Tag: Redemption

Redemption Outside The Shadows – A Mighty Fortress

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 12 Comments

Today is Day 18.

There is a book written by a friend.

Her story is her’s but she is brave and bold in her sharing. Her desire for other’s healing.

Her heart longs for a collective healing from the disease that pounces and robs.

As I work my way through the book, its a work of the heart. I think of the spokes of my life’s wheel, the intersection. The place where broken shows up in our lives.

How the spokes radiate out and poke holes in wholeness. Push through places, bruising flesh, heart, soul, and mind. Our life.

This is a labor of love, this working my way through her words, treading lightly and gently through a fragile piece such as this.

You know that God worked redemptively and tenderly through the hearts of these. So you rush not in, to speak. No quietly with a reverence.

You nod and bend and bow to the boldness. You open up a burning heart for truth.  Hungry for healing. Searching. Longing. Looking for places that reveal God in and all around.

And I am seeing,

How her story is uniquely her’s. It is.

How it intersects my life. It does.

What I am left celebrating in her story. So very much.

I have not completed winding my eyes through the lines of her heart and life, laid out in hope in the telling. I know much from her beautiful book trailer, other’s words about her words, the proclamations of healing on her web sight and on her blog.

A story goes out and forth in its telling, testifiying of a work, magnifying the redemption and hope. Doubles down and  carries on its back those who tell of the wounded’s hope.

Like the pointed metal spokes that roll on rim of traveling tire time, the pointed tips of Emily’s time in shackles rolls right over where we’ve treaded, my co-travellers. Those I love.

I know of  gaunt and rail thin, pushing back from food, leaning in to porcelain rims, throwing out a single calorie breath mint to forgo the stomach-bound disc.

And souls locked in weak weary battle of control. Left wounded, weak. Weary.

But all that’s hurt and broken diminishes in the Light of honest, light of the telling.

Where story walks out new life, while scars are healing, scars close up at the hands of The Great Physician.

My daughter is almost 17 and I look questioning into the eyes and onto the bones and flesh of her friends. Speaking into her beauty, inside and out. Loving the wholeness and relationship with nourishment I see.

She is passionate about life and living and her hopes and dreams for the future. She has not known a weakened war of wills with disease or addiction. But a mother watches and prays and hopes for wholeness in her child of mind, body, and spirit.

The happy faces beam over greens and fruits, protein, sweets, a balance of all the goodness  He provides. The energy drawn from food sources, from the good gifts He gives for nourishment.

And I know the weak and weary from cutting off the calories, reducing down the intake to a slow and painful walk on barely enough. The damage unkown exactly to me. I could ask Emily, ask  a doctor, ask the authorities.

I want my daughter mighty and strong. I want the highest and best for her life.

I long for her to see the beauty and completeness in what God created in her,  formed in her woman flesh. That taking it down and whittling it away to thin frail gaunt is not a life goal. Not an elusive idol, to be rail thin and shadowy.

We women can go and do much in a day, there is loving and living for us, mighty work. God work. God ordained.

Emily is a beautiful friend. I want her words to go forth, her words, a healing ministry.

I long for her words to be available in church libraries, school libraries, counselor’s shelves, on the bedside table of hurting women and teens.

Yesterday Duane wrote a piece you really do not want to miss at his place and at Emily’s
blog. It’s here. It involves the pain and struggle of a teenage boy.

As a mother of boys , I long for healthy body images for them too. Read Emily’s words here:

Chasing Silhouettes is intended to be a spiritual guide to help families redefine body image, as well as to offer insight for caregivers into the minds and hearts of those battling an eating disorder. As someone who battled  anorexia nervosa, both as a child and as an adult, I am here to offer you hope. Our young people, our loved ones, do not have to be defeated by the lies that permeate culture today. But in order to defeat these lies, we need to understand truth.


Please leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for two copies of Emily’s book. You may choose to comment on why you’d like a copy, or simply speak to what’s on your heart on this subject. I will email the winner by week’s end.

To purchase Emily’s book go HERE

Or Here or to Chasing Silhouettes web sight to read more.

From the web sight, read these words of hope:

Chasing Silhouettes: How to Help A Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder is the story of a broken family that finds healing through an eating disorder. It’s the story of how even good Christians need redemption, and how eating disorders pervade all homes- even the seemingly perfect ones.

A unique resource, it addresses the whole of the illness: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, providing shocking insight into the disordered eater’s mind that no other book will offer.

This is Day 18 in a 31 Day Series. To read the collective go here or the 31 Day Series page at the top of the page. Today’s word is Healing.

If you’d like to follow all posts in the series and those published at wynnegraceappears, subscribe to follow by email or in a reader. I post daily in October and several times a week in other months.

Its a JOY to think of having you along on the journey.

Joining Michelle at Thought Provoking Thursdays.

Two Bloggers, Two Salads, and A Two Hour Lunch (This is Grace)

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 5 Comments

This is Grace.

I know a woman who walks out grace, with grace.  Shelly Miller of Redemption’s Beauty a beautiful blog which I follow.

And you will read more of her beautiful story there.

But this is a story of her grace shown toward me, a new blogger.

We sit in a booth and we swirl words around.  And  thoughts go off into places of shared passion.  Sentences spiral around salad about being women and mothers and bloggers.

She laughs a contagious laugh.  It springs up from way down and lands in the between  us.  Warm covering the time like down comforter, snugging in for a two hour stay. She and her story delight. How she came to write in a most unexpected way.  Her story of hearing story because she invites story to come out and play and feel free  She invites and the sharing begins.

Her eyes twinkle with joy as we sip from our straws like girls at the pharmacy counter after school all cherry coke and faux leather swirly seat. And I soak in the wonder that is her life’s story of teaching herself about life. Of digging deep into a thing and come up with the knowing.

We laugh about carving out time and finding balance in our lives.  And she answers some questions and leads me to places she knows I want to go, with words about words.

She is a picture for this blogger/woman/mother/wife of beautiful redemption and of taking a daily step, in brave faith. With faith so bold and strong. Of perservering much and living abundantly. I can tell you many of Shelly’s beautiful stories of redemption.  They are beautiful but they are hers. And she tells them with a striking loveliness and tenderness each time she writes.

We lose track of time a bit and startle when we see the hour.  The time that was spent.  Grace is like this.  It invests in others.  It grants patience and gives out. It explains simple things to beginners who stumble on their way.  It answers promptly and plainly and calmly.  It doesn’t judge the knowledge gaps or hold on greedy to self.  It shares what it knows and embraces a fresh start, a new beginning. This is Redemption’s Beauty.

Grace takes us to a moment that is simple and sweet and covered in community.

Givers give selflessly and abundantly.

Givers of time, of grace, of encouragement.

They place self on the shelf extending a hand out and down and to those who need a word.  Or two.

And you know we discussed grammar and typo’s and sentence structure and books.  Oh yes, the book “The Element of Style” was in the mix. As was “Writing Down The Bones.”

But this two hour lunch was a thank you with a giving woman who has much to give.

And she has much to say about redemption.

Because I sat with Grace and looked Grace in her glistening green eyes, I know even more about redemption today.

And blessed am I to share with you a story of embracing, encouraging and extending the gifts we have and the gifts we’ve been given.

And to pass on the encouragement to you to use your gifts to bless others in family, in friendship and in community.

Thank you Shelly for sharing yours and blessing others.