Why I want to be a rock star...

As I listened to Ann Voskamp's powerful keynote at Allume this past weekend, I was reminded of something I'd written a couple of years ago; and I was convicted by both Ann's message and my own words, because none of us are immune from the temptation to be influenced by the world's standards of "stardom" and success. For my benefit, if for no one else, here is that slightly edited post {with new photos} from my archives.

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

The rock stars I know cook, teach, visit the home-bound, write lovely letters, challenge creativity, and love on and care for the needy right where they live.

They write books and posts that stir up love and good deeds, and pour out love and grace into the lives of others. 

They sing joyfully, laugh heartedly, wipe dirty noses, craft quilts, listen to one, speak to thousands, love the unlovely, kiss boo-boos and fevered brows, sponsor children, paint and capture beauty, and pray and wash feet where no one but Jesus can see. 

They pull weeds, change dirty diapers, scrub toilets, crochet prayer shawls, knit socks, and encourage everyone wherever God takes them. 

And  they do it without a grumble.

They are rock stars - who stand 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

I {LOVE} Sunday::to receive the gift...

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9 {ESV}

{Deidra's Sunday Community is taking an October break.}

Still Saturday::to shake your head in wonder...

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

2 Corinthians 5.17

I had an entirely different post scheduled for this weekend - my last weekend to host Still Saturday before Sandra returns from her break - but when Louis gave me an early anniversary gift this afternoon, I knew that the post I'd planned would have to wait. 

By the grace of God alone, Louis and I will celebrate 37 years of marriage this week - but if we wanted to, we could actually celebrate more years than that. It's a long story that I won't retell today, but it's a story you can read here, if you're curious. 

What you need to know is this: we are not who we once were those many years ago. And if you knew us back then before we were created new in Christ, you'd shake your head in wonder at the gift Louis gave me today: a new backyard swing - inscribed with Psalm 46.10. And he doesn't know a thing about Still Saturday. 

I'm thrilled to be hosting Sandra Heska King's Still Saturday link-ups this month while Sandra takes a break, and if you leave a link below, I'll do my best to read your post over the next few days. If you're new to Still Saturday and want to know more, just click on the button below.

Please let it be me...

Every day I'm able to wander further and further from the house on my own, and today I set up a chair, stool, and basket of cameras closer to the flame bush in hopes of capturing the hummingbird that buzzes about every morning. I'm not disappointed. Only a few minutes after I settle down with my right leg propped up on the stool and a fresh cup of coffee in my hand, I hear her chirp-chirp-chirp. Such a fun little bird to watch. 

For two weeks, I'm spoiled with a physical therapist that comes to my home, but I begin outpatient physical therapy this week, and unlike my hopes for capturing the hummingbird, I'm initially disappointed. I choose a physical therapy center in our little rural community - just ten minutes from home, but it's not what I'm used to in the city.

I'm led to a hot waiting room with uncomfortable chairs where I'm instructed to fill out paperwork, and then I wait almost an hour before the therapist can see me. I can hear her communicating with another patient through an interpreter and begin to understand her delay, but both the heat and the discomfort make me feel nauseous. I want to cry and go home.

Another patient enters the waiting room, and just like the patient before me, he doesn't speak English, and I momentarily forget about hummingbirds and painted buntings and God's goodness, and I begin to entertain old feelings of resentment at having to live in a rural agricultural community.

But I've been here before - not this exact waiting room, but ones just like it, and the Lord brings them to my mind, because pity and resentment are ten times stinkier than sweaty farm workers. My very words come back to me.

In sharp contrast to the stale musk of an overcrowded waiting room and the lab's medicinal odors, the delightful and calming fragrance of the technician's perfume lingered behind as I followed her down the hall to the small cubicle prepared for drawing blood.

Lord, let that be me today. 

May the sweet aroma of Christ fill the air around me as I wait in crowded and messy circumstances and linger as I wander down the halls of uncertainty. May the fragrance of the knowledge of You flow in and through me and into the hearts and minds of those whose lives I intersect this day.

