooner. For living like you weren’t in want and need. For simply doing nothing.

Please forgive me for not extending my more than enough, with unfurled hands to you, sooner…sooner..so much sooner.

Thank you for your forgiveness and your love. Embrace my family as I embrace yours. We are sisters in Christ Jesus and my gratitude for you in
my life grows and grows, as does my heart. Because of Jesus. Because of His Grace. You have taught me more about generosity and giving and compassion than you will ever know.

I love you, Erlita. Be warm and safe and loved and cared for, though you have my family now and not your own. And every night when I see the moon we share, I thank God for you.

Love your sister in Christ,

Elizabeth

P.S. Ask Spencer to read you our favorite books, the ones we read when she was your age. And please take them back to your beautiful Peru and start a lending library for your community. We love words and we love you. Feast your heart on God’s word. Its the richest, Erlita. It will fill you up to overflowing, sweet girl.

Linking with Jennifer, Duane, AnnEmily,Mary Beth and Michelle


Shhhhh, Can I Whisper Something in Your Ear?

I will whisper because it is so tender and fragile, so the whisper of my heart is a quiet dignity for this and for them.

I will whisper about compassion and Compassion International for now. And the children.

But the cry of my heart is really to shout. And when you see and hear and bend the heart to know more, you may want to shout too. Will you walk over here with me, it means just click and we can go there.

To just pray.

This is what Mark Batterson says in his book “The Circle Maker” about prayer

The hard thing about praying hard is letting God do the heavy lifting. You have to trust the favor of God to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. You have to trust God to change hearts…

Thank you for going there to pray for these children. I will try not to shout. I like it when people speak softly to me too. I like to listen to the gentle.

I like the tender and the soft and the whispers from gentle places.

But the cry of my heart, well its all rumbly and loud. So I may need to ask forgiveness ahead of time for when I scream and yell and get quite loud with the cries of my heart.

Because when I went to choose my child, the one that I sponsor, I wanted to choose the one waiting the longest, and then I wanted to choose two and then I wanted to choose a boy and a girl but I chose a girl. And I wanted to choose the ones with especially special needs. And, well it was hard. But my friend Kris who played a role in bending and breaking my heart for Compassion, she said to me words that were full of grace. She told me to think of it this way, they all need a sponsor, so any one you choose will be right…..well you get the beautiful grace-filled words she spoke to me, in love.

But in the end I chose one little girl in Peru. And I pray that God in His holy math and in His holy name will multiply my smallness.

I am writing a prayer for myself for Compassion International. I will share it with you soon.

But your words and your prayers are much much better. They are your words and your prayers.

Counting my gifts in the quiet of my heart and linking with Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience dot com. You can read about her Compassion trips there.

Linking with Finding Heaven Today dot com

And with Denise in Bloom