An Easter Treasure

I had a dream last night - Easter Eve 2016' - that I went to a prayer meeting with a new friend who wasn't sure she believed.  Actually, the 'new friend' from my dream was a lady that I work with now who I don't have a chance to speak with much.  I remembered strongly trusting bringing her there, knowing she would see love, see Jesus because I knew the beautiful ones that were always there for those precious meetings.  There was a time during the service set aside for us to reflect and (for me) write about what we spoke and sang about.  I remember writing about some of my life, my testimony from the last 11 years really when my son and I came to West Shore and I really began to follow Christ and gained my new spiritual family.  I'm not sure of all that I wrote, but I do know that my unconscious mind pulled out the over-arching theme of that testimony/part of my life.  It was God saying very clearly, "If you trust me, you'll be okay."  I remember the sense that I was being given a treasure through those moments of writing, as I have been so many times at meetings like those.  And I woke up feeling the same sense of being given a treasure, a glimpse of something precious God was giving me....

I don't know how to adequately express how much His message has meant to me over the years, how much it still means.  "If you trust me, you'll be okay."  You  know, through all of the incredibly difficult trials and circumstances I've come through in the past eleven years (too many to list here - our lives changing so much, and re-changing, and physical things, financial things, spiritual things...), that statement from God to me has always remained so true.  He's never failed us (my son and I).  So again, when I needed to hear Him say the words, they have come.  'If I trust Him, we'll be okay.'  Is there any way to argue with that?

I suppose, of any time to reflect on the mercy of God, just how great a gift He gave us on the cross, it should be today.  I mess up so much and so often, yet when I feel at my 'dirtiest' for my mistakes and failures, His response is always that if I really trust that He has removed my sins as far as the east is from the west, He will take care of us.  No anger, no condemnation, no judgment, no giving up on the 'unteachable'.  Just simple, pure, unchanging love....

I think He couched the treasure in a dream about a prayer meeting because He knows that through my family (like at a prayer meeting) has always been one place where I could hear Him well, where I have felt safe and let down my guard (eventually), where the world was set aside and I could just BE in His presence, where I knew His likeness would always be true, to me and any around me.  It's been a place I grew to know I did not have to worry about being loved or accepted, it just was, miracle of miracles to a life like mine.  Just like it is with Him.  With this family, I learned how to just BE.  To just breathe.  To be loved and safe... In a world that has been so chaotic, that has been an anchor.  So as with my Father, I must trust that safety and pure love without limitation will not change as the world around me does, even as the safe family around me does.  I can still just breathe, just BE in His presence no matter where or how my 'safe haven' changes and disperses... He's never changed through any ending or goodbye.  He never will.  If I can just hold on to that... this is a passing sorrow, however final it seems right now.


Isaiah 43

But now, this is what the Lord says—
    he who created you, Jacob,
    he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
    they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
    you will not be burned;
    the flames will not set you ablaze.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
    and because I love you,

Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
    I will bring your children from the east
    and gather you from the west.
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
    and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
    and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
7 everyone who is called by my name,
    whom I created for my glory,
    whom I formed and made.”

“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord,
    “and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me
    and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
    nor will there be one after me.
11 I, even I, am the Lord,
    and apart from me there is no savior.
12 I have revealed and saved and proclaimed—
    I, and not some foreign god among you.
You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “that I am God.
13     Yes, and from ancient days I am he.
No one can deliver out of my hand.
    When I act, who can reverse it?”

“Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.

“I, even I, am he who blots out
    your transgressions, for my own sake,
    and remembers your sins no more."

Amen.  And, THANK YOU family... for teaching me what He meant...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBrVAgezRAY

Flight of Praise

Perdition, my heart remembers you well

But every time you call to me

I remember I am free

And the shackles which once bound me

Are no more

 

Lord, I would rather be a slave for You

Than a king over many lands

Rather be held in Your hands

Than hold jewels as grass holds morning dew

 

I stand with my arms to the heavens

My face to the sun

I drink in the light of You

And sing Your praises to the skies

 

When evening cools the air to softness

The birds fade their song to a lullabye

I watch the first stars appear against the lilac sky

And feel the world embrace me as Your arms

 

I no longer fear the night

Nor the slow on-set of morning

For night has been turned to rest

And mourning to dancing

 

