I Hate Steroids

This post, it shall contain ranting of the rather poor-little-me type...consider yourself warned.

I have asthma.  Yes, I know I have mentioned it before, but I say it again for those who haven't always been here to look into these little windows of my life... 

I have asthma...and sometimes, when this warrior is armed and at work, it is very difficult to remember that the asthma doesn't have me.

This past Sunday, I had a tickle in my throat.  The tickle came from the cold that I finally decided to take on after all the months of my kids passing it back and forth...thought it would be fun to play with...I was wrong.  But I digress...  I had a slight tickle while singing and so I ahem-ed to clear it.  When I tried to clear it casually, the tickle turned into an annoying cough that travelled quickly down my throat and into my lungs.  Once there, the asthma decided that the cold was getting too much attention and so it woke from its slumber to freeze my chest.

Fast forward 5 days, you will find me in a doctor's office. 

Why wait five days?  Avoidance.  Pure and simple. 

What was I avoiding?  The dreaded "s" word... 

Yup, you guessed it: Steroids.   The teeny-tiny white pills that work wonders on an almost immediate lung unfreezing....but in payment cause stabbing pain in my arms and legs while they enhance my appetite and swell my face up to a puffy and round variation. 

The smallest of white pills...and I hate them with a large ferociousness.

But even more than I hate the pills...I am confused by the "why's" that come with having a long term issue like this.

And so, I sit here...venting at you poor, innocent reader...working my hardest to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I sit here really, really wanting to see the bright side...the rainbow...the up to the down...but I just don't because, as I mentioned above, I can so often forget that while I have asthma, the asthma doesn't have me.

I sit here, somewhat embittered and fully tired...and I put it out there to you, my trusted and unseen friends because I don't want to let the uglies win...and the best way I know, is to be reminded that I AM NOT ALONE.

What kind of things do you have in your life that you can often forget don't have you?

What verses do you turn to when you fight to get out from under the pull of the tide?

Looking up as always...

Where I've Been Hiding

...behind boxes of tissues, in bed as I prayed for decongestion meds to actually DO something

...out living life over lunches with girlfriends

...holding a forkfull of a fudge pie, hand-made and personally sent to me.

...buried in a few great new books ~ like Crave by Chris Tomlinson and 66 Love Letters by Larry Crabb

...sitting and noticing the world in ways I haven't tried to before.

I am so horrible about dropping in here to say "I'm still alive" and then I come back and people are like "Ya, for how long this time?"  Ok, the truth is that no one really says that, but I have these little imaginary conversations with myself because it is fun to talk in different accents.  (We will just let slide for now...)

....

The thing I gave up for Lent was all the chaos in my mind.

Normally I hear the kazillion "voices", twirling and rumbling around in my mind, all day long.  Each competing for a chance to be heard, none really having much to say.  Pride, anger, resentment, laughter, happiness and contentment ~ all playing out a circus show for me alone and each pulling and shoving me towards control or God, depending on the moment...each jumping and popping up however and whenever they like while leaving me to try and sort them into the "good" and "bad" catagories.

My last verbal instruction from God before Lent began was: "give me you"...and as I prayed to find the best way to lay myself down as a pleasing sacrifice, He answered in the silence...the clearning of the chaotic mess that can be my mind.  He stilled the waters...and left me gasping as, for better or worse, I have learned to exist in the thundering power of a world set at high volume.  Always noise...music, TV, people, the dog, me in my many accents...always something to keep my mind distracted.

If I wanted to hide from Him, I raised the sound level on the TV or kept myself busy talking. 

If I wanted to hear Him, I raised the volume of iTunes and praise music or spoke His Word out loud. 

Whatever I needed...whatever I wanted...I did it thru noise.

But as His hand swept upwards while "Peace, be still" still rang out over the raging waters of my heart and mind on day 1...I realized that in the silence comes the vision.

But still...I kept the volume up all around me as that is what I know.

In the book Crave, Chris Tomlinson has a chapter about silence...about how he learned to just be silent before God...and I was so very captivated by the thought of it that yesterday, I drove with no music on. 

I know. Shocked me too.

I actually just prayed and then journeyed with no noise...and I was amazed at what I saw and what I thought of...amazed to "hear" a world that I usually ignore. 

It impacted me so much, that I did it again today...not wanting the music now...not needing the extra competition of music, praise or not.  I just want to hear with my eyes, with my heart and with my senses that are now heightened in the stillness of nothing...because I have found that in the silence comes the strength as He now roars where He used to whisper...as now His is the only voice to be heard.

What about you?

Are you a noise/chaos-oholic too or do you have peace in the silence?

