He gently set the last eyelash in place, then declared the beautiful doll complete.
“Awake, my daughter,” he whispered, and he breathed on her. Her chest rose as she inhaled sharply. She exhaled slowly, her eyes opened and focused on her creator and she smiled. “Hello,” he said. “Welcome to your life.” Every ounce of her was tinged with joy when they were together. They were so in tune they could even think each other’s thoughts. She would ask and he would answer. He would guide, she would follow. She explored, he showed her newness every day. She kept choosing to stay with him. But she slowly began to lose interest and wandered away. She looked over her shoulder and could still see him, but distantly. She could still hear his muffled thoughts or could she? Perhaps they were her own. He shouted for her to come back, but she kept walking further and further away. She fell on the path and skinned her knee, and where he used to swoop her right up and heal her, he couldn’t reach her anymore. She had left him one tiny step at a time. Then one day she realized she was all alone. The loneliness had come on so insidiously she hadn’t perceived it. She hadn’t intended to turn her back on him, to run away. Could she go back? Surely he didn’t want her anymore or he would be here. But she couldn’t find him. All she had to do was ask, and he would be closer. For each step she could make back to him, he was able to get much closer. By this point she couldn’t remember if she had known him at all, or if she had simply heard others talk about him. But she knew one thing for sure. She didn’t want to be alone any longer. She looked at her smudged and torn dress and scuffed shoes. She tried to run her fingers through the knots in her hair. She made her hands into fists, knitted her brow, and took the tiniest of steps back toward him. He met her right there. Over time, the more steps she took to him, the more she remembered. And the more she learned of him, the more she experienced for herself. And she heard his voice and thoughts again, just like before. It was never perfect, but then again, it was never meant to be. But it could be as good as she made it. #bethelove #thepowerofwith ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting. If you’d like to receive these posts and updates in your inbox, please head to the Contact Page to subscribe.
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Lord, I’ve been banging my head here for hours. I have nothing to say.
Talk about My love. My love for you. Ummm…can You be more specific? Talk about… How I’m always here for you even when you can’t hear me. Even when you can’t see or sense. Like right now. You may be blinded, unable to sense anything, but that doesn’t mean I’m not here. Bad things happen to you that if you could vote you’d have voted differently. You vote by the choices you make, but even if you choose perfectly, bad things do happen. Every person on the planet experiences this. Everyone has bad things. I’m with them in it all. And that’s the key word here: WITH. I’m not far away, yelling directions at you like a drill sergeant. I’m in the fray, the rat race, even the darkness, WITH you. You can’t perceive the air you breathe, the oxygen that fills your lungs, and it’s the same with Me. I’m as close as you want Me to be, as close as you will let Me be. I can fill your heart, mind, spirit. The oxygen of My Spirit flows and encompasses every cell you have. Tell them I love them. Tell them I’m not what they’ve been told. They believe lies about Me. I created everything good, and everything to be good. I gave My life to save them. My Spirit goes throughout the earth to encourage and communicate. Tell them I am Love. I am Truth. I am Comfort, Peace, Joy. I am the source of every good thing in their lives. I am the most solid and stable thing in the universe. If they would return to Me I would heal them. Tell them all of this. I’m going to lose at least part of my audience…and I know that sounds selfish and wimpy but I’m being honest and it’s what I’m thinking. They have the choice whether to listen or not. But you have to tell them in order for them to make the choice. Free will is the riskiest decision I made when I created mankind. But it’s not love if it’s not a choice. I want their love. But they have to choose Me. I’ve made it as obvious as possible. I made Nature beautiful and balanced. All of Nature reveals Me. I made salvation as easy as possible: Repent, be baptized, confess with your mouths Jesus is Lord and believe in your hearts I raised Him from the dead and you’ll be saved. That’s it. Open the door and I’ll come in. Life won’t be easier. It may even get harder, but it will be worth it. They need to know. They need to hear it from you. Because you know, better than many, how deep and wide and long and high My love is. Some will listen to you because you have demonstrated it. Some will not listen no matter what you do. But tell them anyway. It looks like You just did. #bethelove #heisnotwhatyouthink #Godlovesyou ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting. If you’d like to receive these posts and updates in your inbox, please head to the Contact Page to subscribe. I’m not sure why. I guess I wasn’t exposed to it as a child, or didn’t grow up in a guacamole-friendly family. Maybe someone told me it was yucky and since it looked kinda weird I believed them?
