No, You Can't Have It!

Just when I get that "life is great" feeling in my stomach there is something that jumps out of the bushes to try and steal it.

I was a soccer game on Saturday. The weather was fine all day and then as soon as Sam's game starts the rain came. I tried to tough it out like a good soccer mom, but the wind blew, my umbrella bent, and being the prissy girl that I am, I had to hang it up.

It's hard to hold the course in the midst of a down pour. That is how life feels lately. All around I see people I love in the midst of a down pour, shivering from the cold, in shock and getting shaken by the difficult season they are in. My heart aches as I pray for the many I know that are in pain. Then I realize I have to go on with the strength I have presently, because there will probably be a time when I am cold and shivering and I will need their strength and joy in the midst of difficulty. I've been there before, so I know the reality of the cold.

It is in times of war when we feel like it the least that we need to take out our instruments (i'm picturing David and his men around a camp fire) and start raising our voices. You know how it feels when you turn up the radio in your car and scream out the lyrics to a great rock song? That is what I am after now. I need the release of a good yell and then gently handing my friends back to the only ONE who can truly help in times of need.

I'm going to get in my car now and turn on the radio and scream. I am screaming for my friends and I am screaming, because I will not surrender them!

Awakening Your Senses

Do you ever feel out of touch with your own creativity? You can’t even remember what it felt like during the times when you had inspiration oozing out; maybe some are so disconnected from their creative self they can’t even recall such time when they even felt creative.

However, being made in the image of an imaginative God who made the rainbow, the ocean, the birds, a zillion flowers, not to mention the intricate variations in the DNA of mankind, why would you think you are without creativity. If you feel that way, it just hasn’t been tapped into yet, or more likely you haven't made room for it.

You know how these things go, sometimes there is rich inspiration abounding and sometimes you feel more like you’re a dried up water hole. I'm currently in a season of a lot of inspiration.
As I pondered the creative impulses I’ve had lately, the prodding and invitation to be taken up into the place of musing, I realized when I am sensitive to my senses; I open the way for more creativity.

How many of us go through our days rarely in touch with the language of our senses, these incredible gifts that for most of us function with little thought, yet get little fanfare. I’m talking about the ability to see the bristles on your husband’s face, feel the smooth curve of your own calf, hear the wind whistling in the trees, smell fresh bread baking and taste the butter as it runs down the warm slice you consume in an instant.

This mysterious language was given for our pleasure, for communicating to each other and back to God. Through our senses we can experience worship in a new way. Did you know that holding your child in your arms can be an act of worship to God? The gift of making love to your husband is a profound act of worship to the Creator who made you with these senses. If we tune up our receptor to awaken to the movement of the senses in our lives, we will begin to get our creativity jumping. We will be the creative people we were designed to be.

Soon I will have a free download available on my website, 5 Steps to Get Your Creativity Jumping.

Reteaching Loveliness

"The bud stands for all things, even those things that don't flower, for everything flowers from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to re-teach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing."
Galway Kinnell

I’ve written about this poem before, not on my blog, in my book. Today as I typed this poem up for a girl friend who has recently been devastated by a stroke, I was reminded of what this poem meant to me in a time of my own devastation.

The Bible speaks about the reproach or shame of ones widowhood. Of course I never understood that until I became a widow. Most of us would think, why be ashamed, loosing a spouse had nothing to do with you. Nevertheless the shame still existed and all that I was seemed to be ripped from me in an instant, my identity as a wife and my sexuality as a woman. suddenly I was reduced to the new oddity of being a single woman in a married crowd.

At 36 I was thrown back to the awkward teen years, not knowing how to acclimate to old friends that suddenly saw me differently. Women guarded as if their husbands had become my prey. The solid ground I knew became soft and spongy. Nothing felt secure, as all reference points spun out of control by the amputation I experienced in loosing my lover, best friend and father to my children. I felt totally exposed and naked. Suddenly all beauty was gone. Nothing felt lovely inside or out. I was stripped of all loveliness.

Bill died on Good Friday and was buried the day after Easter. All things looked dead and dormant, like the town of Weedsport that we spent the night in on the way home for Bill’s funeral. Yet that wasn't the end of the story. It never is, because if a seed goes into the ground and dies it will spring up into new life. That is the hope that we have.

Slowly with time, glimmers of hope emerged in my life as love began to cloth me and transform my life, reteaching my heart its loveliness. There is no one or no thing that cannot be transformed by the power of love. That is why I am particularly passionate about calling women out of the dead-barren places where they have been stomped down, trampled over or forgotten their loveliness.

Love Unlocks Doors-Happy Valentine's Day

"Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before." Mignon Mclaughlin
With love I am unstoppable, without it my light dims. Can you imagine being so infused with a constant infilling of love, so surrounded that you can't escape it or feel anything beyond, underneath, around or besides it? That is what Paul prays in Ephesians 3: 17, that being so rooted and grounded in love we would be able to comprehend how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is which surpasses knowledge.

Although lately I have seen glimmers, someday I will know the full reality of love when I meet Jesus face to face. But for now I strive to grow more fully, to live more deeply in the presence of God's love, to live dripping in it and not just speaking of it intellectually.