Yes, Lord. Please let that be me.

There is none like you...

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8.1

While my recovery and rehab have excelled expectations, I'm still forced, for the most part, to be content with photos from my archives, but if I did wander about with my camera today, the photos would likely look much the same as they did last October. The grass under the tall pines is bright green, the cypress trees around the pond are turning yellow, and the palmetto thickets along the creek remain tangled with wild vines and their flowers. 

As I watch the early morning light cut through layers of fog to paint amber streaks down the trunks of trees and sparkle like diamonds on dew-soaked leaves, I'm reminded of the many evidences of God's faithfulness and majesty revealed in nature - from the orderly cycle of seasons, to the daily rising and setting of the sun in blazing glory. 

I'm humbled by God's sovereignty and power over His creation. As we read through the creation story in lifegroup on Sunday, I thought about the foolishness of thinking that we have any control over the environment outside of our ability to practice good stewardship of the resources God has given us dominion over and entrusted to our care.  

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,

Psalm 8.3-6

This ever faithful, sovereign and powerful God of all creation pours more love and kindness and goodness into my life than my heart and mind can begin to grasp. Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?...there is none like you.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8.9

I {LOVE} Sunday::to lift up my soul...

{Deidra's Sunday Community is taking an October break.}

Still Saturday::to stand full-face to God...

 

It was in a little wood in early morning. The sun was climbing up behind a steep cliff on the east, and its light was flooding nearer and nearer and then making pools among the trees. Suddenly, from a dark corner of purple-brown stems and fawning moss, there shown out a great golden star. It was just a dandelion and half withered, but it was full face to the sun, and had caught into its heart all the glory it could hold, and was shining so radiantly that the dew that lay on it still made a perfect aureole round its head.

If the Son of Righteousness has risen upon our heart, there is an ocean of grace and love and power lying all around us, and it is ready to transfigure us, as the sunshine transfigured the dandelion, and on the same condition - that we stand full-face to God. Turn your soul's vision to Jesus and look and look at Him, and the divine attrait by which God's saints are made even in this twentieth century will lay hold of you. 

Lillias Trotter, The Master of the Impossible

Those who look to him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed.
Psalm 34.5
I'm thrilled to be hosting Sandra Heska King's Still Saturday link-ups this month while Sandra takes a break, and if you leave a link below, I'll do my best to read your post over the next few days.

 If you're new to Still Saturday and want to know more, just click on the button below.

Because who knows...

Two weeks later, the fog is lifting, and I'm faced with the reality that writing assignments, work on the Good Day book with Robbi, and a promise to help a loved one are tasks left unfinished on the way to surgery. I'm overwhelmed with how to back up, jump-start my brain cells, and begin again. 

I'd love to wave a magic wand to freeze time - or at least slow it down - that I might catch up with those who have forged on ahead. An impossibility, of course, and I'm wasting time longing for it. 

Today that traintrack of thirty staples will be removed, and whether or not it's true, I feel like it will be a huge step forward in returning to my normal. I'm even planning on packing up my camera to take with me to my appointment with the surgeon in the hope that a photographic moment on the hour drive home won't go to waste. Who knows, because surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

Even when I was afraid to ask...

With subtle changes that are easily missed by those who know and expect something different, fall is nothing but a big tease down here at the edge of the glades. It's still very much summer, but when morning lows dip into the upper 60's and leaves from the sweetgum trees begin to twirl down into crunchy piles in the grass, I long to be outside with my camera.

It's only been a week since surgery when I share that hope with my physical therapist, but he thinks I'm making great progress, so he takes me for a walk outside with a cane - around the scrub oak lined circular drive and through the fresh-cut grass. I prove that I can at least walk to a chair and sit.

So I promise to do just that - sit and not try to walk about - as Louis puts a camping stool in front of the folding chair he's placed outside for me in the shade of the back porch. He helps me prop up my right leg - the one with 30 staples in a line down the center across my knee - and leaves me with my camera.

