If I had to say what were one or two of the most loved memories I have about being a southern preacher’s daughter I would say foremost I loved and still cherish being the “apple of his eye.” His only daughter, not in a princess-y way at all but just a light in his eye, a sparkle, an honor in his life that I did not deserve nor earn. Never once was there any hint or lack of favor toward me. One learns young in a “fish bowl” that people will believe what they choose and they will misunderstand a man and his heart and they will take it out on him and his family but they can never touch the “apple of his eye”. The second treasure I carry with me as a southern preacher’s daughter is the peace and stillness of the iconic “Sunday afternoon Nap.” We didn’t really have to go to sleep at all but it was a private safe haven when the world stopped turning and my two brothers, my beautiful mother, my dad, and I all took off our Sunday outfits and each lay between our washed cotton bed sheets and rested our heads on sweet southern smelling pillows and Rested. It was a Sabbath Rest that I did not yet understand at an early age. It was a sturdy parson’s home and all was right with the world. I never knew what lie ahead for us nor that life would not always taste as sweet as those Sunday afternoons. I didn’t know yet that daddy couldn’t fix everything and that my sweet, sweet brothers weren’t men yet. I didn’t know that my mother’s southern beauty hid pain that I had not yet heard of and had no inkling of the hard things that were expected of her. I memorized each one of them and I tasted the ripened rays of childhood and it has stayed on my tongue forever! I love them.
the way I was before…
I have long been running toward that Morning light
trying so hard to be the holy one with all my might
Then you whisper in my ear, “Peace, be still.”
I have long been kneeling in that Cathedral in the sand
trying so hard to form my self into a holy jar
Then you whisper in my ear, “I am the Potter.”
I have long been wading in that River of life
desperate to drink the holy water that cleans
Then you whisper in my ear, “I am the water that never ends.”
No I lay me down on the Alter of Holy Rest
Trust my hands to the maker of all that grows
and drink every drop form the River of Life…
oh how Peaceful it is to “be still and know.”
The perils of knowledge…getting out of my head…
The reality is that God is good but he is not safe…
I have two friends who give me counsel that I treasure. They both told me years ago “you have to get out of your head! You are MORE than your head…”
I have a fine mind. I am thankful for it. I would say I have an average intelligence quotient and am satisfied with it. I was not cut from the “genius mode.” What I have learned over the years is this. ..longings and desires are wired in us. They are designed to point us to the POINT of “being here.” I have also learned that knowledge without character is evil and pointless.
When I am in my head I have the tendency to become hyper-vigilant so I can control my longings as this makes way for the illusion of having control over my world but the truth is I cannot control other people, wars, countries, religions, or what might happen to my children or grandchildren. Of course, I certainly play a part in my choices, thoughts, and actions! It is called self-control but control, as in the ways of the Sovereign God, no.
Sometimes it is hard to make things clear but when I purposely look and listen I then see and hear without a doubt. I have four longings that exist in my soul. My longing to know the God that made me, the longing to not just know Him but to “get to him”, and the most compelling longing is to know that this same Holy God wants me, sees me, hears me, and desperately extravagantly loves me. A love so far beyond anything my fine mind can know on a cherished level. My fourth longing is for not just my family but all of the human race to know this too.
While all of this sounds deep and romantic there is a catch. In the words of C.S. Lewis in the Chronicles of Narnia series of books the characters repeat over and over that Aslan, the lion in the book who saved the world, is GOOD but he is not safe. He is a wild and wonderful and good Savior but he is not tame.
A lion, the Lion of Judah is “wild” in every sense of the word. He certainly cannot be contained in my fine mind! There is no safety net, no formula, no religious works to perform that will fulfill my longings! my longings are absolutely and completely filled in one way…surrender. Surrender to the fear of losing my life. Surrender to the fear that the man might come to me and tell me the diagnosis I always dreaded. The anger that I didn’t get the great early childhood or adolescence or adult life that I wanted. A surrender of the wounds of abuse and yes, we all have them…
Surrender all that you love and hold dear for they are not yours anyway. This is a supernatural surrender. It is surrender to The One God sent to show us himself, Jesus.
Oh now you are saying “here it comes…some kind of sermon. No, not at all. You are the only one who can seek him and find him. You must seek him on your own. I cannot control your choices.
So to sum this up I will say that “getting out of my head” is at times impossible but my mind can be renewed daily. My mind can reach my soul and weld together within. My mind can know that I have been given everything I need for life and Godliness. I can know in my mind God sent the exact likeness of himself to dwell among us and it is He that fulfills all of my longings. Every single one of them!
