Author Archives: Denise

Can’t touch this

Misc 208

Time…

We don’t control when ours begins or even when it ends – only God.  Yet even still, He allows us control over the moments falling in between.  It is the proverbial dash between the dates found on too many tombstones.  In His creative, expressive love He has sketched out our lives but it is up to us to live the dream.

This year has been a wildly busy year with very little tangible worth.   Worth, however, isn’t always found in the items we hold or touch.  Sometimes and often more importantly, it is found in the things that touch us and change us.  In that, this year has been overflowing.

When I left my nursing career, I thought I would have all this “extra” time – time to get home and hearth in order; time to spend with friends sipping tea and eating lunch and time to pour out my words from heart to paper.  Yet, it hasn’t quite been this way.  On occasion, what I think will happen does not.  Such was this year. 

Instead of ordering home and hearth, I have been flying by the seat of my pants trying to maintain equilibrium.  I am a creature who thrives when things are clean and rightly placed.  Not compulsive by any means but life happens with more clarity when my surroundings are together. 

Instead of spending time with friends, I have been lucky to find a moment in a hallway to reconnect.  This has made a lonely year.  It is a funny road us introverts walk when our needed refueling occurs in quiet and solitude yet we desire not to do life alone.  Often, we struggle between the two.  This year has been a struggle.

Instead of writing with abandon I feel like I have abandoned my writing.  When life is a blur and tasks are overwhelming, the work of writing falls down the “must do” list.   What once used to flow now burps and spurts.

Worth carries a high price but it isn’t what you may think – it is me (and you).

I have found in the letting go of what I thought would happen – I get to embrace what He has designed.  The cost is me.  Only I can surrender myself.  Only I can allow eternity to inhabit my present moment.  He has given me that control.  When I release it back to Him, the infinite invades.  What I once sought to measure, I can no longer confine much less define.   In Him is found the exceedingly abundant more than all I can ask or imagine.  When eternity invades, His power is at work within. 

I may not be able to touch it but I have been changed by it.

And that has made this a very good year.

Sweet Silence

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Sweet silence I beg

               do not leave me

Rather, surround me

               in your gentle arms

In your sweet caress

               may I find peace

In your warm embrace

               may I find love

In your quiet comfort

               may I find forgiveness

Oh, most gentle spirit

               graceful and true

In your presence

               I know that God exists

In the sweetness of solitude

               He speaks to me

 

These simple words were shared almost 5 years ago on my very first blog.  Today, the quiet calls me back…

There

 

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I close my eyes and I am there. 

In a church with no walls yet with worship so free earthen boundaries could never contain it.

In a school where chalkboards perched precariously on chairs and sweet little faces peer around corners eyes wide with curiosity.

In the wall-less, roof-less “living room” of a home where sweet community is forged and prayers are spoken.

In a chair outside a church where water flows down faces and over feet – holy ground.

I am inhaling deeply the graces found once again in Haiti.  Soon, I will share this incredible trip.  Right now I am savoring (selfishly) the treasures in my soul.

 

Soon

It is calling again friends.  This tropical island void of the commercial hype yet full of beauty in raw and hidden places.  This place has long held a grip on my heart.  Not because of waters and beaches but because of hearts and faces – beautiful ones who have been carved deep into my soul. 

 little girl in haiti

I am leaving again to visit Haiti.  I ask for your prayers in the coming days – for us as we go and for those we will meet.  Agendas have been planned but God’s hand will guide. 

If you would like to read about Haiti and me…visit here for a few minutes.

Quiet

 

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It is quiet – not the eerie kind of quiet that sends shivers down the spine. 

No, rather it is the enveloping quiet wrapping itself like a hug around the soul.  It is the silence that caresses my heart to soften and awaken to His presence anew.   I find it now in the early morning dark while the busy world slumbers.  It is in this quiet hush that I hear His voice whisper. 

I am learning not to fight the internal alarm clock that rouses me at 3am but instead embrace this quiet place.  Open my eyes, my heart and my soul to the One whose whispers have too long been drowned out in the whir of life. 

Be still, be calm, see, and understand I am the True God.  Psalm 46:10 Voice

I sit here emptying myself of all the noise that has invaded my heart.  It roars as water rushing through a crumbling dam.  There is no way to stop it now – the force is too great and it spews me hollow.   And yet, in this pouring out I am not left vacant but available… 

Stillness has to do with seeing…the opening our eyes to another dimension, to the mystery of God that lies all about us.  M. Mayne

…available to Him.