Triune Dancing

O God my God,
I cry out to you.


The ache and longing forever by my side,
longing for more Love Divine.


Triune God will I see
this ache is meant to draw me to Thee.


How perilous this human part
if not directed towards your heart.


If only these lenses were cleansed
to see the pain a means to your end.


Brokeness and frayed edges all around.
Am I the only one who sees?
How out of sorts things are with 'we.'


Longing for a place called home,
tired of this sojourners roam.


Crying inward for something different than the same,
is it fear keeping me lame?


Hope beckons of community renewed,
but only if I sit with You.


Triune Dancer spins and twirls,
"Come, dance with Me, that
I might settle thee."


Uncomfortable steps and eyes so close,
something softens, fragile petals of this rose.


Fragrance rises with thorns and all,
strength given on this dance floor of my soul.

Advent Week III: Rejoice

We prepare this week by feeling the joy.  We move through this week feeling a part of the waiting world that rejoices because our longing has prepared us to believe the reign of God is close at hand.  And so we consciously ask:

Prepare our hearts
and remove the sadness
that hinders us from feeling
the joy and hope
which his presence
will bestow.

Each morning this week, in that brief moment we are becoming accustomed to, we want to light a third inner candle.  Three candles, going from expectation, to longing, to joy.  They represent our inner preparation, or inner perspective.  In this world of “conflict and division,” “greed and lust for power,” we begin each day this week with a sense of liberating joy.  Perhaps we can pause, breathe deeply and say,

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
     my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”

(reflection from here)

I read this this morning needing some guidance into the week.  There is something about the Christmas season that expands my heart and I find myself longing for all sorts of things: new memories, community, a boyfriend, children, more ministry opportunities, travel, new experiences, play, presents, affirmation of importance in people's lives...

I long...

I thirst....

I don't often know what to do with desire for more in my life.  I rejoice in what has been given but yet still there is a place that longs for so much more.

So I read: Scripture, Devotionals, Meditations like these to settle my heart in.  The desire I have is not the problem (for years I thought it was and chose shutting down instead). Rather, it's where I take the desire and into whose hand I place it.

This week we R E J O I C E!  My heart is expanding, being prepared, and oening up to J O Y.  The reason I rejoice is not that all the longings will be fulfilled, but they are what point my heart H O M E. They are the honing device that draws my spirit back to Christ. There as I settle in to His presence, his dwelling within me, He puts my heart right.  

He affirms the longing (which most the time I'm expecting rebuke if I'm honest cause shouldn't I be fully satisfied in him?) but He also reminds me of the incompleteness of those things.  Deep satisfaction and grace to go forth in my life to love can only happen if I stay fiercely committed to betrothal in Him.  

In him, I am free to give myself over for the sake of another, find beauty and joy in the mundane, hope for a greater tomorrow, and rest in what's provided now.  The longings don't go, but they draw me back to the Source of Life.  So when a longing is fulfilled, when H O P E is no longer deferred, the hands that receive the gift are better able to enjoy it as a gift rather than entitlement.

And so we rejoice....anticipate together....and find J O Y.  Christ is coming, to the lowly manger of our conflicted hearts, to bring new life. 
I N C A R N A T I O N...in you and I.  Amazing!

Little by Little

When I was thirteen I went to a junior high school dance. This event was a big deal: It was HALLOWEEN.


For the Shaw Family, Halloween is no small occasion.  Much to my mum's chagrin her kids never were simpletons when it came to dressing up.  This particular year, I decided I would be Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.  Now the dress itself I found in my closet, but the shoes... The glitter shoes at the Paylesses of the world would simply not do, the shoes must be the creme de la resistance!    


Thus, we gathered glue and sequins from the local craft store, pulled out my old pair of tap shoes, and the journey of 1000 sequins began. One by one by one....day by day after school I plopped myself on the couch and the glitter party began.


And eventually, after much perseverance and persistence, they were finished!


I braided my hair, put on my dress, applied a smidge of rouge and lipstick, and   stepped into my sparkling delights.


