Five Minute Friday: Glue: Sometimes there is no glue.

Sometimes there just. is. no. glue.  Mothers weeping for their children...sorrows like sea billows roll in Korea...parents who sent their beloved ones on field trips by busses and boats, never again to see them alive.  On this Good Friday, they weep and wail, and I weep with them...parents in my town who lost their daughter and son, same age as my own...earthquakes, disease.  Sometimes there just is no glue.  But there are wings of angels.  In my deepest darkest night of the soul some years ago when told I was going to die and leave my young children behind, when my body hurt so badly and was too weak to fulfill any bucket list, I saw the white feathers around me.  I knew for weeks on end that I was being held because I could see the tips of the wings...no faces...but I knew. There is no glue to heal a heart that is ripped apart by such agonizing loss, but I pray today that those people in the news, not just faces, but human grieving souls will see the wings of God's angels sent to carry them through.
May it be so, we pray.

You  can find more 5 Minute Friday writing or link up your own here!
http://lisajobaker.com/2014/04/five-minute-friday-glue/

Day 11 of Wild and Precious Life/ Ordinary!!!

So I missed a week of the 31 days, and yet I am summoning the courage to appear again, despite my forgetfulness/not fulfilling the goal, etc... Why?  Because despite falling down in the race, I want to finish.  I think this is our ordinary human life.  We fall down on our goals.  And then this prompt came from 5 Minute Friday, and it was perfect for today.  ORDINARY

And the first thing that comes to my mind is Romans 12:1 in the Message Bible:

 "So here's what I want you to do, God helping you:  Take you everyday, ordinary life---your sleeping, eating going-to-work, and walking-around life---and place it before God as an offering"

How do "ordinary" and  "wild and precious" come together?  And I think that that is the whole point!  When I see that the eggs I fried for breakfast are God providing for this precious child,  the figs I picked off the tree are God's beautiful art in my back yard, the cutting and sewing and emails I do today as God's grace to help us through my husband's unemployment, not JUST a mundane list of tasks to be accomplished....Then I know how precious I am.  And as I sew Little Red Riding Hood outfits today, I will think on that and on the precious little girls who will wear them and pretend and be delighted. 

5 minutes is up!!!

Have a day of beauty and knowing you are precious, always!!

Day 4 Your One Wild & Precious Life

"You are blessed when you're content with just who you are---no more no less.  That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought."   (Jesus...Matthew 5:5  in The Message)

I love this translation.  It is often written as "the meek"  the "gentle and lowly"....the humble.  But that word humble used to have a very dark meaning for me...it was about being humiliated.  This opens up for me that humility is being at rest with the person I am, the one God created, with my inadequacies and fears and downright deficiencies.  It takes me to a place where I am very very clear that I am not God, and I am made for a reason, but not to be all in all as God is....God knows very intimately my fears and brain injury issues....and loves me deeply AS that. It also takes me to a place where I don't need to compare me to others who I think really have a ministry, or .... When I am in acceptance of this,  I am in possession of a LOVE deeper and wider than the ocean, that will not EVER let go of me.  I am in possession of great serenity and peace that lead to an UNself-consciousness which always has more to give to others than a self-conscious me.

Day 3 Fear and this Wild and Precious Life 31 Days

I read today that pain is the touchstone of all spiritual progress!  I don't want to believe the Beatitudes sometimes...that God's blessings are on those who mourn and who are lowly and persecuted and poor and poor in spirit (what one of my pastors called "begging on the inside").  I don't want to have to walk that path to get there.   I tell God that I have walked that path enough and it's time for the party!! 

Sometimes I want to prove that if I had wealth and good health and, and and...that I could work it just fine, thank you.  That would make me feel precious and I would have the means to live that wild, carefree life like those birds Jesus references in Matthew 6!  Yea, I wouldn't have to worry about whether there's enough for food AND bills and if my daughter's asthma is flared up and we need to get her to a specialist now. 

So last night my husband looked up the word used here (He knows Greek and is such a help with these things!)  and Blessed/ Happy is fortunate/lucky!!!  We had to talk about that and think a long while.   The key word in all those beatitudes is in the middle "for". 

"Blessed are the poor in spirit (also in v10--those who are persecuted because of following Jesus) for the Kingdom of Heaven is given to them."

"Blessed are the meek (humble, gentle and lowly) for the whole earth will belong to them"

I am to be happy about this/consider myself fortunate because the reward in the end is HUGE.  We may not be rewarded financially now or have the Stuff that would be pretty and fun, or even have the jobs that give us that spiritual status here people can see...the jobs we want...any job at all in my husband's case, despite 100s of applications!  But God keeps us fed and sheltered and clothed, just like those birds.  Anxiety has all been about fear of the what if...?  and just as Jesus said, it hasn't added anything to our lives!  I can let it go because I and we are Precious to God.   precious, treasured, cherished, and He Will Not Let Me Go!  The Kingdom of heaven will be give to those of us who know our powerlessness and poverty and absolute need for God!

