M is for...

Heaven. Yes I do know heaven starts with an H. Yes I do know how to spell...well I guess that is debatable, but with the help of spell check and Google I can spell marvelously!

Heaven has been on my mind lately, because well it just is :)

Sometimes I wonder what its like. To lay there in a half conscious state nearing your eternal home. Are you able to comprehend that you will be seeing what you've heard about all your life?  What does it feel like to be hours away from meeting your Savior? Does your body ache to be free of pain and with the Lord? Do you wonder what it really is going to be like.

 I don't know that there are harps in heaven, Or the process for earning your wings. I don't know of bright lights at the ends of tunnels, Or any of those things.

I'm sounding morbid, but where is the morbidity in death? Glorious, death is glorious! The world went black one Friday afternoon and when the sun shone again the sting of death was gone. Blood shed on the cross to take away the fear of death and replace it with anticipation.

But I know to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord, 

and from what I know of him, that must be pretty good. 

This Monday death is not on my mind, but instead the hope of heaven. Strangely beautiful and so full of pain death is not the end but only the beginning.

Words from my favorite song right now by Sara Grooves. 

It's the Love Day

February 14 comes every single year. Every single year men everywhere wake up to the fact they are expected to do something and this will put them in a panic as they try to go through the uncertain jungle of figuring out their wife's wishes. Every year people buy huge over sized and over priced teddy bears to give to their beloved. I have trouble understanding this...lets just say a teddy bear who says "I love you" in squeaky voice probably isn't my love language.

Every year there is happiness for some people. Diamond rings get slipped on fingers. Starry eyed couples wearing faded jeans say vows in a sterile court room. Candles are lite and the fire crackles, but the real love burns in the heart.

Source: karenemcgee.blogspot.com via Chantel on Pinterest

Every year there is sadness. The women who will eat too much chocolate ice cream and watch sappy chick flicks and long for what could have been with that special guy. Widows will come home to empty houses and eat up leftovers from two nights ago.

Children will scavenge in the garbage for a small scrap of food for their supper unaware that somewhere in anther world they have never known people eat chocolate cake on the 14th.

Women will walk into a cold sterile clinic and sign papers in a hurry. A few quick moments of unbearable pain and it will be over. They will go home and tell themselves that its okay and stop feeling bad, because it was just tissue.They did it because they weren't sure if they could really be loved fully if they brought a baby into the world.

Girls, boys, women, and men all over the world will suffer, because someone will chose a cheap dirty thrill over real love with their special someone.  Helpless victims of human trafficking, do not not what love is. Love for them is not being cherished, respected, cared for, comforted. All they know is money and the desperate hope that enough money will free them.

Dismal and depressing words on this day that is to be so full of happiness. All this pain in the world. All these disheartening facts. Maybe this is why today on the 14th day of February makes me think of hope. God's hope and love. The only two things that can really change this world and I wonder how can I show the love of God to others. Oh there are so many that need it.

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust

Today I'm listening to love songs about God. Reading some good words from friends and thinking about the hope and love of God. Oh and of course eating chocolate.  

Dear You

This year for my nieces and nephews birthdays I'm going to try and write them each a letter. Since this idea just arrived in my brain I have a bit of catching up to do, but today is the birthday of my oldest niece. Thus she gets the privilege of the first letter and she also has the honor of being the one who made me an aunt in the first place.

Dear Niece,

You are turning 20 today. How in the world did you get to be so grown up? You've got the two in front of the zero in your age which means you have kissed the teen years good bye forever. I remember when that happened to me. I felt so old and yet not ready to be old.

My freshmen year of college had just faded into the distance. The year where you feel so grown up and so little all at the same time. Twenty suddenly felt so fresh and full of prospect and hope.And it was a grand and not so grand year. A year marked by death and grieving.A year of laughter with others and happiness for others.

On the outside twenty had the ups and downs of life and on the inside I fought the battle of achieving spiritual maturity.

