under the mess

It was early spring; winter was finally past with nicer weather here to stay.  Not wanting to be inside any longer, I was anxious to get "out there" and start clearing up the gardens around our house.  One sloping bank in particular was a mess of weeds and downed limbs, as well as being home to mounds of leaves from the previous fall.  My husband had planted tall spikes of forsythia along the upper edge of the bank, and I was eager to free the budding branches so eventually they could bloom in all their glory.

I attacked the overgrowth with gusto.  I pulled, tugged, threw to the side, cleared and pruned to my heart's content.  Happy with my progress, I was almost to the end of my crusade when a spot of color caught my eye. All movement stopped for a moment. I wasn't sure what I was seeing because it was nestled so deep in the underbrush.  Only after I had a chance to move the surrounding debris was I able to see the source of the color - the first forsythia bloom of the season.

 

I stood there in awe. This perfect beauty, produced from the branch that had been buried beneath the muck and the mire.  Flower bursting forth from the limb that had been denied all but a little light.  Apparently, the one with the most junk dumped on it blooms first.

 

Sounds like something out of Life 101.

 

We all have weights bearing down on us in our lives; no one escapes that fact.  Some come for a season or a time and then leave; others make their nests in our days and roost.  This overgrowth, this debris, these heartaches and pressures and unwanted circumstances that threaten to bury us and squeeze out the light in our lives - they don't come to weigh our heart down for no reason.  God allows them into our lives to help us to grow, to flourish, to bloom.  We usually don't recognize them as beneficial fertilizer (because we're too busy trying to make them go away), but God knows they are exactly what our soul needs in order to produce the sweet blossoms that represent Him changing a life.

 

Life exists under the mess. It's there for a reason. It's the mess that provides the nutrients for our growth. 

 

So keep calm and bloom on.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

new (in)courage Community Groups forming today!

 

 

Happy Monday! And, for being a Monday, this is one is filled with fun news!

 

 The awesome online "beach house" for women, (in)courage, is having registration for their new and existing small groups today. You won't want to miss being a part of one of these online communities - they are resources of encouragement and discipleship like no other. 

 

 There is a group for almost any taste and talent- you can check out the complete listing of what's available here. Click on over and sign up for one!

 

The lovely Jennifer Frisbie and I are co-leading a group called

(in)couraged to Explore the Writing Life.  I am honored and blessed to be a part of this group; it's taking me outside of my comfort zone and it will connect me to other great women writers who share the passion of using their gifts and talents for Him. I desire to be an encourager for these women, and to learn from them as well as we share our lives and stories.

 

No matter what you love to do or are passionate about - they've got a group for it.  And after you head on over there and sign up, I'd love if you came back and left a comment telling me which group you registered for so I can be the first to cheer you ON!

 

Now go on, get out of here and head over to (in)courage, and have a great Monday!

plans and priorities

Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.

Proverbs 19:21

 

 

This is so true.  I get up in the morning with So. Many. Plans.

 

Plans in my calendar.  Plans on my mind.  More scribbled on paper.

 

Plans I alone have made, yet before God I can't help but acknowledge that only He knows my day.  He has it planned.  And His plans could very well not be mine.

 

Sometimes the sheer volume of tasks on My List overwhelms me and I think, "How will I get this all done?"  I can feel my heart race and panic set in. 

 

Truth is, often there really aren't enough hours in the day - for my plans.

 

The best advice I've read on priorities comes from the book Lies Women Believe and the Truth that Sets Them Free by Nancy Leigh DeMoss.  In it she writes, " The Truth is all I have to do is the work God assigns to me.  What a freedom it has been for me to accept that there is time for me to do everything that is on God's 'to do' list for my day, my week and my life!"  I love that concept.

 

I'm betting that God's to-do list for me looks way different than mine.  Think Mary vs. Martha.  Yeah. That.

 

Plans. Lists.  Pressures. Commitments. They all threaten to manipulate my day and thrust me headlong into my next 24 hours before I'm even ready. Why am I letting them dictate my schedule? Where is my priority? When will I remember that simply sitting at Jesus' feet with my Bible, a journal and some quiet time is not a waste of time, but lifeblood for my soul?  I cannot think of a better investment in my day than to give Him a part of it.  The moments I give Him are necessary in order to get those other things done.  (cue My List.)