I met up with my friends at Lakeview Junior High and we danced the night away.  With every roger rabbit and running man (: little by little the glittering wonders began to fall, one by one by one....


The dance ended and the ruby slippers were no more.


But what a great memory and, oh, how I loved those ruby slippers.  Then it hit me....as the dress came off and the make-up was wiped away... there were no pictures!? No memento to capture the journey of the slippers.


Halloweens came and went. Year after year, I found other fun characters to play dress up in. But....but there was something about those slippers...

I think little by little throughout my adolescent and young adult years I tried to reapply those sequins in vain. Sparkling parts of myself that felt like they'd fallen off or my circumstances seemed to tell me they had. Not sure when, or how, or why exactly only that something lost its glimmer along the way.  

But I'm realizing more and more the parts I thought were the most sparkling parts about me were a false luster.  Artificial. The closer you got the faker you saw it was.  So I'd keep you at a distance so you wouldn't see what I saw deep down.

But here's the thing, once the sequins fall (and oh how they have fallen), all you see is what's bare, underneath.  And that's when the magic begins to happen.   

So, this year when Halloween neared the slippers beckoned.


Only this time, the young girl who for years only wanted to be pretty characters felt permission to be ugly, wonderfully wicked, and have some fun. 

The magic of restoration, reconstruction, redemption.  That little by little, in the everyday moments of my life, there are possibilities. The small and not so small things are being transformed with the hope of redemption.  That I get to participate in a life that doesn't settle for the artificial but trusts that the good and genuine can happen, is happening, even when the sparkle feels like its lost her luster.  


God is good and He is the creator of all good things.  I don't need to offer just a pretty package anymore. The magic of the slippers is that I come just as I am, bare, and the One whom I've given the ugly parts of myself to readorns.


He, little by little, day by day, is sealing on me a glory and splendor not of this world. A sheen, like the slippers, that glimmers and shines pointing others to the way home.

Book Ended in 2010

It is December 31st, one day before the New Year.


A time to remember.


Maybe try to forget.


I think a little of both.


A duplicitous time (and I think I am not alone).


Last year recovering from my back injury, I stumbled upon a book by Donald Miller called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I finished it in a few days.  It helped lift me out of circumstance and pain to the greater story being written through the pages of my life.  


I didn't know what lay ahead, I only knew his words lifted me up and renewed hope allowing it to expand within...


Inhale, 
     big breathe outward....
     
      THE BALLOON OF  H  O  P  E  GROWS.


Dreams were allowed room to stretch out, expand their horizons, and take a few more steps forward.


Desires seemed right there for the taking while at the same time just beyond reach.


Steps into new territory taken, yet the outcome quite different from the expectation.


Like I said, duplicitous.


And maybe I need to nestle into that reality (maybe we all do). Realizing it is all happening at the same time. the both/and, the IS. And in the midst something beautiful, mysterious, good IS happening but from a realm and a kingdom we have yet to understand.


This morning I lingered in bed well past eleven o'clock flipping through the pages of Anne Jackson's Permission to Speak Freely and once again I'm disrupted...


Reminded.


Renewed.


Another traveler willing to share deeply from within the pages being written in her story. And somehow, and in some mystical way, it gives me permission to live mine more fully and step into it with deeper faith.


And I am grateful.


Grateful for those who have had the courage to tell their stories and prodded me to more fully live in mine.


Inhale.....


     Deep Breathe.....


        Whhhhhhhhhoooooooooosssssshhhhhhhhh........


H O P E.


     F A I T H.


         E X P AN D I N G.


I don't now how God has book ended your year? Whether it's been an author's words, a relationship, an unexpected heartache, the fruition of a long sought after dream...I'm trusting with you (and for me) that something beautiful is unfolding (even, and perhaps most especially when we don't see it).


Hello 2011, we welcome you!