Like a morning bird I fly free

Into the blush of heaven’s dawn

Forgetting the trouble past

And looking onward to a new tomorrow

Heaven Winks

30 years to remember
30 years to cry
30 years to look back
On that last goodbye
30 years to forget
30 years to dream
30 years to push forward
Into this new world

30 years has changed my face
To someone I barely recognize
A child of my own in bed
A few grey hairs
Old memories and faulty new ones
The same eyes...
The same eyes that saw and recognized
The same ones that held your gaze
The same eyes that wept tears
And the same eyes that have learned to laugh again

Sometimes I will look at something totally new
And find that it still reminds me of you
Like a newly developed picture
That was plucked out of a different time
You are gone but you never left
Your shadow lingers everywhere
In my brother's voice
In my son's eyes
In my niece's love of puzzles
In the way I like to draw and we all love music
We all love Jesus

There is an enduring legacy here
Your sisters still talk of you
But they also talk now about their Creator
Someone they never knew without your example
And your mother is there with you now
She wouldn't have been without your words

Most people seem to think that heaven
Is a place beyond our imagining and removed from our experience
But I disagree
It may be beyond understanding in splendor
But I don't believe removed from our experience here
We will feel no pain there, know no worry or fear
How could you with Jesus there?
I think it more of Him giving you 'grace glasses'
None of the pain, but all of the reward.
I feel the eyes of heaven looking down
And they are not God's eyes alone
They are those, like you, who've gone before us
Whose dream it was to see us live, to see us grow
To see us struggle and still look up and say 'I believe.'
What greater joy could there be for those acquainted with angels
Than to see their lives restored by the redemption of those lives they held most dear?
Call me a dreamer, or an idealist, or a fool.... but THAT is my belief of your time in heaven
The Savior breaks the bounds of what men can dream
And He reveals to you what we cannot see

And heaven winks with the sunlight.

John 15:15English Standard Version (ESV)

15 No longer do I call you servants,[a] for the servant[b] does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

Alright, Enough!

I was reading my homework tonight - which lines up very neatly with everything else that God has been telling me literally through writing - and I realized that I've been fighting a losing battle here simply because I've been fighting with my head down.  How can someone possibly fight when they're not facing what is attacking them?  So, I have had enough!  Every time it seems that something really amazing is happening in my life - like the new job God graciously provided - I am instantly besieged without even having time to delight in the last victory!  And then I feel like all I have to say to people that I care about and deeply respect is to request prayer for the crappy stuff and then feel guilty for always being gloomy and not having more encouraging things to say.  Enough is enough, I am putting my foot down!  As my aunt is always quoting, 'Greater is He that is in me than he who is in the world.' and she is SO RIGHT!  So it's time I start believing it and acting like it!  If satan wants a battle, I am going to bring the battle to him instead of waiting for his inevitable attacks!  And it's not going to be with my head down in a complete lack of confidence which is ridiculously easy to defeat, it's going to be with my head held high in confidence for the One who goes into battle before me!  I am an adamant believer in spiritual warfare and that it is not emphasized nearly enough in the modern church and yet I seem to have such difficulty to combat it in my own personal life.  So, enough is enough!  I'm tired of being held back in defeat by my own lousy insecurities and weaknesses!  And no more whining to my friends, even when things are tough!  They have problems enough of their own and don't need to hear about more.  Who wants to hear someone whine all the time anyway?!  They deserve a lot better than that, and so do I.

I just thought I better get that out in writing, both so that I can fully retain what I've just said and so that there is a written record of it!

Over-freaking-whelmed

My stomach feels like it has been pummeled to jelly

By fear, by pressure, by stress over time

My mind feels both numb and humming with suppressed activity

Overworked my mind with far too many insistent things

Urgent matters that cannot wait

All urgent

All immediate

All things that only I can attend to

All clamoring at once for my attention

And I, only one, cannot corral so great a stampede

I am trampled by my own over-active mind

By too many responsibilities that are too great to ignore

And me, being only one, am drowning in the onslaught

Overwhelmed by life and its vast, great sea I constantly struggle to stay afloat

It does cross through my tattered brain that an exhausted mind,

With its battered and bleeding soul in tow,

May perish in chains

In screams and much battering of padded walls

 

And no one to call to account for this overwhelming tidy but

 

Of course

 

Myself... *sigh*

 

 

 



Warrior's Repose

(finishing later tonight)

 

Rolling smoke across this field where battle so recently fought

The ground scarred and torn as the lifeless soldiers that lay

So many autumn leaves in the cold February of their day

Locked in the long winter that came far, far too soon

 

 Who weeps for these in their souls, a part of them weeps alone

For grief cannot share its most personal and poignant power.

