New Website

I'm in the process of moving this blog over to my new site Soggy Weeds and Bee Spit: discovering the sweeter side of life. If you will be patient while I'm building, you may feel free to join me there. I still have lots to say but the building process takes a little while. Any of my geeky friends who want to offer their invaluable services will have my undying gratitude.

Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde

Looking through the pictures from  a lifetime ago has been difficult   but inspirational. I'm now able to see the fingerprints of God in a whole new way.

Allow me to introduce Bonnie and Clyde, the nesting pair of geese that lived on 'our' lake in our old Mississippi home. I loved watching those geese and would sit for hours by the window as they grazed on acorns along the shore.

Happy New Year!

Christmas time of 2011, I ran across these glass pears while shopping and God used them to nudge me. 2012 will be a Year of Fruitfulness for you, I felt him say. So I bought them and spent most of 2012 thinking that either I was crazy or God was because it felt anything but ‘fruitful’. Rather, it felt like a year of stretching for my heart. My head had lots of knowledge but my heart had not yet been given chances to apply it.  I guess that is the essence of ‘fruitfulness’, spiritually speaking because it’s easy to do the right thing when there’s no resistance. As soon as those waves start rolling in from the shore, though, watch out! Now you get to sink, swim, or walk on water.  So, without further ado, these are the lessons I learned from  2012:

Gentleness. Gentleness should never be under-rated either as a virtue or as a tool. It is the ultimate forgotten virtue in our culture but the ministry of Jesus cannot move forward without this healing balm permeating our actions, words, and thoughts. It has the power to turn conflict into community. 

Confidence. I learned to be more confident when I hear God’s voice because I was right, even when I thought I might be wrong.

Humility. I learned to be humble because even when I got it right, I was wrong. Hearing God's voice and having the wisdom and experience to do something with it are two very different things. Oh have great care, my friends! We see though a veil, not face to face.

I am with God, God is not with me.  Before you preach at me, let me explain! When my boys were young they would tug at my arms in the store to get to the aisle they wanted faster and I would stop until they stopped pulling and tell them, "You are here with me. I am not with you."  This year, I felt God telling me much the same thing and I’ve been especially careful to Stop! Collaborate and Listen (yeah, I went there) before moving forward. If God isn’t leading me there, I don’t want to go.

Friendship. I learned that God prepares a place for me now just as he did when I was younger and just as he will when this world passes into the next.  I learned that part of that preparation is people. Beautiful, messy, and treasured people.

Mostly, though, I learned a deep appreciation for my own two feet. I have learned that no one can do things like I do them. I learned that I am strong. I woke from my long sleep and remembered who I am and that I love power tools, chickens, philosophy, bad sci-fi, puppies, poetry, and music- everything from Gershwin and The Doors to  LeCrae with his no holds barred poetry and compelling melodies. I don't really care for cooking and canning but a well maintained garden makes my heart sing and, if you want to make me happy, then buy me a pack of new markers and a sketchbook. In short, I have finally found my Voice and I can’t wait to use it in the coming year to invite people in from the cold. Welcome to the new year.

-Zonoma

Access

I am a firm believer in legacy- I believe if we don’t take the time to allow others access to us and all that we are, then we are missing the point of this whole thing we call ‘life’. Thus, my goal in living ‘Open’ is to allow the ones God sends me to take the best of me and learn from the rest of me.  As a result of this belief I am always on the look out for that special ‘someone’ that God lays out for me to spend extra time with and invest in.

So it was that a few days ago, when I felt prompted to contact a new friend and tell her that she could feel free to call anytime, I didn't hesitate. Her reaction to my text was to call me immediately (which confirmed for me that I really had heard the Holy Spirit instead of last night’s pizza).

I didn’t do anything, mind you, except give her permission to contact me without worrying about being a ‘bother’ but it was something she needed to hear. She needed a reminder that God cared about her day to day life in a significant way. I dare say that my words brought hope.

I don’t think many people recognize the incredible impact made by the simplest of gestures or words when they are inspired by the Holy Spirit.  When I was a young mother there was a time when I was stuck in the hospital, having just come out of a 14 hour long brain surgery, plagued by seizures as my brain adjusted to the removal of a large tumor. The seizures were so intense that they would completely paralyze my entire right side for hours at a time. Just as I regained movement in my fingers, another seizure would strike. After two days of this, I looked to my mother who was at my side and the family friend who had come to pray with us and confessed, “I think I’m all out of faith.” My mom’s quick and firm reply was, “Don’t you worry about that. I have enough faith for the both of us.”  At this, I was able to shed my tears and again hope that God would come through. My mom understood that not all gifts are tangible. Sometimes, you can only give the gift of a peaceful presence.

