GROWING SEEDS: "I LOVE YOU"

 

GROWING SEEDS: 11-30-14 "I Love You"

HE. LOVES. YOU

Sometimes I like to imagine myself sitting in a coffee shop across the table from God....chatting like two old friends vying for air space with our heads together catching up on all the latest news.  I imagine Him twirling His hot mocha latte with a spoon and smiling and nodding at all the appropriate times...genuinely enjoying every minute of my ability to talk about everything and nothing....at the same time.

And He has a knack for asking me uncomforable questions like, "Girl, I feel so awkward every time I have to watch you lose patience with that man I gave you to love.....What's the deal?"

And as I look down at the coffee-stained grain of the wood table, searching for an answer to His question, He continues, "Do you know....truly know, Liz, how very much I love you?”

And I know, as our very souls touch through the retinas of our eyes meeting at that very moment, that mine will be leaking because does anyone truly know how much He loves us?  Does anyone really know how much He gushes over us?  Do we "get" how patiently He waits for us to love Him back?  I feel a sense of uncomfortablness as I scour my own love-feelings and discover He loves me so much more than I do Him.

Did you hear what I said?

He. Loves. Me. So. Much. More. Than. I. Love. Him.

He then turns His hand over and I see it....I see that He has carved my name in blood into the palm of His hand.   "That's how much I love you, Liz", He says.

And I dare myself to do the same.....to write His name on my palm....to find the same kind of love for Him as He has for me.  I dare myself to daily jot down His love gifts to me on a coffeehouse napkin, record them on my smartphone, to tell Him "Thank You" in my prayers....

.......and to show Him how much He rocks my world.

Thanks-Giving.....Alone

It's the season of Thanks-Giving......a time when many struggle to find even one thing to Give Thanks for.....and try as they may, it simply doesn't come to them.  They sit quietly as the fog of life envelopes them....just waiting...no, BEGGING....for this time of year to be over with already.  And I just want to whisper to them.....'Hold your hand out....hold it out and let Him grab it...you're not alone."

But they can't.  

It was a day ago I learned that my good friend, Brian, had killed himself.  Drove his car straight into the house I first met he and his wife in, and shot himself.  Tragic.  No one knew the pain he was going through....but amongst the 7.125 billion people in this Whole Wide World and the 196 friends he had on Facebook and the 84 followers on Twitter and his ginormous family who loved him, he was alone. 

A-L-O-N-E.

Sometimes it feels like the earth is cracking.....and people are falling into the cracks.  And as we carefully step over the cracks, we say "What a shame about your friend Brian or Robin Williams or Cici Paris......." and we move on, shaking our heads as we turn our eyes away from those who are barely hanging on before falling into the darkness of this world.   And we convince ourselves if we didn't turn away, it would mess up our holidays.

May I suggest that maybe....just maybe....if we worried less about our holidays being messed up with a messed up person and more about inviting that messed up person to share a seat at our holiday table, that maybe....just maybe....it could turn our holiday into the PERFECT holiday.  That the greatest gift we could GIVE and RECEIVE would be to extend our hand and pull that person out of the darkness that is closing in around them....to open the door to hope.

Look around......grab a hand.....and Give Thanks.

I Need To Give Up.......Control

November 2014

She arrives tired.  Been a long day and a 3-hour drive to get here......and my girl is tired.  

Tired because she's just physically tired.....and tired emotionally.....and stress tired.  

And she came to me.....

to this place of solace and rest and peace and no TV blaring and no busyness happening here folks.....and as I looked into her tired eyes, 

I saw my own tired eyes in hers.

I was there in the delivery room when she was born, you know......that was 30-something years ago ...and yet her eyes still look like those in that Beeville Hospital bassinet that cold November day.  How did she get to be in her 30's so quickly, and when did she get so smart......so grown-up.....so opinionated....so...SO.....beautiful?

We rest.  We wake.

We grab our cameras and go in search of things our eyes haven't seen before......Together.

Somewhere along the way, a question is asked....a floodgate is opened.....words and emotions are flowing out quicker than either of us can absorb or grasp.  A memory of confusion and disappointment.....love and broken hearts....of understanding when its impossible to understand.

And I try to tuck them back into the hole they came crawling out of......but I can't.

It's too late.

I love this girl.....she listens when I rant, cry and shake my fists in the air because its November and I'm scared of Novembers.....She is that person who stands and nods her head when I finally get the breath to say, "I don't understand....I just don't understand."  And I try.  And I lose.  And I keep fumbling my way back to something I can't have.....and she still listens.

And yet I discover through the opening of the floodgates that there's a real way to slap God and people in the face  - wham, wham - at the very same time; when you find a way to say with your actions and your words, "It's just not enough.....I need more....I long for more."

And I'm ashamed.

I'm ashamed that I had 20 years to gain maturity on my girl, yet......I'm the one stomping my foot, banging my head on the floor with fists beating against the concrete screaming, "It's not fair!".

And like someone carefully and meticulously threading a needle, she reminds me God is always fair.....He always shows up....even when we don't see Him.....He shows up.....and He shows up differently in each of us.

"GO FASTER......WHAT BUMP?"

 I am reminded almost daily how crazy in love I am with this man.....

And how flying down the road in his lap

Me yelling "GO FASTER".....

And him hearing, "WHAT BUMP??"

Brings so much joy to my life!