Still Saturday::Undone together...

In the relinquishing of independence, I discovered community. My brokenness gave me connection, relationship. I thought asking for help was an admission of weakness. 

Instead, I discovered it a declaration of strength. Like King Jehoshaphat, it was the laying down of my crown that I finally found my place. 

Our God is a refuge for the broken, not a shelf for the display of the shiny. No more pride for those who have it all together, or shame for those who don't. 

Only stripped-bare humility, crowns on the ground. Together.

Michele Cushatt, Undone - A Story of Making Peace with an Unexpected Life 

Forgetting to breathe {and Psalm 84.5 memory verse}...

The winter days here on Pollywog Creek have been muggy, gray and gloomy - not the cool and sunny days we {and the snow birds who migrate south} have always known winter to be at the edge of the tropics. It's been a reflection of a grief I've been wrestling to shake.

The new year holds hard transitions before me, and my heart has been heavy with grieving the changes to come that taunt and mock my here-and-now joy.

The physical therapist straps two-pound weights on my ankles, and half way through her prescribed routine that stretches and strengthens the muscles and ligaments around my surgery-scarred knees, my heart begins to race and I realize I'm forgetting to breathe. 

A month ago, shortly after the last surgery when pain was at it's worst and it was all I could do to hold onto the walker and move from the bed to the chair, I'd listened to Mark Talbot's message on suffering: 

Losing perspective in suffering is stifling; it is like forgetting to breathe. More particularly, we Christians can forget that we are never alone, no matter what we are undergoing, because God is with us, just as he was with those saints who have been in similar straits before. Sometimes we are especially prone to forget when we are dealing with some chronic disability of our own or of one of our loved ones that seems to just be going on and on, with no end in sight. We need then, especially, to be reminded to breathe in the word that God has breathed out for us (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

The Scriptures record a lot of suffering because God’s people have never been free of it, not even from the kinds and degrees that can overwhelm God’s most stalwart saints. Indeed, when Job’s suffering seemed to him to be neverending, he actually accused God of keeping him from catching his breath (see Job 9:18, NLT). Yet his story finally conveys that, as awful as his situation was, much of what he needed to hear was something like this: “Breathe! Don’t panic! Slow yourself down! Don’t take everything to be as it seems. And don’t irrationally conclude that things will never get better.”

Mark Talbot

As Talbot suggests, I begin to breathe - breathing out laments and breathing in grace. God is good and He is with me. I breathe deep, word-soaked breaths and my heart is slowed and strengthened for the journey.

Sweet Shot Tuesday::Light...

Facebook friends will not be surprised by this photo. I posted it yesterday after Emily and I were greeted with this amazing picture.

It's been an unusually warm winter here in SW Florida. I was excited about this recent cold snap and the opportunity to try to photograph macros of the frost that was forecast for the morning, but I was disappointed when I woke up and discovered that it was ten degrees warmer than they had expected. There was no frost. 

I didn't even bother to look outside because I was sure that there would be nothing unusual out there for me to photograph, but Emily needed me to move the truck so that she could get the car out of the garage and go to work. As we walked outside, we were stunned by the view. 

As Emily took pictures with her phone, I moved the truck and hurried back inside to get my camera. To think that I almost missed this because I thought there'd be nothing to see. 

  

As I brought the photos up on my computer, a passage in John 9, where Jesus healed the boy who had been blind from birth, came to mind, and I began to see more than just light and fog and smoke.

It's not the sun shining through a clear blue sky that creates the wow...it's the sun breaking through a layer of fog and smoke. As Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him....As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 

That's the wow - when Christ Light breaks through the smoke and fog in our lives that the "works of God" are clearly displayed to His glory.