Walk with Him Wednesday

How do I calm the storms through the day enough to sing the Praises of the Lord?

For this question I lack an answer, a true, real, honest answer.

The voices of man child the Father gave to me, the laughter and the tears, filled with frustration and also frenzied joy...the volume is so loud at times I cannot overcome it with Praise.

My heart quietly sings it to Him when the moments are soft, as they are now, with blonde heads lay on pillows and brown pigtails softly wrapping her neck while she breathes deep...

Thank you Lord....breathing in and out as the rhythm is natural, given by God, written in His holy name, YHWH...Thank you Father...thank you...

If I could only be a reflection of constant Thanksgiving for my children, not subdued by the temptation to be exhausted or to curse the hard work laid before me...

But, rather to breathe Thanksgiving in ALL things....all things...

Each moment of opportunity to teach my children, to train them up...

To refuse the temptation to find it inconvenient, tiresome, exasperating...

Oh selfish me...longing to make myself god-like rather than to serve the True God...

Those moments with my children should feel and come to me like Gifts from the Father, to be snatched up and given Victory in Jesus as we carve their hearts and their spirits for Him...

For the carving is often done without the words but with the look and the tone and the unintentional communication from my heart to theirs...

Rather I long to live with Thanksgiving in my heart and a joyful smile on my face, even in the harsh moments of teaching and carving, which happens often, moment by moment, that the knife would never dull but rather miraculously, through God's grace continue carving...

That the noise and the business of raising five children would only lift my spirit to sing His praise for the gifts He gave cannot be measured by mere words but a state of being, a place of rest within me that I live in the moment of Thankfulness...

That I might breathe Grace....

Mercy...

Grace...YHWH...

Thank you Jesus for the blonde hairs upon their heads, ten fingers and toes, hearts that long to please, opportunities to seize, help me not to fail...to take the moment by the hand and guide it...

Toward You...

Thank you Lord...

Breathe Grace...

Then they too will Breathe Grace...

They too will echo my look, my tone, my communication, without the words...

They too will one day Breathe Thanksgiving...

My faith runs deep in so many things...I trust, obey, listen, petition...

In the thing God has given to me to do most abundantly, most routinely, most importantly, I lack the faith...

The faith to give Thanks because it requires Trust, Reliance, Vulnerability...

Why do I avoid vulnerability so...

To breathe grace upon those small faces, the future men, and the small, precious woman, in my life, would require to be vulnerable...to share saddness, disapointment, to let anger go and embrace the emotion behind it all...

My faith has a come to a curious end in this moment where I refuse to raise them in the light of God's rejoicing for ALL things and His abundant Grace and Mercy...

Father create in me a clean heart...

---

From Anne today:
"Our thanks to God is our witness to the goodness of God when Satan and all the world would sneer at us to recant."

"When I only give thanks for some things, aren’t I likely to miss giving God glory in most things?"

"Doesn’t God call His people to a non-discriminating response in all circumstances? “[G]iv[e] thanks always and for everything” (Ephesians 5:20 ESV)."

Vulnerable

I prayed long and sought wholeheartedly the letting go and falling deep.  I remember hearing his voice for the first time and something inside jolted with the assurance and confirmation I could not yet decipher. It was only as the days past I realized the accuracy of my first inclination, God's nudging, my returning to thoughts of him. 

Our story isn't common.  We started with words. 

The writing and breathing of our deepest thoughts, questions, concerns, and directions. Our greatest loves and desires spoken through letters. Thousands of letters written by the glow of the screen. Lengthy calls in the late hours.  My thoughts always returning to him.

I wanted him. To be near to him. To feel him breathing on me. To brush against him. To connect. I wanted him to think I was something. Beautiful.  Was I? Was I enough for him? I put my whole self out there...I was vulnerable.

Here...6 years and five children later I shy from vulnerable.  I can't draw words to explain why.  I've closed some. I've been wounded from time to time and have wounded too I'm sure.  And in those wounds the scab of healing (although there is healing) has left my once vulnerable heart tighter than before. 

Where I once was willing to risk it all in order to captivate him I now protect.  I don't protect it all. I freely give up myself to him. Make it a priority to become one flesh.  Create life with him, five times over.  They are beautiful.  We make beautiful for whatever we are lacking in beauty ourselves.  They are the essence of beauty.

But I hold a little back.  I keep myself from truly letting it all go.  I struggle to let love just come, be, to settle and then rise into my life. Like the rising of dough or a fresh baked bread or cookies. 

Bread, the symbol of nourishment.  Could my love be like bread?  Could I nourish his soul?  It first needs stirring, kneading, and a bakers passion.  It must be placed into the oven where the warmth could burn but if done right creates something delicate and perfect.  Jesus is my bread. The bread I take to remember his perfect love.  Like the bread, my willingness to be vulnerable could be a symbol of this perfect love I've been given in the Bread of Life towards the man I love. The man God gave to me.

