Perhaps

"Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created."

-Esther 4:14

Feel

"People will forget what you said,

people will forget what you did,

but people will never forget how you made them feel."

-Maya Angelou

Life is...

...short. Smile big while you still have all of your teeth.

 

Life is...

...not always easy, but...

"There are only two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as though everything is a miracle." 

- attributed to Albert Einstein

 

Life is...

...long; let every moment aim for happiness.

 

Life is...

...a story. Every single one is worth the telling.

 

Life is...

...waking up an hour early to live an hour more.

And Now...

A shiny new year stands before us,
full of what-ifs and maybes, hellos and open doors.

The old year may have been exquisitely beautiful.
It may have been painful or frustrating or full of failure.

Today is a fresh chance to leave the bad in the past,
stepping into a new promise.

A promise to forgive ourselves for what we didn't accomplish,
to forget what was done to us, to move beyond our doubts,
to invite freedom and grace and gratitude to walk beside us each day.

To carry the beauty, and allow the pain to forge and refine.

Its a brand new horizon.

Go forward, and with me, embrace grace.

Today...

No matter where you are, or who you are with (or not with)... 

I wish you full hearts

and laughter,

bone-deep contentment

and hope for a tomorrow better than today.

 Happy Thanksgiving!

On Good Friday

God, who needs nothing, loves into existence

wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.

He creates the universe, already foreseeing

– or should we say “seeing”? there are no tenses in God –

the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross,

the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake,

the nails driven through the mesial nerves,

the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops,

the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time,

for breath’s sake, hitched up.

If I may dare the biological image,

God is a “host” who deliberately creates His own parasites;

causes us to be that we may exploit and “take advantage of” Him.

Herein is love.

This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.

-C.S. Lewis

Today we mark and remember the bleakest moment in the Gospel story. Those of us familiar with the story of the Bible have the benefit of knowing that this catastrophe is leading up to the triumph of the Resurrection. But imagine how the Jesus followers of the time must have felt. The world as they knew it, along with their new found faith, was being torn, quite literally, apart. 

I'm glad that I was spared those terrifying moments and days, but how great would it have been to be there come Sunday morning!

Forward

So much of this past year has been hard, uncertain, left unfinished. Dreams yet to be fulfilled, goals put off for yet another year, visions of peace marred by the incursions of sadness, anxiety, frustration. I found myself this past week, as I lay on the couch fighting a fever that lasted for days, wishing I could have just one more month to get everything in order before the New Year started. As if the turning of a digit cared one whit for my to-do list.

I wanted to feel closure, accomplishment, a happy resolution to 2013.

Then I read this post on Ann Voskamp's blog (go ahead, click the link and go read it, I'll wait right here).

"How in the world do you step hopeful into the next year when you tripped messy through the last year? How do you stand brave with all the smiling rest and ring in the new year when the old year still feels a bit like a millstone around the neck? What if everyone else is making New Year’s resolutions and you just want New You solutions?"

And so, I let it all go. All of it.
I breathe, long and slow and deep, and with the exhale,
all the things that I've been holding over my own head,
they fly free into the atmosphere.

I'm starting fresh today, with a clean slate, asking with an open heart,
"what do You, who holds the world, hold for me this year?"

"And there’s the utter release of being more grateful for what is than feeling guilty for what isn’t — The moving forward always happening in the relief that all the guilt is covered by His grace."

A Happy, Fresh, Clean-Slate New Year to you all!

First

"Eternal Father of my soul,

let my first thought today be of You,

let my first impulse be to worship You,

let my first speech be Your name,

let my first action be to kneel before You in prayer...

Yet let me not, when this morning prayer is said,

think my worship ended

and spend the day in forgetfulness of You."

- John Bailie

(taken from A Diary of Private Prayer)

Ahead

"There are far better things ahead 

than any we leave behind."

- C.S. Lewis

Photos taken on our end of Summer beach trip, while visiting Fort Clatsop.

P.S. I chose my linen and threads for the Ever Blessed Stitch-Along...

Under Pressure

"When we long for life without difficulties,

remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds

and diamonds are made under pressure."

-Peter Marshall

Magic

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you 

because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. 

Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”

- Roald Dahl

Snag this image and use it for your desktop wallpaper if you'd like. I made it just for you.

Invest

“The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. 

If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. 

Your life will be impoverished. 

But if you invest in beauty,

it will remain with you all the days of your life.”

- Frank Lloyd Wright

Right on Time

"Your journey has molded you for your greater good, 

and it was exactly what it needed to be. 

Don't think that you've lost time. 

It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now. 

And now is right on time."  

- Asha Tyson

October

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all. 

The crows above the forest call;

To-morrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow,

Make the day seem to us less brief. 

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know;

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away;

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst. 

Slow, slow!

For the grapes' sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes' sake along the wall.

By Robert Frost

Hope Tree

"Lord save us all from... 

a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms."

- Mark Twain

Courage

Wallpaper from me to you... Click, copy, and enjoy!