Story (5-minute Friday)

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)

 

Wearing Love

I have this necklace with a tiny charm hanging from it that says “Love has found me”.

God has found me. His love found this empty heart and I need not wander anymore.

They are words stamped into metal that hang around my neck. Or inside a drawer with other strands, some with words, some not. They are words with meaning to me if to no one else.

I don’t need this necklace to remind me God loves me. I don’t need this visual statement though I love words and put too much meaning in some while letting other words fall empty.

I’m thinking more about this little phrase and why I give it such meaning and how do I know that God loves me? How do I show He loves me or that I love him back?

“For God so loved Debby that he gave…..” (my paraphrase of John 3:16)

“I have loved you, Debby, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.”

(my paraphrase Jeremiah 31:3)

That’s the burden for me. Words have power. These words do. They demand a response. Love has found me. Does it stop there?

“Love means doing what God has commanded us, and he has commanded us to love one another,

just as you heard from the beginning.” 2 John 1:6 NLT

His love is more than an adornment around my neck but I would rather it be just that. Something I can hold between my fingers, touch the letters and let it dangle, hoping the words alone will be the love I’m called to share. But they are not. The words become dead if they only dangle from chain no matter how pretty they are and too often this charm is the only love I carry.

I am still trying to learn real love. I know the kind of love that is scared of life. Of not getting back. Of not being accepted. The fragile love that is easily disappointed when I don’t get my way. This is the love that shows most often. It would be easy to engrave this on a very tiny charm because it is spelled with two letters: ME

I am unworthy of the Love who has found me, the Love he shows me. And this alone scares me because it is a love bigger than I can understand, so I quit. Quit trying to understand so I can start trying to love. Just love. Risk and all.

 

Tell Me Again

We are a family of story-tellers. I’ve heard it’s in the Irish blood and though there is little of the pure Irish in this blood there is story-telling in our DNA.

The Irish side

There is surely a story to go with this picture of grandpa Mc

The aunt and the dad story-teller’s

When our family gathered I loved listening to my dad tell old family stories, embellished to make him the hero or to provoke reaction from his sister or mother. Most of the reactions were laughter and that was the best part. I believed all his stories. By the time my brother told me they weren’t all true I had my own kids. Daddy just knew how to put a finish on a story. Or take the mundane everyday and bring it to life. Put him and my aunt Iva in a room together and it was hard to say who would tell the best.

On road trips with our children, after miles and miles of music our son would say, “tell me stories”, and he wanted stories about him. So we would tell about the day he was born or how he didn’t like swim lessons but swam like a little fish. He couldn’t get enough of hearing the same ones over and over.

the dreaded swim lessons

He became a lifeguard

At bedtime, my husband would tell them the stories his grandfather told. “Tell us the one about Pigsy”, they asked, and he did. Again.

Our kids grew and the stories became quiet for a while. They were graduating and moving away and moving back and getting married and we were moving and life was just going too fast and the stories fell silent. And then, God stirred and the stories were building in my heart. When things build in your heart you just can’t keep them there. Not me. And they started spilling out. Here.

We found ourselves in the midst of this wonderful ministry to men with substance abuse problems and I started to see grace in a way I had never known before. And my heart began to swell in that way I couldn’t contain and I wanted to share these grace-stories.

Then mama was diagnosed with dementia and I needed to tell stories of sadness and loss and remember better times and how I have grasped at hope like never before and I found more grace that needed to be shared. Somewhere in the midst of this I knew I was doing it for me.

These stories are our stories, me and God, and when I tell them He helps me find peace in their weight and in their joy. He brings affirmation and confirmation. He has shown me how he comes closer when I feel most lost. He reminds me of His story, the one where all is love and grace and I say “tell me again.”

Now I tell our granddaughter stories about the day she was born. I tell her how I was there the whole time and how I stroked her mama’s hair and rubbed her head while her daddy rubbed her legs. And she says “tell me again”.

(This post is part of an exercise for a writing class I’m taking. There are bound to be more!)

I’m In the Game

I take a deep breath as I prepare to write these words. A month ago I sucked the air deep in my lungs, right before I took that jump, the one that felt like a plunge for me, the one my sister-in-law urged me to take. The “jump in the deep end” that I needed more of a push to make me jump.

All of that fussing and hesitating over a class. An online writing class that I must admit, scares me. Yes, it does. It scares me to put my babies, my words “out there” for someone else to weigh and well, I really don’t know what. I don’t know if my words will be found lacking or just plain meaningless. What matters to me, will it matter to anyone else? Does it have to?