Looking up as always...

Wishful Thinking

I know I have been missed around here.

Oh yes.

I do.

I know it like I know that my kids will always rinse their dinner plates rather than let the leftover food turn into super-glue. 

I know it like I know that my dog will be understanding to my carpet when we have been gone for more than 6 hours and his bladder is bulging.

Oh yes.

I have been missed.

...stop laughing...

Looking up as always...

Sixty-Six Love Letters: Review

Title: 66 Love Letters, From God To You
Author:  Dr. Larry Crabb
ISBN: 0849919665

Timing for a book can be everything...and when this book showed up in my mailbox on the first day of Lent, it got such a powerful shot at my mind.  It could be that it is Lent...it could be that my heart is on such a deep journey to discover His voice anew...but whatever it is, I can honestly say that this is one of the best "christian thought" books that I have picked up in a very, very long time. 

Dr. Crabb wrote this book after a late night "I can't fall asleep so I guess I will talk to You" session with God and what came out of it was amazing, in my opinion. He spends each chapter of the book forming the "point" of the 66 books of the Bible into love letters, written in God's voice...sharing His heartbeat and His reasons for choosing the stories and events that He did.

Today's love letter is from Deuteronomy and while I never would have found this connection, I found myself trying to wrap my mind around the simple truth laid out:
"Love has no meaning unless it remains alive when the one you claim to love seems distant and unresponsive."
I know for me, I expect Him to move when I look for Him...I assume He will answer verbally when I cry out...I can take for granted the miracle of my relationship with Him.  But when He chooses to be invisible to my eyes...and silent to my mind...when He chooses, for whatever reason, to love "from afar", I struggle and I fight, uncomfortable in the lack of response.

It might be because it is Lent...and it might be because I am so desperate for His presence...but this book gets two very high thumbs up from my heart, my mind and my spirit.

Cover Information:
Dr. Larry Crabb knows that if we could see the larger story of God and humanity, our world would never be the same. That story is found in large part in the sixty-six letters of the Bible.


Written in a conversational first person, as if God is speaking directly to us, Dr. Crabb looks at each individual book in scripture and boils it down to a one- or two-sentence message to us from that particular book. He then unpacks each sentence in a short chapter answering the question, What does God want me to hear from this love letter? The book's epilogue then fits all sixty-six pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together into one coherent paragraph and reveals the beautiful picture of what God has been about since the creation of the world. Far from being comprehensive, this is a personal approach to helping readers know God and his great love for them, his message for all mankind, and how their lives fit into His larger story.


...just get it.  It's that good.

**Thomas Nelson provided me this book for review purposes & is allowing me to keep this title once finished. I get no other compensation...other than the chance to fill my heart and soul with an excellent read. :) **

Looking up as always...

Faith...Unwrapped

It was my skinny, six-year old self that first recognized the voice of God.

"Yes, I know what am talking about."

Faded memories of me praying with my hands enclosed within my mother's still dance at the frayed edges of my mind.   The room is blackened with the scars of time long gone, but the portrait of my head bowed next to hers still whispers sweetly to my heart.

It was the sixteen-year old version of me that burned at the call from His heart.

Youth camp in the hot Arizona mountains. 

I still remember the heat that flooded my face from within when the altar call was given. 
I knew they would all look at me and laugh
...whisper and make jokes at the girl moving to the front. 

But His pull was bigger than my pride.

My twenty-three year old heart was the one re-captured.

Divorced mother of three.

I didn't come the altar alone and that is enough to show He knew me so well.  He provided me the hands of two new, beautiful friends on the journey of re-learning the tones of His call
...the beat of His heart.

He had been silent for years
...but now He spoke with the raging of newly formed rivers.

The twenty-eight year old me is the one who tripped on His holiness.

Struggling to carry the monkey on my back.

The day He rose before me,

holy...white...enthroned

that is the day my heart can't forget or think of without a jump in rythym. 
His "I Love You" now masked within "I Am God and YOU Are Mine"

was all my mind could hear.

Today...the thirty-three year old looks back.

A week into a powerful season of Lent.

Day seven since I laid my "Isaac" down on the altar...

since the tears blinded,

since my heart threatened to break,

since I discovered faith's true essence of invisibility...

Today, I look around and can't help but see Him.

He floats...

...whispers...

...laughs...

...calls...

...dances...

He exists in power and might

...and today
I can't help but sit,

longing to unwrap Him,

over and over again.

 Emily over at Chatting at the Sky hosts a weekly "chance" to notice...to savor...to enjoy and unwrap the gifts (...no matter the size...) that God drops into our chaos that is life.


Listening to the silence while looking up as always...