Right before Jesus died, he told his disciples and friends, “I do not give to you as the world gives.” As we endeavor to pass our lives on to those God sends our way, it is easy to forget that in addition to practical skills, acts of service, and conventional wisdom, we have something that is worth more than gold: our time and our presence. Jesus taught prayer and ministry and theology, yes. But the truest gifts he gave those he mentored were His time and His peace. Don’t be shy about calling someone up and asking them out for coffee or ice cream. Exposure to us will teach more than mere words in an email- it will teach them to ‘not be afraid’ of life’s storms.

-Zonoma

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

-John 14:27

Monsters Under the Bed, Part 2

I decided long ago to live open, stay kinetic, and be brave. Yesterday’s post was hard, though. It was too fresh, too new of a revelation, and too raw of a hurt. The funny thing was that I didn’t know that fear existed in me before yesterday! It took a bad case of Writer’s Block and some Divine Drain-O to figure it out. Then it was even harder posting it because blogging, for me, isn’t an anonymous endeavor. I am a volunteer pastor at a local church and many of them read this blog.  I also write the small group curriculum and often use concepts that initially hammered out here. So last night, at small group, I had the dubious privilege of sharing one of my deepest, darkest fears with 15 other people (and which ever of the 45 other small groups in our church used this week’s curriculum).  I wanted to go home and hide under my covers and never come out again. It was horrifying and awful but, at the risk of sounding cliché, I knew that God wanted me to do it.

Now, I don’t know if God used that story to help anyone else significantly. Topics like fighting fear with love usually take seed slowly and grow even slower (obviously!)- I suspect that I won’t know if my words had an impact on anyone for years. I hope they did, though, because I know God used them to help me. Articulating my fears forced me to admit that they existed, turn them around, examine them and understand them.

Then God pulled one of his “God Things” out and taught me a lesson or two.

Mere hours after I posted about Monsters Under the Bed, gifts started showing up. Gifts that took time and energy to make. Gifts that said, “I know who you are!” from people whom I’d never shared this fear with before.  Last night a boxed gift set and a gift card to a restaurant and a kindly worded note, a rare smile from a sad-eyed woman I’ve often prayed for, a chance to hold a long-anticipated baby boy, a card in the mailbox with another gift, and this morning a box of handcrafted soaps and lotions. I know when a so-called coincidence is not a coincidence. These weren’t just gifts that were purchased in haste because of a perceived pity party.

And you were there, and you were there, and..

God KNEW!  I’m so humbled and amazed by a God who has given me my heart’s desire and then took the time to help me see it: a community that has embraced me and my quirky family completely. I still struggle with that fear but it is diminished now. The day He asked me to confront it was the day he crushed its head with, of all things, humble pie as I realized that what I longed for was mine all along. And humble pie never tasted so good. It was very Wizard Of Oz.

It made me think of God in a whole new light. Well, perhaps not. Perhaps it is better to say it helped me understand Him in a whole new way because my head often “knows” what my heart cannot yet comprehend. Today as I looked at our Christmas tree with all of its shining ornaments, I envisioned God much like a parent at Christmas time. Grinning in anticipation as He wraps a gift while listening to an angelic chorus caroling in the background (but it has to be a live chorus because he’s God and probably doesn’t need an iPod). Maybe there’s even a glass of wine. Either way, the gifts He has prepared for me are for me alone. I just have to wait til he gives them. Or, in this case, until he shows me how to play with them.

Thank you, God, for community. Thank you for friends. Thank you for a place to belong. I see them now. And Merry Christmas to you, too.

Psychology of a Modern Priesthood

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." -1 Peter 2:9-10


I wanted to pray the New Year in this evening so, groaning, I got up to turn off the Time Square special on NBC and turn up the lights (so that I wouldn't be tempted to 'sleep' the New Year in). Letting go a great big sigh as I turned back to the couch to pray I had a thought. Why do we regard prayer as such a burden? I've been taught to think of it as something that I must do - to the point that, when I don't, I suffer from a lot of guilt (which, consequently, makes me put it off even longer). Even at it's best and most celebrated prayer I’ve thought of as an emergency help line. Prayer Hotline, This is God, what is the nature of your emergency?

I would really like to know how it was that we have been able to twist the truth of prayer around into something that is so... ceremonial. It really isn't. Prayer isn't just another chore to be accomplished somewhere between making dinner and washing the dishes and twice on Sundays. Prayer is one of our highest and most treasured privileges. In the Old Testament, it was an enormous honor for a priest to be chosen to even approach the Holy of Holies once in his lifetime.

We are sanctified and encouraged to approach the throne room of the Most High God, heads held high, and... tell Him about our day. Our frustrations, our joys, our hopes and our dreams. This wasn't always the case, it is by God's mercy alone that we are justified and that, surely, is something to celebrate!



This year, I am going to pray not because I have to but because I can.