The Father's Day Blog I Didn't at First Want to Write (but did anyway)

I've felt a blog brewing in me but haven't wanted to write it. It's because it involves being single. I don't want to be "the singleness blogger." But there are things to be said, wrestled with, and embraced and so I guess, for now, I'm your gal. (Well, for today and the topic...smile.)

This weekend we celebrate Father's Day.

I love my dad. After last weeks scare (48 hours in the hospital with intestinal problems), it only surfaced all the more my ever-growing love for my Dad: His strength, consistency, presence, provision, advice, humor, warm heart, 'live it up' way of life and love, and how he has impacted my life in so, so many ways.

Which is why, on weeks like these, I wonder, "What must it be like not to have a Dad?"

To grow up without an everyday masculine presence? Did you know that a man, by his mere 'being' has impact. What I mean by this is, a man by his very presence in the room changes things.

Truly.

There was actually a study (which I wish I could remember to site) that showed the impact of a man's physical presence or lack thereof in a little girl's life and how on a biological level it influenced her hormonal balance.

Seriously.

Men, your presence matters!

Fathers, your physical presence (let alone your psychological and emotional presence) has impact.

So what does this have to do with singleness? How do the two issues go hand in hand? Well, it's got me wondering. . .

How does the lack of a father's mere presence growing up (let alone relational and emotional support) effect men's ability to pursue good women these days? How do their internal demons and insecurities related to being fatherless effect the way they are able to pursue, believing they have something good to offer us?

Now I know there are a myriad of reasons for why folks are still single. And it's not just fatherlessness. But I have to wonder if this isn't a significant part of the reason for the vast singleness were experiencing in my generation, the former and the prior?

I know so many outstanding, rather stunning, godly women who are waiting, praying, and left just a little bewildered as to why they aren't getting asked out and pursued more.

What I'm left wondering, as I watch this play out in my own life and the lives of many others, is if this is another symptom of the Masculinity Crisis?

Maybe I'm just trying to make sense of it all and put together the mixxed puzzle pieces that is my dating life?

However reality is, there is an entire generation of fatherless men who have not seen pursuit, commitment, responsibility let alone experienced it being called forth in them. So why wouldn't it follow that some are left rather mystified as to how they would ever pursue let alone commit to a woman they thought "too good for me"?

Which is why I'd like to dedicate this post to all you mentors out there. Those who are fathering the fatherless and calling forth boys to become men.

I believe you are:

CHANGING THE STORY.

SHIFTING THE CLIMATE.

RESTORING THE PAST.

BUILDING A NEW FUTURE.

INFLUENCING GENERATIONS.

The story is being rewritten...

It may not feel like it every day or each meeting, but you are modeling H O P E that their stories can be rewritten and that there is a Father who's Presence changes things, everything.

And because I believe God is in the business of rewriting stories and redeeming things, the very worst things, I'm left wondering how he wants to show us the truths of "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" as it relates to these current issues?

What if God is turning it around?

The wicked ways the enemy has attacked marriage and the family.

The lies the enemy has ingrained in fatherless children's hearts and the father's who left them.

What if he restores things?

Really makes beauty from ashes.

Infuses his life, healing, and hope into these little boys and young men's hearts?

What if he uses older men to "retell" young men their stories? Which makes them feel differently about where they've been, who they are, and where they will go?

And while healing takes time and strong men may be emerging a little later in life, truth is this may be the very thing that changes the face of the family in the 21st century.

Think of the depth and strength of these marriages...as men and women encounter the depth and breadth of Jesus' love for them, deep wounds are healed. Each one may come into the commitment a little more whole with a greater freedom to simply love and be loved.

How much clearer an image it would reflect to a lost world of Christ and His Bride(us) as mature men and women unite in love and invite others into it (kids, friends, families, co-workers). Imperfect for sure, but somehow more settled into the imperfect, grace-filled life of loving someone enough to stay in it for the long haul.

And, to me, if this is even a hint of what might be happening, well then, it's been well worth the wait.

To men, fathers and fatherless, mentors and mentees....and the God who is the author and redeemer of it all, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!