I watch the warblers hop from seedpod to seedpod in the sweetgum trees overhead, but the light's not good and the warblers are too quick for my camera to focus. A hummingbird darts around the honeysuckle vine along the fence - but it's too tiny and too far away for even my longer zoom lens.

I begin to feel rather foolish and laugh out loud when I realize that a wasp sipping water from the birdbath is likely the best photographic moment I'll be given on a day when I can't move from where I'm sitting.

Remember when it hurt too much for me to move from the backyard swing? I remind God. And you brought birds to me when I asked? But I stop short of asking for his favor again - afraid of appearing to test the limits of God's goodness.

A mockingbird flies into the flame bush on my side of the fence, but I'm not that impressed. I have a gazillion mockingbird photos, and this time of year one or two mockingbirds are always fighting over the bush's ripe berries. Though I'm too far away for a great capture and the photos I take will likely end up in the trash, at least the mockingbird's a more interesting subject than a wasp.

When the mockingbird leaves, I'm ready to call it quits, but as I snap on the lens cap, I catch a glimpse of another bird in the flame bush - a smaller bird that's dared to snatch a berry while the mockingbird is away. I can't quite identify her in the poor light, but I zoom in to capture a few frames before putting the camera away and Louis helps me move back inside.

I upload the photos, bring them up on the screen and scroll past the mockingbird to the unknown little green bird in the flame bush, and I'm speechless. It's a painted bunting - a female or still green first year male - weeks before I've ever seen a bunting on Pollywog Creek. 

And I'm in awe of God's goodness to me - even when I was afraid to ask.

For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty!

Zechariah 9:17

I {LOVE} Sunday::to look up...

Deidra's Sunday Community is taking a break through October.

Still Saturday::growing in season...

I knew that surgery on my knees would initially be a setback - that I'd enter a season of greater dependency on others and they'd be less able to depend on me. And I dreaded it. It just seems like so much wasted time, when time is too precious to be wasted. But then I read this from Margaret Feinberg in "A Time for Everything" and I'm encouraged to remember that no season is wasted - that I can still "seek and celebrate God" and choose to grow even in this season of dependence.

Some seasons of life will be marked by transition and change; others will be defined by their steadiness. Some seasons in life will challenge us to give; others will teach us to receive....The amazing news of being a child of God is that no matter what season of life we find ourselves in we have the opportunity to seek and celebrate God right in the midst. We can choose to grow in the fullness of all God has called and created us to be. Becoming more Christ-like isn't something that's just awaiting you in your next season of life - it's available to you right now!

I'm thrilled to be hosting Sandra Heska King's Still Saturday link-up this month. While I'm still trying to catch up with everyone who linked-up last week, I promise to persevere. 

If you're new to Still Saturday and want to know more, just click on the button below or here.

I {LOVE} Sunday::to rest and be strengthened...

He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint. 
Isaiah 40:29-31
Deida's Sunday Community is taking a break the month of October.

If all is going well, I hope to go home later today.

Still Saturday::to wait for the best...

...waiting on Jesus is a common experience for disciples. Sometimes we wait for direction. Sometimes we're stuck in a very hard place and wait for release. Sometimes we wait to understand his purposes. Sometimes we wait for his provision. Jesus's timing and purposes are not always clear to us, though they are always best for us.

Jon Bloom Not By Sight p. 126

I'm thrilled to be hosting Sandra Heska King's Still Saturday link-up this month, but by the time this post publishes Friday evening, I'll likely be somewhere between waking up from anesthesia and sleeping off pain meds. I'm getting new knees - one at a time - beginning with my right knee Friday morning.

I hope to read your linked posts over the weekend while I'm still in the hospital, but if not, I'll do my best to catch up with you during the week. Promise.

If you'd like to know more about Still Saturday {and I'm sure that you do}, just click on the button below or here.

UPDATE:  The Linkz Linke-up website appears to be down right now, or at least I can't get into it here at the hospital. If you are Linking Up today, PLEASE leave a comment with a link to your post and I'll try to resolve the issue as soon as I can. Thank you for grace.

An InLinkz Link-up