God-Stories: Ukraine Bound

Hello there, friends, fellow sojourners, and the casually curious.

Ever notice how quickly the wind changes direction? How suddenly, something you thought you were moving towards turns out to be something behind you, and instead, you are caught up with a different destination in sight?

Early last semester, I was presented with a heart’s-desire dream, as my dearly beloved crew of fellow-Christ seekers at Missouri State University’s Chi Alpha geared up to launch our assembly of domestic and international missions trips. One of our four international summer trips was a pioneer missions trip to Europe, and I was asked to help co-lead this. Our original destination was set towards Wales, but through a variety of circumstances, our journey has taken a few new turns. But plot twists don’t surprise the Author of the narrative. The testimony of what came next is an only-God story. I’d love to encourage you by sharing the ways we are seeing God work, and invite you to be a part.

Part way through Spring semester, we unexpectedly found our small band of fiercely devoted college students as a missions team without a place to serve. As as last resort, I was able to meet with our national missions director, who put us in contact with 4 close missionary contacts of his, located all over Europe. Within 24 hours, we had an enthusiastic response from missionaries in Ukraine. As the details unfolded, we discovered they just had a team drop the very timeframe of our original trip dates. Not only were they so eager and willing to bring us into their work in Ukraine, but they already had every detail lined up for us. God could not have orchestrated this opportunity more perfectly.

When we will arrive in Ukraine, our first assignment will be serving Ukrainian college students for a week-long training camp with the international version of Chi Alpha Campus Ministries (Students for Christ). Here, the students will be learning about discipleship, how to lead small group Bible studies for their peers, and be equipped to share the gospel on their campuses! We will get to learn with them, help teach lesson segments, and come along side the directors of this camp to help assist them in speaking to the young people of Ukraine with a heart for the Lord. Europe broadly has been very closed off to to the Gospel, so the fact that we get to meet and work with Ukrainian brothers and sisters in Christ to encourage and equip them is an amazing door into what God is doing. Secondly, will also have the opportunity to go to a kids camp for 600 orphans and special needs kids. This is a camp run by the Ukrainian government, but they have given the directors amazing favor, and we will get to teach about Jesus and the Bible as a means of giving the kids moral lessons. Some of the translators we will be working with even attended these camps as children, and are now serving the Lord in their local churches. These children are considered outcasts and cast offs, so we get to spend time intentionally showing them the love, care, and attention. We will do this through skits, crafts, teaching activities, going on beach-side adventures, and much more!

The waves of call and opportunity are still churning, and all of us on the team still have things to work towards to make this possible. So far, I have $1,800 committed towards my trip, and have $900 more to raise before we leave June 17. God has done amazing things so far, but I would be wrong not to recognize the continued need to still lean on others. Would you be willing to join me, and help make this a reality? If you so feel it impressed on your heart, you can give here: https://msuchialpha.wufoo.com/forms/m1agtd2n0jx7smb/. Every little bit truly adds up, but even if all you can give is prayer, this is such a powerful gift. If you could join the efforts of myself and this team, either through your giving or through prayers, I would be so grateful.

One moment, we were a small group of college students with plans to go to one european country for a few weeks, then we were a team without a location. And then, God guided us to new a place with a real need that had just opened up. On this new journey, would you care to journey on with me? I’d love to know if you would join me, and I can’t wait to see what destined opportunities the Lord draws other stories into the tapestry of His grand narrative!

Look Closer

What if books could read us back?

Staring from serifed eyes of black.

What if, myself, their gaze could see,
Feeling, thinking, who is She?
My heart too, they would peer inside,

While into other figure’s minds I pry.

Settled in transient omniscience,

My soul is without defense
As Siren script sings sweet to me
Lulling me, stay, pleasingly,
And take pause between the tales and truth,
To hear the joy of undoings, and sorrows of youth.
Unseen faces will guide my thoughts
To unknown places, I’m called to cross.
Heightened pulse, quiet turn,
How else to uncover these things not learned?
Beside the hearth, I sit content,
Ink Muses read my face now bent.
Caught by voices that could touch my heart,
Or riffle through questions of goodness and art.
All the while the song goes on,
Musings from me are withdrawn,
And while I skim, and dive, and sift,
Through my soul’s pages, other eyes rift.
Sirens seem to quell my cares,
And intrigue shades the world’s affairs.
Book-cover doors bind my mind’s inward gaze,
Mirrors flicker with each penned phrase.
Could voices unspoken now read mine,
They know, like Argos, what they would find.