I mean, it was green. I wasn’t a fan of green food. Except Jello, and I don’t consider that a food. And sometimes guac has little red things in it, like, what is that? But then one day my brother-in-law made some guacamole from scratch. That means from an avocado. Did you know scratch was avocado? I thought scratch came in a little box from the grocery store. Since he made it AND I saw all of the ingredients going in AND they didn’t look too terrible (except the scratch was kind of iffy) AND since he was a lot bigger than me, I managed to get a chip’s worth of it in my mouth without grimacing or holding my nose. My tastebuds grew three sizes that day. Garlic and lime were rocking out to the rolling creaminess. Diced tomatoes (AKA the little red things) sang backup. I had a fever and the only prescription was more corn chips. Faster than you could clang a cowbell, I became a guacamole aficionado. Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch, but I am definitely a fan. I just had to get over MY preconceptions and ITS appearance and TRY it. As a child, I did NOT like lettuce, broccoli, or celery. And no matter how strong it was supposed to make you, I was certain only Popeye ever liked spinach. As an adult, I grew to like most of those foods. EXCEPT celery. I will never be a fan of the dirty water taste and stringy crunch. I wondered, was it right to judge a food based on the fact that it was the same color as other foods? Poor guacamole. I have done you wrong. But it was also mushy, lumpy, and cold. At least mushy and lumpy mashed potatoes are warm. Then I realized I was allowing the food’s appearance keep me from trying it. What other foods have I missed out on because they looked different than what I was used to? What EXPERIENCES have I missed out on for those same reasons? How many PEOPLE I have missed out on… I realized it was simply fear, mostly fear of the unknown. Fear of guacamole was only one of its manifestations. I have this fantastic book, filled with every day wisdom, called the Bible, and NOWHERE does it say “Be AFRAID.” In fact, 365 times it says DO NOT be afraid. It says be strong and courageous. Trust. Have faith. Go forward. Taste and see that the guac is good (1 Food Chronicles 11:1, The Debbie Translation). Fear is not a reason to not do something. It’s not even a reason, it’s a feeling. Don’t let a fleeting, fickle feeling tell you what to do. Or what to eat. Or who to get to know. I learned to reserve judgment until I investigate. To really see what goes into them. To decide if I can trust the one feeding me the information. And go from there. Ya know, all of this is making me hungry. If you need me, I’ll be at the nearest Mexican restaurant. Hmmm…I used to be afraid of cheesecake too… #bethelove #tryityoumightlikeit #fearisabigfatguacamolehatingliar ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting. If you’d like to receive these posts and updates in your inbox, please head to the Contact Page to subscribe. Pretty much without exception, if I know you, I am or have been jealous of you in some way, for some reason.
If you have a college degree higher than an Associates, I’m jealous of that. If you’re over 5 feet tall, I’m jealous of that. If your skin tans and doesn’t burn. If you can wear earrings. If you can focus your attention for any extended period of time. If you can wear more than one hairstyle. If you can figure out technology. If you can tell a story. If you can write fairly quickly. If you can be asked an impromptu question without your brain completely shutting down. I won’t go on, but I could. It’s important to note that I’m talking about jealousy, not envy. My desire to have what you have is jealousy. My desire that if I can’t have it, you can’t have it either, is envy. Jealousy starts the moment I turn my focus from me to you and decide that what I have is less in some way. It begins with comparison, and as Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” The good news is that we don’t have to be the losers in our own lives. We can fight against jealousy. Two mindsets help me. I say help because I will probably always struggle. The first is to be content and grateful for what we have. If we must compare, do it with broader perspective. Let it not be with the many who have more, but with the multitudes who have less. There is the saying “If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of the world.” Focusing on that one sentence alone wipes out the vast majority of my “issues” AND helps me be grateful for the wealth I do have. “Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” --Eckhart Tolle The second part is to focus forward. Everyone has a purpose, and our purposes are not in competition with each other. Jesus didn’t give the Great Competition. He gave the Great Co-Mission. There is room for everyone on the road, and we can help each other as we all move forward. When I look around at everyone else I lose focus on my own purpose. When I focus forward, I see my own path more clearly. If we focus on our own paths, and are grateful and content, we can see ourselves and others without the green lens on their supposedly greener grass, and we can love ourselves and them better. I don’t have to be jealous of you. That doesn’t mean I won’t be, but I can do something about it. #bethelove #ditchjealousy For an excellent and extraordinary four part podcast on envy, CLICK HERE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting. If you’d like to receive these posts and updates in your inbox, please head to the Contact Page to subscribe. Several tornadoes ripped through Lake of the Ozarks last Saturday, Memorial Day weekend. There was one reported injury.