The process of longing and surrender is rarely a pretty one. It is not tame but it is Goodness and it is how I am created to be and I love that…
Heart to the Cradle
Stained glass windows of Jesus the Lamb
innocent drops of blood soaking up this land
No chance to rock the cradle
ancient before their time
The rose will grow with thorns
the innocent with their lives
Cry over me, cry over me
Heart to the cradles of time
Fly over me, fly over me
who commits the crime
Sir Oliver Wendell Holmes got it all wrong… remarkable!
Sir Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.”
Remarkable: worthy of attention, striking, astonishing, astounding, marvelous, wonderful, sensational, stunning, incredible.
I believe Sir Homes was so very WRONG…it is not common-place to wish to be remarkable. We are created remarkably! We all long to remain so. No child starts out thinking she is common-place or ordinary. When the lighting shines through her window she runs to the window and shouts, “look Mommy, God is taking my picture!”
Children know they are miraculous beings from the beginning, until “we” tell them other wise. Every single human being begins as a single cell the size of a period at the end of a sentence…that cell builds a body of 100 trillion cells! One human body, one!
“You (God) alone created my inner being. You knitted me together inside my mother. I will give thanks to you because I have been so amazingly and miraculously made. Your works are a miracle and my soul is fully aware of this great and Holy thing you have done!”
Remarkable is not the same as Selfish or Prideful…Image bearer of God… Remarkable!
Ruby Love
Ruby love did you lose your love?
so hard to know what’s coming’ down
Ruby love did he use your love?
spinning your dreams around
Ruby love do you love the blues?
flying high and getting down
Ruby love the blues love you
put on your dancing’ gown
Lets go dancing’ Ruby
Lets put our lipstick on
Lets go uptown sweet Ruby
the way we did when we were young
Strong Paths…Strong Shoes
I have a dear friend who shared with me that a “study” has been done that states “…people our age post on Facebook because they need to be validated.”
I disagree on some level but also appreciate the statement. I think the younger generation could perhaps be “trapped” into this form of validation much more than mine. Yet I had to ask myself why I write heartfelt post on Facebook. I suppose there is a need for validation although I do not get “my mattering” from such validation.
For me, honestly, writing my story on Facebook isn’t about validation as much as it is me “penning my memoirs as I go.” I enjoy writing. I believe that while we are in the daily battle (yes, I said battle because when you are “hurting hard” you are a warrior) of life and in the midst of hard times when we need encouragement or just to share a happy moment is not a cry for validation. I want to share things WHEN I am going through them and the dust hasn’t settled yet and uncertainty is flying at me like a bullet or perhaps I have had a great victory or a glimpse of Heavenly Joy…that is why I “do” Facebook.
The great Corrie ten Boom who survived a Nazi concentration camp for hiding Jewish people in her home says, “If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.” Some of us have needed seriously strong shoes in life. Some not as much perhaps but no one is untouched by “strong paths.”
You might say, I have NEVER suffered the ways Corrie ten Boom did. That is so true and a truth for which I thank God every day. However, I have known suffering and suffering in all forms cannot, should not be minimized. My battle with Rheumatoid Arthritis does not define me but it has been a “strong path” that has required God’s gift of “strong shoes.” A path that I have not traveled alone because of a husband filled with unselfish love. As well my two beautiful and sweet-hearted daughters, parents, brothers, friends, counselors, and even doctors who have lifted me up all along the way but let me be clear that my pain is mine alone. I need “strong shoes” daily.
So where is this post going? It is going to this…I want to be real about my frailty, my struggles, my doubts, my beliefs, my strengths so that if it connects me to another human being that may be in the midst of their own “bullet flying, dust choking battle” or in a season of “pure joy” they might feel like they can make it one more day in that hard place or that I celebrate their joy with them.
Of course, it is RIDICULOUS to say that Facebook post can provide much depth. This type of life support must be, has to be done relational and skin to skin in the long-term but what if just one word on one post helps someone reach out for help or not feel alone or they call me or message me? That is not for my validation…that is the joy of living friends!
So cheers to a Facebook post…May it validate you and me. May it play a very small part in helping all of us to carry on when we are sent on our “strong paths” …may those around us help us put on our “strong shoes” even when we cannot…
a bruised reed he will not break
A Message from the Valley of Decision…
I saw her standing in the Valley of Decision and I reached for her hand gently.
I said, “I don’t know where you are coming from but I do know what you are running from.”
