Archive for Hope
The Day My Clothes Spoke to Me
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A new year. A new opportunity. A new day. A new beginning. Ah, the inspiration of it!
I spent part of New Year’s Eve cleaning out my clothes’ closet. I took everything out of my closet and laid the stuff in stacks around my room. Then I began. Toss. Keep. Give away. Store in a different place. Reorganize. Somehow the arrival of the New Year beckoned me to start over again. To think in new ways. To look for new strategies.
Magazine articles about decluttering and organization called to me.
I was in a ruthless mood. If I didn’t love it, it went no matter how much I wondered if it might come back into style in a year or if it might fit me better later.
The process became spiritual.
I picked up a blouse. I thought of my mother and her changing memory. The blouse represented a shopping trip we’d had. I felt saddened and a deeper realization of my time with her changing as she ages.
A dress touched my memory of days gone by and folks I love who I don’t really see anymore. Tears filled my eyes as I allowed the memory to fill my heart.
Another outfit took me back to a season of my life. Ah, those were good days.
The blouse I would wear for my anniversary this week. More smiles.
Ah, there was that item that needs hemming and one that needs a button.
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Christmas Eve Gift
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When I was a little girl, I believed in Santa. I was the last of my classmates to find out that Santa was really my mom and dad. I can still feel how defensive I became when my friends told me that there was no Santa. After all, I had been to Santa’s Village and actually seen the reindeer in Hope Valley, California!
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Hope Against Hope
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Hopelessness leaves a man or woman frozen in despair.
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Why You Must Go Back
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God’s ways are mysterious, beyond my understanding and often seem downright contradictory. While in my humanity, I prefer to think in straight lines which lend themselves to defining a goal as completed, a task marked off, I find that God’s ways are usually not pictured best by straight lines. They are paths which appear, at times, intertwined, difficult to map out, going forward, then backward, orbiting around a center, and often perplexing my human mind. The longer I walk with God, the more clearly I see that He is truly not confined to my limited understanding. He is working, often His deepest purposes in me, when I am clueless.
This week, I was meditating on two of the seemingly contradictory ways of God. In the next few days, I want to explore these two thoughts:
1. You must go back.
2. You can never go back.
Huh? Sounds confusing? I hope you are intrigued sufficiently to continue reading for both statements are true and I am not being ambivalent. There are times in life when you must absolutely go back. You must go back, as it were, in your mind, your emotions, your relationships, to moments of the past and experience the moments again. There are some very important reasons for us to go back. And in other ways, we must never go back and in fact, cannot do so, but that is for another day this week.
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In the Face of Shame
Posted by: | CommentsHave you ever felt ashamed of something you did? Have you ever been embarrassed to look people in the eyes?
On Sunday I began to ponder the effects of shame. I was praying for a beautiful young woman whom I had not seen in a couple of years. The last time I saw her, she asked for prayer because of her marital situation. I had counseled with her, prayed with her and had given her a book as a resource. And here she was again, having a hard time looking into my eyes. The longer I spoke with her, the more obvious it was that she was very ashamed. I knew something of her story. An abusive husband whom she just literally caught in the act of being unfaithful. Not a new story with her. As she cried to me for help, she said, “I don’t want to leave him.” My heart was heavy for her. How I wished I could have taken her troubles away! I wished I could have made her marriage whole. But deep within, I knew that aside from a work of the Spirit of God, things were not going to change in this marriage. She was going to continue to be beaten and betrayed. If she continued to be a prisoner of her shame, she was never going to take the steps she needed to in order to experience acceptance and freedom.
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