Driftwood Prayers & Christmas Khakis

They were there for me in a way no one else could be in that moment.  Angels from heaven may wear robes of white, but the Holy Spirit sometimes hides himself in khakis and polos, sometimes in humble threads on the corner asking for money, sometimes on the trailing notes of a song on the radio, and in gifts of money and McDonald's and fixed cars two weeks before Christmas.

And each Christmas in succession teaches me this:

From the success of the hidden birth of the mightiest King on Earth ever in existence we can deduce that the most helpless have an honored place in the kingdom of God.  And that though others would see dirty animals and straw, we know that there is peace and safety in the glory that shines upon the hay.





I work and create and drive and care and love just as hard as I possibly can, but find in the end I can be one of the most helpless.  And He says, "You don't have to be anything more than what I've made you to be.  Already you are my creation."

I have prayed and prayed and prayed for one thing for Christmas for my boys.  Many Christmases I have prayed.  These prayers seemed to move so slow, like... driftwood in a lazy river -- water getting into the holes and weighing down the dreams, to what seemed like, beyond hope, beyond finances, beyond my means -- slowing down to an eternity the wait for what I've wanted for so long.

But this year God answered my prayers in a way that could only be Him.  And though I'd only asked for one, He gave me two.

 

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I kneel down and praise the God that gives me the desires of my heart because I delight in Him.  His mightiness right now is in the tears that fall down my face.  He is reminding me, once again, that His purpose will come to fruition, and that He has entrusted to me three of His children for a reason.

 
Special thanks to Chris Alvarado of Driftwood Guitars for making our Christmas a most memorable one, and for being the worker in answer to my driftwood prayers.


Also, thank you to the many good people at the Worship on the Water Church at the Flora-Bama for helping me stay on the road, and for the many gifts that will help my boys' eyes light up this Christmas morning.


My love to all of you.  May God richly bless to your lives a hundred fold, and may your spirits Float this Christmas season. 

Merry Christmas.

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All the Single Ladies (Put Your Hands Up)

The truth is I listen to the married woman write and I believe everything I see because I know it's anointed.  But I still have to turn off the television sometime and fall asleep in silence in an empty bed.  I just can't get comfortable and I can't keep my legs and my mind still, so I turn the light back on and look for something to fill the void.  Where are all of my single mamas?  It's time to call roll.

"Here!" 




My kids are asleep and it's quiet here.  I've had my glass of water and my midnight snack -- Corn Pops, but the bowl is empty.  The dishwasher cycle is done and the clothes dryer has stopped.  Surely there is one more thing I need to do before I drop off to sleep, like  watch one more rerun of Friends and get one more laugh in.  Did I get my 10 minutes of sunshine?  Did I exercise today?  Did I talk to a friend and remind myself that I have a support system?  I'll check facebook one more time. 


Did I take it to God when I thought about him again? 

I ran for a while in the park, but the thoughts were hiding under my pillowcase tonight.  And I hear Him:
"Why do you reach for the memories of your pain?"




 

I come again and again to this altar, head hanging, tears falling into the dust on a pretty blue Bible that calls out to me in this Holy telepathy.  I wish it away, saying, "I'm not going to understand anyway" and I see the amused smile in the eyes of Good God.  And I scream at Him, "Why are you keeping me from what I need?  Where is the man for me?"  And He says, ...






"...You are the only one keeping yourself from arms that long to hold you."










"Hold it all together
Everybody needs you strong
But life hits you out of nowhere
And barely leaves you holding on

And when you're tired of fighting
Chained by your control
There's freedom in surrender
Lay it down and let it go


When you're on your knees and answers seem so far away
You're not alone, stop holding on and just be held
Your world's not falling apart, it's falling into place
I'm on the throne, stop holding on and just be held
Just be held, just be held


If your eyes are on the storm
You'll wonder if I love you still
But if your eyes are on the cross
You'll know I always have and I always will

And not a tear is wasted
In time, you'll understand
I'm painting beauty with the ashes
Your life is in My hands

When you're on your knees and answers seem so far away
You're not alone, stop holding on and just be held
Your world's not falling apart, it's falling into place
I'm on the throne, stop holding on and just be held
Just be held, just be heldLift your hands, lift your eyes
In the storm is where you'll find Me
And where you are, I'll hold your heart
I'll hold your heart
Come to Me, find your rest
In the arms of the God who won't let go"


I nestle my legs under the covers and turn off the light waiting for my eyes to close, and I resist the urge to conjure the eyes I love that hurt me, and I look instead for the Light in the eyes that died for me.  The Lover of my soul is here, the arms that go through skin.