Seek me out and find me lacking, or
Blithely equipped for sharp pens attacking.
The story surrounds, calling stories within.
Measure how endings could ever begin!
By the song I’m drawn to traverse this word,
But I may forget myself before I’ve returned.

By these echoed melodies, hear it, and read:
What grows within this sweetly sung creed?

My Far Corner

{Before}

Warm wardrobe wood will greet me, shyly,
To send me outstretched thoughts of welcome,
But through this unfamiliar mosaic tile,
I shall hardly feel it. I too am at a distance.

The fractured apricot colors may hold each other,
Like the warming smile that would trace dimpled cheeks,
The veins of silver grey stretch outward, to catch
Thoughts held for me in the gleam of opened doors.

But perhaps it cannot send them, across this tender space,
Not yet. Though I may see the tremor of hopeful fingers,
The delicate caress of sunlight is brushed by me aside,
Caught instead beside my feet, in the mosaic web below.

{Between}

Butterfly daughters settle on the soft orange armchair,
Their threaded wings stitching familiar strands of memory
Here, surrounding me and again I am just a girl, beloved.
That ancient wood pillar (unspoken legacy) stands beside,
Guarding our peace in the forest of living yesterdays.

These well-worn wings openly receive me
As I settle into strengthened warmth of the noon sky.
Maternal touch surrounds me, comforts me
Where my tiny, encased cares can spread wide.
I drink it in, between deepened exhales, contented.

I dive below the flowing froth of knobby knits,
The turquoise cadence splashing me with tassels.
The woven waterway easily flows over my shoulders
And into my lap. Tufts escape my fingers, and I laugh.
The embrace refreshes me, and strengthens my fluttering heart.

{Behind}

Delicate dignity alighted from the four corners of my poster bed,
A castle for my cares, with daylight, no longer brushing past.
Its white fingers caught me from the neighboring desk, a release
From my spinner’s wheel of words, where tranquility’s hand
Carried me onward. Straw can still glint like gold in slumber.

A tapestry of beaded bronze and blue hung beside me,
A wellspring of gently swirling color that fell deep,
Deep, into the dreams of memories from lives I never lived.
It dripped below starlight to sing things unknowable behind me,
Following my pathways with quiet, guiding steps.

My chocolate sheets let me unwrap my moments,
And I savor the simple sweetness of their warmth,
A smooth taste lingers as rest melts deeply,
And I forget to remember. I am unwound until
The sun rises to make all things known again.

The Age of Dreamers

What do you want to be?

A fireman. Mommy. The President.

Most kiddos have some idea of what they want to become when they "grow up." (Still a somewhat flighty phrase in my book as I approach year twenty.) I too had my list of things I wanted to be and do, but they weren't all... well, here. That is to say, they weren't all a part of this century.

My dreams, rather than exclusively pulling me toward the future, often ran backwards into the corridors of the past. I imagined what my life might look like if I had been born hundreds of years earlier.

I pictured myself navigating the questions of the American Revolution. Would I be a fiery patriot, or would I sip my tea in silence? Would I lose friends and make enemies, or ride out the waves in placid disengagement for as long as possible?

I thought about the thrill of the Great Depression (yes, I'm not kidding), having to make do or do without. My whole family and I would be thrown into the exciting challenge of canning food, sewing clothes and bed sheets, maybe even raising chickens. I wanted to live in Kit Kittredge's attic bedroom, complete with a typewriter for stories and small window to spy on the happenings of the neighborhood below.

(Confession: Once we had a massive tornado warning in Springfield, Missouri. While everyone rushed around upstairs, I sat by myself in the basement crawlspace for a few moments, excitedly hoping that the tornado would destroy our house. It would be such fun to walk through town and make a new life with nothing but the shoes on our feet. A real adventure! Thankfully, nothing happened to our house, and my imagination found other outlets.)

Sometimes I traveled much further back into the rich ages of Medieval lore. A daughter of a lesser Lord, I would walk the length of our castle, brushing my hands across our family tapestries that hung to muffle the chilling damp of the stone corridors. I would bend over my books, learning Latin, French, and history. Riding my horse on the outskirts of the growing village nearby, sometimes I would spy the swineherds children frolicking and laughing all the day long, without a care in the world. Often I would envy them, only to return home with self-conscious pain. Their life would not always be easy. It wouldn't even be much longer until they would have to join in the hard labor of their parents. My lot was to study hard while I was young, so that I could serve well in coming years.

