WORDS on WORDS

As the middle of the night continues I silently converse with self and with God. Wanting to soundly sleep, yet it eludes me. Words, some connected, some out of the blue invade my thoughts and attempts to pray with focus. How do they connect? What do they mean? So until I believe my eyes will rest and my soul quiet these are words I am pondering, questioning, wishing, and praying. Faith, wisdom, patience, understanding, prayer, perseverance, quiet, whisper, listen, share, believe, love, hope, plant, harvest, joy, fulfillment, talents, gifts, belief, doubt, fear, family, friends, discernment, encouragement, forgiveness, repentance, acceptance, denial, anger, joy, temptation, success, shout, witness, waiting, wanting, questioning, sorrow, life, death, easy, hard, weary, rested, respite, nurture, nature, numbness, pray, answers, beauty, evil, good, bad, white, black, gray, shape, covenant, promise, sin, overcome, weak, strong, happy, sad, good, bad, knowledge, friendship, family, Heaven, Earth, Hell, calm, storm, wild, meek, loud, quiet, blame, guilt, memories, desires, needs, provision, health, healing, sickness, worry, concern, virtues, spirit, awareness, enemy, survival, mother, father, brother, sister, friend, enemy, harm, intent, perception, dream, work, heart, soul, knowledge, understanding, character, information, justification, affirmation, service, loyalty, devotion, affection, failure, strive, accomplish, attempt, resolve, deny, trust, healing, passion, tears, joy, apathy, prejudice, heartbreak, jubilance, work, play, earn, owe, care, mercy, grace, resolution, cause, ramification, inclusion, exclusion, young, old, indifferent, offering, admit, bend, break, recover, broken, renewed, confirmation, trial, testing, challenge, reward, goal, win, lose, tie, confusion, strict, stern, convinced, kind, soft, mold, clay, rock, salvation, jealous, rival, contempt, sorrow, fire, rain, sun, moon, stars, infant, regret, learn, teach, show, give, take, gift, talent, fuel, smile, frown, quench, thirst, hunger, feed, unconditional, perspective, lessons, rest, sleep, renew, enlarge, multiply, conquer, divide, unite, freedom, slavery, injustice, shame, disciple, follow, lead, remember, proclaim, achieve, carry, restore............................more than an hour later the focus becomes blurred and I may very well have repeated the depths and the shallows of my mind, yet my eyes will not help me remove or edit words for now. Clay is stirring, Fred and Kleckley are snoring, and Gracie is loving and concerned. She will make biscuits on my pillow if I give in and allow quiet to overcome my restlessness. Perhaps she can purr me a lullaby.

CAPTIVATING

Mid January, already? For many seasons I have been longing and searching. I recently received a wonderful gift during recovery from my unexpected surgery. It was given in hopes that it would help with my healing. I have been praying for healing of many things. Much of it has centered around my little girl's heart and life experience. The gift is a book called Captivating.......unveiling the mystery of a woman's soul. The book was written by a married couple, John and Stasi Eldredge who do Christian counseling and writing. In a brief sentence from the back cover of the book it reads: The desires you had as a little girl and the longings you still feel as a woman-----they are telling you of the life God created you to live. Wow. It is amazing the things it helps me to understand. It is amazing the renewed hope it provides that my heart is exactly the heart God meant for me to share and live fully. I am, I will try to put new perspectives into action. Funny, a recent brief note from my husband said that I had captivated him the night we met and that I still captivate him nearly thirty years later. I had never heard him say that before. I have not felt captivating for a long time. Then I pick up a book I had only taken brief time to peruse, having become overly distracted with day ins and day outs, and it hits me on the head at the perfect timing for me to pick it back up. CAPTIVATING. I had forgotten the title. I am nearing the last chapters. I am learning that God made all women captivating. It was His Divine plan and His will that we see ourselves as very special. He made us this way regardless how confusing it is to deal with the particulars of femininity. We often feel we are marked with all sorts of flaws that rob us of loving ourselves and seeing ourselves as captivating in the eyes ~ lives of others. Captivating to our own eyes. In the eyes and will of God. It is mid January and I will work on becoming more captivating in a still new year with a newer understanding. God made me this way and He would not have me any other way. How I long to become increasingly captivating to His Glory in ways I have not understood.

our snowball fight

for a humorous look at how my siblings imagined Christmas check the link below...... not sure it will work, but we can give it a try.................. http://www.jibjab.com/sendables/view/eXxOVzhecC6uuNUsmHUx91Da

Melancholy Faith???