Casting Crowns:  Just Be Held
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIZitK6_IMQ

Guided Antics

I remember when I was a little girl and I would watch the ants for hours.  Sometimes I would poke a stick into the ant bed to see the inner chambers and eggs....watch them rebuild the exposed parts in the most horrific scurry.  There was not one still ant. 

At first glance it appeared to be chaos...until I followed the movements of just one.  Just one ant going against the grain and flow of every ant he came across to get one grain of dirt, one mighty rock to place in the hole.  And then I watched another, and another, each filling the place.  I'd lose interest and go inside for a while...and come back out to check.  And by dusk the last straggling workers were placing the last grains on an enclosed, and once again protected home.

It's a life of vital balance, is it not?  The same holes that offer us entrance into safety and prosperity also lend the danger of exposure to the elements.  Why on earth do we hole ourselves off alone thinking we are not understood?  Thinking we are supposed to overcome something without any help?

Us and our misguided antics.  We were made to need each other. 

We not only help the young,...

...we help the capable, too.  Being the bridge is a gloriously beautiful part of our God-given instinct.  I will become stronger so that I can become part of the bridge.  And, when our needs are reversed, we can trade.  We will bind our purposes so tightly together in selfless compromise that it will be as if there never were a gap to begin with.

I am so glad I don't have to go through this life alone.  Oh, the feeling when you lift me! 

 

Now, climb up, Brother, so you can feel heaven, too, for we build a place where we live -- really live -- together.

Plentiful Pillowcases

She made us these pillowcases with her sewing machine, all of her grandchildren.  Eighteen grandchildren, and we each got pillowcases -- two each.  She made sure we each got two, and sometimes a blanket or a smell-good bathset in a little basket.
She made sure each one of us got a present from her at Christmas time. 



And if you wanted a Christmas present you went to her house.  That's the way it was, as it should be.  And we, all of us, went.

So, we went there to open Christmas presents.  We went there and nowhere else to eat Thanksgiving dinner.  We shelled peas there at harvest time with buckets, bowls, paper sacks, sore thumbs, and great conversation.  We climbed up on the forbidden roof and picked our own switches, and got the spankings of our lives...we darted in and out to say hello, and to get hugs when we were running low.  That was where we went when we fell down running, fell from trees, or skinned our hides to hell and back, or when, as upstanding citizens, we needed to let her know that our cousins weren't obeying the bible.



Her house smelled of old wood and books and good cookin'.  It was nestled beneath the oaks and pines where mosquitoes and fleas thrived off of the many little legs and the huge amount of shade.  And there was plenty of land to run around on, plenty of trees to hide behind, plenty of room to form whatever exclusive cliques between ourselves and the other many cousins that ran around behind the same three-foot-high chain-link fence.  My three sisters, and I, and our mother, and my aunt and cousins all lived in houses within that freest of confines, with regular visits of cousins and other aunts.  And any adult physically present within the commune of that fence was allowed to whip us if we were misbehaving.  As it should have been.  And the matriarch of the Freest of Confines played the songs and sang the words of the first songs we ever heard on her organ.


I remember the sound of her playing it.  We all do.  We heard her sing about her love of the Lord as we learned to walk, and play. 

When she wasn't at home she was at church singing about her love for the Lord there, or driving the kids on her school bus.  We would listen for her bus and meet her at the end of her long dirt driveway at the road, and she would let us get on and ride down behind her house where she would park it.  What a magical place to be, on that bus when there were no other children on it.  Then she'd sweep the aisles of the bus, and sing about the Lord, and tell us to lift up our feet.

I see it now, the way she lived her entire life to teach us that through everything, through all of the work, and the heat, and the hard, through the times of confrontation, through hospitals and sickness, through all of the things that didn't work out, through happy Christmases and pillow cases, her life was this story of love, this list of the many songs to sing.


