Digital

I think I may need to delete my Facebook page. I was just playing around on it when I am supposed to be spending time with God. It's been over three days and I can tell by my grouchy mood that I need to be reminded who I am and to whom I belong.

I spend a considerable amount of time on Facebook reading status and looking at pictures. I love to look at the pictures. All of them. They reveal things about my friends and teach me things that I didn't know. I love pictures though; I'm pretty passionate about them.

I don't often do any quizzes or applications, but once in awhile one will get my attention and if it gives me results that I think are worthy to share I will post them to my page. Tonight, I was stopped by one that was titled, "What Bible verse fits you best?" So I took it. My results were Matthew 22:37-38 about loving the lord your god with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. The write up said that I abound in love and compassion, even for those who may not deserve it. I love that it brought that verse up though because my first thought is that I would find myself lacking in compassion for others.

But then I think about how much I love people. I think about the things that are deep with in me and how they sort of tear me up. I never tell anyone those parts, at least, not very often. Today I was at work and we have a waste water lake behind our building and there is a microcosm of wildlife happening back there. We have egrets, ducks, geese, turtles, and hawks. Today, said hawk was diving for food. I have always found it fascinating to watch the hawk dive into the water to catch its food. However, I have never seen it actually catch anything. A lady at work told me she saw it take a baby duck one time. Well today was my day. Said hawk was hovering over the water like a helicopter which was amazing to watch and it took its dive and came out with a rather large fish! I know it sounds silly but I felt really sad for that fish, I wished that I had not seen it get caught. I don't think that they should make movies where animals take on human roles, because those kids grow up to be people like me who almost shed a tear over what the fish must be feeling as it was suffocating in the air. The gravity of the sadness was heavy and then caused me to see all parts of life. Death is a part of it and no matter what I don't like to think about it.

Dark topic I know, and I could make it light and get a giggle out of you, but the truth is, that is what I feel on a regular basis. I get moments where my heart breaks for the violence of life and for how much I love to fight and take ground, the reality of debris that life leaves lying around me can be emotionally overwhelming at times.

But...

Maybe that is my compassion. Maybe by feeling the raw emotion of it I can pray and use it to motivate the fight in me to push forward toward truth, and justice, and the grace that surrounds us all and overflows. Maybe it can propel me to change the earth just by knowing how to pray for it. It may be those scales I was talking about before dropping off for a few moments to truly see the Father's view and hear his heart beat. The steady rhythm of all come, love all. I think I need to take the verse on and realize that it's a lifestyle not a destination. The ownership of it takes the striving out. Am I loving the Lord my God with all my heart? Probably not. Am I going to keep praying that I will? Absolutely. I am also learning to love myself which is teaching me how to love others. There is an appropriate balance there in between the two. You can't do either really well without the understanding of the other.

Cool. Good revelation. Maybe Facebook isn't that bad. It inspired some time for me to really seek out an idea about his word in my life. He'll use any means to get to my heart. I love it.

Honeysuckle

I remember a two-story wooden house with a balcony patio off the second floor, set off the road by at least an eighth of a mile of gravel drive. A tobacco farmer lived on one side of us, and his fields wrapped around our back yard where he would bail hay every year into those large round bails. Upstairs in his two-story barn, a large door on side hinges opened, aerating gigantic draping me-sized tobacco leaves hanging from their stalks – dark pungent curtains swaying ever so slightly in the gentle Kentucky breeze.

Opposite the tobacco barn lived a family of five, with a son my age. Next door to them was a brood of seven whose youngest was five years my senior. This memory of the two-story wooden house is my first childhood home and the family of seven our first family friends. The oldest son found a lost two-year-old, wandering the cornfield separating our homes. Our families have been friends every since.

There were collectively about nine children living within a radius of four houses on a long country road that had no proper name. Though the wooden house set off the road wasn’t a farm house and only produced children, the memories of that place are potent and happy — attempting to ice skate in sneakers on a pond the size of an above ground pool, farm animals, tobacco, corn, surrounding woods that went on endlessly littering the bluegrass — all sound tracked by John Denver’s “Country Road.”

Things happen in the woods – fantastic, magical, majestic things. Secrets are made and left in the woods. It’s where stories find their settings, adventures develop their characters, and princes find their princess. Within my woods after a clouded memory of a five-minute walk, trees gave way to space and a gigantic sand bar. Here, I became a grand conqueror whose mission was to battle the enemy amongst fallen tree trunks and large truck tires left behind from a lost generation with their prehistoric antiques.

Memories of the sand bar are faded, viewed through a soft focus lens now. My memories of it are long lasting; I still see what it looked like walking along the trail coming through the clearing. However, my clearest memory of this place is honeysuckle.

The trail was lined with honeysuckle, and the summer fragrance of the blooming plant mixed with adventure and the wonder of a preschooler, lacing itself around my mind and enveloping nostalgia. It was a smell of purity and a definition of childhood.

Honeysuckle is the aroma of my childhood.

Honeysuckle smells to me how silk feels: soft and angelic, lightly caressing, and slowly embracing my memories. It is as if God romances me with flowers, and his gift to me is honeysuckle. Honeysuckle evokes excitement in me, reminding me of possibility, of purity, and rightness in the world – the wonder of a child and the excitement of what could be just through the clearing. In the spring when the buds are starting and give way to summer, honeysuckle wafts through the air and arrests my attention, flooding me with memory full of adventure and excitement, lightening bugs, and summer. It focuses my attention and allows me to submerge myself in the possibility of my daydreams and let the smell wrap itself all around me once again like an old friend hugging me in reunion. It smells of hope and reminds me I am still that little girl in God’s eyes. It reminds me to keep dreaming, to keep seeking out the trails that lead to the next clearing, encouraging me to keep seeking what could be with in that clearing. It reminds me no matter how old I get I will always be that little girl ready to go on a grand adventure and scale the mountain! No matter where the trails traversed, there will be little things like honeysuckle lined along the way to remind me I am greatly loved and never traveling alone.

Blink

I've been playing around with this thought in my head. A concept or maybe a lifestyle change...not really sure. Whatever it is, it is forming itself to be the platform of my life. What I want to focus on and how I want to encourage others to live.

I have spent the better part of my life too afraid to look at who I really am. Second guessing how I spoke, what I said, what I wore, and how other's accepted me. Somewhere along the road, God grabbed me and said if you are really going to live for me and with me then you have to understand who I say that you are. You have to live in that and be comfortable. It wasn't until I stopped looking at who I wanted to be and what I wanted to accomplish that I realized it's always all about me.

This is where this change has come. What if we all took a day to look at the person next to us. What if we were to spend our time looking for the absolute best in each other instead of letting the lies that tear us apart hinder us from pulling each other forward? How much time do I spend sitting inside my head thinking about how I can make my life perfect or better?

I've decided to live a life dedicated to others. To make sure that I am always looking for the best in each person. Really what's the point at looking at anything else, it isolates us, hurts us, and binds us in a lie that we have no hope.

If I love others beyond myself and I see only the good then I am free to live my life powerfully unapologetic loving others and encouraging them to love the person next to them. I fully believe that as I love others scales of brokenness and distrust will fall off of people's eyes and they will start to love the person next to them. I truly believe that Love Covers a Multitude of Sins and when we choose to see the best, the love that is produced through that choice covers the ugly and causes others to not see their ugly but to see their light and to pass it on.