Through Repetition We Remember

"Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge....You are my LORD; apart from you I have no good thing.  I have set the LORD always before me.  Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.  Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure because You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will You let your faithful one see decay."  Psalm 16  

A life lived fully is faith-filled through thanks-filled eyes fixed on Jesus.  Find thanks in all things though?  I struggle with this most of all in my life.  How do I find thanks, this eucharisteo, cut bleeding sons, babes ripped from mother's womb drowned in buckets, Theocracies seeking world domination through Freedom's blood, our own leaders set to lift themselves on high by tearing our life-given blessing away and crushing us by the weight of communism?  These things and more burden my heart and I don't know how to see Beauty, Jesus, in any of it.  How do you find eucharisteo in evil???  The only comfort that I can find at this time is that at some point, Beauty will step in and save.  The weak will be made strong.  The innocent will be given justice.  All pain will be healed and sadness wiped away.  Satan and his black-hole evil will collapse under its own gravity of destruction and death and, once and for all, pain, despair, destruction and sin will be no more.

Just remembering to keep my focus on Jesus.  Through Jesus, thanksgiving.  Life filled with thanksgiving is a full life.  Daily striving to live life fully!

What Are You Gazing Upon?

Open the eyes of my heart LORD; open the eyes of my heart.  I want to see you.  To see you high and lifted up, shining in the light of Your glory.  Pour out your power and love, as we sing, "Holy! Holy! HOLY!!!"

It is this song that my day started with.  It is with this quote that my prayers were directed this morning, "Faith is in the gaze of a soul."  What my soul is set on will determine my faith and ultimately will determine my life (quality and quantity).  So, with all of the heart ache that I have been sifting through these past several weeks, I stopped and thought about what my gaze has truly been on and how that may need to shift.  If we set our gaze on pain, our lives will be filled with pain.  Set your gaze on the wants of the world and flesh, and you will be filled with greed and emptiness.  Gazing upon anger and unforgiveness?  That will lead to a life on a break-neck coarse to death.  A life gazing at self leads to a life of loneliness.  Gaze on Jesus though, and you will have a life that is directed, purpose driven, full of love, joy, peace, grace, hope and faith.  Faith is in the gaze of Jesus.  Life is found in Jesus.  There is still pain but through Jesus we can endure and overcome.  Stay the course.  Focus on Jesus.  Do all that you can for the Kingdom of God and be welcomed home with, "well done my good and faithful servant."

Look At What???

My eyes are burned deep with the terror stricken faces of new life suffering searing agony.  My ears throb of gasping for breath lost to gloved hand torture.  My heart is so broken my own breath comes heavy and I want to scream in rage and my blood boils over and I want vengeance and ending to routine child torture.  I am bitten!  I am bitten, bleeding, venom surging through by fangs of mainstream greed and self-centered beliefs.  I am dying inside knowing that I've been unable to save and he will be yet one more victim; flesh torn, blood drips, screams, gasps and shock.  Helpless.  Hurt.  Violated.  In my brokenness, I sob cry confused and scared at how God can use me when those closest to me ignore my voice, when those I reach out to brush me off as a zealot.  How can You, Jesus, use me when all of this pain I see and mothers ignore is killing me inside and hindering me from being who you have called me to be?  He whispers gently for me to turn it off.  Turn off this gift of technology and knowledge turned black hole of destruction and death sucking every ounce of strength out of me.  Turn it off and look.  Look.  At.  ME!  (Numbers 21:8-9)  Look at Me, your Beloved.  Look deep into my eyes.  Feel my breath of your face.  Relax in heart holding embrace and taste honey sweet kisses on lips.  Lay into me and breath; live.  This road I walk is a weary life-draining journey.  The wind and sand wear away at this tender love filled heart seeking to turn me into hate filled dead stone.  I run this race of time at a break-neck speed but I can be of no good broken and crushed.  I have to step back.  Stop.  Kneel. Lift up my eyes to Him and drink deep and long his water of life.  Be recharged.  Healed.  To continue to be a vessel that He can fill again and again once I've poured out all.  A soft vessel, unhardened by His fire, will dissolve when filled with water or oil.  A hardened vessel broken wastes all that is poured in.  I want to be able to pour out where He wants my water and oil to go.  Where I look, what I look upon will determine how I live and IF I live.  How do I look upon pain and not let it break me?  I need to keep my heart on Jesus so that my eyes will see His purpose through the pain.  This will be hard for me.  The flesh is weak.  The world is in my face.  My heart pain feels suffocating and my spirit seems so small.  But, He is bigger and higher than it all and I am trusting that He will heal and make me strong!  Come Save LORD!!!!

Endless Circles

Blood flows.  Late.  Not really but late enough for Hope to be lifted and then to be shattered once again.  Every month it is the same circle to be spun around and around again on.  I know we are clay on the potter's wheel but I'm so worn from going in constant circles of pain and broken heart, the loss of a hope so dear and one that I can't let go of that I'm falling into a depression.  Every month now is a month of mourning.  Mourning an empty still womb that aches to be filled once more; echos of tumbling babies and haunted by phantom kicks and fluttering fingers.  I want life in me again.  When there is life growing in my body, there God's hands are inside of me knitting and forming and whispering dreams and plans for this little one as well as for me.  When I am with child, I am most with God then ever before.  I grow like my child is growing.  God can not be in me growing a precious babe without growing me also.  Two are one; mother and child.  Three are one; mother, child and God.  I am the most beautiful, strong and confident with child then ever in my life.  I am transformed for this season and I feel like I glide on the air of Grace.  A dream was placed in my heart and I gave birth to it with all of my heart and mind, body and spirit.  But, at birth came death and that dream shattered into a million and more shards of blood and death and miracle and mercy but still dripping with indescribable pain and agony.  He asks me to give it to Him to carry but I don't know how to let go of the unseen that sucks up every minute part of my day and life.  I breath in; I breath out and all I want is to be filled to overflowing once more with new life and to birth that dream into life and wholeness and fullness and peace and joy; Hope and Faith.  "What do you want?" Jesus asks the blind man.  "I want to see!" says he.  "What do you want?" Jesus asks this empty, aching, sobbing wreck of me.  "I want to be FULL again!!!" I scream.  "I want Your hands in me!  I want life in me! I want to hear your voice vividly!  I want to dance in your arms again as I did then.  I want my core of womanhood to come full circle and finish my testimony with my dream birthed empowering, living and wriggling and crying and nursing.  I want Hope and Faith in my arms not figuratively or spiritually."  And the sobs leave me blackened with make-up; my face, my hands, my pillow, my husband's shirt.  Oh my husband; Jesus flesh in my life, the one that I struggle to not stab with blames of fault that because of him I will never fulfill my dream and my womb lays empty and aching and my heart crushed into oblivion.  God is bigger than him and me and choices and I beg for healing to my Jesus-man's body but I fear that the only healing that will come will have to be to this shattered woman and that only weighs all the more as I face the task of having to bury a dream; a dream I've buried and dug back up and perhaps it is the rotting carcass of this dream that is killing me and dragging me down deep.  But, how do I untie this burden-corps of dead-dream?  I've always been a dreamer but dreams have always been out of my grasp.  How do I let go of that which I have never held?