It is all around us, in us and through us, before us constant and available, but how easily we get disconnected from the life source.When little quills get stuck in my skin or old splitters fester, that freeing love diminishes through my diminishing perception of life and the world. It all comes down to my perception. If I am struggling and rating any given moment through all that has affected, molded and formed my perception there is no way I can accurately access the power of His love, even though His love is unchanging. My perception layered with squewed realities at times can make experiencing God’s love as illusive as capturing a greased watermelon slipping through my hands.

However, when I block the world out and look up at the heavens, I am taken back by how huge God's love truly is for me. If I could take it all in it would be explosive.

Because of that outrageous love there is the realm of possibility that I strive to live in, breaking free from all of my preconceived ideas, all of my unmovable opinions and everything I think I know, when in reality it all could be undermined in a moment by His penetrating, life altering love. Imagine being the most loved person on the face of the earth, so lost in love that nothing could stop you. The truth is we are loved that perfectly, if only we could recongnize it.

Missing Beauty

"A crown of beauty in the Lord's hand." That's what the Bible says we are. We are His delight and He takes pleasure in lavishing His love upon us. Knowing these things makes me want to know more fully His passion for me. I want to live in the daily reality- God is crazy about me, so much so that He hung the moon just for me.

That is what I feel when I look out upon the moon lit sky. Although I gaze up into the expanse, I don't feel like a small speck in the mix. In the quietness of the night I feel God so intimately acquanited with me that He woos me into His company to say, "I hung the moon for you!"

Today I sat on the floor with my guitar and glanced over to see the first email Mark ever sent to me framed and sitting on my shelf. The subject line says, Missing Beauty. Mark sent me that after I left a church that we both attended and he was reconnecting to see where I went.

Today, when I read those words again, Missing Beauty, I knew that I was sensing the Lord's heart too. His thoughts towards us are too numerous to imagine, continually leaning in towards His Beauties, the ones for which He hung the moon. We are the ones He created millions of incredible flowers to enjoy. We are the ones that He made a world to exist in, to know love, be loved, give love and mostly experience His outrageous love. Don't you just want to soak in that outlandish moon hanging love? I do!

Training to Win the Race

I was reading in my devotional today and I was reminded that in the life of an athlete training is a necessary and on going process. When running a marathon you must train, not merely try hard if you want to be successful. This process is not only confined to athletes. This is a life long process for growth and for success in life. To receive a payoff there is a process. We must train to win.

There is an immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something. That is why when we come to hard things in life that are too big for us to accomplish on our own, if we are smart we will look to our Trainer for specific instruction in the process.

You can guess how much I like going to the gym. But I want the payoff, so I do it. By applying the same principal to other things that I have to process through lets me participate in the process and not sit on the sidelines as a victim. No one wants to apply hard work to things we don't like to do. We would rather be rescued out of the process, but that would defete the purpose. No one can do the work of training necessary for an athlete, except the athelet himself. I know the process bites, but I want the payoff. There is no payoff without the process.

All the Little Pieces

My mind thinks well of itself. It is eager and ready, up in the morning to run the show. It makes a plan and executes it. It sizes up a situation, a person or a dilemma and moves forward to “handle” things. My mind is a handler.

But then He comes peaking from around the bend, “Hey Kimber, in all of your handling, where have you been?” I respond, “I’ve put my running shoes on like you told me to do. I’ve been up this hill and the next. Look at that mountain I claimed and the one over there.”

Again, “Kimber, where have you been?” Somehow I knew the question wasn’t about geography, but availability. I knew that He had come to collect all of the little pieces that Mind neglected. He came to collect my heart that was lagging behind on the mountains my will had in tow.

On one side was the handler and on the other, pieces on the floor. Now I am confused. These two don’t seem to work very well together. One often leads with no consideration of the other. Conquering all these kingdoms and living for the “go” I’ve certainly been living, but wait, my heart says, “No.”

Then masterfully He comes to stake out my heart, stalking in the corner, watching every action and passing thought. Then in the perfect moment His lasso is thrown and I feel the gentle tug- He’s calling me home. If I ignore the prodding, He’ll tighten the rope until it burns, digging into my chest, I feel the tearing of all of the pieces He’s come to collect.

The burn grows stronger still. Mind is powerless to act, but relinquishes its firm insistence in response to His strong persistence. I know I am an easy target with His advances, because of His indescribable need to have me I give little resistance. He’s not the type that is one day wanting and the next day done. No judgmental expectations sizing me up. No pointed calculations that are far out of my reach, simply He longs to love me.

He takes the dirty acid drops and the bitter waters from where Mind has drunk, He washes them away, all those less worthy voices and removes the cutting burs that have pierced through my worth. Then reminding me of who I am, lifting my eyes to Him again, I sing the words I wrote,

“Looking in the mirror I see your face staring back at me, with beauty and grace living right here inside of me. Now I know who I am-All the little pieces You’ve come to collect. All the little pieces of my neglect. All the little pieces are waiting for You.”