 

Breathe soul, breathe.  There is time enough in this day to do what God wants me to do.  And the only way I'm going to figure out what those things are is

 

to ask Him.

 

to listen to Him.

 

to spend time with Him.

 

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you as well.....

 

Sounds like a plan to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



waiting for perfect

I'm not sure what I've been waiting for, but I do know that I've been waiting for something to be perfect before I write on this blog. 

Maybe it's the topic. 

Or the words.

It could be my mood that I'd like to be just right, but then again, maybe it's my hair. (which is far from perfect even though I just got a 60$ haircut. Don't ask. That's another blog post entirely.)

At any rate, I decided to break the silence and stop waiting for perfect and just write. If I wait for perfect to arrive, the world is going to slip by without me because it's broken and in no way can manifest perfection.

Sounds bleak, doesn't it?

Believe it or not, there is good news for all of us in all of this.

The good news is that God doesn't wait for you to be perfect, doesn't wait for me to be perfect. He wants us just as we are, with our imperfect hearts, lives and souls. He's already made us perfect through Jesus.  No more waiting. It's done. It's so simple, really. And it doesn't get much perfect-er than that.

So go ahead.  Jump into whatever it is that's calling your name long before perfect comes down the pike.  Long before you've got your ducks in a row, planets aligned, checkbook balanced.  Tomorrow those things won't be.  Because, you see, in this world perfect never comes and stays.

Yet perfect, in Jesus Christ, is already here.  And will last forever.

What are you waiting for?

one Saturday morning

All my life, I’ve struggled with knowing what I want to be or what I want to do.  It was never really a problem until recently, due to being on the other side of child rearing and “the busy years”.  My search for significance is turning up empty a good bit of the time.  Things come along occasionally in my life and I think , “Is this it?” or a month later, “Is THIS it?”  I’m tired of asking that question and having “it” never turn out to be “IT”.

This all came to a head Saturday morning when I was reading a devotional and it warned against letting the emptiness in my soul, heart and mind be filled with these three things- self pity, self preoccupation, or giving up.  That described me to a "t". Giving up is exactly what I’ve wanted to do when it comes to the area of writing.

I have such a struggle in this area.  The more I strive to be a writer, the less I feel like writing.  In comparing myself to other women writers- which is strictly taboo, I know, but happens all the time- I feel instant defeat.  I read a wonderful blog the other day, delightfully written, and the author wrote  - “when I write, it’s fairly easy.”  That makes me wonder about my own ability, because I often don’t feel like that. I sit here and imagine words just flowing out of her fingertips and it being effortless for her many times over.  I’m sure this probably isn’t true.  Reading her blog really put me over the edge, probably because she writes just like I’d like to write.  And gets noticed for it. Ugh.

Comparison is a bear.

Reading that devotional, I realized I was all about self pity, self preoccupation and giving up, which is a place I never thought I would be.  I cried my heart out to God.  I told him I felt dried up, useless, and like I had nothing left to say, and that I’d been feeling like that for a long time.  It wasn’t really a pity party, it was more of a cleaning out of my soul.  I needed to say all these things to Him, because He is the only one who truly understands me and would clearly see the mess in my brain that I was trying to sort out.  It unearthed some real deep seated feelings of never, ever really knowing what I wanted to do in life, from after college on.  I graduated with a teaching degree with no desire to teach.  And it just kept going from there.

So now when I think I’ve hit on “it” and then the “it” loses its appeal and seems to shrivel up and blow away, it makes me crazy.  I unclenched my tight fists, held open my hands and said, “God, I give it all to you.”  And I felt Him saying, “Beth, I want you.  I want your heart.  I don’t care if you write or play basketball or crochet for Me; I want YOU first and foremost.”

And I realized that is what I was lacking.  My tears stopped and dried.  I felt a much lighter load inside- in fact, no load at all.  Only joy.   My heart now had an answer – that He wanted to love me more if I would only let Him.  He showed me that I was not spending the time with Him that I used to- when words flowed more easily and I always had a story to tell on my blog and when I was thrilled with my writing even if no one else was.  I've recently complained that I’m dry for material, but I’m not spending any time in His word or really praying for Him to use me.

I think that may have something to do with it....

