I've been productive. I am into Pinterest again and if I was successful, my readers can "pin" my pics if they so desire. I am out with the Executive LinkedIn and in with the new season…artist, writer, leap of faith taker!
I attended a writer's conference yesterday and found it super beneficial. I highly recommend them, Serious Writers Academy. It was small, there was conversation, there was no competition or need to be farther along or better than. The facilitators were outspoken, funny and expert. There were important take aways for me.
Engaging with others who need to believe in redemption, not need or even want to know me… is what I believe is God's plan for me and my story. So, I'll be making myself engaging and relatable.
I have a relevant story someone may be searching for.
Today, I heard the song by Casting Crowns, "Only Jesus". The lyrics that proclaim I don't want to leave a legacy, don't want people to remember me…only Jesus. I'm glad Jesus knows most proclamations of such are pretty tough for us. So tough for me I told Him so, said I don't really know how that's supposed to be for me. I have no idea how to do what I do for you.
I continued on, decided to just do what I can today. So, committed I have been this afternoon. Readers can pin my pics, someone may connect with me on LinkedIn. I corrected Mailchimp just in time for next week's newsletter, the first in the "Redemption Series".
I ran just as far as I could, moved away from him and had big plans. He found me and well, I knew I'd never try running again.
Don't worry, it's only the intro that's about me. I'm fascinated with Hagar and how she came to be with Sarah and then ran away once, thrown away the second. She was found by God, the God who saw her.
I paused at the recollection of yesterday. I had decided the very same thing. I am learning about writing. I am learning about the need to branch out, hold hands with others, how my story in a way depends on them. How they might unbeknownst to me, be depending on me as I depend on HIM.
Although I am a victim, I am no expert on trauma recovery. I know the lingo, I understand the flight or fight. I know how triggers creep in. I know how damaging before can be to now. I understand the pull of hanging on to harsh resentment, fear, and unforgiveness.
I also know mercy and though I don't fully understand it. I know it is irrevocable, the offer I accepted to believe in the life of Jesus and in His death redeeming all my damage and the damage done to me.
I know mercy more every day. Will know even more tomorrow.
I have a few hundred followers, some know me as a believer. Others might only wonder, might see the hints I give.
I don't understand how to live for "only Jesus". I don't suppose it is meant for me to work that in a fully understood plan. I suppose it is meant for me to invite as many others as I can close enough to read my story and to understand mercy as the balm for their trauma.
A mercy that doesn't require perfection, a mercy that will never say no.
Subscribe to hear more of this "Redemption Story" Email me if you have comments, I'd love to hear your redemption story.
Last week I told someone I just felt so "invalidated". Now, I don't know if the passage about the man held back for 38 years by his disability was planted in my mind OR if God knew on this day, I would wake up and read John 5 and understand it more clearly.
More clearly as in, it is time to stop taking on the burden of others' behaviors and spoken words. It is time to stop owning the responsibilities of anyone's choices other than your own. It is time to move on and sin no more, look on to new things. No if's or buts like the man who said everyone either beats me to it or is blocking my way.
Jesus was ridiculed for leading this man to healing on a Sunday. Jesus wanted them to know that God is always working and so will be He. (vs. 17). The chapter continues with the questioning of his authority. Jesus told them even greater things will happen, things they will marvel over.
Chapter 5 is about Jesus doing His Father's will regardless of naysayers and critics. It is still God's desire that we be healed, changed, walk towards new life because of Jesus.
The Chapter closes with lines I underlined two or three times. About what I seek and through whom. Convicting for me!
We can't wait for people around us to move us from our helpless places to the healing pool. We move from being invalids when we know our validity is through Christ. We can read every self-help book on our shelves and even daily sit with our scriptures. We're surrounded by good and well meaning advisers who we may want to impress, gain their approval. We won't know liberation from the oppression of our maladies until we seek the glory that only comes from God. At least, I believe God is saying, Lisa Anne…this truth is for you.
The Book of John is a powerful book, a great read if you want to be closer to Jesus.
And I pause before entering my office door, I pause in the parking lot longing to discern their meaning, their message, being so captivated by them there.
I heard a podcast speaking of change in habits, change in mindset and how most of us make it about four days.
Good morning Day 4 of 40 and my observation of Lent!
Someone chuckled when I announced my decision to fast, added we're not Catholic or Episcopalian or anything like that.
She watched as I chose water over wine.
My girl grew up on the anthems of Sheryl Crow.
So, we continued as I shared with her why I chose my indulgent red wine in the pretty stemless glass that my hand hurried home to cup after life and work had worked my nerves and took from me more than I had to give.
How could I not choose to give up the thing that I decided was my worthy reward, my justified balm for my weary soul?
How could I not sacrifice in an effort to find perhaps the true balm that was being perhaps, ignored?
For some it's social media, others it is sugar or bread or chocolate or maybe stronger drink, intoxicating the heart and mind.
For me it could have easily been Instagram or peanut butter.
Because, I've taken to peanut butter in excess again.
