Tag: The Nester

Savoring – Day 2

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 11 Comments

We are walking through words, with words, and around words for 31 Days, over at The Nester. You will find a wonderful community there and I will be right here with you for my first 31 Days Series entitled Wonderful Words. Did you miss the introduction, it’s here. Or Day 1, it’s here. Yesterday was  ordinary.

Today is Day 2 and we are Savoring.  Will you come savor with me? It would be grand.

Savoring.

Lingering, the senses, suspending them in air.

Stretching moments like silly putty out and up and past what was possible.

Staying long in a moment, capturing it holding it, like mason jar lightening bug mini prisoners. The beauty is winged and apt to fly, unless the glass walls hold it captive, a lid on life, a lid on lovely. Or memory grabs hold.

Savoring.

Swaying hammock style back and forth in a place, shifting gears  into slow a Southern one. Defined by a pace that slows for breathing in  memory. Restoring a soul by
resting long in laughter, resting long in love, resting long in now.

Savoring.

Sucking hard candy slow and gentle, sun setting slow in a tease of the theatrical, suspending as if it will never go down. Slapping orange and pink sloppy exquisite on blue sky canvas. Sky poetry. Seeing  every detail. Marking  micro-moments in memory. Mind’s camera shutter clicks and stores, clicks and files, clicks and captures. Clicks and saves, savors.

Savoring.

Walking the fingers up and down in a brush of tender on child’s back. Whispering prayers over life. Breathing in Jesus, breathing out worry, doubt, fear. Lingering in love.
Wrapping a heart in words of encouragement, lingering in momma love where the heart beats slow. Resting in childhood memories, freezing in bags zipped tight, locking the pieces of childhood in love sacks. Locking it up, seal tight with hope, seal tight with joy.

Savoring.

Keys on the ivories, boy fingers play notes of sweet music in a blink, in a wink, in a nod they’re off. Bend in and listen. Bend in and hear. Really, the music fades. The fingers stop playing and the aisle of love is in sight,  a life of new  love is near. Still the heart and savor all the favorites,

Roof rain on tin, cut green blades, love notes on white napkins, boy wide toothy smiles, glasses on eyes on a  books in the late night, dog’s tail wag, stargazer scents and star-gazzing skies and the multitudes of sweet and bitter sweet taste, see that He is good. Place a comma, place a pause, freeze the frame and take your time,

Take small steps, take long breathes, take it slow. The every drop, the every crumb, down to the last words of the last page of the last page turned.

Smack.

Taste.

Relish.

And savor.

Joing my words with theirs: Eileen, Heather, and Jen

When The Oh So Ordinary Looks Extraordinary- Day 1

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

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.

Thirty One Days – A Series of Words

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 9 Comments

For the next 31 days I will be joining a group of others in a series of thirty one days…..

After pondering about where that would take us and considering how that would shape my writing and this blog, after wrestling gently with ideas, I landed. I landed which means we landed on 31 Days of Wonderful Words.

My heart is beating a little faster and my mind is racing a little quicker and I am churning up on a sleepy Sunday night all of the words we will wrestle to the mat, all the poetry we will read, all the scripture we will soak in, and the art of words we will delight in together.

Here are some thoughts, though there will lots of surprises and spontaneous combustion. And the words will spill out here for 31 days.

Words of encouragement, praise, hope, discovery, faith, love, challenge, redemption, forgiveness, creativity, and the words will swirl and the words will spin and we’ll wrap words around words.

Will you leave a comment if you have a word to add to the mix?

Will you join me on facebook where there will be more words on words.

There will be words of Oswald Chambers, and C.S. Lewis and Mary Oliver and The Word but mostly there will be frail and meager and shakey words. There will be odd poetry and there will be prose with odd punctuation and sentence fragments. Because it will be afterall, mostly my words.

But there will be honest, real, transparent and unmasked words from the inside place, where God speaks and where creativity and art are birthed from His inspired whispers.

Thank you for joining me. I am filled with excitement and ideas, but yours are important….very important so leave me a word about your favorites. Poetry? Prosety? Words of others? A mix and a mingle of lots and lots of words.

You all here… well I am without the words to express what you mean….but I will work on that too.

God Bless,

Elizabeth-Writer
wynnegraceappears