The Sundial

"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. I have a treasured collection of her stories that she wrote in the quiet evenings after her long days of farming. 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 that 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 working in our days.

  

This week I am linking up with these great bloggers:

 Meg Weyerbacher #TeaAndWordTuesday

 Jennifer Dukes Lee #TellHisStory

Suzie Eller #LiveFreeThursday 

 

 

The Butterflies

The season of Butterflies . . . I get so excited when the summer heat brings in these fluttering beauties.  And usually, my heart starts to remembering ---


It was the fall of 1986, and my husband and I were preparing to move our family, (the 2 of us and our 6 year old and 1 year old sons) across the country. We were following the call of Jesus, as He asked us to come with Him to a new and different place.  Scary and exciting, sad and hope-filled, my emotions were all over the place then.  


This was before the day of internet easy connections, so stories were saved and gathered in my heart from family and friends and books and magazines. I had read a sweet story in Guideposts about a Mom and her daughter raising Monarch Butterflies, and having the joy of those beautiful creatures fluttering around them stirred a deep longing in my heart. I prayed that somehow God would give us the beauty that we needed to make this giant leap of faith into the unknown, hardly realizing the depth that He would go to just to show us how much He cared for us.


As the moving van was loading our furniture, I sat in the grass outside our inner-city home and thought of all of the memories we had gathered in those crowded years of college and babies and ministries-just-beginning.  When something fluttered over my head, I looked up to see a beautiful Monarch Butterfly floating overhead.  "Thank you, God," I whispered in awe, as it continued to flow back and forth around me the entire time I watched the movers.


I held onto that picture the next morning as we pulled away from our friend's driveway and headed towards the interstate. The miles gathered quickly as we crossed over the state line heading into Iowa. But something caught my eye, and we looked in amazement as first one Monarch Butterfly, then another, and another, until there were dozens and dozens of Monarchs making the same southwesterly journey that we were on.  We had been given the chance to join in with their yearly migration, as God was sending us on our own migration.  Every day of the trip they were with us, until the final day when we crossed the California state line, when they must have veered south into Mexico towards their resting place.  On that day, slightly disappointed that we had not seen a single Monarch, we opened one final card from a friend back home. She had told us to wait until we were in California to open it.  Not knowing my heart-held story of promise, she had chosen a card with, (you guessed it) a monarch butterfly on it.  The God who called us to follow Him was faithful to keep us in that journey.

"Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass."

I Thessalonians 5:24

Our California-Season was shorter than we had expected, but full of learning and stretching like no other time in our lives.  So as I entered this current season of stretching, hearing the voice of my Jesus saying, "Come with Me, here" my heart has been longing for those beautiful-moments-of-promise once again. 

On days when I see no sense or purpose, when weakness or pain threatens to steal my joy, He has saturated my heart with the Promise of His Presence again and again.

"The Lord's lovingkinesses indeed never cease. For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your FAITHFULNESS."

Lamentations 3:22-23

When my dear friend's young adult daughter asked for prayer as she was contemplating her own leap of faith, I gladly joined in to support her. She didn't know all of my stories, but she knew that God had been faithful to keep His promises to me through so many years. When she asked if she could paint a picture for my me and for my husband to show her thankfulness for our support, I eagerly looked forward to see the picture she would create.  

Did you guess the beauty that God wanted to bring to my remembrance?

"Seasons" by Kyrstin Schober

Are you on a Journey of Change?

 Has there been a Shift in the Seasons you are facing?  

I would love to pray for you as we walk these paths where Jesus calls us to follow Him.  He is waiting to show us His Faithfulness here.

I'm linking today with:

Meg Weyerbacher for #TeaAndWordTuesday

and Jennifer Dukes Lee at #TellHisStory

and Suzie Eller at #LiveFreeThursday

The Garden That Was

Last week my husband helped to transplant this clematis before it succumbs to the shovel of the Landscapers tearing out its old home. And so,

the clematis has moved again. 

Yes, this is the same clematis, from  this post. 