After having that meeting with God,  as I was hanging up laundry, the beginning lines of this blog post came fast and furious into my head and I knew I had to go write them down.  Like, right that minute.  Primarily so that I wouldn't forget them, but also, because I sensed they were the beginnings of a story to tell.  I practically ran to my laptop like I haven’t in months or maybe a year and started this raw writing, and poured out words without even thinking about it.  It just all drained out of my fingertips, from my head, through my heart and onto the page.

I have discovered this - My connection with writing is directly proportional to my connection with God.   (click to tweet this)

I had never thought of that way before.   But it makes total sense to me now.

This still doesn’t mean fame, fortune, recognition, a book deal or any attention whatsoever.  But the way I was driven to write this piece is the way I want to feel again.   It's actually the passion that I was missing more than the writing.   What I was longing for was the desire to write –  that's what I so desperately wanted to return.

And I believe it has, because I've recognized its source.

Thank you, God  of the universe, for meeting me exactly where I was one Saturday morning, and speaking to my very need.   You have shown me some incredible things that only you could have known I needed.

It's all about You.

 

easy trust

Trust was easy...when there was nothing going on.

When I began this trust journey in earnest, the mid-winter snowy doldrum days went by at a leisurely pace.  At any moment, I could take inventory and come up with everything being just as I liked it -all grown children accounted for and in their proper spots in life, good jobs all around, great health and a warm, cozy home for the myriad of snowbound, cabin fever kinds of days.

It's quite simple to trust when everything is going my way.

But now the changes have started to come, and I realize my heart is anxious today because there are - and will continue to be - decisions and deadlines and calendar dates I won't have any control over, and the planning towards them puts my stomach in a knot because I must, I MUST, see that these things work out perfectly or someone's life is going to be ruined.

Gee, you'd think I'm God, wouldn't you?  Repeat after me - All control is only an illusion....

So here's my chance. I want to do things differently this trip on the worry-go-round.  I want to put my trust in God into action and watch Him work, as opposed to fretting over all these circumstances and manipulating people and things to get details crossed off my list.  I want to give over to Him all the things that are running through my mind at a constant exhausting pace, and watch Him produce the results.

The giving over is easy; it's the not-taking-back that's hard.

When the deadline looming on the calendar sends me into a panic and decisions have to be made with no one making them and when I feel that wrong paths may be taken unless I step in and make it all right again, I am telling myself right now that I will need to spend more-than-usual time in prayer so that I can gain His perspective, experience His peace and be comforted by His presence.

This is a growth opportunity for me, if I'll only take it.

I want to get it right so that this trust thing becomes easier next time around.

And the time after that, and the time after that....

she's here!

No, I did not just give birth. 

Thank goodness.

But...a delightful little girl and three musical bears did get released on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble scene just this past weekend, so may I introduce -

What fun!

Seeing it on the bookshelves at B&N this past weekend was pretty much a thrill; being nestled between a Berenstain Bear's book and Eric Carle was the icing on the cake.

I started this blog with the intention of it being the record of my journey toward picture book publication.  That was February of 2009.  Here I sit, exactly 5 years later to the month, with a picture of the cover of my published picture book.

It kind of blows me away.

This was a dream of mine that I didn't even realize existed.  Not until I started working in the elementary school library in February of 2008 and became inundated and surrounded by picture books did my love of them surface completely to the point where I felt I needed to write one.  At first I thought it was just me following a familiar pattern; typically, I have a hard time sitting back and just observing or enjoying things that I come across.  If it's out there and possible, I either want to teach it, sing it, lead it, write it, or speak about it.  I'm a front row and on stage kind of gal that usually bites off more than she can chew and gets rather ahead of herself and overcommitted. 

So, I figured this could be more of the same.  It's not enough for me to just enjoy picture books; no, I need to write one.

And for whatever reason, this time it took.  Things began to happen that I couldn't possibly have orchestrated or predicted.  The key element was that I met Corey Rosen Schwartz online and her generous offer of collaboration worked for both of us and here we are.

I have spent time recently focusing on dreams of mine that haven't worked out.  The frustration comes, the questioning, the wondering why.  Then I come and sit down and write about this and see the uncanny timing, the way God put me exactly where I needed to be when I needed to be there (without any help from me; He's really quite talented, you know), and the direction the past 5 years have taken, and I think "wow".  Why am I lamenting what hasn't happened when this has?

I am thankful that this event is a part of the story of my life.  I am thankful that it happened.  And many thanks to you, too, for your continual encouragement and support that I felt all along the way.

Onward and upward....