Monday, May 19, 2025

Sometimes it's like you're a flag on a flagpole and you just have to hang on.

Sometimes it's like you're a flag on a flagpole and you just have to hang on 


There are so many instances where this statement applies...Sometimes you are in a job where you keep working your but off and you keep getting passed up.....hang on.

Sometimes you have an addiction that tempts you daily.....hang on.

Sometimes you are  tormented by your own anger tempting you at every turn to blow up....hang on.

Sometimes you are just plum tired and have to keep working...hang on

Sometimes anxiety courses through your mind and affects your body, too, and you can't control it....hang on

Sometimes the temptation is the quiet type, like depression that cuts like a knife in your heart, and it's all you can do to hang on.

Sometimes it's all of the above at once, in a hurricane force gale....and you have to hang on for dear life!


I was having a day like that yesterday....and talking to God usually helps. He usually leads me to a comforting scripture or message of some sort.  But .....

                                                  there 

                                                   was

                                                  only

                                                 silence.

 I tried confessing my sins.  I asked for prayer from friends.  I tried just listening.........nothing.             Nothing worked to get me out of my oppression.

The only verse that was last in my mind that morning before going to work, was .....Wait Upon The LORD......so, I did.....only barely.......I was like a scrappy mess emotionally.....like one of  those flags that have seen its better days,  but are still out there, flying,  hanging onto the pole.

I'm writing this to encourage you.  At the end of the day,  I finally got my message from the LORD.  It was simply BELIEVE.  A lot of the things that were tormenting me were problems that I have been dealing with. The rhetorical question hanging in my mind was......

Are you going to believe?   

Are you going to believe things are going to get better or are you going to hang onto your pessimism, your grouchiness, your "I hate (fill in the blank-with whatever you are hating right now)"  attitude?    It really is that simple.

You still have to endure the dark days that feel like you're in a tunnel and you are never going to get out.  But on the other side of the tunnel, you are faced with 

What               will                you               believe?

I CHOOSE to believe things are going to get better with the situations/problems that I am facing.  I CHOOSE to  believe we am going to come out on the other side, victorious!   I CHOOSE to believe, that though I am a flag on the flagpole today,  tomorrow I will be walking on solid ground across the bridge of faith to an unknown GOOD plan that God has for me!


As for me and my house,  we will serve the LORD....Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. 

Joshua 24:15


I am giving credit in this article to the LORD, of course, and also to Steven, my husband, who inspires me and encourages me every day to CHOOSE BELIEF......because that's how he lives his life!






Friday, March 21, 2025

the tender hands of God (with awe)

 My God,  You are so tender with me

Even, espcially when I am harsh with myself

God, my God 

how you love

with passionate abandonment


Sip the sun

 


As I sip the sun on brilliant Saturday morning, 

my imagination takes me to the mansion overlooking the wide valley with the creek running through it.  

I imagine its me sitting up on the cozy glass-enclosed porch viewing the scenic beauty and musing about the morning or taking a stroll onto the overhanging deck, cup of warm brew in hand.  

breathing in the cool crisp clean air of winter and the magnificent scenery.  

but atlas,  I labor along the creek bottoms, following a deer track in the early rising sun... 

THIS is my preferred workout.  

There is no sight of the creatures, now,  only the evidence of matted down grass in places and  some bones along the edge of the creek (succumbed to a pack of coyotes, no doubt) the abundance of which  I heard in evidence on a previous evening walk; the multitude of yips and howls which sent me scaling back up the hill from whence I came.  

But in the day, I am fearless and the creatures of the night are the ones in abeyance (for now).   

The only one, the marvelous mutt by my side

As we sip the morning sun together in our morning nature walk to otherworlds



Peace... Restful Sunday steeling into my soul

 


Pure Sabboath

Watching the Robins

Seeing the Geese with their flashy white reflecting dazzingly in the sun

The water turning into liquid gold, lapping the shoreline

The occasional call of a herring gull

the roaring of distant falls as a backdrop

a slight breeze rustling the prairie grass at my feet

The hammock beckoning


Sunday steels into my soul