...and this is the WILD part:  in this life with sadness, injustice for the poor, poverty and my total need to be dependent on God,  I absolutely get to be happy about my dependence, and free of worry, free to be merciful, free to work for peace, for justice for the poor, free to be mocked, even persecuted for these Jesus values, free to be one of the poor...ANd KNOW that I am more than ok!!  This world is not the end game or even the best reward.  That comes in the next life.  It is upside down. It doesn't fit our society's norms or values at all.  It doesn't fit with the current notions of the "lazy poor"  or "letting the market take care of it"...it doesn't fit with the American INDEPENDENT value that says those who depend for anything on others are a burden and far less than and worthless and undeserving.  Jesus told us that we are to see differently.  
We are working on that.  I am here writing and thinking it through at the same time, glad for these 31 days of challenge to write on this one subject.

31 Days of One Wild and Precious Life

A new adventure for me, this 31 days of writing.  Honestly, a huge challenge to myself to really start writing again, however that comes out, after this last post-brain injury decade when I have been so afraid to write.  And the topic, it was a God moment last week when I saw a shirt with the quote on it.  It so woke me up, that I cannot stop thinking about it even now...." what will you do with your one wild and precious life?"

Wild

for me wild is not worrying about the fashion rules; it is dressing in what is comfortable and the colorful way that I usually love to see, because this unlocks how I live the rest of my day..free of what I think you must want from me, free to be who I actually am!...wild is letting joy in when we are wildly poor.  It is living out what matters most to me whether our house goes into foreclosure or we go bankrupt or the government shuts down.  Wild takes me to the homeless with joy and gratitude to serve the Christ in each of them.  wild picks the flowers that are growing ad doesn't worry about what I didn't get done in this year's garden.  wild walks, even dances in the rain, has big boots, probably thrifted, knits colorful wool hats for children who need to stay warm, gives them to orphans in Siberia and homeless in the windy city.  wild sews her crazy best, but doesn't worry over being enough!

Precious...precious knows that God made me and treasures me.  percious knows that this is NOT affected by my abilities and inadequacies.  Precious knows the touch of the big feathery wing of my angel sent to hold me.  Precious sees those around me...their eyes..their love and their pain and reaches out to both...it lets in the everlasting lovingkindness (hesed) of God that will not let me go

and heart deep knows that it does. not. matter. to. God whether we are "successful, productive powerhouses"  God just treasures each child and sees who even I am and loves me.  Just that.

Once upon a time I had great joy while living in poverty, no posessions to tie me down.  Just a VW Bug and a suitcase or two...life was sitting and talking with "the least of these" , the God-followers, God-questioners, the chased, the givers, the sanctuaried...all loved by One God...all speaking love and cherished.  

 I am by the GRACE of God, taking that back!

One life...this is my one chance this side of eternity to choose...choose the clothes and attitude I put on each morning, to scream "STOP" to the accuser voice that tries to convince me that I am too small to matter to God, and to smile with love on this and every child of God....to choose to believe, each day, I am/you are child of wonder, child of God, given this gift of preciousness, set free to love, to dance, to create, to forgive, to cry and have joy.  to share that.

I don't know if anyone will read this and that's ok...but if you do, I would love to hear from you on this .  I don't know where these 31 days will take me.  Grateful for day 1 today!

Your One Wild & Precious Life

"Oh Come, Oh Come ...and be Thyself our Prince of Peace"

I listened with deep feelings to this new release of a very old hymn today.  It is Advent....the time the Church waits for birth, rebirth...we wait for the celebration, long for it because our labor pains are strong. 

We feel the broken places of our lives and our friends' lives and our world...and I long for healing, for end to the injustices, the cancer, the diseases, the unemployment and poverty.  OH COME OH COME EMMANUEL.

 AND RANSOM CAPTIVE ISRAEL....

There is hope.  Every day I find more links to people in dark places who are making a difference.  As a seamstress, I love this hope in the cottage business of sewing and designing!  We can buy their cute bags!  http://freesetglobal.com/stock-bags/shop-USA.html

Freeset is a fair trade business offering employment to women trapped in Kolkata's sex trade. We make quality jute bags and organic cotton t-shirts, but our business is freedom!

I know all too well that I alone can't make much difference, and can't bear the pain...It breaks me.  But WE can create a strong braided cord if we work together with God.  Even in our brokenness there are glimpses of joy, glimpses of healing of hearts though bodies still suffer, glimpses of progress--not perfection--growth, change, Love.  

                             God IS WITH US.

and in my broken state, I can link arms with others who feel too their broken places, and we can be with each other,  the physical touch of the invisible God. 

Spring Pinks Saturday

I just love spring, warm air and sun that lifts my head to the sky.  It is so much fun for me to make dresses for little girls, imagining them twirling and skipping, picking flowers from the garden, going to tea parties or sitting in church folding their hands all lady like like their mom, for those few minutes!! 

                      The details are my favorite  part!!

  I loved making this with a recycled Laura Ashley dress, beautiful vintage hanky and Cicely Barker Flower Fairy panel.  I have another style dress coming out in this Laura Ashley fabric as well; but I only had the one cherry blossom flower fairy that goes perfectly with this pink, gray and purple in a size 3T.

Doing the artwork on this apron is something I have been wanting to do for so long...finally got up the courage to try it on a dress, and it sold out!! The apron is from a recycled linen skirt.  But I found more of the main coral pink with yellow roses fabric,  so I am making a few more after customers really wanted me to find more fabric!

Here is the full dress with the bloomers (which I adore!)...This one is available just until March 20 or it sells out again, whichever comes first! 

So I am off to sew Easter dresses!  Happy Pink Saturday!
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