Then there was the dream of life in the 1800's, probably the one I visited the most often as my sister Aanna and I would don our prairie girl dresses to ride our family couch-turned-covered-wagon, or pick dandelions in the back yard. In that life, I wanted to go west, to find the open spaces where I belonged. I would travel to a little town with nothing but a few pieces of luggage, and there I would become a school teacher, perhaps even marry the bachelor newspaper editor. Between teaching with chalk-dusted fingers, ambling walks through prairie valleys, and a sisterly quilters circle of wise mothers and young friends, my life would be full of contentment, measured with the rhythm of steady unpredictability on that new frontier.

***

Can I tell you a secret? This last dream tickles me so much, because it's true. Today, I feel as if I am living a modern variation of the life I once carried in my ten-year-old head. Though I never would have planned to come back to the place where I grew up, here I am living in the Midwest once again. This time, I'm nestled between green pasture fields and winding gravel roadways. I have the privilege of tutoring three remarkable souls, and respond to "Miss Rebekkah". Wagging-dog-tails follow me when I walk to the edge of the property to mail letters to distant friends. Going into town is a semi-weekly occasion. I live here with an amazing family who show me daily the multi-faceted miracle of individual lives seeking to show Christ's likeness, while drawing that same likeness out of others. This little dream I once held surprised me by showing its face again. I had forgotten all about this childhood dream, and still, I love it.

Perhaps certain childhood dreams are never truly cast aside when we finally "grow up." Maybe they are always tied to a tender place inside of us where they have taken root, if not to come true, then at least to shape who we are and what we grow to become. I am reminded again how intimately God cares, how he sees all. Perhaps He hearkens to these scarcely-breathed prayers we don't even know we carry, and treasures them.

Only God knows, but I wonder if there may be other past dreams I will meet again. Maybe I can hope that castles and village cobblestones will be another distant imagining brought near for re-introductions. My Lord's mastery of the future fills me with such hope! Let it bring you hope too. There are other sleeping dreams that we may still have the surprise of looking forward to, though these all pale beside the dream of being reunited with Christ who came for us. Then, we will finally be in the place where we were made to belong. This is the place of his unaltered, uninterrupted, never-ending presence. This is the greatest dream of all.

Fainthearted Slumber

Sleep is a wonder.

As a child, it's viewed as an unwelcome interruption that hushes pretends and half-coordinated grand schemes. Occasionally (or, well... more regularly) protests explode before a toddler surrenders themselves to rest. Those hot, exhausted tears on flaming cheeks and shrieks of misery are blinding. All wonder, all joy, it is coming to an end!

But eventually, Rest takes a small fingered hand, dries the tears, and kisses sleep onto those reddened eyes. Mother's caress, Father's embrace, becomes a haven. Their arms no longer hamper little wishes. They are a harbor for journeys familiar as night, and as new as the morning.

Sleep is so secure, so trusting.

Now we are older, but sleep can still carry a touch of the abstract. Sometimes sleep is as difficult to appreciate or attain for me as it was for the little Rebekkah who protested against nap time with tears that betrayed this was exactly what my exhausted toddler body needed. For myself and my peers, sleep can still carry associations of defiance. There is the conscious effort to push away drooping lids to experience and accomplish more, more! We try to make more time by stretching it out... futilely. Or we try to make time disappear by quickly sailing through unconscious night the vessel of deep rest. But instead of arriving on the longed-for shores of the morning, we become painfully aware of our fitful wrestling against sleep beckoned that will not come.

My mind doesn't always catch the signal from my worn-out limbs. As the fog of calculated cognition dissipates, my thoughts crystallize into pointed diamonds that prick my tired body. They descend like slivers of light from the yawning expanse of darkness to hold my head hostage. Though ready to cross over, my thoughts flit into unexplored burrows, keeping me bound with scintillating jabs of incessant distraction. I cannot cross over yet. Like calculated counter attacks to my tired limbs, thoughts begin to descend, cutting tangents into the draped sky to lengthen it's dark expanse. I am kept still, not yet entering into the land of slumbering release.

