Leaving A Trail of Beauty

“For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow , wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” Habakkuk‬ ‭2:3‬ ‭ESV‬‬ God cannot be rushed. I get impatient at least once a day. Okay. Probably more often than that, especially if any of my day involves being behind the wheel and sharing the road with “slow” motorists. Without Jesus, I’d probably be a pretty rage-filled driver. With Him, I still beep my horn more frequently than some. All that to say . . . though I’m not one to like things to go slow; God has His own timetable. Let’s take  the pace of my healing post-divorce. I gave myself a bit for that. You know . . . a few months should have taken care of it, right?  I was married for more than 20 years, so an extended school-length vacation should have whipped me right back into shape, ready to tackle all things new?!?! As you can most likely guess, it has been quite a SLOW process instead. Patterns of thinki

I used to think dreaming was a bit like this photo, complete with similar results. I would exhale my dreams out into the world. They’d then catch in the wind . . . only to drift away, settle in the soil, and become someone else’s weed — a virtual nuisance to the ones who caught them. This mindset is directly related to what I shared about feeling like I am too much, therefore it is a natural progression for me to believe my dreams are also way too much. What I have so often neglected to do with my dreams is leave them in the capable grip of the Dreamgiver. My Jesus is perfectly able to fulfill those very dreams He has placed in my heart. However, I am guilty of holding on to them myself, squashing them with my toddler-like fists, and somehow wondering why I feel undervalued and forgotten when I still see myself so far away from my dreams coming to fruition. How do I stop this spiral of unfulfilled dreams from continuing? One way is to identify what dreams I am choosing

Light. I struggle with feeling anything but light. From as far back as I can remember, someone in my family has had a poor relationship with food. I grew up in a household of diets and closets full of all the seasonal clothes in addition to all the sizes for every season. My parents each had their own self-image battles that ran the opposite ends of the weight spectrum.  The number of times I saw anyone stop and admire the reflection in the mirror amounted to a handful in the 22 + years I primarily resided with my dear parents.  My self esteem and relationship with my own reflection was shaped by what was modeled for me. I saw the critical eye of my parents, internalized their statements to and about themselves, listened to their judgments, and I deduced a number of things that ultimately shaped my thinking about myself for the rest of my life: I said too much ( I was sassy from word one ) I ate too much ( I got to a point of hating the feeling of being full )

New. Like new. Newborn. New again. Renew. All words and phrases tumbling around in my head as I try to wrap my brain around what the start of a new year has for me. As a youngster I found it a bit disappointing that though the fanfare of a new year was big, I woke up January 1 much the same as my December 31 self had gone to bed. Once deemed old enough, I joined in the fun of watching both Guy Lombardo’s New Year’s Eve special and the much cooler New Year’s Rocking Eve hosted by Dick Clark — with whom I was already acquainted from countless Saturday afternoons watching American Bandstand (the only acceptable segue from Saturday morning cartoons). As an adult, I am still a bit underwhelmed at the reality of awakening New Years Day with any significant change underway. The view from this side is slower to come into focus than I’d probably prefer. I wish I were better at switching gears. Unfortunately, the date on the calendar does NOT make everything I’d like to leave behind

Part Two: What is "customized" armor anyway? I mentioned the last time that our armor is customized. A friend of mine challenged me . . . four years ago now, to draw what I thought my armor might look like if God was designing it specifically for me. While this is a four-year-old pencil sketch I unearthed three years ago and colored -- rudimentary at best and with a need to tweak, maybe even paint on a canvas at some point -- the basic concept is still intact. The concept is this: God knows us. He knows exactly what we need and when we need it, right up to how He chooses to clothe us for battle every single day. He knows what we need to wear and what we need to "take up." I was reading a Priscilla Shirer devotional via @youversion on the armor of God. In it she says this (and so much more you can find in the full study), "In Ephesians 6, Paul conveys the belt, the breastplate, and shoes as a spiritual uniform that should be worn by believers at

Core Wounds. We all have them. No one escapes childhood without one or more of these core beliefs that shape and drive the way we approach and avoid throughout the rest of our entire lives. How do we go from eager, unassuming, adventurous toddlers to fearful, hesitant, sometimes paralyzed adults? I cannot unhear the things my parents unknowingly said that contributed to the haunting words and phrases still echoing in my mind more than 50 years later. It isn't their fault, and I cannot blame them for the enemy twisting their words to virtually strangle and suffocate me for decades. I cannot unsay those I said to contribute to the ones rattling around in the minds of my three adult children. It is not my fault or my responsibility to erase all the mistakes I made in the two-plus decades I've been a mama. I was not, nor am I able to heal the damage that's been done from my own mouth or the mouths of others with whom they've crossed paths in their steep clim

Day 6 hope*writers Fall Writing Challenge: TRANSFORM ___________________________ Not sure of your routine in reading Instagram posts/captions, but if you don’t normally swipe first then read — do that now.  Okay, so I was originally going to briefly discuss the transformation that takes place when you add a dollop of whipped cream to an ordinary bonus half cup of Saturday morning coffee.  It was delicious and took on a celebratory feeling just with a tiny phsssht from the can! Then I was going to wax eloquently on how easily we can now transform anything we publish here on IG with the simple press of a filter button (refer back to photos of me and Poppy)  ️ While that is fascinating for about a millisecond, then realized this exercise was about how writing itself has transformed me.  🤦🏻‍♀️ Ah! That’s sometimes easy and sometimes tough to nail down.  Writing in its purest sense gives me a voice. I’m an introvert, and I have a subtle but wicked sense