A Legacy of Beauty

(Most of these words are a re-post from August 2016. This is the original post that the Lord used to spur me on to look at the Legacy of Faith passed down to me.)

Her stories now reside in a bin in my closet. My Grandma Hazel, the Mother of my own Mom, used to point me in the direction of those stories whenever I went to visit her. She knew that after I was finished taking a walk around the farm, I would want to come inside and read her memories of what it was like to grow up and then raise a family in the early part of the 1900's.

 

I loved to look at the photos of her younger self. This is her wedding picture, in 1921, just a few years before the Country entered into one of its worst economic times ever: The Great Depression.  

But instead of coming out of that time with a bitter heart, my Grandma Hazel showed me what it was like to look for beauty in the everyday.  

  

"Let others tell of storms and showers,
I’ll only mark your sunny hours."    

   

I have always loved sundials.  Maybe it's because my Grandma loved that particular sundial quote, and spoke of it in her writings. So I googled "Sun dial mottoes and quotes" and found a list from "Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations"

"True as the needle to the pole,
Or as the dial to the sun."

--Barton Booth—Song.

 

"Give God thy heart, thy service, and thy gold;
The day wears on, and time is waxing old."  

--Sun Dial in the Cloister-garden of Gloucester Cathedral.

 

"If o’er the dial glides a shade, redeem
The time for lo! it passes like a dream;
But if ’tis all a blank, then mark the loss
Of hours unblest by shadows from the cross."
        --On a Sun Dial in a churchyard at Shenstone, England. 

 

As a child I was fascinated that time could actually be marked without a clock! Funny how the childlike brain works sometimes . . . 

And yet, I am making an effort to keep my mind and heart soft, to be more childlike in sensing the wonder of things all around me,

to sense God's hand at work in places where I might have missed Him if my eyes weren't kept seeing.

Should we only mark the sunny hours then?  What if there is a joy to be found in the shadows as well?  What if there is a Blessing to be had when the shadow of the cross marks our days?

I can look back on days when I felt the dark would never end, but it was in the dark-seeing where lessons were learned that sunlight could never have taught me . . .  When the curriculum that we had spent so many hours creating didn't sell, and when the printing business that we had gathered fell apart at the seams, our family was carried by a God who never left us alone. When the relationships were torn asunder, and when the church that we had loved fell apart, our view of God's love was suddenly stretched beyond the easy phrase memorized and spoken by rote.

Even now, when the fatigue or the pain come ready to swallow my nights and steal my rest, the peace that only Jesus brings teaches me to wait upon Him in a stillness that is new to me. 

"Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings."

--Psalm 63:7 

 

So, should we mark only the sunny hours,  
or should we mark the shadow as well?  
Can we take the risk to embrace them both?  
He has a purpose for us in the shade and in the sun. 

One of my Grandma's stories tells about living through The Great Depression, and the hardness that was endured.  She ended with this thought:

"The people who lived then have forgotten about the long days of hard work without modern conveniences. Like the sundial, folks only remember the happy, sunny days of long ago. I also remember the kindness of so many people who made 1930 a time to remember." 

Singing in the shadows, or dancing in the sun, it is the kindness of the heart that opens the way to see God's Beauty in our days. 



This is Week 3 in The Legacy of Faith series here. Within a few weeks I hope to have an updated blogspace to call my home. Can I ask you to pray for me during this transition? Even in these days of pain and weariness, my Jesus would yet teach me more about seeing the beauty of HIS sufficiency.  


I would love to pray for you,
as you also seek to see His beauty.
Leave me a comment below
if there are places where your own heart is aching.

  

This week I am linking up with these great bloggers:

#Glimpses 
#Teaandwordtuesday 
#Sittingamongfriends 
#Tuneinthursday 
#chasingcommunity 

The Gardener Sees

This Gardening heart of mine is finding new ways to be satisfied in this Season of Slow. I may have had to change my activities, but I am finding that God still names who I am in the deep places of my heart.

Have you heard Him call your name?

Have you heard the whisper of 

"Beloved, follow me?"

The British style of Gardening is a fascination to me. So I eagerly wait for new episodes of "Gardeners' World" to appear.  This past week, as the hosts interviewed a most famous gardener, Penelope Hobhouse, she spoke a thought from her younger days that met my way of seeing:

"I was bowled over by suddenly realizing gardening is about beauty and not just being practical." 

Over the years of helping many of my friends in their gardens, there usually came a time when they were surprised at the beauty I saw in the landscape around me. It might have been something they had missed, or something they had counted as a detriment. Even the small "critters" such as the frogs and toads have their own purpose and beauty.

 

 

Say What?

My heart holds fast, when

Others name it plain or drab

I will find beauty.

--BG

And yet, while I have no difficulty finding beauty in gardens, 
I am not so quick to look for the beauty in the rest of my life.



I want to open my eyes
In the drab days
I want to hear music
In the plain songs

For there is a beauty
All around me
Even in the dreary
A singing for the soul
In every darkened day.

 

 "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV 

 

 

What about your days?
Is there a beauty that you have overlooked?
Is something drab or plain
catching your eye with a hidden song?




