I will
Eat better
Start exercising
Watch less TV/Netflix/YouTube…..whatever
Get enough sleep
Do more
Start following a budget
Stop complaining
Read my bible every day
Be nicer, better, smarter, thinner, healthier
Give myself a break
It’s a full To-Do list for a day that never comes….
Tomorrow
Hard as it can be, I’m choosing to live in the today’s.
Linking up with Kate Motaung and a friendly bunch of bloggers to free write for 5 minutes on the word Kate gives and GO! Join the party!
Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker for 5-Minute Friday. Today’s word prompt is Truth. Y’all, this was a hard one. Truth is, I did some editing this time, as in this is a second draft. I beg your grace.
I am searching to live this truth I believe.
I have measured myself by the world and there is no truth in that. It has left me lacking and smaller than. Left me with feelings that are lies and standards that are false. I don’t like the numbers I see on the scale so I don’t get on it but what does the scale measure? It doesn’t measure truth. Not the truth that I am loved, I am valued and I am enough. Not because of how I look or what I do but because I am beloved by God.
Truth is, I don’t always feel lovable.
Truth is, I have some stuff I still need to let go.
Truth is, despite of my less than feelings, my imperfections, my comparisons and numbers on a scale, I am enough.
It’s God’s love for me that gives me value, that gives me worth. That makes me precious beyond measure.
Some days I can’t believe this. But it is still truth.
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image from Pinterest
Do you want fair? Or do you want grace?
Fair wants the good to be rewarded and the wrongs to be called out.
Fair says not you but Me, Me, Me.
Fair says you have to say it this way, raise your hands this way and only go here and not there.
Fair says you do the crime you do the time.
Fair is what we want when our team is offended and we scream “that’s not fair!”
Our mama’s told us to play fair. Don’t cheat. Take your turn.
And grace disrupts and says who cares about the what because I care about you.
Grace doesn’t play fair.
Grace says everyone is welcome no matter how we look, how we sound, where we go or what we say.
Grace welcomes the less than, the forgotten and grace welcomes them first. Before the fair-play folks.
You can play fair. You can keep the rules and keep score but me? I want grace. Give me grace, always, grace.
He, after all, loves each of us—good and evil, kind and cruel. He causes the sun to rise and shine on evil and good alike. He causes the rain to water the fields of the righteous and the fields of the sinner. – Matthew 5:45
Linking up today with Lisa-Jo Baker for Five Minute Friday. To join in or read other posts click here.
Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker for Five-minute Friday.
Five minutes. On the word TOGETHER
GO
We started together. Their two, birthing me, making together into my home, my safety. Another added a few years later and this would be the together I would chase. After their divorce, after the constant moving and separating and being far away and knowing together would never look like I wanted.
In those years I built walls to protect my heart and before we were all DIY-ing it I was doing-it-myself while longing for together.
It was there, always. It looked different from what I wanted and I wasn’t open for its new design but it found me before I found it. Together.
Together has been fractured recently as my mother-in-law was “promoted to glory” earlier this month and her another chair will be empty around our Thanksgiving table.
Mama’s dementia fractured together several years ago and has redefined what it means in our family.
The thing is, the thing I’m learning, is God’s together is grander and more than I ever knew. But then, He’s always bigger than the pictures my heart paints.
His together can mean sitting with mama and knowing whoever she is today is enough because she’s His and we are His – together.
I feel together in the company of these men in recovery as they stand alone and I know we are with them and we are their together standing in the gap while they are becoming part of God’s together.
That is the glorious part. That together can be in the company of giggling 6-year-old girls having a tea party and together can be alone in a booth at Panera Bread watching the couple pray together with the older man.
Because I am His and He is mine and yours and in Him we are, will be, together.
To join the link-up or view other posts in this community click here.
Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker’s blogging community and 5-minute Friday to free write about today’s prompt: laundry
GO
The podcast streaming through my ear buds while I try to crank out another morning of walking becomes background to my thoughts. Not listening to the words that aren’t finding place in my mind, I’m thinking about what to do with this word prompt, laundry.
Because today will not be the Friday I try to claim each week, because we will spend another day in the car making a drive several hours up the road, I’ve carried an arm load of laundry to the washer before I set out the door at the still dark hour. It’s a load of whites. There is always a load of white shirts. With only two of us home, laundry can be done one day a week and usually three loads will do our clothes but one load, one full load is always these white shirts. The ones with little flappy things called epaulets where we’ll slide the strip of red and fasten it down. A sign to some of who we represent, a sign to those at the Center (where we serve) of our position, i.e. we’re “in charge”.
This load of laundry is one I like least. His shirts, the ones he wears well and always looks so neat and crisp and they come out of the dryer ready to hang, these are no trouble. Mine…..like me, they aren’t easy. I fuss and fidget with the fit as there always seems to be a tag scraping at my neck. They do not come out of the dryer fit for anything but the ironing board. And then there’s the whole thing about not wanting to wear something that is in no way flattering, forget about fashionable!
The washer agitates them just like they agitate me and maybe that agitating will get the dirt off me like it does the laundry. Or maybe the agitation keeps me aware and keeps me focused because really, I love what we’re called to do. I love who we represent. I’d just chose some different laundry.
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Story, as in my story. A story to be lived, to be shared, to be redeemed. A story that tells of hope, of beauty, of a life that is continually being found by the Savior of Fools.
My story spills out here, on this little space I call Graceland because it is that. It is all grace as this story continues from day-to-day and I am living in graceland, always.
This is about forgiveness as I revisit issues that have kept me from living a fuller life in God and learning I can forgive a past and I can forgive me and I can accept God’s forgiveness. Really accept it.
This story is about my parts that include ministry and walking in a community of men in recovery and some not wanting it at all and learning how to love them all and still love me and God.
This story is amazing because God is amazing and his design is nothing short of the kind of story that draws men and women to Him.
This story, the one I keep trying to write instead of giving the keyboard to God, this one isn’t over. It’s a love story and mystery. It’s full of unexpected, page-turning twists and even when I don’t know what the next chapter holds, I know the ending. I already know that this story, the one that sometimes is tragic and others victorious, in the end, the very end, love wins.
(I’m linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker for the 5-minute Friday posts. Hop over to read others, or write your own, take on the prompt: story)
Living In Graceland 