As thou has been, thou forever will be...

"The Lord will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen Your frame. You will be like a well watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail."  Isaiah 58.11

My sincerest apologies {again} to all who are clinging to summer's last hurrahs - this last day of August and the final stretch into the Labor Day weekend.

I know your pain. It grips me every spring - when cool, dry days begin to give way to scorching heat, oppressive humidity and mosquitoes - and I grasp and savor every last refreshing breath.

I rejoice at August's waning moments and the hope that cooler days are just around the scorching bend, but I've tried to be careful to not wish my life away - longing for a different time or place....or season. 

Today - this very moment even - is what I have....

...to delight in

...to appreciate

...to rest in

...to be grateful for

...to be loving

...to be encouraging

...to pray

...to cherish

...to share

...to create

...to embrace

...to not waste

Added later:
...to play
...to laugh
...to sing
...to dance
...to praise
...to cry
...to kiss and hug


{what would you add?}

A small plaque inscribed with Isaiah 58:11 hangs on a wall in my home. Taken out of context, I've often thought it was written just for me - encouragement to get through our long and heavy summers. As I look back on these August days and bid her farewell, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for all the Lord has done for me. He has surely been with me. He has guided me, satisfied my every need and strengthened my frame.

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me. {listen}

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my father
There is no shadow of turning with Thee
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be




{Photos} This last week of August on Pollywog Creek

Hunger...

The glory of bread is that it satisfies.

~ John Piper - A Godward Life

I'll open the pantry door and reach for the crackers and chips every time. 

Hunger pains - those steroid and ulcer-induced gnawings - are not patient. They stab and grumble. "Right now," they insist - so I open the pantry and grab the closest food fix to satisfy their greedy demands. 

Junk food - a quick fix. There's no lasting nourishment or fuel for the long haul. Empty calories that weigh me down and do more harm than good - quenching hunger for what truly satisfies, strengthens and heals.

I learn, albeit slowly. 

If bowls of fresh fruit sit full on the kitchen counter, I won't open the pantry. I'll satisfy hunger with nutrient-rich foods that nourish and fuel and heal. 

I learn this, too - when the stabbing pains of life in this broken world gnaw at my soul and eat holes in my heart - and the junk food fixes the world offers weigh me down - I need only eat of the food that truly satisfies, nourishes and heals.

Taste and see that the LORD is good.

{Photos} my kitchen counter

I want to be a rock star...

Some of my favorite people are rock stars. I want to be a rock star, too.

Rock stars cook, teach, visit the home-bound, write lovely letters, challenge creativity, and love on and care for the needy.

They write the books that stir up love and good deeds, and they "like" and send hugs and kisses.

They sing, laugh, wipe dirty noses, craft quilts, speak to one or thousands, love the unlovely, kiss boo-boos and fevered brows, sponsor children, paint and capture beauty, and pray in secret.

They pull weeds, change dirty diapers, scrub toilets, crochet prayer shawls, knit socks, and encourage where ever they are.

And  they do it without a grumble.

They are rock stars - standing on the Rock to Shine like a Star - loving, giving, writing and speaking the words of life to which they hold.  

"Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life." ~ Philippians 2.14-15a NIV

As I count thanks with Ann in community today, I am grateful for..

...YOU - and all the ways you are a rock star, inspiring and encouraging your circle of influence 

...the good medicine of a cheerful heart and the friends who delivered with love and laughter

...a sweet morning with Addisyn

...a day trip with Louis and watching him play "Big Buck Hunter" with Mason and Austin {adorable haircuts}

...two Sunday mornings in a row for worship and fellowship {how I love the Body of Christ}

...answered prayers and meds that work {yes}

...music and those gifted to make it

...hot showers, clean sheets, soft pillows and heating pads

...bowls of fresh fruit on the kitchen counter

...the views out my windows

...a daughter still at home {truly a gift}

What gifts and rock stars are you counting with thanks today?

