Like a cloud that has held it's rain so long it can no longer keep the moisture and drenches the earth and the people and the animals in a deluge of drops, so has this last ten days been raining blessings. Showers of blessings have been falling to my delight and awe. One after the other, issues which I had long considered impossible have burst into thoroughly quenched and nourishing possibilities.
How appropriate this should happen in a month when the tag 'April Showers...' is so often used.
I have been so thirsty that my heart towards heavenward the way my mouth would if this were physical parchment. I keep my heart open and chant to myself, "I like to receive, I like to receive!"
That is my chocolate epiphany this year. Each year, but one, in the last decade I have chosen to give up all forms of chocolate for my act of Lenten contemplative practice. It may seem silly, but chocolate really is my drug of choice. Every day I eat some healthy from of it; dark, 76% or more, but nonetheless, chocolate. And each year God has honored my deprivation with an astounding , desert Mother like epiphany. This year, I heard in my heart that I needed to learn to like receiving.
Realizing to me that receiving has always contained a bit of shame and/or guilt that I should have some need or require some act of charity was astounding. For the last two decades I have been so dependent on others and could not figure out why the Lord would make me carry such a burden. But the minute I felt one small twinkle of 'like' in my spirit when someone blessed me, blessings poured forth and he Graced me with so many opportunities for self sufficiency I find myself working at double time to keep up with taking advantage and making the most of all of them. I wake up at 2AM excited for the days work ahead and will myself back into the sleep my body needs. There is an intense look on my face, I'm sure, but my heart has a big ol' smile on it.
Now, when someone blesses me I say thank you with nothing but gratitude. There is no inner dialogue of 'please God don't let me need so much'.
It reminds me of when Catherine Marshall, the wife of Peter Marshall who was the chaplain of the US senate, and was such a spiritual powerhouse herself, was fighting, trying to heal from Tuberculosis. It lingered and lingered and lingered until at last one day she said, "Lord, if I have this forever it's OK" and bingo. Healed almost instantly.
And after we have such a more dimensional understanding of surrender and humility and more so God's enormous benevolence and love for us.
Amen...more, more, more. May it be so for you as well.....
Love,
Deborah
Friday, April 12, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Tuesday News
This Tuesday morning finds me feeling the Peace and Grace of God in ways that allow me to focus on the tasks at hand in the midst of a storm of controversy at the outer perimeters of my life. I have waited a lifetime to learn how to do this.
Growing up in an incredibly dysfunctional home, I was always thoroughly distracted by the sturm und drang of people around me who were just miserable and had no hesitancy to either show it or project it onto me, or share it in violent and demeaning ways.
Yet now, finally, in 2013, I am in the middle of a bunch of people who are having an angry, violent time and I am just smooth sailing. Ah me! I am so happy to have learned this skill.
It is an internal skill. It takes the renewing of your mind of the things of God that are eternal and deep and meaningful in a larger perspective. It is a skill that requires one to carefully stay connected to the external. One must also stay connected to one's emotions and physical state.
I've turned the heat off for Spring and Summer and the little bit of chill to the air helps me stay just a bit more alert. I've made some chicken soup ...homemade...and the matzo meal is in the fridge ready to be made into balls to drop into the delicious liquid that this time will be better because a friend, a very good cook who happens to be a 'y' chromosome ...male...gave me the tip of sauteing my veggies before I add them to the liquid. He also told me tarragon is the spice of choice.
Additionally for the first time I can involve myself in creative and technical aspects of writing all the while knowing there is this tornado of anger in the center of others.
I have done this. I have translated the skills I use everyday with infants, children, tweens and teens ...for adults! Yea! Hallelujah!! Freedom to 'be' under and in any circumstance!!!
One of my clients asked me what maturity is. It is this, as I have always shared, 'to feel one way and act another'. But this today I can also pass on. The definition of 'healed' is to keep your peace, maintain it, enjoy it and walk in it, while others are gnashing teeth and filled with heated emotions.
Well... I think that merits a 'Praise God'! For another time...how I got there :)
Love,
Deborah
Growing up in an incredibly dysfunctional home, I was always thoroughly distracted by the sturm und drang of people around me who were just miserable and had no hesitancy to either show it or project it onto me, or share it in violent and demeaning ways.
Yet now, finally, in 2013, I am in the middle of a bunch of people who are having an angry, violent time and I am just smooth sailing. Ah me! I am so happy to have learned this skill.
It is an internal skill. It takes the renewing of your mind of the things of God that are eternal and deep and meaningful in a larger perspective. It is a skill that requires one to carefully stay connected to the external. One must also stay connected to one's emotions and physical state.
I've turned the heat off for Spring and Summer and the little bit of chill to the air helps me stay just a bit more alert. I've made some chicken soup ...homemade...and the matzo meal is in the fridge ready to be made into balls to drop into the delicious liquid that this time will be better because a friend, a very good cook who happens to be a 'y' chromosome ...male...gave me the tip of sauteing my veggies before I add them to the liquid. He also told me tarragon is the spice of choice.
Additionally for the first time I can involve myself in creative and technical aspects of writing all the while knowing there is this tornado of anger in the center of others.
I have done this. I have translated the skills I use everyday with infants, children, tweens and teens ...for adults! Yea! Hallelujah!! Freedom to 'be' under and in any circumstance!!!
One of my clients asked me what maturity is. It is this, as I have always shared, 'to feel one way and act another'. But this today I can also pass on. The definition of 'healed' is to keep your peace, maintain it, enjoy it and walk in it, while others are gnashing teeth and filled with heated emotions.
Well... I think that merits a 'Praise God'! For another time...how I got there :)
Love,
Deborah
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