Nights like these are unwelcome, but they help me journal more readily. Sleep is a treasure.
How blessed we are in the confounding truth that strength is given through weakness. So much stock is set in activity achieving, and, yet all this is impossible without the antithetical posture of sleep - to rest and be. In the Sabbath lies our strength.

This past Thursday I found myself in Nashville, TN to see my sister and some wonderful friends perform at the Grand Ole Opry. Music lingered in my memory as the clock struck midnight, but with the show over, it was time to make the trek home with my sister and our friend. For an hour the two of us just talked on the porch steps while my sister slept. Against a symphony of crickets in the dark, the door opened to bring us inside so she could gather her things for her flight home at dawn. By 2:30am we were on the way to the airport. She and I said our goodbyes, the first of many that following day. I'm saddened that I won't see her as often now, but that actually makes the anticipation of heaven so much sweeter. Goodbyes won't be a part of the common tongue there.

Shane Salzwedel

As I drove back to the house where my sister and our other friends were already sleeping, the world began to change. At first, it was just a slight thing. A wisp of white hung low over a tree top. Then, wisps drew deeper breaths and became clouds, hanging like a dust sheets over invisible pieces of furniture above the road. Lights began to smear in the distance. The thin sheets of cloud turned into curtains and began to coagulate, thickening, spreading. Mass, color, light, and form disassembled themselves from each other. Solids became permeable as all the world was smudged. It was a dream world, but was I awake or sleeping? I thought of giant fingers messily holding the sphere of time I now passed through. A handful of headlights probed the dark, but could only see so far past the foggy fingerprints, not nearly far enough to frame this evanescent world and discover where it belonged.

John Bainbridge

It was 4am when I found myself back at the house. I wanted to hang there, suspended between the morning and night, between waking and sleeping. Would it be possible to rest there in the space of the night? To think and pray and wonder in solace until the dawn? I grabbed my knitted blanket and tiptoed past those slumbering and onto the front porch. Logic was fleeting in this odd hour as I curled up by myself on the wooden bench and faced the road.

I paused to rest my head on the arm rail and watch the speeding cars go by. Thoughts skated lazily as I inhaled the thinning night air. No sharpened star dust to pierce me awake tonight. Across the way, roosters began to crow, sunrise still an hour away. It might have been an age. Was this the morning? Was this still the night? Perhaps I choose to stay and find out. Perhaps I wanted to preserve this incomprehensible state of waking. Perhaps, like a dream, I have forgotten why I did it at all. Thoughts, like dreams, don't make sense that late, or that early. Still, they come. Why does the cock crow when there is still no sign of morning? Why do cars insist on rushing by in the dead of foggy night? Why do I choose to sit here and not to go to bed? It was all a bit surreal sitting on that porch until 5am while the house slept, just me and the neighbor's roosters. Yet, while it happened, it's hard to remember why. It's almost as if I dreamed while waking.

Summer Pools and Silver Screens

It's July, and the Midwest summer heat is smothered everywhere like butter. Here in Missouri, the past two months have been characteristically humid in the most uncharacteristic of ways: rain. Buckets and buckets of it. The aftermath looks like trolls have come out of hiding to angrily chomp away at the roads. ("Stress-eating", as I heard it hilariously put.) I absolutely love the rain, especially when it means I can slip into another good book, or enjoy ambling walks through unending, lush green grass. While sunny skies are deciding to make a more regular appearance, I'm still hanging onto the hope that neither of these little delights will disappear for me anytime soon.

Whatever the weather, summer is a time for waterside adventures, clinking iced beverages, and (hopefully) space to kick up your feet or plot some fantastic new venture. Though I have had some serendipitous summer travel, adventures often come in smaller packages. Like diving into a hundred pages of a new book in an afternoon, or crowding to see the newest blockbuster (or, ahem, newest Redbox addition). 

In the midst of all these adventures, I find myself on the edge of something much further away. Each time I pick up a book or maybe settle in for a show, I'm not just here in the physical space of Missouri. I am on the edge of a pool far away, in a wood very different than the one outside my window. There is an enticing call of other worlds that has echoed once before. It beckons me to enter, just like it did to two children who peered over the edge. What could be in there? What might we find? 

