Just pick it up already...

      "You're ready for this." He tells me. "I've been preparing you for a long time."

     "But I'm scared." There. I said it. I want to shout with joy, and keep it a secret. I was full of excitement and flooded with fear.  
     The very idea of someone like me trying to paint the creation of God was beyond crazy. So I do nothing. I just wait. I wait and I pray. 

     As I do, God begins to remind me of the unique way I had been created. As far back as I can remember, I have known him through the glory of creation. "This is why I chose you for this,"  and I remember box turtles, fat bumpy croaking toads, and caterpillars of childhood.  Oklahoma thunderstorms and juicy plump tomato worms with long curved thorns. I remember Jude Paul's miracle blackberry bush, the coming and going of the Sierra mountain sun, and the cloudy summer days of my youth. 
    I know the deep joy and laughter of Grandsons and I had a moment of deep connection as I looked into the huge glassy eye of a Mother humpback whale. 
     "You see me everywhere," God said, and I knew it was true.

     So I stand here in faith with my feet on the, "Glory Road", because God has put them here. I will stop walking by the table and pick up the paint brush.  
     I will paint.
    I will. 

It is Mother's Day...and I know love.

    I spend the morning alone unpacking suitcases, sorting laundry, and mopping dirty floors. I do it with praise and know I am blessed.  After back to back weeks of travel and a workweek ahead, this is my time.
    I load the wash and remember Reed, not yet one, standing in the laundry room sink beside me.  I clean the toilet in the guest bath, see myself on the floor beside Jude, and remember all the bathrooms I've sat beside toilets in while babies learned to potty.
     I turn corners, go up stairs, and everywhere are marks and memories.  Every knock and fingerprint, and mouth smudge hold a story. I vacuum as the living room fills with a brother and sisters, grandsons, nieces, nephews and puppies.  On the glass porch door I see Onyx's lick marks and picture Paul curled in a Tug Chase pile by the fire. Our Michael hangs from the ceiling beam.
     A chest in the office is covered with marked up Bibles and studies that still make me weep and I know God.
     I paused today on the stair my Mother fell to when we got the call her baby brother Bill, had died, and I can hear her cry out.
    I add tea bags to a pot for my Kombucha and see Gus sitting at the window crying for Garrett. But now it is Cali who sits and cries.
     I see Chandler dance across the kitchen floor and sing with a smile as big as the sun and I stand at the sink and know her heartache. I remember the words she spoke to me in this very spot and how the truth of them made me weep uncontrollably.
    Outside in the yard I see weddings, celebrations, tables, flowers, families, children, and I hear worship, laughter, prayer and praise.
    I smell ReAnnon's cooking and see her nursing baby boys from almost every room as Paul passes by windows on his tractor. We grieve babies that were lost and yet life goes on and still Paul passes by the windows on his tractor.
    A back porch holds a daughters heart and the songs of a Mamo and three baby boys.
    Under the stairs is a tiny room with pillows and books and broken horses.
    Outside is a sanctuary. A garden gift of miracles. A meeting place where I listen and pray and know.
    Praise, tears, death and life.
    It is Mothers Day and I know God and I know love.

I am...

I am a sinner saved by grace...
I am chosen child...
I am set apart by God...
I am a covered by the blood of the lamb...

I am tempted...
I am fearful...
I am made new...
I am beloved...

I am refined by fire...
I am saved...
I am unfathomably loved...
I am a worshipper...

I am called...
I am died for...
I am a receiver of gifts...
I am a receiver of promises...

I am not worthy...
I am a wretch...
I am forgiven...
I am an ugly thing made beautiful...

I am a walker of faith...
I am a believer of promises...
I am a warrior princess...
I am a daughter of the King...

I am a soldier of battles in the spirit...
I am a beloved daughter...
I am a bearer of Armor...
I am a vessel of the Holy Spirit...

I am broken...
I am transformed...
I am made beautiful...
I am a lover of your Glory...

You are mine...

Flashback when Chandler sewed...

