God's Pursuit of Me
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love. - A.W. Tozer
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the flip side.
When I have an afternoon (or a day or a week or a . . . you know) that I camp out in the Feeling Small Acres here at this home place I sometimes let my mind wander to all the jobs I could be doing instead. Teaching high school. Writing for a newspaper. Raising goats. And all the other places I could be instead. On a mountain in Colorado. At the beach. Canada. (Eh?) And, thankfully, it is usually at those very precise moments God gives me eyes to see exactly where I am sitting. Most recently, I was sitting at our kitchen table. With a kid eating a…
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bitter vs. me.
It’s a battle. Maybe mine alone. (But I kind of doubt that.) It’s me in one corner and bitterness in the other. And sometimes I just want to lie down and hand my opponent the title. You win, I’d tell him. Just standing in my corner looking at you makes me weak. It’s a fight I’ve been in before. And one that I particularly am bent to repeat, it seems. I’m about as tired of bitter as I am of fear. Except I don’t seem to be fighting it nearly as well. I don’t think I know where to start.
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sighing. in words.
Completing errands this afternoon, I drove by tidy homes with twinkling lights and coordinating bows. Swept front steps and well-groomed lawns. Cars parked in order from small to large and color coordinated with the shutters. And I thought of our own sloppy yard. Two broken logs on our fence. The shanty town the kids are constructing in our front field with sticks and cardboard and blankets and apparently a living room pillow that has been MIA for a week now. Mushy leaf piles. A hammock with its cottony stuffing protruding, evidence of Magnus’ last jail break. My yard seems messier somehow than everyone else I know and everyone else I…
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shema (sh əˈmä)
A while ago we had our children memorize the shema. We say it together as a family before dinner each evening. With our pinkies upraised. Which serves as a handy visual reminder of the strength God has even in His smallest finger. (Exodus 8:19) (And also – it’s just pretty cute to see Willow’s little pinkie upright and Otto’s two-inch fist as he tries to imitate us nightly.) The shema is no Hebrew mystery. It’s no magic incantation. The shema is just two verses from the Bible that Jesus declared sum up the whole book pretty accurately. Hear O Israel. The Lord is your God. The Lord alone. Love the…
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perspective.
Cuddling with Bergen before bed is sweet. And fleeting. I know. In a recent cuddle-fest, I kissed his ear and whispered, “I love you son.” “I love you too, Momma,” my pint-sized reading machine replied. “Berg – do you know how much I love you?” “No, Momma. I don’t know how much.” And he probably doesn’t. He really can’t. Because he’s five years old. So by his very length of life, he lacks what it takes to understand. He lacks what only age and time and experience can bring you. He lacks perspective. He won’t really understand how much I love him until he’s older. Until he has seen more…
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more than.
We’ve been doing a little rearranging around the house recently. (And Kevin’s not even out of town!) And rearranging often prompts me to clean places I have not cleaned in years. Thus, I discovered a dusty copper bin. Brushed it off. (I’ll sweep later.) And dug around inside. The extra eagle for back up. (But we know Piper will refuse – he doesn’t even resemble his counterpart. It’s no stunt double here. It’s another being entirely.) And my old backpack. From college. Gift from my mom – freshman year. So much decision went into choosing that bag. Color? Brown. (Should match with anything. Not a trendy color.) Durable. But…
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big benefits
“So how many of these children are yours?” I hear that question almost every time I leave my home and venture forth into the world as we know it. Grocery shopping takes more than an hour. (A lot more than an hour.) In part because I have five young children with me. Also in part because I am sorting through coupons, doing (very) slow mental math and calculating good deals. And also in part because I am stopped frequently by strangers. Yes, I know I look as if I am running a daycare. (I kind of am. I just make no income from said daycare and the students are in…
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selfishness – another site.
I was looking at some random blogs the other day and I was overwhelmed at the cuteness out there in blog world. (Or whatever it’s called.) And then I started thinking about myself. And about how I like to think that I do not think about myself all the time when in fact apparently I do. I thought I had a pretty cute blog. And it’s alright, you know. But . . . comparatively speaking . . . man – I have some weak spots. I could use a little bit of glitter and glam. A little eye candy I guess. I like simple. I do. And I am a…
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(in) courage post
Out of the bazillion sites that exist online, I have found one that is a pretty neat little community of women. (Maybe men read over there – I don’t know.) But the focus is women. And community. And building up one another. It’s run by Dayspring and it’s called (in)courage. I like what I read over there. And here’s the fab news for me today. I was able to post my stuff from here over there. Today. I’m pretty stoked! Here’s how it begins …. Maybe it’s taken all of my thirty-seven years and maybe it’s been a winding road but I think I am finally beginning to know me.…
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Story. The Middle.
I keep talking about Story. (The conference we attended. Not just “story” in general. Or – maybe that too.) It was so much good information. And so much good information takes me a while to process. One speaker – this guy – talked about the similar nature of every story. How every story follows the same pattern. Beginning. Middle. End. Usually the middle is the largest part of any story. And the middle usually includes some inciting incident. Some story line, some ordeal, some tragedy, some event, that propels the action of the story. That moves along every other detail. An inciting incident. And after the speaker shared his inciting…
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the gift of boundaries
Real creativity thrives within well-defined boundaries. I first realized this truth when I was teaching writing to junior high students. “Write a poem about any topic you would like,” I announced. “No limits,” I gleefully told those fifteen or so blank-eyed barely-teenagers. Hands were raised. Puzzled looks increased. The poems that were turned in the next day were . . . horrible, frankly. They lacked form and interest and passion and anything that would hint at lovely poetry. A few weeks later, I tried again. But with a different angle. We had been reading The Hobbit and had just finished a portion of the book exploring Bilbo Baggins’…
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easy resolve
The quick fix. The no-hassle solution. The simple way out. Do these exist? I just want one situation in my life – one impossible situation in my life – to have an easy resolve. (I don’t even care which problem, really. Pick any of them.) Kind of like a Get out of Jail Free card in Monopoly. One easy resolve. And I just slap that orange card down and say, “there.” Resolved. Easy. Does anything work like that? 37 years of life tells me the answer. No. No, nothing works like that. Problems do not have quick fixes. Issues are not speedily mended. Solutions do not materialize out of the…
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truth
Truth. Something I am learning about truth is this. Truth is still truth even if the spokesperson of that truth has sometimes neither lived nor believed that truth. Because truth doesn’t require my consent. Truth doesn’t wait for me to act upon it to become truth. You know how I am learning this? By my husband and I being in the position of having to speak the truth we have not always lived to our eldest daughter. This raising a teenager business . . . this dance of guiding and supporting, letting go and holding back . . . it’s the hardest. Give me the dirtiest diaper you can throw…
