Painted

A few weeks ago, I managed to have painted nails for a hot minute.  Nevermind that it lasted only a few short days.  Let this moment be documented.  Let it also go on record that I have no idea how people tend to get such stunning photos of their own nails (and clothes, and hair, and everything else) on Pinterest.  Do they have personal photographers?  Do you know how weird it is to take a photo of your left hand with your right hand? 

It's weird. 

Hope

photo by Miz. November

When I say that life has been challenging the past few years, I mean it.  Income has been increasingly scarce.  Depression has been increasingly heavy.  My health has been increasingly perplexing.  Life has been increasingly confusing.  

But I also realize that my problems are pretty shallow in comparison to the problems that others face on a daily basis.  Though I am never sure where my next paycheck will come from, or even if I will have one, I have yet to go hungry.  Though I research continuously to find a cure for my depression and fatigue, I am not in the hospital fighting for my life.  Nor are any of my loved ones.  Though I seem to never know what my next step in life should be, I am fully aware that my hope is in the Lord and He will guide me even when I don't see or hear him. 

It's time to get real with you. 

I am a Christian, although I hate to even proclaim that because to be a Christian is to be "like Christ", and I fall miserably short of that description.  A little over a year ago, the Lord started working in my heart.  That's a very nice way of putting it.  It was more like the Lord smacked me on the back of the head and asked me just what on His green earth I thought I was doing.  That, my friends, is called chastisement.  It's God's way of keeping His children in line.  And I had been ignoring it for far too long. 

But when the Holy Spirit becomes so heavy inside of you that you can no longer ignore it's presence, things change.  Specifically, my heart. 

As a child of God I know that every good gift and every perfect gift comes from Him.  Anything good that I have in my life is only because my heavenly Father has allowed me to have it.  Because God loves every single one of His children, he wants to see them blessed and fulfilled. We are the ones who get in the way of our own blessings.  But God sees the big picture and we don't.  He sees what we really need, not what looks like it would be nice.  Many times God will ask us to step out in faith and put all of our trust in Him, no holds barred, so He can show us just how good he is. 

Although I had been a born again Christian since middle school, it wasn't until last fall that I finally laid everything at my Savior's feet and relinquished control.  I begged to know my Father on a deeper level.  I asked over and over for discernment and direction.  And now I can say that I truly desire God's will for my life over my own.  Why, you ask?  Because pursuing my own will has only led to heartache and hopelessness.  It took me all these years to finally realize that my way was the wrong way.  

Fast forward to this year and my life looks very much like a demolition site. 

I have no job.  I'm getting by on very little.  My eyes are dark and body feels frail.  My mental and emotion state is desperate.  Everything else in my life is in a holding pattern.  No movement.  No progress.  To the unbeliever, this wasteland looks like misplaced faith on my part.  But to those who know the Lord, this empty lot looks like the perfect construction site. 

I am the embodiment of Romans 5: 3-5.

All my false hopes have been stripped away.  My tribulations are building patience in me.  And this patience will be the foundation for experience.  And that experience will be the very thing that makes my hope real.  You see, hope doesn't come from putting your trust in the things that you can touch.  It's easy to believe in the things that you can see with your own eyes.  It's only when you put your trust in the things that cannot be seen or touched that true hope is born.  I have no hope in this broken world.  Every shred of hope that I have is in the hands of the Savior who died for me on a cross two thousand years ago.  And no matter how long my tribulations last, I can glorify in them knowing that God promised that my hope would not make me a fool.  Hope will not make me ashamed.  He promised that he will not leave me nor forsake me.  He will finish the work that he started in me.  This construction site will not be abandoned.  He promised.

And God never breaks his promises. 

Worn

from here.

And this pretty much sums it all up lately.

November

all pics my own

By now most of the leaves have given up the fight and let go of their branches.  Although they are no longer a fiery orange, the muted blanket of tan, burgundy, and coral pink leaves looks quite beautiful under my maple tree.  With multiple heat sources humming throughout the house, I cringe at the thought of the upcoming winter season.  I can handle nights in the thirties and days in the fifties.  It's when night and day have no distinguishable temperature difference that makes me desperate.

My mood matches the season.  It always does in the fall.  So many things to say and no words to say them.  Thoughts and emotions and memories swirl in my head like the leaves on the ground.  Then they seem to settle in my heart and get wet and heavy.  There they lie, like leaves in the gutter, waiting to be dug out and dealt with.  But who knows when that will happen, or even how it will happen.  Sometimes I will single out one of those thoughts, emotions, or memories like a particularly intriguing yellow leaf that begs closer inspection.  I'll hold it up to the light and examine its veins and spots, smile at its beauty and melancholy and then drop it back into the pile in my heart.

 Things are always changing around here.  Life is in constant flux.  Sometimes I wish things would slow down.  Sometimes I wish they would hurry up.  I think too much about things that I have no control over.  I busy myself with the things that I do seem to have a tiny semblance of control over.  And I pray that my heart finds rest somewhere in between those two places.

This is the pensive nature of this month.  My month.  November.

Hurricane

from......

 She was all stardust and tears.  A magic spell that was broken.  A loner in the midst of a shoulder to shoulder crowd.  She was a song that no one knew the words to although they could remember the melody in the back of their mind. 

But she didn't want to be the melody.  She wanted to be the words.  She didn't want to be just the dream.  She wanted to be the reality.  She didn't want to haunt the halls of someones heart.  She wanted to live in their soul. 

So her smile fell hard on blind eyes.  Unspoken words echoed in her ears.  Her heart rattled loudly in an empty ribcage. Prayers floated around her head like promising rain clouds carrying droplets of hope; faith waiting to be made manifest.

