Cycles and Songs

In my life there are cycles. In these cycles, God gives me songs to get me through. Some good cycles but mostly trying cycles. The songs that He gives me provide encouragement, peace, strength, assurance, direction and comfort. Music is to my soul what food is to my body. Sustenance. As I begin this "Easter" week in my life cycle, when my marriage died and He began to resurrect it, God has given me a song. It sustains me. It lifts me out from the dead even while still in the body. It soothes my soul and strengthens my heart. The words are wonderful, but to hear the music that goes with it adds a dimension that words cannot produce. Yet, here are the words that will remain this next week while I endure a rough cycle in my life experience.

All the way my Saviour leads me
Who have I to ask beside?
How could I doubt His tender mercy
Who through life has been my Guide?
All the way my Saviour leads me
And cheers each winding path I tread
Gives me grace for every trial
Feeds me with the Living Bread.
You lead me and keep me from falling
You carry me close to Your heart
And surely Your goodness and mercy will follow me...
All the way my Saviour leads me
And oh the fullness of His love!
Oh the sureness of His promise
In the triumph of His blood!
And when my spirit clothed immortal
Wings it's flight to realms of day
This my song through endless ages
Jesus led me all the way!
You lead me and keep me from falling
You carry me close to Your heart
And surely Your goodness and mercy will follow me.....

Today in reading, I am struck how, like Abraham, I have doubted that God could take this old marriage, this tattered relationship, these broken people, and make it prosper...but He has. And I, like Abraham, must hold on to the promises that He gave me during the dark night of my soul, and grasp them for dear life as I blindly grapple my way back to the light of day. "Hope being GONE, he hoped in faith and did not weaken when he saw the circumstances before him impossible...but he grew strong and was empowered by faith AS he gave praise and glory to God. Above all, he, Abraham, was fully assured and satisfied that God was ABLE and MIGHTY to keep His word and to DO what He had promised." And so it is with me...all my life, I have had nothing to have faith in except my God. That, I have held on to...and will continue to hold on to, until that day when my faith becomes my eyes....He has never left me, or forsaken me...He has loved me with an everlasting unchanging strong grasping love....that, no one can ever take away from me...though my heart and flesh may fail, He will not.

Job....what a good ol boy...

"Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind. " And who are the "these" he speaks of? Beast, birds, bushes and fish...."these" know more, believe more, see more than apparently the eyes of man do....they KNOW HIM....they KNOW HIS hand! Do we? Do I? Do we even WANT to?! Or is it too hard, or is it not what WE want to happen, or imagine it to be in our dreams.....have we been so brainwashed by the "have it your way" mentality of this century, that we think we are owed to have it our way?! Obviously so. But His way.....is indeed better. Not perhaps easier, or more lucrative, or glamorous but better...for us and those around us watching. His hand is gentler than the worlds, steadier than mine and much more accurate than those of any leader. Think of it....these creatures and inanimate objects KNOW the hand of the Creator God....look to them...pattern after them...they trust, use instinct, don't worry, do what they were made to do, be what they were made to be....they don't have to figure it out or have endless hours of counseling....they just are what they are and do what they do in keeping with who God made them to be and they function within what they were made to be....and we spend agonizing amounts of time trying to figure all the minute details of that out instead of letting God just lead for us.....go figure.

Strengths vs. Weakness

Yes, we all have them, those lurky pesky little things. Even my strengths sometimes I consider a hindrance. And yet, to fully comprehend that my God MADE me with each particular indentation of His fingerprint....I am discovering that what I once considered a fault, is truly a jewel. What, perhaps, the enemy meant for evil, my God made for good. Both His and mine. As I go through the process of learning this, I see that it is like jewels hidden like Easter eggs, in the corners and shadowed places in my life...how delightful to find all the things HE has placed there behind the rocks and crevasses of my soul....the Son shines on them, little by little and one by one and I see the glint of a sparkle reflected off them...reflected by His light bouncing off the gift and back to my eyes....and I marvel at what HE has made and given to me. For example, these emotions!!! He has given to me. He planned for ME to be entrusted with them..the strength of them, the depth of them, the roller coaster of them, He gave. I am a steward. And this morning I was praying about this and I was reminded how that if I, being human and limited, can have this deeply running river of emotions in ME, then HOW MUCH MORE my Father has in Himself, these deep emotions!!! It is so overwhelming to see how deeply HE LOVES ME!! Hebrews says that Abraham "WENT although he did not know or TROUBLE HIS MIND about WHERE he was to go." To live each day in eager anticipation of Your unfolding of it for me....IN me.....THROUGH me..... Thanks for my gifts Abba...