Today's #Haiku #Poetry prompts were the words "fast&plain." Once again, Ronovan Hester has been kind enough to open the invitation to participate in the challenge over at his site:
Ronovan Writes



I am linking this week with:
#LMMLinkup 
Meg Weyerbacher, #TeaAndWordTuesday 
Debbie Kitterman, #TuneInThursday 
 

 

Shadows in the Stillness

Wow. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I wonder who it is that stares at me.  When did the eyes sink low, and the grey paint this hair? 

Do you ever feel that way?

The years flow swiftly 

and my heart has trouble

keeping pace.

But there is ONE who sees with eyes 

that are true,

and HE would call me close

to see with eyes

made new with HIS sight. 

 

 Shadows

Turn my eye to you

Love bids my heart come, look in

The shadows all fade   

--Bettie Gilbert

Beauty

The beauty of youth

Fades, the mist and shadows spin 

Eye of Love sees true. 

--Bettie Gilbert 

"The eye is the lamp of the body. You draw light into your body through your eyes, and light shines out to the world through your eyes. So if your eye is well and shows you what is true, then your whole body will be filled with light."

Matthew 6:22 (The Voice) 

 

Are your eyes weary with the shadows

or the fading of light?

Will you look with me
for eyes made pure
and vision restored 
from a light within?


I pray that we will lift our lamps

to catch the light

that Jesus brings

and take Joy in a Love that sees true. 

 

 

 

These poems are offered as part of the challenge put out by Ronovan Hester at his site RonovanWrites, for his weekly #Haiku #PoetryPrompt, where the words this week are "Eye&Fade."  

 

And I am linking today with

#TeaAndWordTuesday, Meg Weyerbacher 

 

 

Sunrise in Vietnam

Sunrise over a small village in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.

How did I get to be in that incredible place?  And why am I telling this story now, in the middle of this RA/Fibromyalgia Season of re-learning my place?

Another word-sharing-session with my counselor brought me to the place of remembering.  I told her that I still wanted to be up and doing and walking away my anxieties. I am not finding the PEACE here that I thought I should have attained by now.  So my Counselor asked if I could take a walk through the memory hall of my mind.  The same emotions that were triggered during the actual pleasant times can be triggered again, proven by studies, simply when we remember those times.

Shortly after she proposed a time of remembering, a new Blog-Friend of mine found out that I had taken a God-Planned-Adventure to Vietnam, and she stirred up these very memories when she shared her own Adventures.  Thank you Valerie, at gracewithsilk  for asking to hear about my story!  So today I am walking over the land that a healthier and stronger me was allowed to witness.

I was probably 17 or 18 years old when I had a vision while I was praying. I saw myself in an Asian Village, being so thankful to share in a love that was God-given.  I assumed I would be a Missionary. But my life took a different turn, and decades later, as a stay-at-home Mom, I found myself wrapped up in the story of my Pastor and his Wife, trying to adopt a baby from Cambodia.  I prayed and agonized with them through a very long and difficult adoption process.  When they returned with their beautiful baby boy, I sat amazed by the pictures in their slideshow.  It looked like the Asian Village in my vision from so long ago.  Tears rolled down my face, as I felt the Lord say that I had been in that village with them through my praying.  Ahh beautiful, I thought.  Now I know why I had that vision. End of Story.

But God's endings are not the same as ours.  Another decade later, and this time our oldest son took a trip to Vietnam with his new friend.  We didn't know that a possible marriage with his friend's sister was in the itinerary.  But again, Jesus finds ways to let a Mama know how to pray.  On the very night of the marriage, half-way around the world, my heart was burdened to pray for my children's spouses, with an urgency like never before.  So when our son came home and asked us to pray with him so that his new wife could get a VISA to come to America, my heart had already been prepared.

Years of praying, and crying, and waiting were finally answered in the spring of 2011, when her VISA was approved.  When we finally met our new daughter-in-law, loving her was easy because my heart had been captivated before she ever set foot in America.

So when she asked me to go with her back to Vietnam for a Family Reunion Party later that fall, I thought my heart would burst.

Breakfast time in Vietnam means noodle soup (not cereal) and tea (not coffee.)

A trip to the market across the street from the family's house happened daily. Even when I thought I would lose my way, my daughter-in-law held my hand and treated me with honor, so that I knew I was in the safest place I could be.

This Grandma, (51 at the time,) managed to stumble into the flat-bottomed boat for a ride down the river. When God calls out the Adventure, we never know where He will lead us.  As a 17 year old, looking for a future of purpose, I thought I knew what LOVE looked like.  I thought I would be the one teaching those around me what God's Love looks like.  But HE is the teacher, and HE knows how to plan the future that will bring about HIS Beauty in every place HE leads us.

Sometimes Beauty looks like a small table, child-sized by American standards, set with simple fruit, prepared by the hands of a family that speak a language you cannot understand, opening their hearts for LOVE to be shared.

My journeys now feel large when I can take a day-trip involving a 3 or 4 hour car ride.  But my times for Adventure are not finished.  When I let Jesus plan my journey, whether through chronic illness or healthy travels, HE will set my feet in the good place of HIS choosing: Finding BEAUTY and LOVE each step of the way.

"Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus" Ephesians 3:20-21

I'm thankful to be sharing my remembering-story with a group of other great bloggers over at #TellHisStory.  Won't you check out their stories as well?

Jennifer Dukes Lee #TellHisStory