I can guess what you're thinking...

It was delightfully (and surprisingly) cool a week or so ago, and though my time was generally consumed with events surrounding my daughter's college graduation, I basked in as much of the turn-off-the-air-conditioning, open-the-windows, and linger-on-my-backyard-swing moments I could capture. 

And I can already guess what you're thinking.

After weeks, if not months, of finding little more than a photo here and there on the pages of Pollywog Creek, you'd think I'd have something more interesting than the weather to write about.

It's not that I'm not writing.

Late last year I resigned from the magazine writing I'd been working on for several years. My lifestyle no longer reflected the target audiences my articles were reaching, and I'd exhausted all I knew to say. When I received an offer to write for an upstart magazine that would both tap into my knowledge base and challenge my comfort zones by pushing me out of those areas of experience, I knew it was time to make a change, and I love it.

I treasure the online communities I'm part of and the relationships that have developed as a result, but my new assignments have taken me away from the computer and face-to-face with remarkable women whose stories I get to uncover in conversations over coffee or brunch. I get to be amazed as their stories unfold -- stories I'm trusted to retell in just so many words that never seem like enough. 

I'm also working (albeit slowly) on a series of children's books based on my archived and no longer available "Letters from Mimi's Backyard."

And I'm writing in places unfit for public consumption. I can't remember a time when I didn't process life in writing, and I have baskets of journals as evidence. The thought sometimes occurs to me -- usually at night when I'm trying to go to sleep -- that I probably should cull my journals and destroy those I'd rather no one ever discovers, because I can't reconcile scripture and the doctrine of Imago Dei with the popular sentiment that it's alright to tell your stories even if it hurts those who "behave badly."*

Since the beginning of her last semester in college, my daughter and I have been slowly making our way through Beth Moore's study on James, Mercy Triumphs. In her teaching on James 4.9-11, Beth addresses the proliferation of cynicism in our religious pop-culture that is expressed in how believers are so willing to publicly ridicule other believers -- especially in what we say and write online -- and it should turn our joy to gloom (vs 9).

There's a way to tell our stories without shaming others or being cynical, I believe -- a way that leaves wide spaces for grace and mercy to work in those who have hurt us and whose misbehavior has left scars on our souls. I can only imagine how I would feel if places I have failed to "behave better" (of which there are many) were written about on the pages of public journals, blogs, and social media platforms. 

So sometimes when weeks pass without anything more than a "Still Saturday" or "I Love Sunday" post, it's because I'm processing life more privately. 

*I edited this paragraph from when it was first posted after I realized I'd ventured too close to doing exactly what I was trying to avoid. Oh, the irony of it all. What does Proverbs say? When words are many, transgression is not lacking.

Green is the color of August...

An edited repost - my signature segue into August

There are two reasons I love the month of August: the green-tinted kaleidoscope through which we view this rain-nourished world around us, and though it's only a minor seasonal fact that has little to do with the weather, August is the last full month of summer. It's hump-month. We're half the way to cooler mornings and pleasant evenings and no mosquitoes. 

Not that I'm complaining, because I promised myself long ago that I'd cultivate contentment and stop wishing my life away in anticipation of something in the future.

To not fully delight in the gifts of the moment is both foolish and ungracious, for it's not only all I really have, it's abundantly more than enough. 

So I begin the month of August once again counting a multitude of gratitudes for a day and a week and a month of more than enough. 

• the color green - dotted with rippening beautyberries, a blazing flamebush, dangling clusters of wild grapes, and the giant orchids that have boldly pushed through the rain-soaked earth
• four days and nights to run my fingers through his soft curly hair and leisurely cuddles with a baby grandlittle
• Wednesday morning in study and fellowship with sisters in Christ and the teaching ministry of Beth Moore
• an evening round the table with Nick, Casey and Emily for the first time since Christmas
• the fervent prayers of righteous sisters carrying me through a seige with shingles
• the daily reading in the Word with Louis 
• my beautiful Emily home from Georgia - who makes days and nights with grandlittles possible
• a blue bowl of sweet cherries
• the assurance of God's new mercies every single day

Related: Green is the Color of August 

Photos: August greens on Pollywog Creek

It's still progress...

Beth Moore on taking three steps forward and two steps back...

Call me a math wizard, but isn't that still one step forward? Isn't that still some pretty big progress as we run against the hurricane winds of a godless culture? So Long, Insecurity, p. 12

{Photos - more through-the-screen photos of my Pollywog Creek backyard}

Cultivating an eye...

It begins with a simple prayer - "Please show me your glory, Lord, right where I am."

I can be blind to the beauty around me. Sometimes all I see is dirt and trash and the frost-frozen leaves of the once green flame bush hanging brown like bats from barren limbs.

Like the man born blind - unless the Lord opens my eyes, I cannot see.

It's the only way I know to cultivate an eye for His mercies around me.

