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Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Beautiful...

So, if you read my blog with any consistency, you know I’m constantly moved by the words I hear in music or conversation or that I read… This got my ear this morning and I SO identified with it that I cannot get it out of my head.

I was so unique
Now I feel skin deep
I count on the make-up
To cover it all
Crying myself to sleep
‘Cause I cannot keep their attention
Thought I could be strong
But it’s killing me

Does someone hear my cry?
I’m dying for new life I

want to be beautiful
Make You stand in awe
Look inside my heart
And be amazed
I want to hear You say
Who I am is quite enough
Just want to be worthy of love
And beautiful

Sometimes I wish I was someone
Other than me
Fighting to make the mirror happy
Trying to find whatever is missing
Won’t You help me back to glory?

You make me beautiful
You make me stand in awe
You step inside my heart
And I am amazed
I love to hear You say
Who I am in quite enough
You make me worthy of love
And beautiful
You make me worthy of love
And beautiful
Beautiful

(Its by from Bethany Dillon’s album Bethany if you are interested.)

So what struck me is how a isolating a lack of confidence or faith can be. And when I say “confidence or faith” I mean in who God has made you to be.

Each of us get stuck in what we are not at some point in our lives…

And each of us believes with every cell of our being that we are the only one to feel this way…

Even though we have read, heard and seen that there are millions of people in the world who might feel as we do, we cannot process into our hearts that we are not alone.

I cannot count the number of times that I have stood in front of a mirror and started sentence with “why can’t….” and ended it with something that I perceive as “wrong” with me.

How I long to be beautiful…

My problem is that I’m using a worldly definition of “beautiful” every time I stand in front of a mirror to begin that kind of dialog…

It isn’t that there is anything wrong with me…its that I cannot see myself the way Heaven sees me.

The only thing wrong with me is my eyesight…

We are all becoming…

We are all growing and learning and stumbling and trying…

Have you ever seen a child learning to walk?

This is how we must appear to God…

Have you ever thought, “How precious!” and held your breath and silently rooted for that little one to get up and try again every time they stumble?

This is how precious we are to God…and He is rooting for us to get up and try again…

He makes us each exactly the way we are…there are no mistakes. When you look out over the course of your life, can you believe it? I sometimes can’t.

And when He sees us, it is through rose colored glasses – red, actually…the blood of Jesus.

There will come a day when I will step out into the world with the full knowledge in my heart that I am beautiful in every possible way to God…

Because where I am deficient in and of myself there is Jesus to fill in the gaps…

And through Him, I am adopted into the family…

I’m a kings kid…

I’ve been blessed exceedingly, abundantly, above all my own wildest expectations…

I am quite enough…

I am worthy of love…

And I am beautiful…

And you are, too!

Peace, everyone!

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

I still dream…

My radio was blasting on the way into work..

It just makes me feel good..

I put on some music and sing along and have a good old car dance…

And I imagine myself on a stage in front of 30,000 people, singing a song I wrote, hearing all 30,000 of them sing along…

I still dream of being a rock star.

I still dream of a lot of things…

Sometimes I’m so busy living my life, living THIS dream, that I forget there are others…

I still dream of writing a book…

I still dream of endowing a scholarship for arts education…

I still dream of visiting the Great Wall of China and seeing Cambodia and being on Safari in Africa and photographing Polar Bears in the wild…

I still dream of seeing the Holy Land…

I still dream of having my scrapwork published…

I still dream of owning my own creative business and using my hands and my eyes and my heart to pour life into something I love to do every day, all day, for money…

I still dream of cooking classes, literature classes, painting classes…

I still dream of a beach-facing house, stepping off of my wide and shady front porch into white sand and surveying miles of unspoiled shoreline dressed in swaying sea grass…

I still dream of having that ballerina body, long and taught, graceful and elegant…

I still dream of taking back that one thing I did that I’ve never been able to forgive myself for…

I still dream of a 28 hour day and boundless energy so that I can do all the things I have ambition to do when I wake up each morning…

I still dream of helping, mentoring, nurturing, supporting, coaching and teaching God’s people…

I don’t have a list…a “200 things to do before I die” list…

I don’t have a five year plan…

I don’t know where to begin with my dreams most days…there are just too many practical things to be done some days…

Especially now…boxes and nursery colors and laundry and work tasks…

But in my car, with the music blasting…

In front of 30,000 imaginary people, singing my song…

I’m a full-fledged dreamer…

Yea…

I still dream.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Unexpected…

It’s a cathartic experience…

Moving, I mean.

You TRY to purge all the things you know you’ve stored for far too long before having to box them and move them to a new dwelling.

If you’ve moved, you know…

Every object gets a good hard look…

Do I REALLY need this? When was the last time I used this? Will I ever use this again? If I do need something like this in the future, can I buy it cheaply?

Some how, we just don’t want to carefully wrap, box and ship things that we are willing to store away in a closet somewhere.

Moving is cathartic…

And if you move enough (like I used to) you become very good at looking at NEW objects, before you buy them, and assessing…

Yea, this is cool…but do I need it? Can I make due without it? Do I want it badly enough to keep it through my next move?

Interestingly enough, the only things that didn’t make it through this process when we moved from California were my scrapbooking things (of course!!), the things that Scott had buried in the deep recesses of his office (Lord knows, I wasn’t going to venture into that stuff!) and, of course, those things boxed in the garage that had yet to be unpacked from the LAST move (why unpack and purge things that are already packed for the move?).

Yet, even as purifying as packing to move can be, UNPACKING after everything you own has been in storage for six months is even more of an experience.

I wonder at the things I unpacked…and the things that are still in boxes.

To begin with, there were things I unpacked that I’d forgotten all about…the ice cream maker, the fondue pot, the new baking pans, the pizza stone, the garlic roaster…these are but a few things I unpacked that surprised me.

Then, there were the things that I simply HAD to pack that made me wonder WHAT I was thinking when I finally had them out of boxes. (Note all of these have gone BACK INTO a box…either one for the garage sale or one for the trash.) The discolored Tupperware (come on…you know you have some too!), six thousand coffee mugs from all over the country, wine glasses from some place I’d done a wine tasting, Circle K big gulp plastic cups….another note here….I was immensely surprised at how much of my glassware was pilfered from the bars I used to visit during my party days…Apparantly I was quite the clepto after alcohol…frayed towels, stinky perfumes…you name it.

All I could think while upacking was if these were the things I insisted on wrapping and packing, what must the things I chose to take to the shelter look like to me?

Perhaps the most disturbing is that I’ve unpacked all the things we NEED and even some things we LIKE and there are still mountains of boxes in the garage.

Some of them are collector items that I have never had space for until know. I have a set of antique dishes that I would love to get out, for example.

Some things are destined for spare rooms – things like queen-sized sheets, decorative pillows and spare clock radios.

Some things I simply HAVE to get out of boxes – like the collapsible Swiffer…I HAVE to find that tool!

But most of it is stuff we know for certain we can live without and probably should throw away…if we could ever get to unpacking the boxes.

I am thrilled and exhilarated over how much of my stuff is unnecessary. I’m looking forward to clean countertops and sizeable donations to the shelter.

And I am filled with WONDER at the JUNK I insisted was important to me before I left California….

Powerful metaphore…

I left behind a lot of junk…a lot of stuff…

But I carted a lot of junk with me…a lot of stuff…

How much JUNK and STUFF did I bring all the way across the country with me that I carried in my HEART and SOUL instead of in my boxes and suitcases?

I should be unpacking and sorting those things…

And discarding as many stained, broken, fruitless, worthless, frivolous items among them as I possibly can...