     I had a moment of surprise today that I'm still pondering with a bit of awe.  It is kind of like that moment that I put the boys bike chain back on. In my head I saw my Father's hands do it and I just knew what to do.
     It happened today with Chandler, but the video memory I had came from Mom.
Chandler is sewing.  My precious child simply jumped into the sewing pool with both feet. On Moms last visit, she spent all day shopping with Chandler for material and patterns and shared with her from a well-spring of sewing knowledge.
     There would, however,  be no "super simple" or "easy to sew" patterns for my redhead. She wanted what she wanted, and that was that.
     "That's pretty ambitious," I told her yesterday as we shopped for another pattern, but I couldn't really explain why I thought so when she asked me.  It has been almost 40 years since I've sewed anything.  In the end, Chandlers strong will provided all the confidence she needed and I couldn't help but smile.  "Go for it." I told her.
     Chandler and I could not look more different physically but beneath her pale skin, blue eyes, and red hair lies a spirit I know intimately. I really get her. She is, at age 24, so much like I was at 24 that it stuns me sometimes.
     This child now sits and my kitchen table, patterns and material covering them both, and I remember...
     In my childhood, mother spoke through the straight pins she held between her lips or as she bent over a pattern on the floor with scissors in her hand.
     Today I was working on taxes. Papers in piles all over the floor of the living room, so as the purr of Chandler's sewing machine filled the room,  it soothed and comforted me in a way I did not expect and I saw my mothers foot against the pedal of her own machine. I remembered the excitement and anticipation of the new dress.
     "Mom!" Chandler shouted. "I need your help."
     I sat down beside her and could hear my mother voice. I saw her fussing with the patterns, turning them this way and that and suddenly I knew what Chandler had done wrong. I could see it. Crazy.
     Chandler is going to be amazing behind the sewing machine. I believe this.  With a legacy of love and a heritage already in place, Mimi will simply pass the baton and answer all her questions until the day Chandler makes patterns of her own.  I think she's gonna take to this like a duck to water and I smile as I write this.
     Thank you Mom!  Your love from behind the sewing machine formed and blessed me as a little girl and is coming full circle back to me as a mother. Our little Chan is sewing! I love you.
   

Prophetic painting by a Nana...

     Do you know how something can be right in front of your eyes, day after day, and yet you just don't see it? There is a picture hanging on the wall downstairs in our house. It is in a darkened hallway that goes from our family room into a bedroom. It's been there since my husband brought it home from his Nana's house in Cleburne, Texas five years ago. It hangs in the hall right outside our office and I must have passed it hundreds of times as I've gone from here to there, and yet...I never really saw it.
     It was painted by Paul's Nana in Oklahoma City in 1976 (the year we were married) and is inscribed to him on the back, "Love Nana."  It recieved a "Runner Up" ribbon in the local fair in 1980 and she kept it with her until Paul brought it to our home in California five years ago.
     After a terrible tragedy, Paul's Nana gave up her life and walked without hesitation into the shattered world of two teenage boys, one adolescent boy, and a five year-old baby girl. She prayed, she trusted God, and she walked in faith.
     Nana died in December at age 98.
     Paul and I were laughing and telling stories about Nana for weeks after her funeral, then one night when we got into bed, Paul said to me, "I've been thinking about that painting Nana made for me. I think it was Prophetic."
     "Which one?" I asked him thinking about the rose painting in the upstairs bedroom and the "Rare Bird" album cover painting that Nana had done for Charles. I had recently put that one in a closet and suddenly felt bad about it. "The one I brought home from her house and hung in the hall. The one of the Road."
     "There's a painting of Nana's in the hall of a road?" I asked.
     "Yes. Over the King chair, outside the office."
     Was he crazy? I wondered. Was I?
      I got out of bed and rushed down the stairs and there it was in front of me. Paul said Nana had painted it the year we got married.
     It looked so much like a picture I had taken just a few months before, that tears filled my eyes. It's our "Glory Road." How could I have missed this?
   
     The last picture on this blog post is my photograph. I show it to you because I don't want you to miss what was right in front of me and what might be right in front of you.

     I'll think I'll paint it, frame it just like Nana's, and hang them side by side.
     I know that Nana and Jesus are smiling right now. It took me awhile Nana, but I see it.  I see it and I love you. Thank you for this.