And now, years later, as we rest our heads on plentiful pillowcases, on everything she made, as we obtain our rest by way of the hands that loved us, we find that her love lives for eternity.


We rest our heads on her love, and continue her story.


Myra Lee Dorman Kelly

Birth:	Jul. 17, 1932 Dowagiac Cass County Michigan, USA
Death:	Aug. 23, 2012 Escambia County Florida, USA
Myralee Dorman Kelly joined her husband in heaven Thursday, August 23, after a courageous battle with lung cancer. Born in Dowagiac, Michigan, Myralee moved with her family to Florida at the age of nine. She graduated from Tate High School in 1950. Myralee was an active member of Oakhaven Baptist Church, was a pastor's wife, and for over 40 years, served as organist for several area churches. Myralee is preceded in death by her husband of 43 years, Joseph D. Kelly; her mother, Gwendolyn Dorman Hopkins; her father, Floyd Dorman; her brother, Billy Dorman; and her Sister, Freida Renfroe. She is survived by her daughters, Paulette Smith (Rex), Cynthia Watson (Donald), Kathryn Taylor (Ronald), and Vivian Cockrell (Billy); 18 grandchildren; 40 great-grandchildren; two sisters; Barbara Hawthorne (Donald) and Martha Emery (Kenneth); one brother, Bernie Dorman (Bonnie); sister-in-law, Evelyn Hines (Bill); numerous nieces and nephews, and good friends.

Leaves Like These

Who says God can't appear like He did in a burning bush all that time ago? 

For as I smoked my cigarette and said, "Take this death from me,"  I looked into the small tree before me.  And the branches moved like free-flowing vines, and the leaves moved with green vibrant hope, and the branches reached like arms waving to get my attention, while the branches of all others were still.

And it held me enthralled as His Spirit filled my eyes and heart.

He said, "My peace is before you, and it is always here.  The calm you seek is I am always here. 
Knowledge is in your awe of Me, wisdom, because you ask Me.  Love, because you need Me.
Peace, for you trust and believe and obey Me.

And I reach for you like these branches.
And you are the wind between leaves like these."


Leaves like these, leaves like these

In none but one tree.
In a face so clear one feels it.

In a life so pure, like air
It is seen and then not seen.
And awake are the eyes that search for Him
And content is the heart that finds Him.
And it matters neither the day nor hour
For His presence never leaves the heart
That holds Him dear.

He tells us, "Be still," when we know not His will
But with leaves like these, leaves like these
All is well, all is well.

There are visions for the eyes that know He is here
In leaves like these, leaves like these.
Joy to the hearts that feel the breath of wind
The touch that doesn't come from skin.

Let none distract us from His love
Let eyes like ours be fixed upon
Leaves like these, leaves like these
In none but One Tree.

Fro Glory

There is nothing softer than my children's freshly shorn hair there spread out on the floor.  Everytime I sweep it up I touch it just to marvel at it's softness.  Three different types of hair -- thick and straight, curly and thin, and blonde feathers... when the Lord's blessings are full to overflowing, overflowing like this hair on the floor.  There is so much of it it's almost this mess of blessings.  What am I to do with it all??? 

I spend much of my time caring for my blessings, and gathering up the abundance of them to give away so that we have room to walk in our home.  I have never known a love such as this.



Now if I walk outside beneath the beauty of the trees, the feel of the soft grass on my feet, the caress and smell of the unbiased breeze, and get into my man-made car and curse God for a flat tire I get that He did not divinely and graciously manifest me a miracle in reconnected treads, and think, "forget Him.  He doesn't exist anyway"...  it is then I fail to see that He held it together with His finger until I got off the interstate with my children in the car.

What is my knowledge, and how omnipotent am I that I could possibly judge what is, and what is not, fair?  How could I possibly think I know all of the things that should go on in a mind?  Who am I that, no matter my age, I am your superior?  He is the "I Am".  And I am the "it is what it is" -- the "it is what it is" that should not judge.



That woman who cares for her sick parents and family, and works two jobs, and never has time for herself got a bad deal in life?  Is it really a burden that she loves that much?  That woman that cares for her mother who has followed the circle of life and becomes like a helpless baby once again....Is it really a pity that she does for her mother what her mother did for her?  To become selfless angel incarnate, finally?