Made up for the break from red wine by mindlessly cleaning out the jar of especially crunchy and sweet salty amber colored cream while waiting for dinner to be done.
Then I had my dinner with water in the wine glass and I was satisfied until it came time for something more…my pattern, I am learning.
So again I go to the kitchen and I finish off the chocolate almond Halo Top that boasts of being harmless.
The wine stayed corked in the cabinet and I began to learn what I know now.
I look for reward in things outside of myself to be told that I am enough and when I feel unnoticed, I indulge in the first "good" thing I can get my hands on that is waiting there for me.
To burst through the back door, tell my husband it was a horrible day and reach for my reward.
Maybe three days in, I'm learning already about that "heart shaped hole" people speak of that we try to fill.
The place of our souls where Jesus wants to be enough.
Maybe by day ten I will have fully exhausted all of my immediately gratifying rewards and I'll sit with Jesus and myself just quietly.
Maybe I will be filled not from the immediate things I seek to gratify me, food, drink, a device in my hand or a reader that likes me and says "you're good".
Maybe my needs will be less and my soul's wants, becoming more will be seen more clearly.
They've been so fully met all along.
What you need has always been here.
I chose to fast from red wine for 40 days for two reasons, one of them selfish, I admit.
I see it as sort of a spiritual experiment. I am curious to see how my faith will change, what I will hear and see more clearly.
How I will know myself and God when I surrender intentionally.
Women and wine, it's obviously a thing.
How could I not sacrifice something that will be hard when Jesus died for me…sacrificed His life on the cross for me?
So, Lent for this not churched that way poor country girl, I am learning and I am allowing your lessons.
It may be more than wine as the wind down "waiting to comfort me reward" that's been buffering God's voice.
It may be that and other things I am only just beginning to hear.
It may be finally that all the mistakes I casually named my favorites because you don't tell your little daughter dancing in the kitchen about your shame.
You masquerade your shame with reckless sometimes funny mommy behaviors.
It will be joy for me, fully believing.
It will be like resurrection morning!
Last night, I drafted a post about the robins, deleted and started over three times. Went to bed thinking, well I don't know why…but, I may be losing my writing voice. It seemed so unnecessary, for me to tell again about my love of a bird.
So, I woke and I journaled and I decided to be brave and share my choice for Lent. Like most writing, the words just came. And it is about me; but, it may be for someone else, God said. "It is my will that you be brave.
About forgiveness I'm learning more every day, every new day I am becoming more free.
In the Book of Luke, the 21st chapter, Jesus told of a poor widow having very little left to give.
Yet, she gave all she had, two copper coins.
He noticed her poverty and He noticed her commitment.
My days have been an absolute hodgepodge of diverse people and places this week.
All the voices loud and mingled together and pointedly expectant of me.
Who am I to have all the supposed answers?
At dusk yesterday I sat alone in the backyard. The clouds were clearing out, one lone puff of one resisting the drift, the last one to fade away.
I woke up today and told myself.
Everything gets messy before it becomes clear.
You'll be super miserable before you walk away, that way you won't feel guilty for leaving as you know is your typical sweet martyr way.
The thing with the battle of the mind, the fight for the settledness of the soul is that it is insidious if we don't know it is up to us, our own choice to refuse to allow its control.
To say, I know your motives, I know it's your plan to make me weak from within.
Today, I will see you in every face I see and I will battle on.
They may see my countenance renewed and therefore, they may see you!
Chapter 21 of Luke continues with Jesus warning of persecution and it being an opportunity to bear witness of how we are different.
I love the permission this gives me not to have to know every single thing.
Mostly I love the permission this gives me to not mull every encounter to the point of misery, rather, to trust I will know how to respond, what to say.
My responses will be different when I respond from the place of peace within.
Still, some may come against me, baffled over my demeanor and ready to push their agenda to topple my resolve and tip my trust from within.
This is earth, not heaven. This is to be expected here.
I want to see the plans for my life I have yet to fully see.
This part is up to me.
There was no inspiration in the sky above me, its color was thick and like taupe mixed with gray.
The color of old water left in the kitchen sink, murky from faded suds and dirty plates.
No music seemed to suit me. The podcast I was moved to hear again had strangely gone away.
I walked on with the bounce of a trendy and sort of tired old song.
Next one and the next the same.
They were not working, the songs that usually drive me, keep me distracted from the pain of my hips, my feet.
Songs about grace and Jesus too trendy for me today, too much like radio pop.
Twelve or thirteen minutes I told myself, just a brief bit, you can endure it.
So, I picked up my pace and I listened to my feet hitting the ground and I know it's not possible but I could describe the sound of my own breath coming up from my core.
And I felt it, the way my body changed as my breathing weaved up and past my ribs and into my particularly patterned exhale.
Control, keep control. Focus on the release.
I kept on and got to the place with the dangerous curve and the steep right bending hill.
The geese had congregated on the water and were conversating loudly.
I slowed and felt the wind sweep across my face making me realize the warmth I'd created on my chest, caused by my own private version of running my race.