Every picture tells a story, dont it?

I hear the whispers...

The oldest living things on earth...

     Yesterday my husband and I hiked around the Ancient Bristlecone Forest and it blew my mind.  We stood among the oldest living things on earth. The oldest living things on earth.   As I contemplated why, in my 23 years I had never had the inkling to go before now, (it's only a two hour drive from my house) I knew that it was all about God's timing. I wouldn't have seen what stood in front of me 20 years ago, or even ten.  There truly is a purpose for every season under heaven, and this was mine for these ancient trees. 

     There was something amazing about standing at the foot of something 4000 years old as Paul and I celebrated the brand new life of our third grandson Gideon just two days before.  I love how God uses things like this to reveal himself and how he uses us in each other's lives because if not for some precious friends, I would have missed this entirely.  A few weeks ago, our friend David went to finish a job at the visitor center and his wife Lisa went along for the ride.  David is a  master woodworker and put in all the counter tops and cabinetry in the new building. The next day, when Lisa posted a picture of an ancient tree, I couldn't stop thinking about it and asked Paul if he would take me so we made a date. 

      The new forest visitor center was still running on the adrenaline of the re-grand opening from the day before, (the old visitor center burned down in a fire several years ago) and the woman who greeted us sang the praises of DK Wordworks and his artistic cabinetry. After asking a few questions about the trails and the timing of the hike, Paul and I headed off.  We were told that the 4 1/2 mile loop around the Methuselah trail usually took about 3 hours if you stopped to take pictures. I saw Paul look at his watch when she said this and make new calculations.  I knew what he was thinking. These people had never put anything like me into that mathematical photo taking equation before. 

     So picture this. Me, who can't even drive home from Mammoth without stopping to photograph something, on a very narrow trail full of roots and rocks among the oldest trees on earth. This was not a trail that you could walk along and casually take pictures. The trail required my full attention, so it was one or the other. The reflection of the afternoon light on these trees captivated me and had me turning in circles and stopping at every bend in the road.  Paul was recalculating the time it would take us to get to the end before the first quarter mile. 

     I think it was right about the one mile marker that my camera froze. I'm not kidding. My brand new Iphone wouldn't close or shoot another picture. I thought perhaps the forty-seven pictures in a row or the jostling from the trail had killed it. I couldn't close the app, or turn it off.  My words, "Are you kidding me?!" brought my husband from the forty feet in front of me back to my side.  He was sympathetic and patient. I think he even felt my pain as we hadn't even entered the oldest part of the forest where Methuselah lived.  After a few minutes of panic, it finally shut down so I zipped it into my jacket pocket and moved forward behind the footsteps of my husband. In the quiet that followed, God reminded me that this ancient forest was not about me and the pictures I was taking, but about His creation and glory. Once I settled there, I somehow knew my Iphone would come back on. It did.

     We arrived in the grove of 4000 year old trees about an hour later and as we sat among them we read the amazing story of their survival. I will share some of that with you now. 

      Bristlecone Pines grow very slowly because of limited resources and short growing season. Only a thin layer of tissue (a growth ring) is added to the truck branches and roots each year. A one inch thickness of growth may take a century to accomplish. It may take 300 years to reach a height of 50 feet and they keep their needles for 30 to 40 years. This lack of forest floor litter prevents the spread of fire. These trees have been sculpted by wind, ice and extreme exposure to the elements. Their contorted shapes seem to defy nature and the exposed dead wood of these ancient trees seems to have their own color palette.  Sunshine, wind and aging all have their effect. The polished surfaces are the result of wind and ice blasting the surface for thousands of years. They may be famous because of their age, because of their ability to record climate trends. Their sensitive nature gives scientists a record of the past. Climates, droughts, severe frost, fires,and volcanic eruptions can all be recorded in these ancient pieces of wood. 

The amazing Great Basin Bristlecone Pine will continue to thrive in this harsh environment. Dolomite, climate, and dense wood all play roles in its secrets to longevity, yet there are many mysteries to solve. These oldest trees survive in the most difficult situations.  Perhaps there is a lesson in this for all of us. A lesson as old as these ancient trees.

I love this stuff!