New Blog: Jaggedgracecreations.wordpress.com

I have started a new blog.  You can find it here http://jaggedgracecreations.wordpress.com/.  The explanation for the move is on the new one.  I just wanted to make sure anyone looking for me could find the new blog which I hope to be more faithful to write in.

Five Minute Friday: See

So, here’s the skinny: I’ve been thinking about writing and how often our perfectionism gets in the way of our words. And I figured, why not take 5 minutes and see what comes out: not a perfect post, not a profound post, just five minutes of focused writing.

No extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation. Just painting with words. Finger-painting even.

So now on Fridays over here a group of people who love to throw caution to the wind and just write gather to share what five minutes buys them. Just five minutes. Unscripted. Unedited. Real.

Your words. This shared feast.

A Five Minute Writing Challenge <—click to tweet this!

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..

OK, are you ready? Please give me your best five minutes on:

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See…

Start

See

What do I see?

Well, I guess it depends on what spectacles I choose to put on today.

Does my vision depend on what my eyes see or what my heart sees?  Do I walk by faith or by sight?

Do I see through the lenses of what the world values and tells me how to interpret, or do I see through the lenses of eternity?  Do I see from God's perspective?  or at least try and see what He wants me to see?

I can look at the situations I encounter each day as road blocks, or opportunities to take a path I would not have otherwise chosen.

I can look at the people I encounter as annoyances or as people the Lord has sent me to love and serve. I can choose to make this moment about me or learn to forget about me.

I love the part of the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi: 

Lord grant that I might seek to comfort rather than be comforted, to love than to be loved, to understand than to be understood.

Stop

Five Minute Friday: Perspective

On Fridays over here a group of people who love to throw caution to the wind and just write gather to share what five minutes buys them. Just five minutes. Unscripted. Unedited. Real.

Your words. This shared feast.

If you have five minutes, we double dog dare you to spend it writing here <—click to tweet this!

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments.

OK, are you ready? The Gypsy Mama Facebook late night crew is my new muse come 10pm Thursday night, so please give me your best five minutes on their choice:

Perspective…

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Start:


I just had a discussion with my brother yesterday about perspective.  How funny.  We spent such a lovely day together enjoying one another's company and reveling in the glory of God's redemption.  Where there was once so much hatred, anger and angst, there begins now to grow beauty, forgiveness, restoration.  As we walk this complicated pathway of unraveling decades of confusion and tangled mess that began with years of abuse at the hands of our family, as we look to the future, there is hope.  It won't always be so tangled.  We won't always struggle with the past so much.  It won't always be awkward to try and be real and close.

We find freedom.  We find a new perspective.  We are not victims.  We are not just survivors.  We are thrivers.  We are heirs to God's beautiful grace and redemption.  What once seemed hopelessly broken is beginning to look different.  It is beginning to look beautiful.  As God puts the pieces together and combs out the ragged mess of tangles, the beauty of how big He is begins to be clear.... much clearer, I think than if we had not been so badly broken.

The most beautiful and powerful stories of redemption being with places of deep, dark, hopeless brokenness.

Deep in a well; In a forgotten land.  As my friend Ramsie would say about Joseph.  Deep in a well, where there seems to be no light, no hope, no way.  His hand reaches down and rescues.  And as we walk, the muck and the mire, the filth and shame, slowly washes away in the showers of His loving grace.

Stop

Five Minute Friday: Together

Around here we write for five minutes flat on Fridays.

We write because we love words and the relief it is to just write them without worrying if they’re just right or not. So we take five minutes on Friday and write like we used to run when we were kids.

On Fridays we write with gusto, unselfconscious and flat out.

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes on:

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Together…

Together was not a word that I grew up feeling good connotations about. For the most part, I generally felt pretty alone. Even in a room full of people I felt alone. I felt like I was different. No no one liked me; I did not fit in. In my family together was not a good word. It was an opportunity for someone to abuse me.

The feeling of being alone and different followed me many years into my walk with the Lord. It was different, but still alone. I knew He was always with me. I knew He loved me no matter what.

But I did not feel like His people loved me that way. I did not feel like I had deep friendships. I pretty much kept everyone at a disposable connection level.

About 5 years ago, God began to unearth some really painful really dark secrets that kept me feeling alone. He showed me that I felt alone, not because people did not want to be with me; I felt alone b/c I was hiding. I was afraid people could not love me if they knew some of the struggles I carried and could not get free from.

When God took me to celebrate recovery to deal with my alcoholism, He began to dismantle the walls that I thought protected me. Those walls kept me alone and isolated. As I began to come clean about the things that I thought I could entrust to no one but God, an amazing thing happened. I wasn't alone anymore. I was truly together. As I dealt with the fact that years of sexual abuse and child pornography had distorted my sexuality and let others come into my pain and distortion and pray for me, walk with me through it all, I wasn't carrying it alone anymore. The secrets no longer had to power to keep me from experiencing together. I told and people loved me anyway.

Then an amazing thing happened; people began to have courage to tell their secrets and the chains that held them began to fall off.