She said she had forgotten her loveliness and her might. She has forgotten the taste of new wine and sweet olive oil. Her trees would bear no more fruit. All of her gifts and talents had drained away. The “invented” normal had left her heart and soul gravely bruised…
I have seen it many times in sixty years. The exigencies the “inventor of lies” has put upon us. The accuser, the impostor of beauty and wisdom says, “We girls have to be skinny, smart, beautiful, witty, sexy, as well as Mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, healer, cook, house keeper, and oh yes, we can never age, wrinkle, or grow soft muscles or gray hair…
Oh what a relief is found when we know these falsehoods cannot raze our joy! The Spring rain will wash you clean of shame and doubt and you will regain all you have lost! Young woman, daughter, widow, single Mother, or any Mother, any woman…Come to the Valley of Decision and lay down all the plates you are spinning. Hold with palms open upward any control you deem you have and you will realize that you are so far beyond what you believed. Choose Wisdom instead of control. Choose Wisdom which says, “You are the Pearl of Great Price!”
Stay in this Valley and decide to seek Wisdom… be healed, be whole, and dance before the Lord God without fear and then reach out your hand for the next woman you see and give her the Wisdom you have gained…it is a decision, it is truth or it is lies and you must choose…thousands upon thousands of women are waiting for your hand…
A bruised reed he will not break, and a fading candle he won’t snuff out. He’ll bring forth justice for the truth. Isaiah 42:3
Also, inspiration from Joel 3:14
Reconcilable Purity
He said, “I get my meanness from the gutter and I get my kindness from God.” I sat down under the bridge with him and I said, “I think I could say the same.” He looked at me square in the eyes and I could see he was surprised by my response. He said, “You don’t look like you know much about the gutter.”
I smiled and said “looks can be deceiving don’t ya know?” Then he laughed. The sound of his laughter was one that made me smile. His laughter was like a nine month old baby’s belly laugh. The kind of laughter where nothing is held back and a sweetness of joy rings from it. I told him I had not laughed like that in ages and he said, “Oh you can only laugh like that when Fury and Thunder have cracked your soul and all the dark places have been opened up and cleaned out and all the pieces are strewn about and you cannot put them back together by yourself. I call it reconcilable purity. This laughter only occurs when you have lost your life to save it and when you were first but now you are last…”
I sat there in sober silence but something inside of me begin to tremble. “Who are you?” I whispered. He said, “I am just an old man who has been given a new heart and all day long I just like to go around and give my heart and life away to whoever might need it for a minute or two so that they can go about their day with some pure laughter…” The gorged veined, brown spotted hands palmed my face and the old man looked me in the eye and he said, “Go and be, not do. Go laugh and cry. Go and give your life away for someone else and you will see. You will laugh the laugh of “reconcilable purity.”
what I couldn’t know…
What I couldn’t know…when I was a nursing student my instructor gave me an assignment that I have carried with me for forty years. I will never forget it because I gave loving gentle care to Jesus that night.
Stay with me… to get the whole and the depth of this picture I must confess that at that time in my life I lived in a what I call ” a well-intentioned but misinformed idea of Grace.” In my childhood and early adolescence Grace was very “sanitary” , if you follow me. It followed a certain prayer, then Baptism, the cleaning up your behaviour issues (or at least hiding them), and then good works followed that. At age twenty I had long well-known I could not live up to these rules but continued to pretend that I was ok…
So this happened…
I stepped into the room of a woman very ill. She did not speak nor open her eyes. I could see she was weary and when I reached to touch the bed sheets she grimaced embracing herself for what I couldn’t know. I was about to begin my assessment when my instructor, God bless her, said “take care now…you will be touching Jesus.” Oh how I weep when I remember those words.
When I pulled back the sheets the little emaciated body of the still silent woman was covered in bed sores. Her body was filthy, her finger and toe nails grown long and brittle. The sore on her spine was through to the bone so that even the breeze of my moving the sheet caused her to stiffen in pain. I turned to my instructor with a face full of question and overwhelmed I whispered “what am I to do for her?” She responded by nodding to a bath basin and many towels and simply said “you want to be a nurse now here is your chance.”
It took me two hours to peel off her filthy clothes and wash the dirt from her body and to dress each wound. The woman never spoke and her eyes remained closed. I only spoke gently to explain each of my actions. It was tedious and repetitive work. After I had dressed each bedsore and put a clean gown on her and of course, clean sheets I turned to leave. Only then did the woman look at me briefly and simply said in voice so strained and broken, “Thank you so much.”
I turned my head and smiled at her but her eyes were already closed again. I whispered that she was welcome. I stepped out into the hallway and in my unprofessional youth I leaned against the wall and cried and trembled. I cried because something in my soul told me that night that Grace is personal and intimate and sometimes very painful. I leaned my forehead against the door of that hospital room and a still small voice that seem to come from her room said, “whatever you do to the least of these my daughter, you have done it unto me.”
What I couldn’t know or fully grasp that night is I had begun my journey toward developing gratitude…and so much more pain and joy echoed down the road of Grace…
Jill Autrey Dorman 