Unintentionally I keep myself busy, keeping his touch and his affections at bay.  I don't WANT this but I DO this.  This causes our once raw, crazy love to be left burning softly not flaming wildly as it could. Blessings, God's blessings stay adrift, just off the shore, waiting for my signal. 

My once passionate words now spoken as untimely jokes to lighten the mood from passion to playful.  Passion reveals vulnerability. I can't go there....why can't I go there?  Moving into him is where I want to be.

I love and must leave here in this journal Ann's words today.

How to Fall in Love Again in Four Minutes A Day

It only takes four minutes a day to move into a deeper heart place. It only takes four minutes a day to connect in soul intimacy; to breathe in oxygen for the other half of my heart. Don’t, and I too begin to suffocate, the death heave. I wish someone had told me this in the beginning.
::

Four Fixations

Four times a day think on love.
When I leave the marriage bed…
leave the front door…
when I return to front door….
return to marriage bed.
These are the four critical archways of time in our day. Touch or whisper a sweet nothing when passing through these gate points, and we walk into hours of closeness. Forever love fixates like fresh love.
::

Four Embraces

Four times a day, wrap up in the life partner. Embrace fully and hold each other’s eyes. That’s all.
Repeat four times daily.
The one flesh breathes best when the skin pores are close; connected.
::

Four Affirmations

Four times during the day, thank him. For working faithfully to provide, for hanging up his towel, for putting gas in the van, for making this heart skip a wild beat.

Look for the ways to thank him and watch how he moves closer.

I will set my mind to this.  Revealing my hearts true desire. Not masquerading it with expectations that crack and the distraction that separate. Making more time, drawing more near to him.  Creating the uncomfortable for me to create the Oneness that is US.

I want to be US. Lord help me to be US.  We are friends, parents, partners, life organizers, planners, preparing, trainers of children...I want US to also be vulnerable together. For the baking and the warming to rise into something delicate and perfect.

Standing shoulder to shoulder encourages and refreshes, standing toe to toe, skin to skin, eye to eye, letting hands wrap tight and speak words of beauty creates LOVE.  Father, help me to CREATE.

Walk with Him Wednesday

The Practice of Marriage...hmmmm I murmur to myself and take a deep breath, as I ponder whether I can truly contribute to this discussion as my marriage is still truly in the birthing stage.  It is cloaked in the appearance of being matured and steadfast as my husband and I have created five angels and brought God's gifts into the world in just six short, often long in feeling, but sweet in reflection, years since our "I do's".  I DO...what are those words we spoke.

Words we pledge to one another in the stillness of the moment when all the world stands still so that we might become ONE.  Breathed with youth, innocence, good willed intention of grace, love, adoration, promise, and commitment.  In that moment all is possible, all has come full circle, love has spawned a new beginning and the world is as foot.

I DO...
I DO...
I DO...

Do I love unconditionally when the words we once spoke with love and honor become harsh and jagged with edges that cut deep in the night?
Do I serve fully when the rewards seem shallow and few?
Do I press forward with compassion towards the man who chose me, or for whom I was chosen by God to make his life whole, two to become one?
Do I respect Him because God calls me to, commands me to, promising reward for looking past the man and setting my eyes upon the Lord?

The seasons come in quickly once the vows are spoken and the lives that were once two are now one and we make our bed together and rise under the same sun.  For us the stretching of skin, kicking of tiny feet and joyful pangs of childbirth arrived ten short months after breathing our "I do's". Naked, pink and warm with life he brought a new season of life to our fresh, barely birthed marriage. The two were both infants at once.

The season of childbearing, angel making, quiver-filling has yet to be subsided.  This season sits long, breathes deep, blesses much and will pass too quickly I fear.  Within this season are yet smaller, more subtle seasons as my husband and I learn, grow, repent, renew, and repeat our love for one another beneath the cloak of making and birthing babies.  We are birthing babies and birthing marriage at the same time.  This comes with many lessons and many blessings.

We till the ground of marriage, churning it, kneading it, watering it into something ever growing and maturing.  We take care to keep the light and the dark upon it for proper amounts of time.  We give the dark it's pleasant intimacy and the day its laughter and loudness as little boys and 1 sweet girl fill our home with joy.  Again we till the ground, churn it, knead it, water it expecting growth towards the direction of the ultimate light.  At times we find the weeds.  Harsh yet necessary cleansing must happen and we start fresh with a new bed.  We are not gardeners and gardening comes with difficulty.  To be a farmer of hearts and minds and souls without being a farmer of the land presents challenges.  But, we press on thinking of our I DO's and our love and our promise.