I woke up today to write with a mind covered with a head of hair I had always hated:  Big, and curly, and bushy, that would tickle the nose of any man who could get close enough... but my God loves my hair, and He looks down on it and marvels at all of the strands of His own creation.  So much so that He allows it grow all of my life...even after death it continues to grow, the crown of this physical body.  Just as my spirit continues to grow beyond death into what is good and right.  As the bad now dies a slow death the good takes its place.

Sometimes what we find hideous is, in fact, glorious.  And so, we look twice at the texture.





Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.



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Swamps and Faces

                                                                       (photo:  Schomsi, Pixabay)


The weather changes and the birds get quiet.  Holding onto the past is like holding onto the always-changing weather, or like a songwriting acquaintance of mine, Joe Doyle, said (in one of the many great songs he has written,) "...it's like trying to put smoke back in this cigarette."  Like a history book of which I can make note, but in which I must not live, my past is a teacher.  There was much good, and there was bad.  There was desperation, validation, perversion, sweet purity... but of all of the evil in the world, even stronger is the greatest of everything else:  love.  And I know of love, because here I stand.



Regarding the battle in the mind when fear and jealousy try to control and overtake good with manipulative plans and the desire to subdue another....oh, that the battle is lost, because my eyes are open to a light shining around him, and around her.   Would that we all rather help, than hurt.

I am reminded of the movie, "The Neverending Story" when the horse Artax is stuck in the quicksand in the Swamp of Sadness.  The horse's strong, powerful, and agile legs were useless without the desire.  And that desire sometimes comes from knowing there is something that makes everything worth the effort.

Is getting out of the muck something I can accomplish alone?  No.  I notice that I've an inborn desire to  need arms... but it is God's arms that I feel when there is no one else to be found.  It is His arms that I feel each time my heart remembers that I'm not doing so good inside without Him.  Bitterness is not going to win if I am mindful of Him.  He will not forget me.  When everything and everyone else around me fails, and I become disappointed in a life that may not be working out like I'd hoped and planned, He reminds me it's because He already has a plan. 

He already made me for a specific purpose.  There are specific needs people have that I can meet right now, that I will be enough for. And when I seek to know what it is I am reminded.  I don't go through the motions of an empty "religion", but I live an alternative choice, choosing love, choosing joy, choosing truth, choosing pureness in my work over instant self-gratification.







Oh, I pray to inhale peace and exhale joy, and it comes.  My breath is like snowflakes, and I inhale His Spirit as deeply as I can, and know that He is God.  And I tell Him,

"You are my God, my Healer, and Provider. You touch the hurt places of my heart and bring me wisdom and understanding, forgiveness and grace for my mistakes and purposeful acts I've done that defy good--forgiveness and grace for others that weren't good to me, or couldn't do what they said they would.  You give me calm faith, and immortal hope.  You enter the places in me that human eyes cannot see.  With You in my heart the deep cut feels like only a sting, and simple delights make me soar!"














In a world that knows how to battle with fingernails and swords, I can do battle with kisses and hugs, kindness, and a willingness to listen when the rest of the world can't be bothered.  When I feel anger to retaliate, I can surrender to the love of Christ, and follow His directions to give grace or turn the other cheek.  Love is that incarnate of the Holy Spirit, of the heart and soul of Jesus.  And He can flow through my hands any time I desire Him, when I reach, in that moment.  I quash any ill desire because I do not want to add to the quagmire that this world is becoming.  Do I cling to religion?  No.  I cling to a Holy Ghost that goes through my skin and inside of me, giving to me like I've never been given to before.  This is my testimony.





Here's that he turns toward that person, looks her in the eyes, holds her face in his hands, and gives what she needs:  this husband for his wife who does things hoping it will bring her a smile, working until his back aches to provide for her; this wife that gives to her husband daily, sacrificing her own desires to make his days more pleasant by filling whatever need he has; this parent for the child, sacrificing his or her own desires to care for the wellbeing of their offspring, providing ways to delight them and engage their minds, teaching them even in tiredness; this brother for his sister, leaving his endeavors of the moment to protect her from harm; these friends reminding each other that they are available to help in any circumstances that arise; this God for you and me, daily doing all of these things whether we are open enough to notice or not.  He reminds us that our purpose is not only our delight in His creation, or our own discoveries and observations, but also in our work for others.  That we obtain peace in our appreciation, but obtain love only with Him, with others.  Daily.  That He gave us eyes not just to witness the glory of the morning, or to see the colors of the sunset, but to see that others are smiling or crying.  He gave us ears to hear oceans and rain, and laughter and wails.





