Daily 5 - Day 344

Today's Daily 5:

1. kit kat bar
2. walking in the cemetery this afternoon.  (I paid a visit to a local Victorian cemetery that I love to walk in... it's a place I go when my heart is really aching, and I need time to walk and think and listen and pray.  I needed that today.)
3. pausing to notice flowers, and smile at them, try to let their beauty penetrate
4. taking photos as I walked... epitaphs that struck me, and flowers...
5. the brief moments when my racing thoughts settled, and there was quiet peace and I could breathe again
6. this beautiful post that Renee wrote, that my heart simply said, "yes" to, because I know that place she describes, in my own way, right now.
7. watching a British comedy/drama television series on DVD with mom and dad and laughing.  British humor really is to my taste.
8. recognizing in a fresh way a gift of grace offered to me in the midst of a challenging conversation last night
9. tears that finally flowed, no longer able to be contained
10. a quiet place to rest tonight at mom and dad's

Complicated

Apparently my fruit smoothie says I'm complicated!  The results of this one made me chuckle, especially since these days I start most days with a fruit smoothie.

You Are Complicated

You have many sides to your personality. You aren't exactly the easiest person to figure out. You are quirky and apt to contradict yourself. You are constantly evolving and changing. You have a unique take on life, and unlike most people, you're not too optimistic or pessimistic. You appreciate novelty and uniqueness. Most of your favorite things are acquired tastes.

The Smoothie Test

Blogthings: We Have a Quiz for Almost Everything

A Grown-Up Taste

It all started when I wrote a post about being well, and choosing to love anyway, even in the really hard moments.  I scheduled it to go live, and forgot about it.

Until the day it went live, and I discovered my own words were being used by God to convict me. 

That was new.

Until it happened again this week.  I wrote a post on the weekend, just some quick thoughts, forgot what day it was scheduled for, and, on the day it went live, spent the day eating the words I'd written.

I even wrote a post about eating my own words, complaining about being a grown-up, and having to make choices.

And then, with my own post about eating my words ringing in my ears, I made the mistake of chatting with a dear friend, and whining a little about this newfound method of God's voice and conviction speaking to me.  I sent her the post I'd written and her response was telling.

"Why do your words have to taste bad?"

umm... excuse me?

"If you write good words, and you eat them, why do they have to taste bad?"

I hate it when God borrows her voice.

I've been thinking a lot lately about "grown-up" tastes.  I love to cook, and these days I'm far more brave about the recipes I'll try.  I don't reject a recipe out of hand because it has one ingredient in it that I'm not necessarily fond of.  I learned to broaden my tastes because of compromise, and I learned compromise sharing a grocery budget with my roommate.  I can honestly tell you that these days I eat dishes with mushrooms, onions, and even cook regularly with ground beef because of her.  They are foods (well, not ground beef, that was just over-exposure as a kid) that to me, are grown up tastes.

My friend's word's resonated.

Why do your words have to taste bad?

I was whining about conviction.  She was pointing out that I pray regularly to hear God speak clearly, and I was now hearing him in my own writing, and complaining about it.  "Not like that, God.  You can't speak like that."

I talked in an earlier post about wrestling with the choices before me right now.  Choose life, not death.  Choose joy, not despair.  Choose healing, not festering wounds.  Choose forgiveness.  Choose to love even when it costs something.  About how those feel like really "grown-up" choices to have to deal with, and about how my default response is a favorite Meredith quote from Grey's Anatomy, in which in a rather stunned and panicked tone she cries out, "I'm an adult!  When did that happen, and how do I make it stop?"

But even in those moments I heard the echoes of scripture reminding me of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians, "When I was a child, I spoke and thought as a child.  But when I grew up, I put childish things away."

And I am struck, too, by these words from the author of Hebrews, "You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others.  Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God's word.  You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn't know how to do what is right.  Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong."

Maybe it's time to develop a grown-up taste?  Maybe the words God offers don't have to taste bad when I need to eat them.  Maybe it's time to develop a taste for the word of God - his conviction, guidance and direction - in whatever form they come in.  Even if it means eating my own words.

Daily 5 - Day 343

Today's Daily 5:

1. pancakes for breakfast (though, they were made with spelt and soymilk, so not quite as good as buttermilk pancakes, but still pancakes)
2. the bus driver saw me sprinting for the bus and stopped to let me on, rather than making me wait for the next one
3. chinese take out for supper
4. laughing with friends for the evening (and laughing at God's sense of humor in how we managed to spend the evening indirectly talking about all of the subjects I'd rather have forgotten about)
5. got a longish walk in when I discovered I'd have to sit for 40 minutes to wait for the bus to get home tonight, and realized I could walk the distance in less time than the wait would be.

Hope

"Until we walk with despair, and still have hope, we will not know that our hope was not just hope in ourselves, in our successes, in our power to make a difference, in our image of what perfection and wholeness should be. We need hope from a deeper Source.

Until we walk with despair, we will never uncover the Real Hope on the other side of despair. Until we allow the crash and crush of our images, we will never discover the Real Life beyond what only seems like death.

This very journey is probably the heart of what Jesus came to reveal."  (Richard Rohr)

I was digging through my backlog of thoughts, quotes and meditations I've wanted to share here at some point, and came across the above passage from Richard Rohr.

I've been thinking a lot about hope again in the last week or two.  Partly because I'm praying for some situations that seem, in the natural anyway, barring miracles, hopeless.  Partly because I've been working through some stuff from my past that came up again - stuff from a time that really did create a sense of despair.

Hope, if you know me well, is one of my favorite words.  And this week I'm thinking about it, scouring my life for it, and clinging to it with white-knuckled fingers just because it is what it is.

And it encouraged me to be reminded by this quote that hope shines brightest in despair.  That it is in despair that we discover how grounded our hope truly is.  And that Jesus is hope revealed, and worth clinging to.