A New Heart

"Jesus calls us; o'er the tumult
Of our life's wild, restless sea,
Day by day His sweet voice soundeth,
Saying, 'Christian, follow Me.'"

 --from the hymn by Cecil Alexander, 1852

When you find yourself in an unexpected season, how do you react? I have found myself taking up both hardness and surrender, with a heart that has revealed my own tendencies to waffle back and forth.

But God has no intentions of letting my waffling change His Plans. He is forever working to bring about GOOD.


When this week's prompt showed up at Ronovan Hester's site, Ronovan Writes, 
for his #Haiku #Poetry challenge,
with the words "Shell & Coast,"
I was set to find pretty lakeside images
with dreamy vacation thoughts.


Oh, but how can I not listen to my heart when it is being stirred
with the truth of where I am actually walking? 

 

 

 

 

A New Heart

Break this hard heart shell

When I want only to coast

Thru life, Lord, move me.

 

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." Ezekial 36:26



In these days where my physical condition of waffling between pain and rest
mirrors the way of my heart,
I hear a VOICE beckoning to me,
calling me.


Come, follow Me,
and I will remove your stony heart
and give you a tender heart of flesh
with a single minded will
to pursue the way of love.



Whatever the place where we find ourselves,
be it planned or unplanned, 
there is a way to choose
LOVE
within the day,
within the moment.

There is always
SOMEWAY
that our lives can speak of Love.
There is always
SOMEONE
to be blessed by a tender heart
and a tender word.



I am thankful for these online communities that prompt my heart in ways both surprising and convicting. Take a risk and give it a try for yourself! You may just find an inner poet lurking within your heart as well.

Great sites to link with this week:

#RonovanWrites 

#Glimpsesofhisbeauty 
#TeaAndWordTuesday 

 
 
 





 

Where is Hope?

When you take a break from something, do you ever have a hard time rejoining that activity? I have so missed being able to join in with the Haiku Poetry Challenge offered by Ronovan Hester over at his site, Ronovan Writes. 

So when his words for this week's prompt showed up in my inbox yesterday, "Hope&Stay," I thought I would jump right in: those words are just my style!

But the weariness of a full weekend caught up with me, and the words were nowhere to be found. In fact, the ENERGY was nowhere to be found either.  So once again, I paid attention to my "inner voice" and let the waves of weariness wash their way to the shore.

All the better for the listening,

because our heart

speaks more clearly

than our minds ever could. 

The mind needs time and rest

to catch up to what

the heart already knows.

 Arms of Hope

If weary I fall

Strong arms securely stay me

God, my hope restores

--BG

Jesus, My True Hope

My hope is secure

Not in my own strength resides 

On Jesus I stay.

--BG

 (Thank you Mariah Hanson for this original photo!)

Are you watching the waves now?

Is there a washing of the heart

flooding over you too?

I pray this song by Matt Maher will bless you

as it has blessed me:

 "Yes, my soul, find rest in God;
    my hope comes from him."

Psalm 62:5 NIV 

I am linking this week with:

Barbie Swihart, #Glimpsesofhisbeauty 

Meg Weyerbacher, #Teaandwordtuesday 

  

 

 

Holy Ground

grounded
here in this sand
quick sand
it feels

days run 
together
when duties
long stilled
echo the halls

changing plans
i follow the
sun
mete out my
moments

seeking a
firmness 
wanting a
strength i
lose my clenching

find what was
missing 
seek what is
losing
life laid down

LORD of the 

moment he

holds me beneath

where ground

shifts

i watch him plant

seeds in

my feet standing

ground

sand shifting

and life is

here blooming

watered from well

springing up

HOLY GROUND

“'Do not come any closer,' God said. 'Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.'”

Exodus 3:5 

The writing prompt this week, given by Jamie Wright Bagley,
 (you can check out her site here) 

is "God in the ground beneath me," 
with a secondary prompt to experiment with the
 no caps no punctuation style of poetry that ee cummings made famous  


and my heart started pounding
when i heard a whisper
calling my ground
holy



What if the very place where the trial looks hardest,
where the ground seems most burnt
is actually the place most holy
in the eyes of the ONE who is changing
my heart? 



You might recognize that first photo above
as the one I posted here earlier this spring
after the DNR had come through our favorite
prairie park with a prescribed burn.

The second photo shows the prairie transformed,
when we visited just a few weeks ago. It's hard to
imagine the way that fire birthed life into 
the worn-out prairie lands. 