{Photos} from a morning to wander  

Weekends {are for} wanderings...

Weekends {are for} Wanderings on Pollywog Creek 

...looking back and catching up

As far as I know, all my loved ones made it through this week of new things and new rhythms for new routines with only a few minor glitches. Truthfully, there will always be glitches, right? And the sooner we accept that, they won't catch us by surprise and trip us up. We can deal with them and move on.

To the short RA update I posted earlier this week I'll add that I continue to feel better every day. Overwhelmed by God's kindness and mercy, I've been whispering "thank you, God" all day long as everywhere I turn I discover evidences of His hand at work around me. {Can I thank you enough for your prayers?}

Friends I've not seen in several years brought lunch, laughter, and the sweetest fellowship into my home this week. I've not had many visitors since my trip to the emergency room over five weeks ago - a price we pay for living on a dead-end road in a rural community nearly an hour from where we go to church.

The morning after that delightful afternoon, I felt better than I had in weeks. Louis was home to protect me from dogs and gators and myself, so I loaded my basket with cameras and wandered about outside taking photographs until I was drenched and Louis insisted I go inside. Maybe the new meds are starting to kick in - I certainly hope so - but I tend to think it's the good medicine of love and laughter and friendship that eases the sometimes overwhelming pain and loneliness and opens the way for healing.

There are circumstances we sometimes need to experience for ourselves before our eyes and hearts are open to the needs of others. I told my friends that I've learned much in this season of disability - a season I truly believe is passing - that will make me a better giver of care to others in the future.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. ~ 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 ESV

{Photos} Dusk last evening on Pollywog Creek

Through the Window::Week Three...

My enthusiasm for the August TtW challenge this year has all but disappeared. There are just so many photos that can be taken through the few windows I have in my house without boring everyone, including me, and even on those rare occasions that I leave the house these days, I travel the same roads to one of the same two destinations: church and the doctor's office. (Now that's a thought worth a post of its own.)

So I reached back a ways and grabbed a photo taken through the car windshield in May on one of our trips through sugarcane fields and into the sunset and a thunderstorm. We're hoping to travel that same stretch of highway again tomorrow - maybe I'll have a current Tt{car}W photo for the last week of this year's challenge. (Won't we all be happy to move on to something else?)

Last week I overlooked TtW photos by one of my dearest friends, Allie. She has a fantastic post I know you will enjoy, so please click on over and tell her I sent you.

If I have overlooked your TtW photos, too, PLEASE point me in the right direction...and forgive me? I'm old, gray and crippled and this seems like as good a time to use that excuse as any.

Because of that trip down the same sugarcane highway we are hoping to take tomorrow, I won't be home to "talk" tomorrow, so I'll ask y'all today...what highways (literally or figuratively) are you traveling these days?

Photo Play::Who, Where, What...

Today I'm joining Claire Burge and other High Calling photographers (and poets) in a "history" photo play. Claire's challenge to us was to find five images - one for each answer to five questions about our history. She also encouraged us to use symbols in our images to represent those memories.

I began working on the challenge this morning by writing down the questions and making notes as I recalled the events in my past the questions evoked and the photos that might reflect those memories.

The first four photos were taken this summer, the fifth photo in 2008 - with my first digital camera - an old Kodak.

Question 1: Who made up your DNA?

This is the photo I wanted to submit. It's certainly a picture of the people who literally contributed to my DNA, but it's a picture of a picture and I didn't think it would be a fair submission. As I made notes about who my parents were, I thought about my dad's love for the Florida Gators, crossword puzzles, and writing, and how much those loves of his became my own. 

Both my mom and my dad were U.S. Navy veterans who served in WWII, and were unashamed of their love for our country. After my dad passed away and we moved my bedridden mother into our home, a few people from church dropped by on the 4th of July to serenade her with patriotic music. Tears welled up in my mother's eyes before trickling down the crevasses of her soft white cheeks. In her dementia, mother forgot many things, but never her love for her country - it was in her DNA that made up mine...