Answer.....

To last blog......"Why are you cast down Oh my inner self? And why should you moan over me and be disqueted within me? Hope in God and WAIT EXPECTANTLY for Him, for I shall yet praise Him, my help and my God. O my God, my life is cast down upon me and I find the burden more than I can bear!! Therefore will I EARNESTLY REMEMBER YOU from the land of the Jordan River and the summits of Mout Hermon, ....Roaring deep calls to roaring deep at the thunder of Your waterspouts; all Your breakers and Your rolling waves have gone over me. Yet the Lord will command His loving kindness in the daytime and in the night His song shall be with me, a prayer to the God of my life! Why are you cast down O my soul? And why should you moan over me and be disquieted within me? HOPE IN GOD AND WAIT EXPECTANTLY FOR HIM, FOR I SHALL YET PRAISE HIM WHO IS THE HELP OF MY COUNTENANCE AND MY GOD!!" He is risen indeed.

Mood Swings

Why do I have them all the time?!!! AGRHGHHHHH!!! I can have such a positive outlook one day and the next be down so far in the opposite direction!! Stabilization seems to elude me at times. Yet, I try. I won't give up. This has been a very hard year, and I wish I could blame it on that, but this has been a lifelong curse that seems to never go away. I know God has good plans for me, but like Job, I sometimes wonder what the reason is or what the outcome could possibly be! NEVERTHELESS... I press on....just harder to press on during days like this. Sometimes I feel like I am doing good to tread the waters of this life and at others, I feel like I am just floating on my back in serenity looking up at the sky and the clouds that float by carefree. Is this just LIFE? Are there other people like this?!! Surely it is universal and I will take some comfort in that fact. And yet.....I guess it keeps me close to my Source and that....is a good thing. Just wish there were an easier way...an easy button would help. Feelings are fickle. I know the facts. I try to keep them harnessed and in place...at times that is hard on the old strength of fortitude....need a break....from what though? Reality? No. I have tried that and it NEVER works!! From treading I think....yes, that will do....treading....

So...onward and upward and another day goes by...seemingly wasted. ......and yet, is it? If I am learning the lesson I guess it is not.

Bermuda

It's not just a triangle in the Caribbean!!! It is a tool of satan in my garden!! I swear that it comes up straight from the depths of hell....you can NOT get it out!!! EVER!!! It is in every fiber and grain of my garden this year. I was, of course, in a hurry to get my veggies out and could not, NO, have taken the time to kill the grass and put on weed blocker sheets, and then put top soil on it. No. That would be too easy. But I have never pulled so much and left so much and cared so little in my life. That stuff seriously is IN THE GROUND TO THE MAGMA! I know there is something the Lord is trying to teach me through this little garden...He always does through working in it....Perhaps the fact that the stinking Bermuda is like the sin or the humanness of my life. Perhaps to show me how good and worthy things take time and energy and patience. Perhaps it is just to show me how little I have of that P word. I worked in my garden for at least 4 hours today. There was no t.v.....no Internet.....no music (except for the serenade of the birds)....there were no other humans to talk over my thoughts with .....just me....talkin to myself and my God. It is a lost art to just be alone....in a garden....working with out sounds and interruptions. I have just finished watching the John Adams movie and was impressed how a man so greatly thought of was laying bricks with his son towards the end of his life.....how he worked with his hands on the land. It got me to thinking today about how the Settlers DID it! How the Indians did it....How my grandparents did it!!! Wondering what their secrets would have been for this cursed Bermuda! Wondering how they did it with out Lowes to go to or tillers to till or miracle grow!!! The best part of hard work like that is getting dirty. So dirty and sweaty and exhausted.....then.....comes the best of the best....the nice soothing warm....clean to the bone shower. Not a better feeling to be had for an outside laborer......