Rachel and Robert Jenkins had gone to Laurie, Missouri, to visit friends Clint and Kim Gawart and enjoy a weekend on the lake. They tracked the storm system even as the skies darkened, and grew more concerned as they were unexpectedly delayed returning to the dock. After they docked the boat in the blinding rain, Kim and the boys went to the house, Clint finished up, Rachel gathered a few last things, and Rob tried to grab a deck chair that had blown across the yard. Rob never made it. From the deck of the Gawart’s house, Rob’s 15 year old son, Ethan, and 13 year old son, Benjamin, could see the trees bending. A limb broke off and crashed down five feet from Rob. He knew he was in trouble. Scared, the boys watched as another tree broke completely in half and they yelled for their father to stop. Struggling to climb the hill in flip flops, the rain beating him up, he didn’t hear them. Suddenly, Rob felt something shove him face down onto his right side, facing up the steep hill. He saw trees smash onto a nearby dock. He looked around to grab his flip flops but was facing the wrong direction. He then felt a thud on his right leg. He started to drag himself to his feet, leaving his flip flops pinned underneath a tree. He couldn’t seem to bear any weight on his right leg. He looked down and saw a nasty, baseball-sized gaping wound on his right shin, with blood streaming down his leg. Rachel dropped everything she was holding and sprinted from the dock to Rob. Before she got there he yelled to her to call 911. She ran to the house and yelled to Ethan to call 911. Ethan and Kim ducked inside and began dialing. Rachel jumped over the railing and ran up to the next door neighbors’, but got no answer. She hustled back down to Rob, then realized she couldn’t get him over the railing. Breaking spindles in two with her bare hands, a rain-drenched Rachel finally reached Rob. Bracing him on her small frame, she continued yelling for help as they struggled to reach the top of the stairs. The next door neighbors had been hiding in an inside room. Their grown son had come out to get an old mattress to shield them when he heard Rachel yelling. They got Rob into their own house, soaking wet and bleeding. They made a makeshift tourniquet with a belt and sweatshirt. Ever level-headed, Rob said, “Honey, if I have internal bleeding, I’m not going to make it.” Rob noticed his toes were turning blue. The pain from the tourniquet was excruciating. Kim was frantically going door to door, trying to find chainsaws and trucks to remove the downed trees so the ambulance could get through. Unknown people began showing up at the neighbors’ house to help. One was a hospital volunteer. He replaced the makeshift tourniquet with a gauze one, and after a while said he thought the bleeding had stopped, so they loosened the tourniquet. “My pain level went from a 10 to a 4 at that point,” Rob remembers. It took more than thirty minutes for the ambulance to get to Rob, and it was another half an hour to the hospital. The ER doctor asked Rob what happened. “A tree pushed me up the hill before another tree hit my leg,” he replied. The doctor looked confused and said, “You don’t have any abrasions or bruises on your shoulder, and your shirt is clean.” Whatever knocked Rob out of the way, it WASN’T a tree. Surgery took ninety minutes. Torn muscle and the severed tendons to his toes were repaired. Despite embedded tree bark, the wound wasn’t terribly dirty. The only fracture Rob had was to his fibula, and it was a clean break. They didn’t even need to cast it. He will need some therapy but should make a full recovery. Some of you might wonder, where God was in all of this? God’s fingerprints are everywhere. God was there protecting Clint at the dock, who didn’t even know anything was happening. God was there when a tree limb fell within a few feet of Rob but didn’t hurt him. He was there pushing Rob up the hill instead of down, preventing him from reaching for his flip flops. Had he reached them his head would have been crushed by the tree. He was with petite Rachel, helping and protecting her as she got help, busted through wooden rail, and got her husband up the stairs. He was with the next door neighbors, who were home at the time and whose son heard her cries for help. He was with the hospital volunteer who helped save Rob’s leg, and life. He was with Kim and Ethan as they called 911. He was with Kim as she thought to get help to remove trees. He was with every volunteer who got the debris removed, in the rain, for a guy they didn’t even know. He was there when the main power line to the area was knocked out, making any local downed power lines a non-issue. He was with the ambulance and hospital crews. He was with the easily-repaired tendons. He was in the perfect placement of the clean fracture of the fibula, the non-balancing bone. He was in the fact that the break was the fibula and not the tibia, which could have ruptured an artery. With a clean fibula fracture there was no need to set it, so no need for a cast. A cast would have made wound care impossible. God is there in the hearts of all the people who have committed to bringing meals to the family for several weeks, and who continue to pray. God was there over the previous several weeks when Rob has prayed to be a servant who brings God glory. God is with Rob’s sister-in-law, yours truly, who has the privilege of bringing you this story. And He is with you now, as you read this. #heisnotwhatyouthink #amazinggrace To see the damage created by this storm system, click here. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting. If you’d like to receive these posts and updates in your inbox, please head to the Contact page to subscribe. |
Applying nature's principles and systems to personal and cultural development.About CommentsI love to read comments and know how my work is helping you. Please respond with your first AND last names. Anonymous comments will not be read and may be deleted.
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