And it's a prayer He's never failed to answer.

He lets me see it in a thorny seed pod and the wise words of a dying friend.

And in a firey sunrise and the way new growth sprouts varigated leaves on a canvas of blazing pre-dawn bokeh.

Beth Moore once told the story of being thrilled to see moose outside the window of her Rocky Mountain cabin one morning. When others complained that they didn't see moose, Beth responded, "Did you ask Him to show you?"

God delights in showing us His glory, but if you are like me, you'll miss it if you don't ask.

Have you asked Him to show you? What did you see?

{Photos} Day 11/366 right outside my front door

Stirring up...

"The greatest need we have is not to do things, but to believe things." Oswald Chambers Photos of the muscovy ducks skimming across our pond are some of the few I took this week. We're having a heat wave here on Pollywog Creek, and with record high-lows combined with high humidity and heat indexes over a hundred, I'm not inclined to spend much time outdoors. Despite a lack of photography and outdoor activities, I've certainly not been bored. It's been one of those weeks, with spurts of chaos along a steady stream of the less significant stuff of life. A feverish baby and a nighttime trip to the store for tylenol. Potty-training preschoolers, a little one with a stomach virus and the extra loads of laundry that accompany them both. A doctor visit to discuss surgery - for Louis, not me. Difficult professors, bird feeder stealing squirrels and a week of sleepless nights with a restless grandson. Friends and family with heartaches and pain, and praying for wisdom and encouragement. No. I've not been bored. Wednesday morning I arrived at the home of my widow friend as planned, with just enough time to help her shower, change her bed linens and drive her into town for an appointment. I had not planned on bringing my 2 1/2 year old grandson Gavin with me, but there he was none-the-less. It was just one of those things that couldn't be helped, and with no time for me to make different arrangements, Gavin needed to be on his very best behavior, and I lovingly told him so. With a handful of toy cars I found in the bottom of his diaper bag, Gavin played quietly by himself on the living room rug for almost an hour. I checked on him frequently. "What a good, good boy you are," I reminded him often, looking into his big blue eyes and planting a kiss on the top of his head. I expected him to be good, or at least that's what I told him, and thankfully he lived up to my expectations. Gavin is like most of us, I think. We tend to live up (or down) to who we know or think we are, and also like Gavin, we sometimes need frequent reminders. "I am who God says I am." Beth Moore Emily calls it "the wave" - those seasons when we read or hear the same verse or thought in scripture, in sermons, and in our private study. I'm on a Hebrews 10:24 wave.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works...

On a preschool level, Gavin demonstrated a way that works. When I reminded him that he was good, he believed me and was "stirred up" to do the "good work" of a busy little boy to obey his mimi. When I remind you and you remind me, and we believe that we are who God says we are in Christ, then we are "stirred up" to the "love and good works" for which those who love the Lord have been gifted and equipped.

Memorizing scripture...

...with Beth Moore this year. This is how I am doing it - with a little brown field journal from Desiring God, colored pens and pencils (though yellow doesn't work well), and my ESV Study Bible. This is my first year memorizing scripture from the ESV Bible and it can sometimes be a challenge for me to re-learn a verse in a version that is different from what I have always used. The little brown field journals are the perfect size for taking with me any where I think I might have even a few minutes to concentrate. I need the constant repetition. There's no system to my underlining, annotating and equating - it's just what works for me at the moment. Tomorrow I will add another verse to the journal - I'm just not sure which one yet. What about you? Are you hiding God's Word in your heart (and mind) this year, too?

Painted Bunting...

Is this not the most beautiful bird? It's a male Painted Bunting. I first caught a glimpse of this charming little finch last week and again yesterday afternoon, but both times I was either unable to get outside or I didn't have my camera with me. Today I was prepared. While Gavin took a nice long afternoon nap, I sat on the swing in the backyard near the bird feeder, and with a good book, a delightful mug of vanilla bean coffee and my camera, I waited. 

I didn't have the best angle for fully capturing the beauty of this colorful bird after he perched on the opposite side of the feeder from where I was sitting, but I knew that if I moved at all, he would fly away. 

I remember listening to Beth Moore share about a time she asked God that if it pleased Him, would He bring a moose to the cabin where she was staying in the Rocky Mountains. When she woke up the next morning there was a moose outside her door. No other cabins had a moose, just hers. 

I don't believe for one minute that God passes out favors simply because we ask, nor do I make it a habit of asking for simple pleasures - for they are usually all around me - but it has been my experience that on many occasions when I have asked God for a glimpse of His glory in creation that I might capture it to share with others, He has answered that prayer in ways that often astound me. 

Today was one of those occasions. When the painted bunting flew over my shoulder and landed on the feeder, I whispered another quick prayer that the noise of turning on my camera would not frighten this shy little bird away, and it didn't.

Seeing and photographing this exquisite bird was truly a gift.

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." ~ James 1:17