These burnt-out shifting sand places of our lives
become HIS fertile land 
when we let Him have the final say. 
But in those days when I stop short, try to shorten the
 process, or worse yet,
go off in my corner to pout,
I only hinder His planting,
quench off His Spirit,
and stunt my own growth.



For those of us who seek our corners,
can I offer a prayer?


"Dear Lord of the Harvest,
what an Amazing LORD you are!
Will you open our eyes
to see YOU in the 
shifting sands of our days?
Will you help us to loosen our hold
and come out of the corners,
to find YOU at work 
in the fertile soil,
the sandy loam
of hearts set free,
to be transformed into 
YOUR HOLY GROUND." 

I am linking with these great bloggers this week:

Barbie Swihart, #Glimpsesofhisbeauty 
Meg Weyerbacher, #Teaandwordtuesday 
Debbie Kitterman, #TuneInThursday 

 

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 
 

 

Let Me See You

I spent a lot of time this week thinking about the gift of marriage.  A lot can happen over the course of the decades, both for the good and the bad.  When my husband and I were starry-eyed teenagers, we thought we saw Beauty when we looked in each other's eyes.

What we really saw were

 dreams for the future,

wisps of imagination

and hopes we envisioned

and longed to embrace.

As the years sped by, and life dropped in, those visions faded, and not all of the dreams came true. But something deeper was birthed as we began to see the true heart behind the eyes. Something snuck up on me when I wasn't looking. 

The wrinkles became

beautiful

And the weakness

seemed strong

As I looked at the scars

won by living

together

and facing the world

as one. 



 

Seeing

If beauty is in

the eye of one who beholds,

let my eyes see you

  --BG

 

 

 

Where is Grace?

Behold the sun shines

on the good and bad alike

eye of Grace watches

  --BG

And my heart

sang a song

birthed from the place

where God must see me

with eyes filled with Grace.  

My own lines

and wrinkles

may look ugly to me

the scars

that I've gathered

from the heat of the years. 

But God looks through 

His Grace-Lens

And views 

His Beloved, His Own

clothed with a beauty

from His

Love-Won-Heart.

  

  

  "Many waters cannot quench love

    rivers cannot sweep it away."

Song of Songs 8:7 NIV 




These Haiku are offered as part of the #Haiku #Poetry challenge set out by Ronovan Hester at his site:
Ronovan Writes 
where the prompts are "Behold&Eye."
Take a peek over there for some fun with Haiku!  


I am also linking today with:
Meg Weyerbacher, #TeaAndWordTuesday
Jennifer Dukes Lee, #TellHisStory  

When Worry Wastes Beauty

The springtime sun revealed the sad state of our yard this weekend.  And while my husband mowed the lawn for the first time this year, I tried to be thankful for the abilities that are still mine, and enjoy the small containers that I had filled with pansies.  They were my Mom's favorite spring flowers, after all.


But not too many minutes later, I heard myself bemoaning the fact that I could not rake and trim and spend the entire day working like I used to do.  Where only moments before I saw the beauty, now I could only see the tasks still left undone.

Please don't tell me I'm alone in this? Am I the only one who can so easily fall off of the Thankfulness Wagon?

So, when my head hit the pillow, several hours later, I was reminded once again, where my heart condition had become derailed. I heard the voice of my Lord stirring in my heart: 

Will all your worries add a single moment to your life?

And why worry about your clothes? Look at the field lilies! They don’t worry about theirs.

Matthew 6:27-28 TLB 




There is so much beauty all around--free for the taking! We wait all winter for spring, but then rush past its beauty on our way to the next task, the next season.

 

 Beautiful Moments

Worry is a curse

Blinders causing me to miss

Beauty in my day 
  --BG







I have so much to see in this small garden that I've been given. And while I cannot do all of the things I wish I could, I can pause, remove the blinders, and peer into this life of mine. 



The garden that is my heart, 
would sing with a beauty all it's own, 
a tune of springtime and life renewed,
if I could hear the music
being sung to my soul.

A song of daffodils and pansies
of robins and finches,
A song of Love sent
from a God who cares
And dreamed all of this
for hearts to receive. 

 







This #Haiku #Poetry was offered for the challenge put out by Ronovan over at his site:  Ronovan Writes
where the prompts this week are "Beautiful&Curse."
Join me there to see a great list of other Haiku.


I am linking today with:
Meg Weyerbacher, #TeaAndWordTuesday 
Jennifer Dukes Lee, #TellHisStory