Stop....... times up

But I can't leave this hanging. Today, I help women walk through the process of recovery. Today I get to help others come out of alone and shadows to walk in together and light. So many years I spent alone in a crowd trying to manage my sin and beg God to take it out of me. His way is together, not alone. He only set me free as I opened up the basement and allowed people to come and shine light and love on the little girl hiding in the darkness. He set me free as I allowed people to love me and hold me and remind me that I am not defined or limited by the past. I will always bear scars, but today the scars are beautiful; they are an opportunity to tell His story of redemption in my life. Today I am not hiding and ashamed. I can tell about my pain b/c my pain helps others find the way to open the door so we can go into the dark basement and hug the broken scared little people and bring them into the light to find freedom and grace, hope and peace, redemption and restoration.

Five Minute Friday: Light

Linking to Five minute Friday with Gypsy Mama.

My life is so blessed. It is light and love and grace. I find sometimes I feel guilty for the abundant grace and blessing that encompasses my life.

I ask why me? Why are things so hard and so dark for others when everyday my life is filled with light.

Why are my two musicians friends, who are so filled with beautiful talent, lost in a dark desperate place. Why has reality fled them, and yet He brought me back from the darkness of a lost reality? Why do some get so lost in addiction that they can't find their way out; when He delivered me and took away the chains that bound me to repeat the addictive pattern.

Why do I get to have 3 beautiful children in spite of that fact the my reproductive organs are so scarred that they are supposed to be incapable of conceiving; when so many I know who did not make choices that lead to damaged reproduction cannot conceive.

Why do I look at my beautiful children perfectly healthy and growing in grace each and every day and another looks into the eyes of a child who dies of a disease that mother passed to child. I should have that disease. Dirty needles and loose living should have sentenced me to death and with it's death sentence on me an identical sentence to my children.

Yet, His grace.

Why in all my attempts to take life from my body, always He kept the breath of life in me? When all around me people fight to live and die none the less.

I am so grateful for the light. His light has led me from a place of such darkness, such hopelessness, such loss, chains that cut into my skin, chains that held my mind.

In His light, all the chains fell away, all the darkness fled, all that was lost has been returned with more than I could have ever dreamed. The girl lost in the darkness has become the woman of light and love and hope.

But there is always the why in the back of my mind. Thank you Lord, but why? What about the others?

Five Minute Friday: Loud

Around here we write for five minutes flat on Fridays.

We finger paint with words. We try to remember what it was like to just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

Want to play Five Minute Friday? It’s easy peasy! (<–-Tweet this!)

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking 2. Link back here and invite others to join in. 3. Meet & encourage someone who linked up before you.

OK, are you ready? Give us your best five minutes on:

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Loud…

Sometimes the voice of the critic inside of me is so loud. Sometimes it is so loud that it drowns out my ability to create. It taunts me and mocks me; it undermines my belief that I am an artist. Sometimes the beauty of the Lord fills me with such awe and such a stirring to allow Him to create, express something beautiful through me. Then the taunting voice of the critic drowns out the beauty that is stirring in me. I stand in my studio and lose the faith to create. I avoid trying and allow the voice of the critic to drown out the voice of beauty and grace.

Slowly but surely though, some days I am able to ignore the voice of the critic and show up in the studio to meet the Lord anyway. I meet Him and refuse the let the critic taunt me into turning away. I stay and wait and the Lord is so faithful. He meets me there. He create beauty and worship through me and I am amazed and so grateful.

I am noticing the more I go into the space and wait refusing to leave. The louder the voice of the Lord encouraging me and stirring me becomes and the less power the critic has in me to taunt and stifle.

Five Minute Friday: Ache

On Fridays I try to participate in Five Minute Friday. Here is the rules and here is my post.

Around here we write for five minutes flat on Fridays.

We write because we love words and the relief it is to just write them without worrying if they’re just right or not. So we take five minutes on Friday and write like we used to finger paint. For joy in the process. No matter how messy the result.

Got five minutes? Come and write with us, we promise to tell you we loved it! (<—Tweet this!)

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments.

Start:

My ache goes back to my oldest daughter being little. You see I had her when I was 20 years old. I had just met the Lord 3 months earlier, was fresh off of drugs and trying to finally deal with the unbearable pain of an unmentionably abusive child hood.

I am so grateful for Ally. God used her to save my life. God taught me about His mercy and grace by lending her to me. I had done drugs through most of my pregnancy, so I call her my miracle baby, b/c she came out healthy and unscathed from my selfish and destructive decisions.

The ache is me is that I couldn't have been more whole when I began the journey of raising her. I know God redeems all; I know He knew and sent her anyway and I know that He will work all things for her good and will get the glory.

I just missed so much about what an amazing child she was because I was incapable of unconditional love and acceptance at the time. I expected her to be perfect and make me look like a good mom. I was so broken that I seldom took time to listen to her amazing songs or watch her amazing dances. I didn't really take in all that she was.

I am present and so much more healed now. I do appreciate and listen and accept and love now. But now she it 19 and what I would give to be able to go back and hold 2 year old Ally and listen to every song she wanted to sing to me and watch every single dance she wanted to show me and allow her to just be a beautiful, amazing, precocious, creative little girl. Oh how I ache.

Stop