Question 2: Where do you come from?

This was the hardest question of all. There's too much to say about where I come from - even in the handful of towns within her borders I've called home. It's where I've lived my whole life - the land of sunshine, alligators, sugar-sand beaches, palm trees, citrus groves, Sand Mountain, Bok Tower, horse farms, water-skiing, grits, fish fries, rivers, springs, scuba diving, Friday night football, Gator Nation, hurricanes, mosquitoes, y'all, and being lured to sleep by the cicadas' tymbals...

Question 3: What object is precious to your past?

I had two answers to this question. My mother's wedding ring was the first thing I thought of, but I'm wearing it, and don't think that a photo of my gnarly hand would be all that attractive, so I concluded that my second answer, which is actually related to the ring, would be a better choice. When my parents returned from their honeymoon to their small apartment, mother found a white hand embroided tablecloth with a crocheted trim on her kitchen table. It was a wedding gift from her matron of honor, and though the details of that lovely handwork are not visible in the photo below, I know they are there - underneath the vase of flowers in mother's favorite color that were given to me on my birthday...

Question 4: What memory resonates most deeply?

From my earliest memory, I was crazy about kittens and pianos. While my parents lovingly provided me with more than enough kittens, a piano was beyond their means until I was a teenager. I remember hoping every Christmas and every birthday that a piano would somehow appear in our living room. As an adult, I now know how painful that must have been for my parents to want to give me something they simply could not afford. I wrote breifly about my love for the piano and my Aunt Dot a couple of weeks ago. I have many not-so-good memories that resonate deeply, but this is a good one...

Question 5: What moment in history marks your childhood?

There are two moments in history that came to mind as I considered this question. Hurricane Donna is the first. I was ten years old. Communication was not what we have today, and we made our way through hurricanes with much less preparation and knowledge than we do today. On Donna's second trip across our state, she came right over our house. I remember walking outside in the storm's center and rushing back in as we heard the eyewall approach. I remember my parents trying to tie the window casings down before they blew out, the pool overflowing and flooding our Florida room, and the fear that I was going to die. Donna was one of the msot costly storms in U.S. history, and because of the devastation and high mortality, the name "Donna" was retired and will never again be used for an Atlantic hurricane.

The second moment in history that marked my childhood was one with much greater global significance. Three years after Hurricane Donna twisted through my central Florida community, I was leaving school for the day on November 22, 1963, and as I gathered with my classmates on the lawn outside Dennison Junior High School, the news of President John F. Kennedy's assassination traveled from one person to the next. Many of us cried as we found seats on our school buses for home.

Emily's maturity and keen interest in politics have opened many doors for her that have included the opportunity to meet those holding high political offices and an exposure to the secret service, as a result. At one event, we watched the secret service with their arms around President Bush's waist as they moved him along a line of greeters. The photo below, with one of the president's planes in the distance and a deputy and one of dozens (if not hundreds) of secret service agents at another event, represents that real and constant threat to the security of those in office...

Emily greeting Vice President Cheney the day the above photo was taken.

How would you answer one of the questions? I'd love for you to leave your answer in a comment below, or let me know if you participated in this photo play.

Because two are better than one...

\

A lovely long weekend of Diptychs...

















...because two are better than one.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.  ~ Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

I'm counting thanks in community with Ann today - for "twos that are better than one"...

• my husband Louis and my beautiful Emily, who still meet my every need - cooking, cleaning, making up the bed, and helping in a multitude of ways as my health improves each day 
• Joyce C and Marilyn and the hearts-knitted-together journal of gratitude we share
• crispy apples and sweet bannanas
• grapes and cherries 
• homemade yogurt and zucchini muffins from the bakery
• fellowship and worship with the Body of Christ
• purple berries trailing the fence and bringing beauty in a vase to the table
• Louis singing grace - the only song he says he knows - to sleepy Addisyn on his chest
• red brick churches and wooden backyard swings
• summer's August greens and the hints of fall in the yellowing sweetgum leaves
• afternoon naps and thunderstorms

Photos: from a long weekend with two trips (one to Lake Placid and the other to church) and two outdoor wanderings on Pollywog Creek 

Weekends {are for} wanderings...AND Through the Window::Week Three...