It's been quite a while. What is up with me? What is up/down in me? The last couple of weeks, maybe a little less, I have just been in a stupid state of mind. I have been very introverted. I have been extremely, did I say EXTREMELY, moody. I have been sad. I have been pensive. I have been deep. Of course, I have acted shallow. As I fight my way back to a more user friendly, updated and improved being, words travel across the confines of my partially functioning brain. The word melancholy sits in my mind. So that's it? Often when I am driving, my conversations with God overcome the stereo and the traffic. (Good thing I am in His hands and that HE is the distraction instead of other things) My faith has become melancholy faith. It is there, but it is in a saddened, depressed refrain. How, Why is it so easy to slip into melancholy faith? I will try to decipher some of it as words form from somewhere inside. I am encouraged that in the last year we learned that Mother Teresa had moments of melancholy. I have not taken the opportunity to learn more, I just remember it being on the news that she had moments of darkness, extreme sadness, disappointments, poor self worth and constant questioning of her life experience. We start a new Bible study tonight at Mt Horeb. We will be doing Beth Moore's A Woman's Heart.......God's Dwelling Place. She asks that we make the following prayer a constant plea, especially over the ten weeks of fellowship. "Lord, open my mind that I might have understanding." I often think this has been a portion of my melancholy faith. I want understanding. I have always pursued it yet it eludes me much of the time. 2007 was an extremely rough year, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I guess it is common that as a year comes to a close we tend to relive and try to evaluate and pray for understanding. That is what I have been doing, basically finding myself in a trance as 2008 has turned the calendar page. Is my faith really still in place? Was it strong enough in 2007 or the years prior? Has it ever really been strong enough? How do we know? Lord, please give me understanding. I suppose I really need to ask Him to open my mind more. Take the cobwebs away. You know, you knock them down, throw them away, but in no time at all, there they come back again. I have had a lot of cobwebs overtaking my emotions this past year. Yet while driving this morning and praying for 'something' GOOD, Lord, please......... I flashed back to a little blonde haired girl on an early Sunday afternoon. I remember the little girl coming home from church, changing clothes and skipping outside while my mother likely was frying incredibly tasty chicken. (Often I would find myself sneaking inside the kitchen to 'snatch' a tiny morsel of fried chicken liver and try not to get caught in the act....) I would take off to my daddy's pond, yards away, yet visible from the kitchen door. I would run across the worn and well used dam into the sunshine speckled from the trees that stood guard nearby. I would marvel at the leaves, especially the star shaped gums, marvel at the shimmer of light across the rippling water, scurry to spy a turtle or a frog and tadpoles in the murky depths. The minnows would always make an appearance; all one had to do was pop a crumb of old bread at them. The little girl would stand there, then sit there, crouch there taking everything in to the greatest details. She would sing the hymns and congregational responses from the church services. Create in me a clean heart, Oh God..........Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below, praise Him above you Heavenly hosts, Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost...........Jesus loves the little children................. And then I've remembered and buried inside the darkness that sometimes was there with me. The darkness in many ways that came from childhood molestation that often happened there. That is all that needs saying for now. My praising and loving was taken advantage of. My faith and innocence was intruded upon. The cycle of melancholy beginning at an early age that I would not accept healing until approaching it this past year. It is a work in progress and I ask HIM for understanding. I ask for forgiveness for whatever faults I played in misguided affections. I ask for the returned freedom that the little girl be released to be who she was intended to be at that time.........happy, joyful, naive, and trusting in dreams. To be, and to remember a little girl with the huge praising and pure faith of a child.

What I desire is for that degree of first faith to return to me. I believe that unless we are truly a child, we lose objectivity in the miracle and trust in God's presence. It dulls with age and experiences, gets questioned by the influences of different surroundings and by other people around us. It is the faith that is born into us when He first thought of us; unique to each individual and just maybe it (that inborn, inherited faith of first breath) eludes us until the hour He calls us back to His open arms in the Heavenly realms.

And so the posting has gone long. But, it gives me new hope that in the first days of a brand new year, I can become 'new' again in a lot of ways if I accept and allow it to happen. The prayer I need from you is that I can look forward optimistically instead of lingering with hurt and guilt over things past. That a good harvest is coming after many longstanding trials for our family. That the time has come for sunshine to overtake shadows if I will let it light a new path to finding Annette, with blessings for all the Falls family, present and breathing.