Now 20 seems pretty young and tiny in comparison to life now. I'm pretty sure its the graduating from college thing. Strangely its the being out of college feeling that makes you suddenly really start to grow up. To think your own thoughts. To stand on your feet. To make your own decisions. To just live life.

If you were to read my journal from the year I was 20 you would see desperateness. Not wanting to be emotional. Not wanting to be swept away by frivolous ideas. Wanting to be holy. Desperately wanting to be free of myself.

I didn't attain that freedom that year and I still haven't. Instead of I've slowly started the process of understanding there is grace and strength for every detail of our lives.

I want to tell you on your 20th birthday that life will be nothing, but loveliness from here on out. I can't promise you happiness, but I can promise you that if you trust in the faithfulness of God you will have joy. Your going to learn a lot of new things this year and I'm going to learn some things too. I just don't know what, but that is all part of the adventure eh?

Happy Birthday to you. You the person who makes me jealous for your talent of writing fabulous fiction. You who finds the cute clothes. You who never fails to encourage me. Your the best.

Love,
Aunt Beth

Happy Tuesday

I miss iced coffee. I miss NE. I miss my cousins. I miss my aunty and uncle. I miss summer. All that to say, summer don't delay your arrival! (and I just needed an excuse to post...fixing issues on the blog)

M is for Making the Most...

I'm going to try to write every Monday. I thought I could do Monday moments, but it just sounded to just not like me. I thought I could do Monday Musings, but that was already used. Then there was Monday Memories, but that sounded too sentimental and put me in a box.

Thus "M is for..." was born. I can choose any M word I please and write whatever jolly well comes to mind. Oh and I dare you to give me a "M Word" to write about. Without further ado, my words from my mind that I will not bring forth. Yes, I do believe I'm a bit in a strange writing mood this morning. Bare with me.

Life should be made the most of every moment. Even the times when you think something better should have come along, but your stuck with hot dogs on your plate instead of steak.

You make the most of life when you and your other friend stir up pancakes for just the two of you. Because both of you are obviously so popular that no one has the courage to hang out with you. Ahem. You make supper for two and bacon fries in the skillet until the smell has permeated everything about you. Its hard to decided if smelling like you washed your hair with bacon grease is the smell that will drive people away or if its the latest and greatest attention grabber that could make Emily Post drool. We will just say the later.

Make the most of your Saturday Morning. Even when your alarm manages to go off 3 hours before you need to get up. Its a tragedy to mourn or its a happy thing to realize you can roll over back into the beautiful world of dreams.

Make the most of breakfast conversation. Because when the silence has lasted for a straight 10 minutes, why not just lay your thoughts on the table with the confidence of a queen. Life is not about boring breakfast conversation.

Make the most of your Sunday. Let the words from the songs, sermon and scripture roll around in your head all day long. Its wonderful. 


My advice. Make the most of life. Even when its embarrassing, awkwardly funny , and sometimes down right dis heartening.

Bare

The trees are bare. Leaves have fallen off long ago and what its left is stark branches waving in the wind. The ground is bare of color and covered in shrived brown grass. Trees and earth are waiting for the hope of spring. For lush greenness and gentle warm rains. Waiting for beauty.

But the beauty is already here. There is something simple and lovely about trees with nothing on them. Grass that blows in the wind and looks smashing against the sky.

The brown of winter is beautiful. Bare is beautiful.

We are beautiful when we are bare. I hide behind the mask. My life is fine I am fine. Do you not know that everything is just fine?

And I'm not being bare. Sometimes there is ugliness in hiding and in letting others think something that is not true. 
You cannot wear your heart on your sleeve, but sometimes its okay to be not okay. When I bare my thoughts I'm letting someone else carry the burden. And somehow in awfully strange way being bare is being beautiful.

Dependence

When is it I'm going to stop I wonder. The endless cycle of trying and trying. I see things in my life that should be wash down the drain permanently.

