forgotten your first love

do you remember the moment you fell in love?

do you remember where you were, what you were doing, who you were with?

how did awareness come? Sudden and strong, gentle and soft?

moment by moment, realization dawning, or like a torrent?

gushing and rushing.....

do you remember? it's important.

do you remember? it's the beginning to a love story.

or have you forgotten your first love? Forgotten the taste, the touch, the sensation, the rush....

Return to me, you've forgotten me, love me as you did.

How? Painstaking discipline? Wishful thinking? How can I remember?

Pursue. Discover. Learn to love again.

where is His face?

Where is He?

in the morning storm, as it rolls and blows

in the cry of pain from an illness

in the wreck less, hopeless struggle to try

in the failing, falling, striving, and missing, yet again

in the daily struggle to be daily,

to do daily, to complete the list,

Where is His face?

in the midst of temptation and seduction,

in brokenness and laziness

Why are those voices louder? Stronger? More convincing and appealing?

His presence is in the before, during, and the after....

His face is ever before, always with, and neverleaving.....

He is. Simply, just is.

wash. rinse. repeat.

1. read, reflect, pray
2. run, skip, hop, jump
3. draw and dream
4. talk and listen, communicate and hear
5. watch and wonder
6. consider and ponder
7. sprint and sleep
8. go and go and go
9. wash, rinse, and repeat

mission

i drove on a sunny fall afternoon

listening to an inspiring preacher

talk about his family roots

roots steeped in

love for God and

love for family

and i wept.

my family is not like that;

we don't celebrate together,

share together,

sacrifice for each other.

we compete,

we strive,

we martyr,

we distance,

creating our own families, communities, religion with non-blood folk.

the legacy needs to be reinvented.

the words of God more closely followed.

the mission lived out.

and then i wondered,

pondering, visualizing, wrestling

with

my life mission

it's spiritual

it's pivotal

it's deep

i know these things,

but i couldn't remember what God has whispered long ago

When i sought.

in agony, in deep sadness, in panic

i wondered.

playing around with pieces of words in my head,

pondering, wondering, musing, managing phrase after phrase

it finally came.

to communicate God in a visual way.

the arboretum

it's the place where abundance lives;

where beauty, in it's vastness adores the pathways,

is frivolously poured out in the roads,

is lavished on the hillsides and tossed in the wind,

is ridiculously painted on the trees, and cleverly hidden in plain view,

endless streams of color and texture flowing, growing, changing melting,

this intensity is so vivid, so immense, that to trample on it, trod upon it, kick it up is completely ordinary and expected.

truth revealed

sometimes I'm buried so deep I can't see clearly.

I lose perspective; time ceases to have meaning, things blur together-slurred and unfocused

sometimes I stay in this state for weeks and months; forgetting what is real and eternal, what is sharp and pure and honest and true. sometimes I get lost, my attention is diverted, and I get disoriented. And then, there is a moment of clarity-a gift of honesty, a splash of cold water, a breath of fresh air, and in that moment, truth is revealed.

Truth came today;

I was desperate, running, searching,longing, and grieving.

Truth was spoken in that calm, quiet stillness, when only truth can be known, heard, and understood for what it is.

I learned two things about me today.

I learned that I expect to be abandoned and I think God is too demanding. These truths of the lies I believe are haunting and riveting, exhausting and yet precise. I live by these two lies. And they shape everything. They explain why I give up so quickly when people let me down, when volunteers don't make their commitments, when so called friends walk away.

They explain why I've been avoiding God, timid and cowering, afraid that what will be asked of me is too impossible, too hard, too much sacrifice, too high a price, too great a cost. This explains so much. This is why it's hard to lead. This is why I back down, this is what it means to stand up.

What's the lies you believe? How are they impacting your worldview? Your daily living? Your faith and your future?

what normal is

it's the buzz of the lawn mower circling the back yard,

it's the chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven,

it's the rush of a warm breeze,

it's the steady beat, the pounding lyric, the joy of worship,

it's the promise of family,

it's the dog chasing, the kid's running, the flurry of activity,

that's what normal is....

quiet moments contrasted against a constant of movement,

it's living in a state of tension, of the dreams yet realized,

it's unending, not stopping, continuous, ever-changing,

that's what normal is...