This pool I sit at in my thoughts belongs to the Wood between the Worlds, the land C.S. Lewis introduced as the first doorway into Narnia on the dawn of the world's creation. Polly and Digory stumbled upon this place of pools and worlds through the magic rings of a manipulative uncle. They soon discovered that their yellow rings would take them into the Wood suspended between universes, while the green rings would turn each pool into a portal and allow them to enter into another world.

Like Digory and Polly, I become transported to another place with each story I enter into. Even if I just think to slip in for a cooling respite, the stories are designed to take me somewhere.

Each one a new possibility: Adventure, mystery, perhaps even danger. 

The truth is, I can't really know what I will find until I get there. What these children found beyond their pool was the shattered civilization Charn. Magnificent, eerily compelling, and wasting into decay.  A large red sun bathed the landscape in the waning light of death and disaster. There were signs that unspeakable things could be lingering here, but a question moved them further into the world to discover what happened here, and what story this place would tell.

When you submerge yourself in a world, that world begins to soak through and affect your interaction with it. The two children come upon a great banquet table filled with people frozen in dramatic expressions of nobility, grief, and malice, each figure adorned in the most sumptuous of fabrics and jewels. This place was filled with captivating scenes, and awe-inducing displays. Digory began to forget he was in a place that was sick. He simply wanted to go further in. 

In another part of the room, the children discovered a table with a bell bearing an ominous description.

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger

Strike the bell and bide the danger

Or wonder, till it drives you mad

What would have followed if you had

Despite Polly's pleas to leave, Digory had remained in this place long enough to let all he saw capture his imagination. After all, horror of horrors, what kind of state would they be in if they left now, and never discovered what would have happened if they stayed? Yet preserving wholeness is not always compatible with satisfying intrigue. With a ring of the bell, something awoke. Like the choice to press further into a tale and suspend our own disbelief, the boy struck a chord that shifted the children's positions from observers to participants. Their postures of self-distancing were suspended, and the world opened wide so they could fully enter in, unaware that this act granted permission for their surroundings to access them as well.

Jadis, the great queen, had awakened.

Those who know the story of The Magician's Nephew remember that the children, realizing the evil they had stirred with this woman, try to run. Despite their attempts to flee, they inadvertently draw the queen back to London where she wreacks absolute havoc. Even as they attempt to bring her back to her decayed world, everyone touching the children on that London street find themselves in a new, uncreated world, where the whole party watches a Lion's song form the land of Narnia. The weakened queen tries to flee, only to bide her time in hiding until she can emerge as the White Witch. Things are ultimately set right as Narnia grows deeper roots, but restoration takes much more time than the choice to let things remain unbroken.

We enter worlds of other imaginings all the time, be it through a pool of the silver screen or book cover doorways. I still love to look for echoes of Aslan's call when I enter any of these. "Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters." I can't really know what I will discover until I'm there, until I've seen some of it, but we all carry the rings to access and exit in our pockets. I can always put on my yellow and green ring, and choose to come out. Despite the otherworldly imaginings of grandeur, riddles of plot, or display of compelling emotions, undesirable things can begin to soak in and affect my feelings and perhaps even influence action. I too can bring things back with me that threaten to wreck an internal world and raise itself up as ruler in my thought life. Yes, I have unwittingly let Jadises enter into my head space when I was not equipped to deal with them. 

What is even more unsettling than access is that, while the effect can be more than we desired, the act is not always unwillingly done. Digory admitted he knew what he was doing, despite his pretend of being enchanted.

Though I am a part of this world called Earth, I belong to another. The Jadises I entertain don't just affect me, nor even the world outside my mind. I am an ambassador for another Narnia, a heavenly kingdom. When the voice of the Holy Spirit urges me not to ring the bell of suspended disbelief, but to slip on my ring and leave, I can trust that there may be danger here that I am not able to ward off. If I give breath to those foreign figures of thought, they can gain strength to build unseen kingdoms and suppress generations seeking to know the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of God.

While I am entering into summer stories, I hope to take delight, look, explore, and glean. Still, I would be wise to remember the rings I carry. The choice to remove myself from where unwelcome things may stir is still within my grasp. Eyes are portals (like pools) to my soul. The things I invite in are not always easily contained by end credits or epilogues.

Into the Woods (and Back Again)

Through these last few months of school, my brain has been full of random names, books, points, and counterpoints for my written final exams in Literature. With the academic year at last drawn to a close, I can give my brewing blog-thoughts space to breathe.

Ahhh....