And if I want to write words others will read, won’t this be helpful? Why are my fingers hovering hesitatingly over the keys?

I don’t show this side. Not much. Not outside, beyond the walls of our home or the arms of my husband. Those are safe places and places that know me well. Where I can wield some control and there it is – that word: control.

Our instructor has posed a few questions to our group before we started.

Consider your writing. Consider your life. Who are you becoming? Who do you hope to become?

See why this scares me? Are you kidding? Who am I becoming or hope to become? Those are mighty big questions for a class about writing. And I take another deep breath.

Something is happening. I don’t know what. I do know, God has a plan and I’m in it. I can feel things stirring and it makes me want to withdraw and let someone else play my part. But I don’t like missing things. I keep my eyes open on road trips so I don’t miss out. I may be breathing deeper these days and feeling inside out but I won’t miss it. I’m in the game and trying to let Him call the plays.

This isn’t a country song

I’m not a fan of country music so I’m sure I’ll get this wrong, or offend someone, but wasn’t there an old joke about playing a country song backwards? If you play one backwards you get your wife back, your dog back, etc.? The inference seemed to be country songs are sad. They are about loss. I fear it could seem this blog is often sad and about loss.

I write about life as it surrounds me and it is those times of despair or loneliness or grief that grip me most. Those deep feelings that wrench my heart and twist my faith. I wonder if my posts were ‘played backward’ we’d get those things back?

 

 

There is much sadness in families marked by dementia, divorce, addiction. And there is much joy. Much. JOY.

Perhaps it’s the joy voice I need to work on. But don’t you see it? It’s the voice that is spelled F A I T H. In the midst of sorrow there is faith and that carries joy. A quiet, not always smiling but always thankful, joy.

While mama doesn’t remember me, I remember her and all she has given me and still does: JOY

Another relapse, another one falls to the disease in the community that holds my heart but I turn to see three more who are celebrating two years clean, 10 years, clean, 22 months clean. JOY

A friend going through emotional heartbreak with a child but she is true and she faithful and she loves. JOY

 

I said something in the class I teach with the men in recovery and it came out wrong and they laughed like I never heard them laugh and my face was scarlet for an hour (I mean really!) and I’m not sure I can walk in that class again. JOY

My life is filled with joy. I am a happy person because I know I am loved by the only faithful One who can be joy in the midst of all life gives us. Make no mistake, when I share my heartbreak with you, it’s God’s way of soothing my soul and reminding me of His great joy.

 

Word prompts

It’s funny how the word prompts for this weeks photo challenge with ProjectLife365 mirror a lot of this week. There always seems to be one or two of the prompts that is challenging. The kind of challenge that stretches the way I might consider the word.

The week started with these words: macro, surrounding and retrospect. Macro, easy.

macro of a flowering tree at this time of year in SFlorida

clouds surrounding us

a good place to be retrospective (too much of a stretch?)

Surrounding….hmmmm….we were flying to Atlanta that day, how to depict surrounding?

And retrospect? That’s hard. My brain was already focused on being away and out of routine and I only had my iPad with limited photo’s and…..

Yeah, the word prompts could have as easily described the days. Sunday, with a focus on corporate worship, things are in macro view as we sing and receive God’s word. Monday we found ourselves surrounded by chairs and people in a classroom with long curved desktops. Surrounded with information that sometimes sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher: “Wah, Wah, Wah”.

And what could be more retrospective than a seminar about retirement that brings to mind the past. Still, a photo to illustrate that was challenging and I took the easy way out with a beach shot. You can always turn to creation to find beauty and answers.

I know it’s just photo’s but I like this kind of stretching. There’s not getting it wrong and it presses me to search out of the box of a mind I often have. All squared up with sharp edges.

Today’s prompt was home. An easy one but things have been busy and I need to think. Create, girl. Push your sights further.

This globe was in the entry of the seminar room. Yes, home on this spinning orb.

Now if I could just take this stretching to other areas of my life. Use those word prompts God gives so clearly: love, joy, peace, gentleness, self-control (ouch!). Still work to do.

When he took control (and I lost it)

No matter how I think I connect or want to understand their life I can’t. Not really. Not all of it. I don’t get life not being raised in a church. Not always, ALWAYS, having a bible and knowing how to look up a passage without the index.

I will never connect with having an addiction that destroys your life or holding a sign that says “homeless, please help”. I don’t understand what life is really like for a man whose life span is shorter just because of the color of his skin. I want to. But I can’t. So I am who I am. We are who we are. With them. In front of them.

