The Long Conversation

Every blog has a song inside it. Today a love song because our Father so deeply loves us. Click and loop to hear it while you read. 🙂 <

I have pulled up a chair, poured a hot cup, I've had a cleaning cry when I needed to, I've poured it all out and I've kept it all in and found that it's ok either way. I've stayed as long as I've liked, and I've come back when I may because there is time--my lifetime going on forever. The conversation that will never end has been a midnight discourse, a pondering parley, it's been a desperate question with a year's long answer, an immovable opinion remedied with His single word. You're invited into the dialogue, but I've found it is prudent to listen awhile too--listen a lifetime.

I've peered into the Great Story to see some of the first starters like, "Let there be light!" and "Be fruitful and multiply". I've heard the first words of young Jesus saying, "Didn't you know I would be about my Father's business?" Year after year, page after page, His Word permeates the reader, overflowing one's life, bringing eyes and ears alive to Him. It leaps off the page to meet me here in room, in my car, in my world. The conversation has begun, and it will never end, but one must take one's place and join in.

All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved...Romans 10:13

I've tossed silly, stormy questions that He hung straight up to dry. I've volleyed words only to run from His replies, blocking them out, pretending I didn't hear. I've marched into His office, and I've cowered behind the curtain unsure if I had His audience, if I had been heard. I've written Him books and books full of feelings, told Him my dreams and listened to His for me. I've heard that He traces the lines of every word, following along and I've known Him to break right in. He's rang bells to seize a moment with me, He's sent a song to share in my thoughts as I pray. And it's a conversation with no end. You can join in too. Most of you already have.

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.....Isaiah 1:18

It started for me with a kneeling-prayer on my dad and mom's dining room floor, an admission, a repentance, a glancing back at a self-driven life to say goodbye and start anew, start the conversation that has gone on until now and will go on forever.

Sometimes I step back from the dialogue in ugly unbelief while He moves near. I may falter in my speech while He's finessed a forest for me to find a word in, to feed my ears and eyes His feelings for me and the way forward. I may stutter. I will stammer only to feel the wind and find the sky has coalesced into meaning and direction. I find He has carved a cloud into holy speech, a picture of His written Word. And this conversation will go on and on. If you don't yet know, He wants to talk to you too...but I bet you know.

There have been love notes galore that remind me, "For God so loved the world", and books sent to shake me out of my stupors and into discipline and correction. His words have come by way of men and women speaking His heart's utterance for me.

Do not neglect the spiritual gift that is in you, which was given to you when the prophets spoke and the elders laid their hands on you. 1Timothy 4:14)

I've heard it through signs on the highway, signs in the sky, from stones on the ground, from the mouths of children, the eyes of animals and in any way He chooses to reveal His mind and echo His timeless nature and Word. I posture myself to hear with belief. I exhort myself to listen and join the conversation with all of my heart as His whole world opens to form His-voice-to-see as it did in the beginning.

For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:19-20

The long conversation starts here:

What I Didn't Do

Looking in the mirror at the curling locks that reach around and down the front of my shirt.  It was what I didn't do that created this moment for me.  It's been awhile and I don't even know why.  The bun or the braid or the pony tail lengthens and I have done nothing about it. And those strands of silver wisping lighter than the black, here they come and I let them show. It's what I didn't do that allows them their time and maybe I look all of my 55 these days because of what I didn't do.

If I didn't worry...  if I didn't ...what then?  It would take time, but something would grow from that looking away...that ignoring. Like the long curls cascading down the back a slow change would occur from what I didn't do... if I didn't worry, if I didn't.

And it has begun; the slow, the easy, the steady change, the turning of the back to the prodding problem, to the frightful future. To the bad news I turn my back and do nothing...Instead of acting, I just "trust fall" again and again. To the heavy thoughts of days ahead alone, of getting older and when things go wrong, of sickness and such silly things I do not sink into concern. I do not feed the frenzy that comes to me poking, asking, threatening to invade my head and my heart.

Once the frenzy came shouting at me and I pulled up a chair to listen awhile. What if "this"? What if "that"? It shouted. I went for a walk with my friend. 'Round and 'round on the road winding between tombstones and big old trees we walked shuffling a gathering of Canadians into the graves.

I told her what I'd heard and she said, "Rhonda....the Lord! The Lord is already there at the end of each concern and He will take care of you." Sometimes I need a friend to help me in what I shouldn't do. I shouldn't worry. And if I don't something new will grow. It will. And I will look different. I will talk different. A change will come because of what I didn't do.

Little Worm

Who is this little worm, but a mite on my windshield?  Wiggling about, such a phenomenon. So small, not more than half a centimeter, but charged with the vigor of an athlete.  I thought his tummy must be full of food to have such energy-- and how did he light upon my windshield?  Had he been spinning a long strand of web too?

I had a trunk full of groceries.  I bought a little extra this time in case I can’t go back soon.  The little worm shrugged at me with a blushing of pink all about.  He has no care over powerful monopolies of food and such things. He needs no warehouse of goods to sustain him. He feeds in the open air as I plopped my bulk groceries down into a large cart. Alone in the warehouse full of people, no one bothered to look much at the other, all awkward behind masks.  He feeds outside of the system I’m in, I mused.   He does not envy me nor beg to come in.  What more could he need? Little worm, how I'd like to enter yours.

I, inside my car, trying to enjoy a moment beside a lovely lake, but concerned about the cottage cheese and meat in my cooler and concerned that I find a bathroom in due time. I’m caught up in a system chosen for me before I was.  Need it always be? 