Different is her face for every mourning soul

Yet the same staring gaze of despair.

Shock melts into hurt, hurt into anger into tears into... more hurt

And over and over the cycle returning

The fall leaves once again flipping end over end in the long winter's icy breath

 

(will work on later tonight)



'Till The Thunder Sounds No More'

Author's Note: When I was a little girl, exactly 2 months and 4 days before my 5th birthday, the axis to my world crumbled and an amazingly Godly man named Ronald 'Ronnie' Rosenberry passed from this earth and into the arm's of God.  I called him 'Daddy'.  The months before his passing, I alone of my 3 siblings was young enough to be around the house for the duration of his battle with cancer.  I saw him suffer and I longed to bring him comfort and to relieve the pain I saw in his eyes when he looked at me and was tormented by the knowledge that me and my sister and brother would be growing up without him.  I remember going to the grocery store with my mother as she was forced to pick out what she felt to be the most 'tasty' looking baby-food for him to eat because with the food tube in his throat due to the esophogial cancer he could no longer eat solid or even ground-up food.  I remember asking him one day towards the end as I had so many times before, 'Daddy, will you read to me?'  He could not answer me through emotion.  You see, at this point, he was so weak that he could barely talk and certainly didn't have the energy to read me a story any longer.  My mother had to try and explain to me that daddy couldn't read to me that day because he was too sick.  She kindly offered to read for me in his stead, but I declined.  It was kind of her to offer, but it just wouldn't have been the same.

In that last year or so of his life, before he grew so weak he could no longer read to us, he liked to sit at the piano and play and sing.  I don't remember what his voice sounded like, 31 years has dimmed that particular memory into a yellowed photograph too dim to discern.  But my mother says while he could hold a tune, he had a little too much vibrato in his voice to make it truly pretty - which she has said very lovingly.  Like many things in his life, I believe it was his gentle, Christ-filled spirit that made it beautiful.  I do, however, remember that one of the songs he sang during that time was a song by an old gospel singer/song-writer named Mosie Lister. http://www.popularhymns.com/till_the_storm_passes_by.php called 'Till The Storm Passes By'.  Throughout my life riding the many hills, turns, loops, and spins of its roller-coaster ride, I have never forgotten that song or how, shortly after my dad's passing, my older brother (11 yrs. old at the time)sang the song in church in our father's memory.  (My brother, incidentally, has grown into a man much like my father was before him.  He's got a huge heart, he's incredibly compassionate, He loves the Lord, is patient and protective with his children, and he loves to sing.  So do I, for that matter.) Perhaps because of the very strong association the song has with my father and the emotions that link that to a father's love, protection, and even sorrow for his children, there are points in my life where I still listen to this song to feel the comfort it brings.  Sometimes, after a very difficult day or frame of time, it is a song that I hear replaying in my mind like a lullaby until I finally fall asleep.  Last night was one such night... (won't tell the weekend's story here)

Till The Storm Passes By

 

In the dark of the midnight,
Have I oft hid my face;
While the storm howls above me,
And there's no hiding place;
'Mid the crash of the thunder,
Precious Lord, hear my cry;
"Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by."

'Til the storm passes over,
'Til the thunder sounds no more;
'Til the clouds roll forever from the sky,
Hold me fast, let me stand,
In the hollow of Thy hand;
Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by.

Many times Satan whispers,
"There is no need to try;
For there's no end of sorrow,
There's no hope by and by";
But I know Thou art with me,
And tomorrow I'll rise;
Where the storms never darken the skies.

'Til the storm passes over,
'Til the thunder sounds no more;
'Til the clouds roll forever from the sky,
Hold me fast, let me stand,
In the hollow of Thy hand;
Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by.

When the long night has ended,
And the storms come no more,
Let me stand in Thy presence.
On that bright, peaceful shore.
In that land where the tempest
Never comes, Lord may I
Dwell with Thee when the storm passes by.

'Til the storm passes over,
'Til the thunder sounds no more;
'Til the clouds roll forever from the sky,
Hold me fast, let me stand,
In the hollow of Thy hand;
Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by.

Hold me fast, Let me stand,
In the hollow of Thy hand;
Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by.

'Til the storm passes by.