New Year’s Grace

Take a moment today, tomorrow and throughout the coming year. Give yourself grace.
An image of a cup of hot tea with a lemon slice.
Photo by Lisa on Pexels.com

This past week, Ruth, Lori and were chatting and I, once again, apologized for my recent absence here on the blog. What can I say? I’m sorry that I’m leaving it to other people? I’m sorry I’m not carrying my weight.

I quickly got a message back from Ruth and I’d like to share a bit of her wisdom with you. Miss Ruth is, after all, a very wise woman. She reminded me yet again, that I need time. Time to heal. Time to feel. And time to simply be.

As we head toward’s midnight, my phone is pinging with notifications. Have I chosen a word for the year? What about a cause to support? Then there are those people who comment that they know resolutions aren’t popular but making one or more is the right way to get ourselves and our world back on track.

Fortunately, I’ve got Miss Ruth and her wisdom to back me up. I don’t need to pick a word. I don’t need to select a cause. A list of resolutions? Again, I don’t need it.

What I need to do is give myself a bit of grace. Whether you read this tonight or in the coming week, I hope that you will join me. Give yourself the grace that you need to get through the day. Hold on to the grace that you need to get through the month. Day will follow month to become 2022.

And the best part is that God will always be there with a refill when you need a bit more grace. You don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to buy it. It is simply a gift given to us all. His grace. Grace for you and grace for me.

–SueBE

Dust Off Your Face

Alt-text: This is Squeaky, my mackerel tabby with tiger stripes, sitting on my laptop as I try to participate in a Zoom meeting. He is sitting on the keyboard to keep warm, but also to discourage me from doing anything other than patting and playing with him. The laptop is on a dark brown and greyish-silver table and is next to my blue iPad. In the background, there is a peach-colored wall and two square, white windows. There is a black metal floor lamp with a white shade nearby. In the windows, there is a reflection of the trees in the backyard that is striated by the light coming through the bamboo blinds.

This morning, my cat, Squeaky, was tossing around his toys, and when one of them rolled under the couch, he looked at me with those piercing “guy-liner” eyes expectantly. “Can you get that ball for me, O Servant? Sometime today, please,” he seemed to say. Even silent, he’s pushy, but that’s part of his charm.

So I felt around under the couch and found the ball, but it was covered with dust. I picked off the schmutz, and, without realizing, touched my face. Uh-oh. I’m allergic to dust. Earlier this year, I got a skin infection from scratching my face after I’d dusted. Not again! I ran to the sink to wash the dust off my face.

Dust off my face. Huh. Isn’t that what we’ve all had to do recently as we get semi-sorta back into IRL (in real life) meetings using Zoom? If you’re going to be in a Zoom meeting on camera, you’re going to have to take your face out of storage and dust it off. 

Being on video means we’ve got to remember to do laundry the night before so we’ve got clean “work clothes.” In the morning, we’ve got to shower so we don’t show up with “Bedhead” hair on camera. 

As we get back into the swing of things, let’s all remember to dust off another thing we’ve collectively put on the shelf: kindness. 

It takes a lot of energy to deal with everything being thrown at us. As we all dust off our public faces, and remember how to conduct ourselves in public spaces, tensions flare. So if someone comes at you today in a bad mood, try not to respond in kind. Show grace and conduct yourself with dignity. You might just be the metronome of mercy that sets the tone for those around you. 

O Come Let Us Adore Him

The magic of Christmas is this: That something so small could change the world. That a girl from a “nothing” town could be chosen as the mother of God. That a stable could be the birthplace of a Savior. That a baby — a tiny, helpless baby — could be God incarnate, our salvation, the ultimate game changer, taking us from Old Testament “eye for an eye” to New Testament “forgive seven times seventy times.” God truly is a master of surprise.

Something so small:
the cowrie shells of his nails
(an oasis in the desert!),
the questing bud of his lips,
opening like an orchid.
His hair, fine and spare,
brushed ‘cross a skull
still red with effort,
soft beneath the hand.
Slitted eyes, seeking light,
seeing only subtle shapes.
Yet armed as any animal,
able to grip and startle, track and root.
This, then, will change the world:
hands so small will touch a cross,
flailing legs will lead us to heaven.
To trust in this is to pick cattle over comfort,
seeds over trees, a star that shines so seldom,
yet points the only way. And so we follow.
All that God is fits in the crook of an arm,
swallows us like an ocean.

Window of Opportunity

Picture of my tiny basement window, with a yo-yo next to it for scale. It is rectangular in shape, with two sliding sections. The basement is sparsely finished, and there is a pole lamp to the right of the window.

As I exercised in my basement the other day, I wandered over to the tiny window near my stationary bike and checked to see if it was locked.

Strangely, it wasn’t. Huh. That’s unsettling. I’ve lived in this home for 26 years and can’t ever remember checking that window to ensure that it was locked.

I stood there for a moment in disbelief. That’s a safety risk! Granted, you’d have to be downright Lilliputian to squeeze through that window, but I felt it was my duty to make myself worry retroactively. An unlocked (albeit ^diminutive) window for all these years! That’s very troubling! 

For some reason, I’ve always felt that part of my job in life is to worry. I should’ve been on the ball about this! I considered standing there in the basement and worrying retroactively. But for how long? For the equivalent of 26 years? Where’s that blasted “panic” button when you need it?!?

Deep breaths! Okay.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” a wise sage once wrote. Every problem is a project in disguise. My worry about that tiny opening that only a leprechaun could fit through was really a window of opportunity. A learning experience, taught by the Great Teacher.

It’s not my job to stress over problems I didn’t know existed. My job is to do my best in this moment, grateful for the grace that has kept us covered through the years.

“Anxiety in a person’s heart weighs it down, but a good word makes it glad,” Proverbs 12:25 NASB.

Here’s the good word: whatever is too heavy a burden to bear is not yours to carry. Hand it off to God and bask in the blessings of each new day.

Finding Joy in the Moment

Meditations on joy

Wow. I can’t believe that it has been 3 months since I last posted. Did you miss me? I’ve missed all of you but I have to admit that I’ve missed me too.

I’m not going to go into detail about why I haven’t been here. Let’s just say that my reasons are solid and all too familiar because we’ve all suffered loss during the last 2 years. I even lost my true self for a while. It wasn’t a total loss. My sense of humor made an appearance once in a while but my sense of joy and hope? The new me had nothing of the sort.

The self that I was left with got done what she had to do. But she did very few things with a smile.

In all honesty, I didn’t like this new me very much. And then I realized that last Sunday, November 28, 2021, was the first Sunday in Advent. Our minister spoke about joy.

Sigh. (I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.) I used to enjoy Advent and Christmas but this year? Meh. I just wasn’t feeling it.

But what if I could? I really hated the idea of losing my Christmas Joy to the new me. So I spent this week rediscovering my joy. Here is what I did.

Meditative drawing is a prayer technique that involves sitting quietly and drawing, doodling or sketching whatever comes to mind as you consider whatever it is you need to consider. Me? I thought about the things that have given me joy.

As Ruth explained in “The Present Is a Gift,” these gifts don’t have to be big or flashy.

As I sat throughout the week and considered what brings me joy, I realized that I’d squeezed in time for joy during most days. But I didn’t call it joy. I worked on a crochet project. I finished piecing together a puzzle. I made Christmas cards and listened to music.

None of the things that I had done were big. There were a lot of people who wouldn’t find joy doing these same things. But that’s not the point. I had experienced joy every single day. Hello, old me. I knew you had to be there someplace.

–SueBE