Swept Illusions

March 27, 2019March 27, 2019 / jill autrey dorman

Photo by Fabio Gasperoni

Sunshine in my window I heard the screen door slam

The more I lose the more I win guess it’s just the way I am

Leaving the rain behind me living a brand new way

Taking the view I’m given being thankful every day

Swept the illusions all away cobweb’s about what is true

I cleaned out the hidden places guess that’s just what I had to do

Spring rains clears the skies I close my eyes to pray

There is still so much to know guess that’s just my way

Leaving the rain behind me living a brand new way

Taking the view I’m given thanking God every day

The girl on the side street…

March 22, 2019 / jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments

Photo by Matheus Bertelli

Once I was the girl on the side street flashing in and out of the dark. I was taught a role to play for the well being of my family and for my Dad’s livelihood. I played it well. Such a mix of tender family moments peppered with the fear that maybe Jesus didn’t really come for me…

…now the ocean’s wind catches each regret, each sin, and sorrow throwing it into the eternity of a perfect God to be forever forgotten. In the light of the moon a young woman, who thought the stars would stop shining above her found the Maker of the stars and the freedom and love and the lullaby when He sang a Holy song baptizing over her in waves. So now I am drifting, sailing and it was you who came for me.

On that day when the sun tipped over the edge of the earth and spilled colors like buckets of orange, pink, and violet as a reminder of the power of Holy light. The young woman once ravaged and scarred by guilt and shame found joy in the warmth of The Son. Lifted from the darkness you came for me. You hold me in your arms and by your own wounds, scars, and stripes you heal me. The girl on the side street finally came home…

I’m not far from that girl

March 12, 2019 / jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments

1975

She is still keen on being loved for who she is inside

Her gray – blue eyes can still cut through a room looking for true hearts

and she still feels poetry in music and loves a Rocky Mountain high…

I’ll raise a silver chalice to the girl I was in my youth

She is always with me never far from where I am

and she loves the life she is given walking strongly in the Truth…

Her thoughts still flow on paper and she still gazes at the stars

A few times we have both flown too close to the Sun

I am older now and wiser and that girl is never far…

Hope Remains, is my story

March 7, 2019 / jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments

Photo by icon0.com on Pexels.com

I have a Story given me by my Maker

A heart fierce yet ravaged ever in need of saving

I’ve been given clear eyes to see the Holy One

To shed tears of remorse washing away bitterness

And I’ve been given healing in these two hands

To share the balm I have received and know that Hope remains

I have not seen all the wonders of this world

I have not walked with the noble nor do I own anything of worth

I have not known wealth or fame but I do know joy and pain

And I’ve been given life and love far beyond all earthly gain

I pray for humility and a heart full of gratitude running over

To share the balm I have received and know that Hope remains

A Yellow Garden Cart

February 28, 2019 / jill autrey dorman

Photo by Lum3n.com

A yellow garden cart

Blooms of love and rhyme

Crosby, Stills and Nash

harmony so sublime

Upon a garden cart

grows a creeping thyme

abiding with country roses

And a hint of sweetest times

Road maps and rivers

February 11, 2019February 11, 2019 / jill autrey dorman

Photo by rawpixel.com

Road maps and rivers cannot get me there

A shadow at my window but no one is there

Texas prairie home

a song of love or two

It’s essential every second the time that’s reckoned you

Road maps and rivers

two girls in my heart

The sound of their hello my only travel chart

In a culture that worships a false normal of beauty and worth…

February 7, 2019February 7, 2019 / jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments

Photo by Bryan Schneider

“Some of the greatest lies you will ever believe are told by your own eyes.” Says the writer Preston Sprinkle

We have been talking about this issue in American culture for the last twenty-five years and I don’t see much change in the message. Even in the age of reality TV shows like “the Voice” while the auditions are blind so that a judge cannot pick the contestant on any merit other than their voice we find that if they make it past the blind auditions they are quickly given a Hollywood stylist and their clothes, make-up, and hair are tweaked here and there and by the time the contest is over for that season the person is “acceptably attractive.” Even as far back as Carrie Underwood winning American Idol or Kelly Clarkson…if you go back and look at them you can see they were “made” more acceptable.

With God, your image, yours and mine, we are acceptable just as we are but I cannot for the life of me understand why we cannot get past these stereotypes of how one should look, and dress, and even age…

As a believer in God, Jesus Christ and the Bible I have no problem believing that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, all-knowing, all-seeing, creator of ninety trillion million stars, the ocean, the tide, the sun, the earth…(You get the picture). Nobody tells God what he can or cannot do.