Weekends {are for} Wanderings on Pollywog Creek 

...looking back and catching up

With writing assignments that need my finishing touches, wanderings today (both here on Pollywog Creek and outside with my camera) will be brief, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't get out there and delight in the beauty and wonder in this last month of summer.

If I had to choose one word to describe this past week for me and those I love, I think it would be transition - a moving from one place to another. Not only is my health improving little by little, next week brings with it new challenges and opportunities that we began preparing for this week.

Tabby left for college and classes that begin Monday, Mason met his kindergarten teacher, Gavin and his mama shopped for preschool supplies, and Emily prepared for multiple changes in her schedule and routine that includes resuming her college studies, a new part-time job, and an internship with our U.S. congressman.

What was your week like? Do you have special plans for the weekend or the week ahead?

Through the Window Photo Challenge: I hope I didn't miss anyone, but I think that Mary was the only other person who participated this week. PLEASE let me know if I overlooked your photos, so I can enjoy them and post a link to you here.

Photos: Only the "doll baby" photo was not taken through a window, and all but the last photo (through the study window one morning earlier this week) were shot through the car window on a short trip Louis and I took to Lake Placid yesterday morning. More caracara photos are in a set here.

Today is tomorrow - just be helpful...

{A few thoughts from last summer that I need to remember today.}

"Is today tomorrow?" Four year old Mason asked at breakfast one Sunday morning a year ago. 

It sure is. Just that quickly, today is yesterday's tomorrow.

The genuinely gifted author and journalist Andrée Seu made this statement in a message to the women at Bethlehen Baptist last year:

"You don't have to win the Pulitzer Prize, just be helpful...." 

This day - yesterday's tomorrow - may I just be helpful.

It's not as important to be a gifted writer or photographer as it is to make writing and photography a gift.

 

~

{Photo} My beautiful Emily with her adorable niece Addisyn. "Through the Window" photos will be included in tomorrow's "Weekend Wanderings..." 

I need to say it again...

I sought the Lord, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed.
~ Psalm 34.4-5 (ESV)

...for me.

Because when I catch my image in the mirror and see the ten years and ten pounds that RA and prednisone have added without mercy, "radiant" is not the word my heart speaks.  

That God declares that I am radiant has become more precious to me today than when those verses from Psalm 34 were my reality years ago - when in a season of darkness, with great compassion and mercy, God released me from decades of bondage to fears.  

I can't avoid the mirror. And unless God in His great sovereignty chooses to heal me, I can't control the effects of RA and prednisone, either. What I can do is take God at His Word, and know that what I see in the mirror is not what God sees, and it's only what God sees and says that is truth. 

In God's heart, I'm radiant. Not because of anything I say or do, but because it's what God says.   

I really do want to know what truth God is speaking into your heart these days...and I'd be honored to pray for you as you take Him at His Word.

{If you are participating in Holley Gerth's giveaway, don't forget - the deadline is midnight tonight.} 

Radiant...

I sought the Lord, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed.
~ Psalm 34.4-5

Holley Gerth - whose graceful, encouraging prose fills the pages of her blog and throughout (In)Courage - is sponsoring a fun and creative giveaway to celebrate the release of her new book, God's Heart for You.

Holley's giveaway motivated me to once again hobble out into the backyard with my camera...and, of course, take more photos while I was out there. (Do you think that's the same bee? I love how he dives into the nectar as far as he can go.)

I knew immediately what my "word" would be. What about you?

Click on over to Holley's blog, watch the beautiful video (you will love it, I promise), consider participating in the giveaway and come back and tell me your word. Please?