 

 

 

New Year’s Eve at the Center included karaoke after the watchnight service. What a combo! As the karaoke was winding down (and it was a laugh riot) Henry stands up, takes the mic, looks at his phone where he’s looked up lyrics and starts singing. To me. Coming closer and closer. I think it was some cheesy Elvis song but I really don’t remember because I only felt my face getting hotter and kept giving him the “cut it” sign as he crept closer and grinned bigger. I was one of two women in a room full of men. The place erupted in applause and it was finally over.

He wasn’t doing that for the men. He was doing that because he knows how uncomfortable it makes me, to have him show his affection like that. He likes making me squirm. Seeing my face redden and me not being able to hide. Anywhere. He was just being him. My husband. The man who has loved me for what seems like forever and, somehow, loves me more.

It was the following week in a staff meeting when I find out  quite a few of the men had gone to the intake counselor to tell her about it and how much they loved it. They loved seeing me squirm, first of all, but mostly, seeing love. This surprised me. A lot. That they would think anything other than how funny it was to see “Mrs. Major” get all red and wriggle in her seat the closer “the Major” got.

There’s so much I’ll never get about their lives. Maybe that’s the point. The point of grace for one. Grace that allows us to be us and allows them to be who they are…..struggling, imperfect, broken, searching, loving, celebrating. All of us together. Sharing grace. Sharing love. Sharing God.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found was blind but now I see.

Sunday Psalm

Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens;
    your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.
⁶ Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
    your justice like the ocean depths.
You care for people and animals alike, O Lord.
⁷     How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter
    in the shadow of your wings.

Psalm 36:5-7

Bucket lists

 

The 2007 movie, The Bucket List, seemed to have been the igniter for people to make and announce their personal bucket list: things to do, go, be, make…….before they kick the bucket. Except me. No list except the “to-do” list that laughs in my face with overdue tasks. I’ve wondered if I should have a bucket list and why it’s never been on my “to do” list. Have I set my expectations and sites too low?

Not much time has been spent on this for me. Only when friends announce they’ve checked something off their bucket list do I spend 5 seconds wondering if I should have a list. And then last week, reading the blog Holy Experience, I read about the real questions I ponder about buckets and lists.

The best lives don’t have Bucket Lists as much as they have Empty Bucket lists….Because when I kick the bucket, I don’t want anything left in my bucket. I want the bucket empty.

Maybe I haven’t the need for a bucket list because my bucket is full. Filled with graces and blessings and mercy and life abundant. My bucket is full. And it’s my task to empty it. To share what I’ve been given.

Why want more to fill our bucket – when I haven’t thanked God for all the ways He’s already filling my cup?

Oh, her words found their way to my heart and I scribbled them in my book, the one where I write things like that, and those words, the ones about not thanking God enough (ever!) and emptying my full bucket, those words are in me. I need to see those words at the bottom of every cup I drink and written inside every gift I’m given. My bucket has been filled so I can pour it out on others. Pour it out in smiles given to the frustrated person in line ahead of me. Pour it out in undeserved kindness because I’ve been shown the same. Pour out buckets of grace because it is still pouring out on me.

Because the way to really live is not to try to fill your life up – but to spill your life out.

 

Road weary

 

Is it the travel, sleeping in a smaller bed, or being full-time MeMe to a 4-year-old the past week that has worn me down? Worse, is it just age? Even good things fatigue the body and soul.

In some ways it was too much but nothing would I change. The time spent with the granddaughter is priceless, being part of her little world and seeing things through her eyes eager for the smallest things. Thrilled by a 50 cent ring from the machine in the restaurant lobby reminds me of gratitude of the simple joys. Only a child can express that with such exuberance and sincerity.

Men from the ARC who’ve not seen mountains or been rafting down a river or sat in our rental house for the week to share a meal with us. A meal cooked by Henry for them. Welcomed into our family. Part of our family.

most of our group getting ready for river rafting

Steak night at our place

The teaching of the week was good. It’s hard to get better than Oscar Roan and Dr. Bill Ury, both men immersed in God’s word and gifted to share this word in ways that touch our soul. But the times we are with them, our guys, laughing, eating, sharing, these times are when God’s word is breathed to life. Their excitement no less sincere or full than the 4-year olds.

kk with “uncle” Adam

I am thinking on these times, savoring them before the routine starts again. I’ve made my office “to-do” list and have a doctor’s appointment to start the shortened week. Real life resumes and I want to keep these times a bit longer. So thankful for this life.