Ann states, "The Farmer knows seasons.  He knows you cannot change them or race them and it’s best to just look to the sky and let come what comes and be the man patient, lips murmuring prayers, the thick hands working silent love. He does this. Tilling soul soils for years."
 
And so I turn down beds, fold fresh laundered shirts and pair socks, fail at cooking "good" meals but try my hardest, think of him while he toils for our satisfaction, pat baby bottoms over and over to bring about sleep, cut crust off sandwiches, breath "YHWH" in earnest, run warm bath water, clothe and lay down precious babes to dreams, and slip quietly into my room to till and tend to the man I love and do what makes us ONE to honor the God-Spirit-Man three in ONE.

Through the seasons I pray we don't lose sight of the night and we claim each day; tilling, turning, kneading and sometimes starting anew, clearing the weeds...each season bringing its own blessings and lessons...embracing each with open arms and hearts filled with His LOVE.

I DO promise to LOVE through the seasons. LOVE as both a choice and a feeling. I do this to honor my savior because in the end I know this is the only way to truly say I DO at all.  It covers every season, every change, all the growth, the birthing of babes, the night and the day, the love, laughter and the tears, the weeds.  I see now that my I DO really was a promise to God not to my husband.  We become ONE that we might show our true love to HIM--THE ONE.  YHWH.

Walk with Him Wednesday-Parenting

 I confess that I am, at times, at least once a day, overcome by the volume that life gives off in our home.  God blessed us with boys, amazing, happy, crazy, wild from the earth, BOYS!  As a sign of God's grace and Mercy He then blessed us with a sweet, precious, amazing little girl, our only brunette baby with earthy eyes instead of crystal blue like her brothers.  And now, as she approaches 2 we find that she too has been created from the earth just like the boys and lives in a world where the Louder is the Better! And again, out of His abundant blessings, comes our 5th child....A BOY!!! 

I did not grow up with brothers but I was a tom boy, rough, wild, rugged, engaged in boy activities with boy-friends from the neighborhood.  It was only expected I suppose that the Lord give us Boys!  But, as I said, I confess that the noise in our home sometimes pushes my patience beyond what I think I can bare! 

In an effort to encourage our children to be happy, funny, and to enjoy laughter and play I pray each day for that extra ounce of patience I will need to endure the volume that comes with such activities.  I find, of course, that there are times to encourage and teach them to speak with soft, inside voices, and to refrain from screaming and squealing at every turn. I mean they have to be able to exist in the real world someday and that is a part of that process. 

They are true BOYS, through and through and that little, tiny, precious girl, I'm pretty sure she thinks she is a boy also!  For now, my husband and I allow her to think that and engage with her in those things she find of interest which often happens to be sword fighting, laughing loudly, dancing to music, wrestling, and the rest of the things she sees those CRAAZY BOYS doing from day to day.

Somewhere inside their extremely loud behavior and wild times there is an innocence among them all and a sweetness, although a noisy one, that we find irresistible.  This was an unexpected part of parenting for me and although I'm often reaching into the depths of my ability to withstand the noise, I find that this part of parenting can often also bring the greatest moments of joy!

Walk with Him Wednesday

Parenting...oh the daily and momentary thoughts of my life. Even as I sit here now in a quiet house filled with sleeping eyes and peaceful hearts I feel the child stirring within my womb and consider my calling in his life.

Days and hours my husband and I have spent contemplating our calling as parents.  There is no question we believe children come directly from God, blessings in the purest form, given to us only to be directed back to the Father. Given to Him wholly and completely by continually inviting them back to God's throne.  It is our duty to reflect His Love, His Grace, His Mercy, His adoration for them. 

We've come to imbed into our hearts our calling as transformers, teachers, shepherds.  Truly to know what shepherding our children is about and to then put into practice, consistently and lovingly with kindness and tempered hearts, has been our hearts desire. Heart transformation in our children rather than behavior modification is our newly coined term. They must be molded into servants. 

How can we do that when we are sinful still? Their models?  God has called us so we listen and we go. But I often wonder if I spoil the very thing my heart desires to do in my children?  Can God call them unto Himself despite my fallen and redeemed state?

Patience I must pray for.  Kindness I must seek in times of trouble, mess, or frustration.  Understanding, listening, lingering, holding, seeking their hearts desire, redirecting, and refocusing.  Then to do it all again come morning.

I am my own mountain. If I could have confidence in what God has been teaching me, prayerfully seek His strength to do it, and then trust in His ways...
That is the key. Prayerfully Parenting my Children.  Why do I so often forget that.  Where does prayer go in my day?

My Lord has laid out a perfect plan for me to raise my children.  To offer them unto Him.  I must seek Him first in order to find it.

Father help me to parent in your light, in your path, with your kindness and grace. To keep voices soft, words eager to encourage and uplift, transforming hearts for you and unlocking biblical truths for my children.
Amen