For about a minute, maybe seconds more, there was this bliss caused by God's grace.
In a less than spectacular sky I couldn't find Him and so, grace found me.
And I ran up the hill, all the way this time.
Although I'd decided I might not be able, I kept running.
Last week, I sort of analyzed my life using the big chunk of moments, days and years that were either sorted and stacked as either joy or fear, as either mistake or reconciliation.
My husband and I recalled the dog adopted and where he peed, pooped, what he destroyed, and how difficult he was in the beginning.
I asked him to compare the joy of the Labrador being with us to the initial hassle and adjustment.
He agreed he was worth it.
Worth it to sit in your spot at end of the day to have a big dog plop down and prop his big face across your feet.
Worth it to be greeted at the door with his goofy eyes and happy tail.
If you look closely at your life, all the happenings that you know were true trauma, the interruptions that you remember and think that was it, that's what totally blew my chances of being complete, you might be justified in never believing you should believe.
You might not take chances with new things.
Perhaps, the trauma that began it all has never been fully grieved, a grievous grey sky that you haven't faced fully, haven't accepted for what it is and so you've not felt it, not allowed the grace to be greater than the fear.
In college, my first year, I was raped.
I blamed myself. I hid in shame.
The big and grotesque figure of an athlete loomed behind me the next day in Chemistry lab, elevated just over my shoulder, he was enormous and so powerful in his seat.
I blamed myself because my sweater was way too tight and glaringly hot pink. I know better now; but, only recently realized this thing that made me live so very long in fear and defeat.
It was unresolved grief for the artist in me that died there that night, accepted the disbelief of me.
But, even better than the realization that this trauma was not invited by me is the realization that this incident makes up really only an hour or two of me…of my whole 58 years!
I was the middle child, shy girl who went to college on an art scholarship.
I drove myself through Atlanta all the way to the beautiful mountains of Rome.
I tried something new and I made a great friend who was beautiful and statuesque and intelligent who still remembers me.
I learned to love running there, running uphill every day.
We dined at a splendid restaurant where my friend worked on Friday nights, my choice always, Chicken cor don bleu.
I won an award for a painting and my parents came up to see my blue ribbon.
I began, just a little, to see Jesus differently and it challenged me.
I was brave there even though interrupted in this horrible way.
I was harmed in many ways by that night at a party; yet, that's only a tiny bit of my experience, of my life.
The greater experience is that I was held even then and I am still held by the grace of my Father's hand.
I was His child then. Didn't believe it but that didn't matter.
So, I choose looking back only to be certain of my worth from His perspective and of the importance in believing there is always so much better I have seen and been given, even when I line it up to the most unjustified of my griefs.
I pray if you've known trauma you'll see the freedom of deciding daily that you are more at peace when your recall is one of the evidence of grace, not a harsh gauge of resentment over someone who harmed you and thus, kept you from all that might have been.
There's truth in that sentiment. It just won't take us anywhere, certainly no new places.
You're so much more than the stain of your pain.
When the cool evening breeze brushed my face yesterday it was God saying to me, I saw you keep going.
I saw you turn your attention to me.
Don't let the pain of your past cut short your beautiful race.
Luke recorded the healing of a woman bent by her pain for close to twenty years.
For me, my frame of reference for all my defeats or my failures has always been the harm done towards me by others, the hurtful choices made for me and the ones I made.
Disabled for far too long by my pain until I decided to welcome a change.
Like the woman Jesus was criticized for healing on the Sabbath, I am free.
Leave grief behind, notice the unrelenting grace of your God.
This perspective of forward not former thinking is the direction God is guiding me towards memoir. If you know someone who has lived hampered by harm, share my words. I pray God increases each reader's awareness and embrace of His grace as He is with me, moment by moment, daily.
Today a woman I love who I'd never have met were it not for my work and a shelter, a temporary home.
She stopped by with her girl who was born there, now 3.
Just stopped by to see me.
We talked about a young woman who is helping her, a beautiful girl the age of my daughter.
We both agreed. She is special.
Then I told her and I meant it.
I'm not there yet either.
Not in the place of joyous all the time hope and freedom but I'm closer than I've ever been.
Then, I reached for the paper under my keyboard with Isaiah 43:19 and I told her about my Sunday, how I prayed and cried and prayed to finally believe.
I told her to keep it.
She reached across my desk for a pen.
Then we told each other goodbye and keep praying, no stressing and don't give up or give in.
I noticed the paper when she laid it on the table to put the jacket on her baby.
In blue ink she had added.
Tonight, I read just a sentence or two of someone's blog. The idea of God being our nourishment, otherwise we'd never grow.
I thought of my existence, of my faith being like long ago designed genetics, like deep roots I've only just begun to allow to be fertilized.
I thought of how I am growing at a rate lately that seems to have been after a stagnant stretch of nothing happening too long.
Yet, I've been cared for and I've been attended to and now finally, I will grow, my growth is beginning to have an ease about it, a natural bloom.
Finally free and thus, able to grow.