These birds get quiet because they are getting warm in the cooler weather.  I prepare my space for change in this new season that God brings to my life.  I know not whether it will storm or snow, or be the mildest winter of my life so far... but everything I need is at my disposal to minister to another in the Swamp of Sadness... because I reach for God and God is the only one strong enough to pull anyone out.  He has pulled me out this morning, already.  Time to start walking.  Where are the faces for my hands?

Square Feet and Rounded Backs

We are to be a ship for passengers that carries others to their destination.  We are to let the sails billow taut in the wind, not proudly...just as they were made to do.  We are to be a home for a given amount of time between a point of origin and a destination.  Sometimes we will praised for our seaworthiness, but most times we are to be, simply, a transport to weary bodies and souls who cannot see past their knees.  Always a companion, always with a purpose.

Sometimes we are meant to move like a thief in the night, quickly, quietly, bringing to safety the precious cargo entrusted lest it fall into the wrong hands.  Sometimes we are a place for rest and celebration.  And sometimes we are sailed without a soul aboard just to see what might break before we carry another load.

Without passengers we are being mended, prepared, varnished, to be sailed in the bay, the pass, and one day in the open sea.

So, what will make us seaworthy?  Are we to become strong enough for a day's excursion?  A week's?  Or a long journey?

We begin with oars, and so our ship, in the beginning does not have many passengers, because the Captain knows it would be too much to bear. Our rudder is placed.  Backs are strengthened with the heave-ho.  The rowers become perfected in unison, each relying on each other's strengths and compensating for each other's weaknesses.  In this I'll tell you of my aching back, so that you can minister to me, and everyone can work harder until I am well.  I will lay it all bare before my brethren.

https://www.reverbnation.com/laurenkaysingersongwriter/song/17541393-lay-it-all-bare





Then our idea of a common purpose becomes the common purpose.  We are of one Movement.  The passionate strength of each pull of the oar is measured, the faces that beg for relief in their efforts, for the higher destination to be reached.  The captain watches and commands, the helmsman steers, the rowers row, and when we are measured ready to harness the mighty wind in our sails we will receive the command to lift them, and our speed will increase.  We will work together, our only concerns being not of ourselves, but rather being the safety of our brother, the safety of the ship, the ship entrusted to the equipped called. 

Mark 1: 16-18
¹⁶ As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁷ “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” ¹⁸ At once they left their nets and followed him.



He says, "Leave your nets.  Leave your ways of doing things.  Leave your own understanding, and submit to the Spirit leading your hearts to greater ways.  Now my strength will enter your backs, the backs that bow into humble curves like the curves of the ship that will cause it to slice through the waters."







We want to pull away from shore in a hurry, but the Captain will not let us go and sink.  In the meantime our purpose is our preparation. It is a small rudder that steers a ship.



Zechariah 2:1-3

2 Then I looked up, and there before me was a man with a measuring line in his hand. ² I asked, “Where are you going?”

He answered me, “To measure Jerusalem, to find out how wide and how long it is.”
³ While the angel who was speaking to me was leaving, another angel came to meet him ⁴ and said to him: “Run, tell that young man, ‘Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of people and animals in it. ⁵ And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will be its glory within.’

Yet Another Retraction

When these fingernails grow and grow they are not good for playing guitar.  Neither are they good for shaking hands, nor cradling faces.  I want to hold you close to me, and tell you a thing or two about the difference between instruments of love and claws.





Because, you see, I thought once clawing was the way to survive.  Imagine me on the precipice of a mountain.  I have just fallen and I cling with everything I have in me, my nailbeds seperating from my fingers because I'm trying so hard.  Really the only way to survive is to reach for a hand and cry out that we aren't invincible, that we aren't immune to or above the need of being approved, tried, and tested...that we aren't islands of self-sufficient men and women created to look out for number one. 

We were born to need.