Plantings

I love the spring. I feel this morning as though I was planted almost a year ago - into the dark hard earth by God - like the little roots of the hostas I have planted....I covered them with dirt, I waited and waited and waited for their signs of life - the rains beat them, the freezing north wind blew them, the 6 inches of snow buried them, the hard freeze came and froze them and any hope of their making it - through these stages I saw one tiny leaf begin to push upward, and through it all, begin to rise. I looked at it the other day, and it is rather a small and ill- shaped leaf... a little brown and deformed....and yet, somewhere beneath it's paltry showing, grow roots - going deep, holding on, gathering sustenance - unseen to my eyes but doing so none the less. I am like that ....this past year - I am holding on and growing. I am not yet what God has intended me to be, but I WILL be....I have been....I am becoming.....I will continue....I will not lay dormant and die or give up!!! But I will indeed press on...press upward...grow outward...for the world to see and for my God to be blessed by the life He intended me to lead and live.

Spurgeon says....."Watch for God in the events of your life. Unless you put the water jars out when it rains, you will never collect the water." And so I do. I collect the water of Life in my soul....I drink it down....I grow less deformed, deeper rooted and a joy to those who see and can enjoy what God has made of this once ugly decrepit thing that was the beginning of a beautiful plant. Let the spring with its torrents of storms, produce in me the strong and wonderful product it was chosen to be, with roots that grow ever deeper and stronger in the soil of this life.....with grace and beauty.

Religion

I have been in religion all of my life. I have been religious, judgmental, ecumenical, theological, hypocritical, and been legalistic as well, most all of my life. And yet, I knew there was something more....something I wasn't getting. I have read Catholics, Buddhist, atheists, fanatic fundamentalists, left and rightists, middle of the roadists, faith healers and faith stealers. I, in the late middle of my expected life, have now come to the conclusion that it is much simpler than this. To live it, to believe it, it takes a very SIMPLE style....Jesus, of course, said it best....it is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and your neighbor as yourself." Simple. To the point. And yet, so seemingly elusive to most every form or shape of "religion" I have come across. Because it is NOT a religion....it is a belief and way of life....one you practice or not, every day in every way, or NOT. Rules written on the tablet of your heart to hold in high esteem not scorched into your burdened mind to carry and to keep upon penalty.

I was privileged to be able to keep my oldest grandson this past week. I was able to share some simple Bible stories with him. Not because I had a Bible thumping him over the head but because the things we were observing in nature itself, gave way to stories that related. I want so much for all my children to know, all the world to know, the God that has brought me out from among the dead while still in the body. The God that has delivered my soul from the depths of hell and suffering. The God that keeps my heart, my tears, my life in His hands. And yet, I want them to know Him because they see it in me, not because it is a preached religion with rules that only parch the heart and leave you dry and thirsty for the true water of life. I want them all to know the freedom we have in Him. Not just freedom to DO whatever comes across your mind, but freedom to BE what it is that came across HIS mind when we were created by Him. It has taken me 50 plus years to get to this point in my life...this point where I can hear Him above the others, where I see Him in all things, where I feel His love and presence, and even hear His voice clearly at times. I am at a point where I am not following rules put down and watered down by men, but am in a relationship put forth and grown carefully by God and His love for me.

All this to say, that I have grown in wisdom the past 10 years of my life....in many different ways, the sluffing off of my religious past is only one of them....one that I so desire to pass on to the next generation....but how? When they all live so far away, and all of us lead such busy lives? And when we see each other, there is so much to say and catch up on that to plumb the deep waters of our souls together is never accomplished. What are the options to share with your children then? As opportunity arises and as He speaks through me....for I, like Moses, do not know how to speak what is in my ever overflowing heart! But I desire to be faithful to open my mouth let Him speak who never wants for words.