MeaningFull Poetry Week - Christina's Heart

Day 5! Truth be told - our poetry week is not running in chronological order, life has happened in between but! We are still doing it and I cannot believe how inspired we all have been feeling after reading "heart words" on these pages. This afternoon I want to share the words of a fellow writer and blogger, Christina Hubbard. I loved bumping in Christina's world of words on her blog, and since then we have formed a great kinship of writing. So here's what she says about herself; Christina Hubbard is a poet who writes memoir. Her work has appeared at (in)courage and she recently hosted #write31days of Five Minute Free Writes. She loves helping women find courage and freedom to influence their world with honest, beautiful story. A wife and mom to two squirrelly kids who will change the world, Christina loves sitting on her deck and dreaming up roadtrips and overseas adventures. Find her at Creative and Free

 Christina's Heart! (I fell in love with this poem of hers!)

Come by Here, My Lord

What do we do when love beckons, 

But we fear it?

When it requires us to knock down 

The black night of our own terrible histories,

Cement with sledgehammers,

Hate with kisses,

Bitterness with hand-holding grace.

How can we welcome the murderer into our homes,

The thief to our beds?

But I tell you, It's courage to embrace.

We are still piecing together the disintegration of our lives:

Race hate.

Religious terror.

How come we by some hope?

Come, sing, friend,

Kumbayah. 

We'll weave small threads, like children around the campfire

Blazing. 

Christina's Favourite Poem

 I love poetry which socks it to you with the turn of a word, or phrase, and stays in the concrete world. Poetry is easy when we stay in the abstract. When we struggle with the details of a moment and listen to what they want to tell us, then we begin making art that really means something. One of my favorite poets right now is Laura Van Prooyen

I highly recommend her book: Our House Was On Fire. The book's title comes from her poem "Blanket." She has a way of startling you with subtle truth in a simple line,

"but tucking my daughter in bed

I ask: If our house was on fire

which would you choose?

She says: My blanket, Mom,

'cause you can run."

Sharing Christina's Poetry over at #smallwonder link up 
 

FMF - Cure for Common Work

This week has been busier then usual, hours spent on a film set, hours spent editing my new work and sending it out to reviewers. Preparing a new teaching for this weekend, along with working with my hubby to create a video for it. Taking photos on set, working hard to get a BIG project started and replying to loads of emails and being super organised when it comes to mobilising location, models, hair and make - up. Transcribing a recent interview I did, and working on a new one for next week and just everything in between. It's been pretty fun and pretty amazing but the best part of it is, the beautiful sense of God's sweet presence and Power in it all. Which leads me to thinking about the joy of sacred work. Over the years I have waited on God to help me cultivate a lifestyle of rest, of Sabbath. My husband and I are Sabbath - keepers, evry Friday night when the sun sets we light our candles and settle down for 24 hours of Sabbath. It is our spiritual conviction to remember and obey the biblical Sabbath and it is such a delight in our home. Sabbath is sacred time, the rest of the week days are termed to be "common" or "normal" but Sabbath ushers in something sacred and from this example we learn to distinguish between what has Yahweh our God's stamp on and what is just normal. 

Having said this, I know that Sabbath has become a term or reality people are familiarising themselves with a lot more these days. Yet in this I have said to myself (and to others) that "people teach us how to rest, but no one teaches us how to work."  God took years to teach me how to rest. He had to, because I had burn out a number of times even though I was a Sabbth keeper! God taught me how to rest, now He is teaching me how to work in sanctity. I have also learned that I had burn out because I was doing tasks, investing in charity work and serving in places, where I was not called to serve. I was giving out too much on things not ordained just for me. Yet, deeper still I had wounds that Father needed to heal so that I could truly rest. Yes, to cultivate a weekly time for Sabbath is fabulous, biblical even, but to cultivate a lifestyle of surrender to God's best even when you do not understand it, that's a spiritual discipline that ushers in true rest. It helps eyes distinguish between what is "common" and what is sacred. Next time you are faced with tiredness, ask yourself am I invested in God's best for me? If I am, then this is sacred work and there will be tiredness, frustration even, but it's work ordained just for you and ony you can do it best! Let's not all desire a break from our lives, but to live our lives bringing rest to our work. Resting in work means let God lead and do not strive, be smart and be discerning!

Over at Five Minute Friday 

MeaningFull Poetry Week: Bianca's Heart

Day4 and what a day to share our hearts and lives! Today I am blessed to introduce my fellow friend and sister Bianca Pipe.

Bianca is a Yeshua pursuing, tea hoarding, animal loving South African. As someone who is a big planner and likes things to go according to said plan, she is terrifyingly and wonderfully in awe as she experiences all these plans unravel and watches as Yahweh creates a story for her life much better than the one she had originally planned for. Currently, she finds herself as an accidental nomad in England as she discovers who she is in Yeshua and all that He has in store for her life. She occasionally shares bits of her story over at Written by Rivkah

Bianca does not write poetry or even considers herself a writer, but she wrote a moving Psalm through a personal encounter with her God, here are her words..

A Psalm

A season of life without words

A destitute land.

Forgotten, abandoned, left for dead.

Why have you forsaken me, my God?

When will you remember me?

I cried out onto empty ears.

I searched high and low

I searched for You but You were nowhere to be seen.

Please, my God, remember me.

May Your anger towards me disappear,

Before I do.

In a destitute land, it was there.

It was there where You found me.

Broken, beaten, bleeding.

You lifted me in Your arms.

Cradled me close to Your chest.

I could hear the beating of Your heart against my ear.

Come, My darling daughter.

Come, rest in My arms.

Weep no more, daughter

For I am with you.

Along the still waters, I walked

Hand in hand, gazing into Your eyes

The warm glow of the sun on my bare face.

Forever loved, forever safe in Your care

And now, out of my mouth comes no more wailing

But rather a song.

A song of restoration

A song of grace.

Words that speak of Your majesty and saving power

A song for my King and my Beloved.

A song for the nation

A song for the future

A song.

Her favourite Poem;

I am Woman by Aliyah Lauren Jacobs, (thanks my friend!:))

The reason that this is my number one poem is because when I read it, a fire within me is ignited. This poem causes a light to be cast on all that I have been through. Things that were meant to defeat me, reject me and silence me. This poem makes me see that these things instead made me unconquerable in Him, accepted in Him and helped me to live more loudly and boldly than what I ever thought I’d be able to. I have this poem hanging in my bedroom and when I need to be reminded of who I am, I read it. When I need encouragement, I read it. When I am feeling weak and broken and weary, I read it. It is through this poem that the Father has spoken so deeply into my heart. It reminds me of who He created us all to be. It is who we are – unafraid, hand-made, warrior, ruler, poet, queen.

I am Woman

By Lauren Jacobs

I am Woman – I choose to be undefined.

Undefeated but despised.

Rejected

Dismembered

Disgraced

Maltreated.

But I am Woman – unafraid to be seen.

I am me – a woman and everything that means.

Unafraid

Hand-made

Warrior,

Ruler, poet

Queen,

Boldly powerful,

With a need to be seen.

This is Woman – take a look and see

Object,

Subject,

Beaten

Silenced

But still undefeated; Queen.

I am Woman! Possessing a powerful form.

Victorious,

Impassioned,

Courageous,

Spirited.

Formidable.

She is Woman and all that means!

Captain,

Healer

Fighter,

A Freer.

Impassioned,

Emblazoned

Powerful,

Whole.

I am woman, a spark inflamed, crowned with glory

That is all of me. She is woman, poet, ruler, Warrior, Queen.

Sharing at Holley Gerth