I could wait to post these pictures.  I could get a manicure because nobody wants to see the ugly.  I could hide the swelling and pretend I am not in pain.  I could angle the calluses out of view and pretend I am not over-working them out of pure drive of a calling greater than skin and bones. 



The work of our hands shows in the wear of our hands.  The knobs that form tell a story of what we care about the most.  The tilt of our chins speak volumes of how many we will include.  The deepness of our eyes is where the love of Something Greater is found, the thermometer of our warmth, the barometer of moisture in our souls, the tell-tale of what we will give out of our purest state.



So when our age finds us and our faces own plenty of crevices able to hold all the jealousy and bitterness in the world, and our hands are beyond repair, and we've nothing left to do but sit and think about yesteryear, we will remember by looking at them that we kept our nails short so as not to hurt the ones whose we held, that we let every ounce of bitterness mix and fall with every milliliter of salty tears...the tears that need to fall because, we know better.  We know better than to think we are better, don't we?  Filing nails are choices, such that iron sharpens iron into curves conducive to love.

After all the callused hands are those that build bridges.

Macaroni Mess

I step on legos and little tips of crayons, milk jug rings, and a halfway hardened piece of macaroni that I thank God is just macaroni after I lift my foot behind me to grab it.  I get up from the couch and find that, somehow, a used dryer sheet is stuck to my behind, and, oh, the chapstick that has been missing all week is right there on the floor... without the cap. 




And while all this is going on there's this guilt... 


...That my boys aren't in baseball, and how on earth will I ever afford three class rings two years apart, and college, blah, blah.... all these little worries that rob me of the joy of what Daniel is dying to tell me right in that moment, or what Brendan is itching to show me, or what Jonah is timidly trying to ask me for.


My little loves, and how can your little mama possibly be enough?

                                           (I'm cheating a little right here, if you can't tell.)

                                      (One of those moments when I'm Miss Popularity.)

What I find, in like a mental "aha" moment, but not so dramatic, is that I don't have to keep up with the Joneses.  All I have to do is ask. 

When two cars blew up on me, months apart, I asked for a new car in tears, and I got one.  I told the boys, "Well, if you want to go to Disney World, then you'd better start praying now, because I don't see us ever affording it, baby."  So they prayed, and a few months later, we went.  Then I wanted a CD and BAM, thousands from Birmingham.  And I wanted an electric guitar and received a facebook message from a friend out of the blue saying, "Hey, I got this guitar...."  And I wanted a tablet to make my shows a little easier, and more well-rounded...  I wanted an amp...  I wanted a fan...  I still want a house, and I have no doubt that it will all work out.  Because that's what He's trying to show me through all of this.  "Ask me.  Just ask me.  I am your Provider, and you belong to me.  You are Mine.  And I'm going to take care of you, and everything is going to be ok.  It's going to be GREAT."




So, my question is, what is it really going to take for me to let go of this belief I have that it's my job to worry about everything I can't control? 


Just like Forrest Gump says about his mama, mine "has a way of explaning things to me in ways I can understand them."  My mama said, "Just take the next right step, baby.  And the next one.  And God will take care of the rest."   



If we sit around imagining the worst we're going to find out all we worried about was just a little macaroni, but there God is, sometimes with what I think might be empty nest syndrome, just waiting on our love, waiting on us to tell Him our next request, maybe play in the same room for a while.  And even though eventually our toys end up like legos and little tips of crayons on the floor of His heaven, they are symbols of our messy lives together. 


True happiness is in the mess, gathered around Him, in what really isn't a mess at all.

Creative Prescription

You've heard that when you are hurting helping someone else eases the ache.  And when something dies, something else is born.  In this we heal.  We've been made in His image, meaning we want to be like Him, like child wants to be like parent.  Just like God, as we understand Him, we make and create.  And what do I make today?  Something with words. 

From all of life's wounds I choose to heal by stringing letters together.  And my faith that God will heal me makes it so.  This is just another calling, that my life does not just belong to me.  

Our society chants "This is MY life."  But it is also belongs to our sons and daughters, to our husbands and wives, to our mothers and fathers, to our brothers and sisters, our friends, and to people we have yet to know. 

And I belong to God.

I've been handed a creative prescription to be a window, and you are welcome to look inside.