Back in February, when coats were near and icicles sometimes hung from rock ledges, I found myself spending a few days at Rivendell, the Chole's beautiful prayer-retreat home and vacation space nestled into the Branson hills. Truly a place of rest, wisdom, and restorative beauty.

One clear morning, I took a hike to explore the backyard woods leading down to the Ozark lake. At the time, my recent move back to Missouri, the place where I spent my childhood, was still fresh. Emotionally, I was so thrilled for the opportunity God had given me (I still am). Mentally, I knew I might easily let things get cluttered. I'm acutely aware of my lingering tendency to grasp after too many goals and pathways for improvement. Highlighting everything to focus on stretches me too thin and makes my pages bleed.

Without a doubt, God had led me here. The peace was so palpable. He needed to be the one guiding my every step. My temporal perspective is so dim in comparison with eternity. Only He can guide me where to plant the seed, nurture the soil, or let the fields rest for profitable and sustainable harvest. Simultaneous investment everywhere will only make me bankrupt. This is the hard lesson learned (or being learned) by the girl who spent her sophomore year chasing straight A's in 8 classes on the fumes of mono and came home from school in tears because her body and energy wouldn't let her do what logically should be "normal". I can laugh about it now... kind of.

As I walked through the woods, passing the prayer benches and slabs of stone with chiseled scriptures, I asked Jesus to show me what His heart was for me in this season. He knows every 'has been', 'right now', and 'will be' so much better than I do... And that's when I came upon a flowing brook that ran through the center of the woods.

This. This was a picture of it. In the middle of my questions.

Jesus, knowing me better than even I know myself, treated my story-loving soul to the gift of metaphor.

Here, before my feet, the water bubbled and laughed as it passed from one level of earth to another, journeying ever closer to the vast body of water below. This was a picture of the work Christ had in store for me. A bubbling time of transition...

My Savior--Living Water--has joined my life to his through the miracle of the cross. Blood sanctified, the old made new, baptized. As gravity pulls this slight stream down towards greater things, the Holy Spirit pulls me on toward the Presence I cannot comprehend, but know I am a part of, know I am made for. This Presence of the Holy calls on me as belonging to itself, and the God of the universe grants me communion with His divine purposes. Grace is an equipping force, a pulse that guides me like the current. The Holy Spirit, that most precious teacher and guide, continues the promise of Emanuel, God with us. Here, It leads me, draws me on towards home, which is the very presence of the Father.

Through the seasons of life, I travel across levels. Some have felt stagnant, others torrential. Though the stream sometimes does not recognize its own movement, the Spirit, like gravity, constantly works to pull it onwards. Unseen does not mean non-existent. Through challenge and celebration alike, the Spirit has been drawing me further on. This moment in February was like that transition from one ledge to another, that bubbling expectation so full of life and childlike laughter, leading me onto a new plane of living.

There, too, I saw a sifting. I felt my Father's heart telling me his desire to pull away the dead leaves and things that I let weigh me down. I must find my source always in the wellspring of life that is Christ. I must allow myself to be cut into, re-directed, even detained while that pull of the Spirit separates the debris that would muddy my soul. I must look always after my Father's heart, and seek to soak myself in His presence so I can water the thirsty earth with His Gospel. He is still at work in me. Faithful, just as He has always been. My domain as daughter is a un-retracted invitation into a deeper knowledge of the Holy, a greater nearness, and an increased surrendering of myself.

With cool, refreshed steps I move on, still joyously taking in the overflow of all He has for me here. The beauty of this faith is that I can co-labor with Christ while He equips me for things beyond my own strength. This keeps me near. This pulls me deeper into the waves of my Father's eternal purposes. Even here, in the everyday. Where I type in the Ozarks and streams happen to cut through forests and my shoes still get muddy.

Winter is now gone, summer is here. (Though it still feels like a mosaic spring. I really do love how changeable Missouri weather is. Shorts, rain jackets, and sweaters have to be kept on hand at all times. Never a dull moment with that kind of delightful changeability!) Things blossom, and move forward, and bubble over again.

In truth, it is always time to be listening and attentive to that divine pull, but set apart spaces are equally important. Seeking my Father's heart, like anything worth having in life, is something that must be cultivated and protected. As this little stream of mine finds itself in the opening expanse of freer months, it is time to listen again.

Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

This is my story, this is my song...