I have a harder time believing that this same transcendent Holy God would reach down to his earth and rescue his human race which makes him also an intimate God. A God who desires relationship with the people he created, with me and you. He isn’t playing a game of cosmic chess with us. He doesn’t love us begrudgingly yet most of us have a difficult time believing that same huge God who we believe created us and everything around us truly cares about us. That he delights in us. That he thinks of us more often than there are grains of sand? That he can’t wait for me to come talk and walk with him? That I am more beautiful than any sunset or sunrise could ever be? That he wants to be my friend and even more astonishing that He trusts me? That he never gives up on me just like the father in the story of the prodigal son He never stops looking out to the horizon to see if I am coming home after making a mess of everything in my life! He loves to hear my joy of laughter or singing. He is patient and kind and slow to anger. He loves my face and my body. He loves me!

It is an endless dance of performances and masks that I grow so very weary of. Are you weary? I cannot sustain what I think that you think I need to look like to be acceptable. This is the burden of societal shame.

So, I must not let my own eyes deceive me in commercial ads, in billboard ads, in Playboy, in movies, in T.V.

I work with young women. Eating disorders, body image, and anxiety is at an all time high in this country. It is a fact. They believe they must be thin, quiet, and good all the time. They believe they are ugly and not made by God and in His image at all. What a toll it has taken on our people.

God sees his children as beautiful. He sees each race as beautiful. His redemption of his children cannot be thwarted by any scheme of Evil or of man. So, I choose to look at myself through the eyes of my Father God who created me. I choose to look into his eyes and see myself as his beloved daughter. A daughter of beauty in every way and that He came down from heaven and redeemed me with his Grace and lets me walk with him daily and talk with him freely and never feel that I am ugly or unworthy of his love and blessings.

My spirituality, my beauty, my worth is upheld by God’s stubborn Grace and deep enjoyment of me. It is God whom I reflect and even if my eyes lie to me a thousand times it does not change the Truth one bit. I am precious, beloved, and I do belong to Him. I am beautiful…

I want my daughters and their sons and daughters to know they are more than even their own eyes tell them they are.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity into our human hearts; no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

but grief always takes a side in things that really matter…

February 5, 2019February 6, 2019 / jill autrey dorman

Photo by Snapwire

Like a message in a bottle bobbing in the water

Sun bleached and salty skinned I washed upon the shore

I am made from stronger stuff than it appeared

being born an old soul, competent and sure

I wished for middle ground, something I could manage

But grief always takes sides in things that really matter

The literal peeling of my skin and raw down to the marrow

I wanted to die and be done with the making of this sorrow

Then a warm hand put a cup of water to my mouth

I lapped it up as if water wasn’t all around me

A voice said, ” I am grief and I am not here to take you under

But you must take a side in things that really matter.”

God’s Blue

December 8, 2018January 29, 2020 / jill autrey dorman

Like Einstein, I believe imagination just might be more important than knowledge. I am actually sure of it…

“In all honesty I find myself to be a bit of a “lapser”, if you will, the old lady said to me as we sat on the park bench. She laughed a hearty belly laugh and continued, “I lapse into doubt that I will make it to tomorrow and then I lapse into desperate hope that I will! See that vivid color blue of the sky today? I thought it was a question but she went right on talking…”that is the color of the sky when there are no doubts and everything is crystal clear to me. That is what I call God’s blue. I know without a doubt how to live a life of purpose and kindness. Oh how I love God’s blue!”

My heart was warmed by the assurance that I had just happened to sit down on a park bench next to the right person. “I have lapses too I said, lapses in “How” to live well, I commented. The old woman did not laugh at me but sat there pensive. I figured at that point she would cast me away as crazy and take quick leave of our bench. She did not leave however and it wasn’t until years later I realized she could not leave because she knew me. She was at the end of her pilgrimage and she knew she was sent to that bench just for me. I now want to sit on the bench in the park for other pilgrims if I get the chance.

She began to speak of many things, deep things, funny things, horrible things and I listened hard. She shared how when Day’s sky was a gray-blue those were the days when she knew God was covering her with his Almighty protective wing. She said when there were many obstacles like clouds and winds in the sky that she realized the passing of time and the briskly moving clouds were a reminder every minute is a treasure. Then she said the colors of a Sunset sky were evidence of God’s love of relationships where all colors are mingled together to show His brilliance and to remind us that each of us is a different and known color to Him. These analogies went on for hours and I cannot do her wisdom justice with mere words. She painted with words like a Master.

The night sky she said is not to be feared because it is ordained to us for the purpose of rest, health, growth, and tears. The moon she said is a reminder that even though the “lesser” light rules the night it is no less light. The “dark” is the constant reminder that God does not slumber when we do. She said the moonless, dark sky is the hardest one because you have to believe in the light even when you cannot see it.

As the sun began to set all the colors of creation appeared and the old lady and I sat in silence in God’s Cathedral and worshipped Him, the Creator and all of his magnificent skies. As we parted the old lady took my hand and she put it to her soft crepe paper cheek. She said, “the next time you “Lapse” into a “how to do life well” simply look up and God’s blue will guide you and give you all the answer you need.

I do it every day.