I try very hard to stop. Very Hard. I get frustrated. Very Frustrated. Give in to what I know is wrong and give up something that is far more precious

Rinse. Repeat.

Rinse. Repeat.

The struggle that haunts you. It's like a creepy stalker whispering in your ear that your never going to be perfect. Never going to get it right. Never ever will you to be all you strive to be. You can't be that person. Do that thing. Live that life.

We need to realize that. We can't do it. Perfection will never obtained. Ever.

The cycle stops. I give up. And its wonderful.

Grace. Beautiful grace. Saying I can't do it anymore is the most freeing words that can ever be uttered.

I need His strength. I need His Mercy. I need His Grace. Utter dependence on God is where I need to be. 

Dependence. Beautiful Dependence. Independence enslaves me. Dependence frees me. Ironic? God made it that way. Ask Him why it is. I want to choose dependence. My heart wants to choose Independence. My heart and I battle until I'm so weak that that I run to dependence like a thirsty runner on a hot day.

And I rest in His strength and the world is beautiful again. 

"He giveth more Grace"

And God Made...

So God made a Farmer. No music, no fancy moves, no skimpy clothing, no hot models, just simple stunning photographs of farm life. It caught attention and is being talked about all over the web.

God made the farmer (and the baker, mechanic, lawyer, pastor, construction worker, etc etc etc) and when the farmer found his bride then there were farm boys and farm girls.

Farmer's daughter. That would be me, because before I lived in the city and spent most of my days inside toiling away over the stove I lived on the farm.

God made the farmer's daughter. Maybe He did that because if we hadn't lived on the farm we probably would have turned into prissy little girls.

Well I don't know about the other farm girls, but that probably would have been true of me.


The farm girl whose job is too bottle feed calves who have no mother and this involves letting the calf suck violently on your finger. Calves can produce quite the amount of saliva and you will know this after your clothes get drenched in it.

The farm girl who helps sort hogs until she is covered in hog poop and everything about her reeks of hog manure. And the farm girl will find this rather smelly disgusting task great fun.

 "wow you are so cute after you finish sorting hogs" said no one ever.

The farm girl spends all morning chopping up various parts of the deceased cow and then goes in and has cooked cow for dinner. Thus she lacks the social grace sometimes of not talking about the particulars of butchering at the table.

The farm girl will know how to make big meals for big strong men (brothers and father and the occasional hired hand).

The farm girl will pray reverently for the right weather and know the devastation of one storm.

The farm girl will know the wonderfulness of having her father safely home. She will go to the funerals of other farmers who ran into the deadly side of farming. In the back of her mind will be the fact that when she sees her farmer dad come in for a cool drink it could be the last glimpse of him on this earth.

The farm girl will walk alone in the field and love where she lives. She will love the rush of the wind on her face when she drives the tractor down the road. The farm girl will pick up dirt covered clothes and love making them clean.

The farm girl, no mater where life takes her will always be a farm girl in her heart because she had a daddy that God made into a farmer.

Afraid

I’m afraid to walk up to them. Afraid of not knowing what to say. Afraid of awkward gaps in conversation. Afraid they will think I’m intruding in their world. Afraid I’ll look ridiculous. Afraid of saying the wrong thing.

I’m afraid of going up to a person and saying those first few words. It’s the unknown. I don’t know them and they don’t know me. I’m shy and introverted. I would rather stand in the corner and simply let others talk miles around me.

I don’t like being the one to go up and initiate something. Scared of the uncertainty and afraid of myself. 

Conversation is scary and fearsome, but I’ve done it. I’ve walked up to someone and talked and smiled and listened. The door opens up into a new world. Sometimes we find common ground and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes there is the awkward pause, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve stopped being afraid and have conquered the mountain. Maybe they wished I would go away, but I at least want to give them a friendly word or two.

I have friends that I made because I stopped being afraid and started talking. Friends that have blessed me beyond measure, because I stopped being afraid of the unknown.