Little worm, may I come into your way?  Leave the extra canned goods behind and wander in the ease of your dwellings?  The lake was mine for only a few moments, but it is yours your whole life through, though beautifully short and sweet.  We try much harder than you to extend ours.

"Get out of the car, get out of the race for the normal and safe", I say to myself. Let the world go on fading and the King take His place.  What am I saying?  Do I even yet know?   I’m only “considering the lilies” and a promise I hold.

Mathew 6: 25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes…….

 

 

Adams Rd.

I saw a parcel of land for sale for a solid sum. In the photo advertising, a large oak tree stood next to a shabby white house with ivy growing up the trunk.  I think I would give the whole sum for one oak tree if my bank account obliged.  Massive limb-arms made of strength and integrity and wood; great limbs stretch horizontal far.  And when any oak hangs its massive limbs low, like the giant arms of my father, for a daughter or a son of Adam to climb up, a transaction is made that can never be revoked. 

No one has ever forgotten climbing about on an oak limb, nor the feeling of bark against the skin; legs dangling over the earth, one would go even higher--knees pressed into the ridges struggling for ascent, blood rushing under the skin, and a breeze igniting a sense of losing the bonds of the earth. 

Adams Road, Ozark. 

 

Backdrop of the Battlefield

An old held-back post, or note to self in the blog files.  I must have been feeling the battle. 
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 Your life is not about any of this, Rhonda Michelle.  All of this only creates the backdrop to the battlefield for your soul and for the souls of others.  Your mortgage, the leak in your radiator, your family gatherings, your bank account, Christmas coming, your home, land, your debt, your cars and what is or isn't in your refrigerator are not what they may seem to be.  These are not just your life on a Wed. in 2014. They are only the backdrop to your real life.

Jesus prayed for you like this, ⁵ My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.   We are meant to be here, but we need this prayer of Jesus to tread here because it is more than it seems. 
  

Jesus, our glorious man, is not recorded to have concerned Himself much with my list of things in above paragraph, as IF these were not the most important things in life?! What of that!?  If He didn't then why do I?  

  His hike into the wilderness was an epic battle with the devil during a 40 day fast.  All my hikes are to see beauty and gain strength. Most of my fasts are because I feel chubby. And when I kayak across the lake it is to feel something, see something and enjoy myself. But in 2014 I'm seeing them all in a different way; they are more.  All is more.

When Jesus skimmed the waters of the lake,  it was with eternal purposes in his heart.  Maybe the beauty of the sun glistening off of the water that day, and maybe there were fresh smells, the feel of the water between His fingers, the breeze and gentle waves making soft sounds against the boat. But He was going to command demons and set a chained man free. (Mark 5) He had the same sort of backdrop as me, but lived out of another dimension.  I want His dimension.

With  purpose He crossed from life over to death, and to life again to set many more free.  And He is pulling back the backdrop of my life so I can live like this glorious God-man.

A Farm Forum

A farm forum, ready to convene just for me.  A choir of frogs sing praise from a small pond out back in the middle of February.  They pass their invitation to join the preliminaries of song; their funny prelude to the discussion-- the discovery. 

 A surging within the forum of fields and yards tucked round with fences opens a morning wide.  A garden plot ready to tell mysteries to me, share ideas, reason it all out in the softness of ready soil; ready to receive the seeds that are questions in me.  I will tuck them in and wait-- soon to poke quietly through the earth in answer.

A forum of land and sky calling a morning meeting, preparing for a rousing discussion for a searcher and seeker! How have I attained such good fortune to be invited among such wise handlers of divine secrets? 

                                   

I stand among the furry-wise who take their places at their own gates, live their good lives, sowing and reaping just what they were perfected to. Minding their own business. One calls the meeting to order with a “baaa!”  I take my seat among them.

                               

A magnificent forum of farm and feeling, of astute players all knowing their place.  OH!  I hear a pony pounding his gavel down, with fine hooves he calls this session to order.  I humbly join the meeting, pen in hand.  

                                

Where is your forum of friends?  Where are you planted to preach a good word from the wealth of your own sown heart?  Where does your forum convene? :) 

                                   

Marigolds and Mums.

A month or two ago: 

 Marigolds and mums, moonlight and Matilda Jane from the worn porch in Arkansas. 

Matilda Jane

 Midnight morning glories, as I go inside late,  and my home. 
Men in youthful glory, moms in aging beauty--yeah, it's beautiful being "mom". 

Muffled laughter, many voices, moments and memories made. 

Menagerie and me.  

More and more and more in Him who holds that moon up high in the night sky.  

Manifold awareness of manifold blessing.  Mouthing hallelujahs as best as I can and true as it is to me.

Sweet moments with my sweet ones.  Oh the love, and oh the feelings!  

Knowing the rest of being carried many miles, then walking, running and standing in "my place", made by my God for all time.  My Maker making my merry heart sound and free--ever may it be.

My mounting mosaic.

Now the frost has swept away the miracles in buds and blooms, but I'm o.k. with that.  And don't think there is only the prettiest of pictures here on this place of mine.  Don't look and think only precious moments parade past our path.  My pictures are pinches of the whole.  Beauty sometimes comes right beside the torrents, don't they?  I aim my words and my camera at the beauty.  This, a choice offered in the most Beautiful Book---to think of what is good. Philippians 4:8

--Though praise rises from it all-- all is met with Him, not apart from.  I have power to pay props in prose. So do we all.
Some call this perspective and I like that.  And aren't we all free to aim our own lens and focus on what we choose.  It's a wonderful, powerful choice.