Comfort

This image has circulated the web but today is the first day that I saw it.  This image takes my breath away.  I am not one to turn to the Word for my comfort.  I want to turn to C, or Mimi, or even my little ones.  And there are always those freinds who you can count on to support you and love you; except for when they can't.  I had a wise freind tell me once that our freinds can sometimes be God-in-skin for us, in the sense that they are or have been placed in our life to give us what we need, but they are not nor can be a replacement for The One.  I struggle in this area.  if I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times: I am the proverbial fence sitter.  But this image gives me hope.  It clicks in my mind like little has done before.  I hope it resonates with you.

 

Peace, freinds.  May you have comfort and Love.

Storms and Winds and Waves, Oh My!

How many times do I have to kneel at the cross and beg to be included in the fold?  How many times do I have to be baptized to feel clean?  How long do I struggle with faith?  I am afraid to fall on either side of the proverbial fence.  I cannot bear to trust.  I cannot bear not to.  Why do I beg in my heart to be moved and yet consistently feel nothing?  Where is the God that calms the wind but not my heart?  How will I ever trust?  What is wrong with me?
 

I hate bible stories.  Seriously.  The more often they are told, the more I hate them.  Sunday’s sermon was on Mark 4:35-41, about the disciples crossing the sea and the horrible storm and how Jesus calms the wind and waves.  Hearing this particular delivery of the message was fresh for me.  I found myself stirred.  One of the statements the speaker said was that a relationship with Jesus is built on intimate adversity.  He meets us where our fears are, our storms are, are hurts are.  From my questions above, I fear he will never meet me.  But I still manage to hold on to faith somewhere, hoping that in time it will become truth to me.  Another statement that resonated with me was this: “The disciples had seen miracles in other people’s lives but never before in their own.  This was their storm.  What is yours?”  My storm is the grey between feelings and choice, between desire and actions, between beliefs and preferences.

 Jesus meets us in the storm but he tells us to follow Him.  Today is another step.

Drink to Change

I remember that time I tended bar and told bawdy jokes.  As I laughed and pranced, quite proud of myself because, after all, I had no talent for jokes, a guy stood up from one of the wing back chairs he had been sitting it, quiet and unnoticed.  We had been very busy that evening, two conventions in town.  At this time of the night only a few remained – my captive audience and this gentleman who stood up.  One of our groups was a convention of military chaplains.  Tim was his name and he was a preacher and he felt the need to tell me.  I grew up in the church.  I knew all about churches and pastors, certainly, so I thought.  He shattered that image for me and do you know it was me who sought him out afterwards to go get a couple of long necks and talk about a God I didn’t remember.  It has been hundreds of wild nights and hundreds of no longer wild nights since then.  I didn’t change overnight.  In some ways I haven’t changed at all.  I am still a small girl who wants to know the way, a girl that wants to stop seeking approval from others, and a girl who ultimately wants to look up to God and claim him as her Father.  If it is a choice then I must still be straddling the fence.  But I am different than I was that crazy night.  Not sure why I am thinking of you, Tim, but here’s to you.  Cheers.

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Questions

I asked him questions about God

Questions that could not be answered

My questions required faith

Though I seemed to have none

I wanted to know why the world was hurt

Why I was hurt

I told him I didn’t understand

I told him I didn’t like his parables

I even said I wish we were puppets

And it is true – I do

But there was no fire

And no rain

And there were no answers