 

I had told the story about the unhealthy rose roots that had to be removed, so that the healthy clematis could then take hold and bloom profusely in My Butterfly Garden.  That Garden Bed was installed by the previous owners, and was one of my favorite (read prideful) parts of this home that we purchased back in 2004.  I labored over that Bed, added many more plants through the years, and enjoyed the hummingbirds, and butterflies, and even the hummingbird moths that sipped the nectar of the blooms.

But there came a day when my limitations and the garden's limitations collided.  

My husband is the one who pointed out the inevitable to me this spring:  That Garden Bed cannot continue.  The landscaping blocks cannot be shored up any longer. Certainly not by this limited gardener. It must be removed.  THE WHOLE BED HAS BECOME UNHEALTHY.

But I don't understand! How could I have learned such a beautiful lesson about "Unhealthy Roots," only now to learn that the WHOLE BED IS UNHEALTHY?

 

It reminds me of the words with my Counselor this week.  

There are ways of learning that serve us well for a Season. But when that Season is past, if we cling to those old ways of learning, then God has to dig up the whole foundation. I have had many such uprootings throughout my life.  Each uprooting brought with it a time of surrender and letting go.  I loosened my grasp and grieved at the partings, knowing that what is given to God is never truly lost.  Trusting that was the case, but never seeing the results of those surrenders, I pushed on to persevere in my walk with Jesus.

But here in this place of Finding Spiritual Whitespace, where I am learning a new way of being still with Jesus, some days it feels like my entire foundation is being torn out.  Spending time with Jesus, just to be with HIM; finding new ways to create, just to bring HIM pleasure; and resting my painful body just to preserve HIS Dwelling Place in me??  ...  Finishing the work, and working to be the giver served me well in the past.  But clinging to them now has become another form of Pridefulness.  AND THAT FOUNDATION IS CRUMBLING.

The NEW Garden Bed that will come after the old is torn out, will be much smaller and on level ground.  No more hillside tottering, and no more JungleBook plantings of excess.  And the NEW Garden in my Soul?  I will be content to wait and see what God brings, up from the QUIET.

I praise Thee while my days go on;

I love Thee while my days go on;

Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost,

With emptied arms and treasure lost,

I thank Thee while my days go on.

                  --E.B.Browning

"The Lord knoweth the soul of His servants; and none of them that trust in Him shall be desolate."

Psalm 34:22 KJV 

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

--Albert Camus 

 

Standing outside, feeling the sun warm my winter-weary soul today, I almost cried as I tasted the air of spring on my tongue.  

What does winter taste like?  I never realized that I would settle in to the place of dreary and grey and count it as normal.  In the past, Spring seemed always to wait around the bend for me.  A Gardener with Hope-for-the-Sun, that was me.  But when fatigue rules the mind, then spring flutters itself away to a corner where it cannot be found, or even dreamed.

I placed the walls around my heart, even as the stiffness walled in my muscles.  And yet, somehow, Spring does come.  And my heart is caught unaware, in this place of walls and dim lighting and cold.  Have you been in that place?  Pain can do that to a person: make them hunch and cower and run for cover.  Jesus says that He causes the weary one to rejoice, but where is the music when the room is silent?

  Psalm 18:16-19
16 He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
    he drew me out of deep waters.
¹⁷ He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
    from my foes, who were too strong for me.
¹⁸ They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
    but the Lord was my support.
¹⁹ He brought me out into a spacious place;
    he rescued me because he delighted in me.

That Spacious Place?  That Room filled with music?  That Taste of Spring? It has become my heart filled up with HIM; because He, the Lord, delights in me.   Pain or Fatigue or Weakness or Shame cannot stop His Delighting, because HE DELIGHTS TO RESCUE.

Oh, What a Thought!  Jesus delights in me, and He delights in you, too, my friend.







Once again, I am linking up over at The Faith Barista, with her book, Finding Spiritual Whitespace, where I am learning to find REST for my soul.

She speaks about a heart walled-off from the pain of the past. But what if the pain in the present is where the Heart-Walls are?  

Jesus delights to rescue me in that place of pain, and He will rescue you.  However grey or dim your days, Spring will come.