She was not to be made a fool.  The sea inside of her would not be contained forever.  From a distance she could see it.  She could see the hurricane that she would unleash, changing everything in its path. 

Come Back

I miss blogging. 
I miss bloggers.
 Why did we all stop blogging? 

Of the long list in my Spots of Sunshine lineup, there are now only about four blogs that post on a semi-regular basis. 

I know that we haven't run out of things to talk about or thoughts to share.  Yet, there is no one here.

Blogging has been replaced with the short, spastic world of tweets.  Pinterest has given us Attention Deficit Disorder.  Facebook has put up the false front of being "social", while the people using it forget what being social is all about. 

I miss the connection that blogging brought.  The sense of community and conversation.  I admit that I often felt like the conversation was quite one sided.  But my blog friends always showed up when it counted.  They were always there to offer a word of encouragement.  To make me laugh.  To brighten my day.  Or to offer insight.  

I loved the circle of bloggers that I once counted as my friends.  I wonder about what has happened in their lives.  What are they doing?  Where are they?  And why aren't they here? 

Many times over the past year I have signed in to my blog account and looked around at an empty room, like a party that no one showed up for.  The thoughts in my head that were bound for a post got dropped like a joke that you forgot the punchline to. 

I quit blogging, too.

But I miss it.  It felt real.  Maybe it can again.  Maybe there is hope in the old-school.  Maybe someone else out there is getting tired of the impersonal blurbs and constant flux of new things to keep up with on the internet.  Maybe we could blog again. 

Come back?

Real Time

 Five years came and went without the blessing of seeing the ocean.  Five years without hardly leaving the mountains.  My heart ached for it like a long lost love.  I even had dreams about it often and woke up homesick for a place that isn't even my home.  But this year we went.  The plans did not fall beautifully into place.  The extra money did not magically present itself.  It was a messy execution with too many plot twists to even discuss.  Besides, that would subtract from the glory of it.  The important thing is that I got to spend a week in my favorite home away from home.....Holden Beach, NC. 

Apart from an unexpected beach trip, life clicks along uneventfully.  These days are hard and they are humbling.  They are a fair mix of joy and pain.  Love and depression.  Learning and changing.  I would like to think that I have been changing for the better.  Meeting myself daily and listening to what God has to say about who I really am.  The ego has decreased bit by bit.  I'm tired of doing things unnaturally.  So I no longer fix my hair.  I let it do its wild unpredictable thing.  I let it grow.  Who knows how long that will last, but I'm enjoying it now.  I got rid of all but a select few pairs of heels in my closet.  What's the point in having my feet hurt?  I gotta stand on these babies for the rest of my life, hopefully, so I don't want to destroy them in the attempt to look "hot".  Age inappropriate clothing is out the door, along with the too tight and the too low and the too constricting.  It's time to breathe easy.  It's time to not have to constantly check what I am wearing.  It's time to be real.  


And maybe it's time to blog again.  Just maybe. 

A Love Letter

Dear Lord, 

       
             I got the love letter you sent me. How blessed I am to have a love like you!

             The warm air in my lungs was the sweetest kiss.  Your intoxicating scent of new life pushing through damp soil still lingers in my nose like rain in the distance.  I adore your smell, so refreshing and calm.  

              The blanket of green was such a heavenly embrace.  I feel your hug each time I glance outside.  And the whispers of the frilly blossoms tickled my ears like words of adoration from the one I love.  The pink ones are my favorite!  So delicate is their beauty, as if one touch would disturb their fragile balance and send them into a flurry. 

              I heard that you have been professing your undying love for me!  I heard it in the songs of the birds and in the babbling of the creek.  It's true, isn't it?  I know you love me endlessly.  Why else would you stay up late to serenade me  with the sound of peep frogs at night?

              Oh, thank you! thank you! thank you! my love, for sending me the sweetest love letter called Spring!  I will read it every day and wonder in your love for me.  

                                                                                                      With all My Heart,
                                                                                                        Your Beloved


 

 
 

Making Things

I have a real problem with starting projects and then letting them sit and ferment while I forget all about them.  The one thing that will spur me on to finishing is if I want to wear my project (or hang it on the wall, or give it as a gift).  Such was the case with this necklace/body harness.

The materials were gathered and the plan drawn, but nothing was being done about it.  Until last weekend, when I wanted to wear it, finally.  So I finished it. 

The waitress told me that she really liked my shirt.  So.....either she's into classic white button downs.....or she didn't know what the heck I was wearing.  Either way, she really liked something I was wearing.  Win.  ;)

Learning Curve

 2012 was the year of upheaval.  2013 was mostly spent just trying to hold on while the earth kept spinning.  But 2014 is shaping up to be the year of self realization.  Quite possibly a year of tearing down and rebuilding.

Why should it take so long to actually learn who we really are?  Or am I the only one who, at 33, feels like I am finally figuring out that I am not at all the person that I have been pretending to be for all these years?  It's like there is a huge disconnect between the person I was designed to be and the person that I have been trying to be for so long.  The Lord seems to be washing my eyes of all the disillusionment that is this life.

Of course, I understand that we are always learning.  Always changing.  That is how life works.  I remember my ex boss from my last job telling me one time that what you think is an integral part of your life and who you are at this point will not even be important to you in the future.  I knew, of course, that he was right.  But part of me didn't want to believe him.  It just seems like we should know ourselves better than that.

When was the last time you really thought about what makes you "tick"?  What makes you "you"?  What are you really passionate about?  I believe these are the things that shape who we are supposed to be in this life.  There is a deeper reason for everything that makes us "us".

I want to find out what those reasons are.  I want to know what I am supposed to be doing with this life of mine.  I want to know what God's plan for me is.  I want more. I want more joy, more purpose, more fulfillment, more creativity. 

~I want to become the person I was meant to be.~