Tag Archives: devotional

Making the Whole of Life Beautiful

Beauty, Hope, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Make the Whole BeautifulI’m in the third year of writing my memoir. It’s a project that can’t be hurried along, even though many days I feel like I’m running late for the school bus and need a good shove on my bottom to get moving.

I long to get through the schooling in the brokenness of my own humanity, and on to the grown-up life of the promised happy ending. But patient endurance must finish its work.

Over and over I must keep going back. Back to study brokenness, back to study pain. Back to study who I was, who I became, and who truly I wanted to be. It’s like picking up shards of a broken mirror, each reflecting a fragment of me, and trying to piece it back together.

Trying to make the pieces, and me, WHOLE again.

I can’t go back and make some of those pieces pretty.

But I am moving forward, and with God’s help, the whole is becoming beautiful!

The book of my life will be colored by beauty, and not by shame and pain. Because:

God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. Psalm 18:24 MSG

Praying for God to help you make the whole of your life beautiful too.

Linda

Faith, Hope, and . . .

Hope, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A few years back I special ordered a sign with my favorite quote on it for a Christmas present to myself. It’s been in the entryway of my house ever since, where my husband and I pass by it multiple times a day. I read it often, but apparently it’s just been wallpaper to my husband all these years. This week he finally noticed it—and noticed something missing. See if you think something’s missing too:

sign

“What about LOVE?” he said to me. “You know, faith, hope and LOVE? You have faith and hope in there, but where’s the rest of it?”

Immediately this scripture came to mind:

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13:13 NLT

The GREATEST of these is LOVE. Had I missed the rest of the message all these years? I was hearing and dancing…had hope and faith, but where–where was the sentence that completed the quote? The one with LOVE in it?

It may seem trivial, but this really bugged me. My favorite quote was now diminished, incomplete, and lacking something vital. It didn’t inspire me like it had before. I felt silly that I had never noticed the missing sentence on LOVE before, AND I had absolutely no idea what it was supposed to be.

It took a few days of feeling perturbed before I finally asked God to help me figure out the ending. I had to chuckle when it finally came to me!

“LOVE is letting Jesus lead.”

All this time I had pictured myself dancing alone to the music I could hear and believe. But I haven’t been alone, He’s been there the whole time, a silent partner in the dance, teaching me how to yield to my love for Him and surrender more and more of my movements to His lead–to His LOVE.

Now I know, LOVE was never really missing. God is LOVE. Always present, always holding me in His arms and gently leading me in the dances of my life.

Thank you hubby for noticing what I couldn’t, and for challenging me to find the LOVE.

“Hope is hearing the music of the future.

Faith is dancing to it now.

Love is letting Jesus lead.”

Lead on Jesus, lead on!  

Praying for you–for faith, hope and LOVE. . . and your dancing with Jesus life.

~Linda

The Beauty in the Dark

Beauty, Hope, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To love beauty is to see light.  -Victor Hugo

Some may say there’s no beauty to be seen in the dark . . .

perhaps believe that darkness is the absence of light . . .

or preach that only dark things happen in the dark.

But not me.

I’ve found a secret place in the dark…where sorrows, pain, and grief burst forth in a melody of tears that only God hears.

Continue reading The Beauty in the Dark →

The Inspiration for Coloring Life Beautiful

Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

 

Pain inspired it.coloring

Beauty will heal it.

After years of chronic pain and disability,

After experiencing another in a long sequence of treatments gone wrong,

After losing a healthy, athletic body training to climb a  mountain at age 50,

After crying lakes of tears and books of prayers,

After almost dying,

After barely living,

After being given the gift of desperation…

Continue reading The Inspiration for Coloring Life Beautiful →