The Warrior and the Flower: April 2016

Saturday, 30 April 2016

Things I learned in April

1 – Lost in art. What was nice was coming back after the holiday and sensing that holiday excitement of seeing each other again. We were waiting to start on the same project and having to use the same desk, we had to wait for one another. Which meant time together and chatting, refreshing. Joined together to do the Memory Project, my soul did soar. Depth, I love depth. One lady shared about her experience and how being a part of this for the first time, was soul touching for her, she has an adopted child and it touched home. An elderly guy in his later 70’s joined the class a term ago, walking around to look at our pictures, he stopped at my desk. Another lady and I started talking to him and he opened up about being an orphan himself, it was incredibly difficult for him. I wanted to cry, the pain was obvious, I pray for Him to come to know Messiah and His saving Love.

2 – I love diffusers! As in totally, have found a new love! They come in all shapes and sizes. My first one was a flower one and my new one is a bird one. I love the smells; I have also found that smell can have a calming effect on one. It can also calm and bless the room.

3 – Thunderous clouds in the valley of low cloud. When the dark clouds are thick and there is no sunlight, it feels cold and dark. Yet when the clouds are darkest it is also when they are the fullest – the rain will come, the rain will come and bring with it mighty blessings again. In the words of my hubby “great things are coming for you boo, it’s coming soon.” Scriptures that comforted me – 2 Thess 2 and 3, Isaiah 42,

4 – Parallel emotions. A crisis within, a struggle in one area does not mean you are a broken mess, it means that we walk with parallel emotions. We can be struggling with one thing but be still happy, revitalised in another area, learning about yourself, healing, growing, seeing something in a new way. A new way of seeing. Parallel feelings, like holding an ice cream and a ham burger in two different hands. I want people to know that. I want people to realise that about life, we are complex and advice is not always needed, just the freedom space to say this is what I am struggling with and can I speak it out loud because I am fine and in need to say what is hard.

5 – Great things! Like getting a new dress for my brothers upcoming wedding, shopping which I haven’t done in a long time and getting my hair cut, what blessings.

6 – Redemption work. What started off as something that maybe did not function as part of the perfect plan for my life, is something that can be redeemed and turned around to become something great. Life is not this one-way track but it is a place of learning and growing. Feeling like I fell down meant I got scared to move forward and so I sat down, afraid of making wrong decisions, afraid of dishonouring God. But it has turned in to a place of good things, a redeemed place. A place where I can learn something new and see just how deep Gods Love is. How wide His encompassing mercy is, the deal is all about self – forgiveness, self – compassion. The open arms we offer to ourselves, the comforting arms we open to our own hearts and say “I love you, God forgives you and so do I, be free to be.”

7 – In the beginning the earth was formless and void, completely empty and without form. Sometimes this is the shape life takes, confused about the next step, or a crisis of faith, a cross road, or a tragedy and yet it says that God’s spirit hovered off this void. I have drawn comfort in these words, the fact that whatever I have faced as a crisis over the past month, that is where God’s spirit hovers, even when I have felt alone. Even when the “Footprints” story has felt so much like my own, I know it has not always been the truth, Yeshua carries me. I am not alone, over this dark the Spirit of God hovers.

8 – Wonderful. Good news from my publisher, 8 weeks and my book is out! My author copies will be given to me in about 3 weeks and I cannot wait, I signed my contract 14 months ago, I wondered at it being so far away. Now I can finally grow excited.

9 – Kitchen Tea’s are expensive! Tomorrow my mom and I will host my future sister in law’s kitchen tea,. I am looking forward to it but its been pricey in the midst of everything I have been doing. But I am looking forward to it, after 14 years they will finally be getting married oh yeah!

Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life, by your love I am sustained and to your love I am always called back. _ Henri Nouwen.

Tuesday, 26 April 2016

The Wilderness Woman

This morning in the mercy of prayer, Father ministered to my heart about being what I call, a wilderness woman. The wilderness is not this dark crazy place like people have made it out to be. The wilderness is surrender, its intimate solitude. Over the centuries , many devout followers of God lived in the wilderness. For it was there where they sought after purity and peace. In the wilderness, there is ample need, ample lives to be touched. This month I watched a beautiful movie on the life of Lilias Trotter, a gifted woman who gave up everything to follow the call of God on her life. A call that led her to the people of Algeria. In Algeria she lived in a city where she ministered until persecution pushed her in to the desert. In the deep of the desert land she found untouched peoples, people who had never heard of the Living Christ. People who had never known the depth of Gods love. In the desert she found home and cultivated such an intimacy with God, that her written words are spirit – breathed.

Some are called to live in the desert. This beautiful place of intimacy and solitude, it is their calling. For others, they are called to live in tribes and cities, there too they experience intimacy and love. For each one, there is an individual calling. For the wilderness woman, she develops keen spiritual insight in her life as a fluid traveller of tents. The desert is a place of the unknown, the mysterious, the miraculous and the thirsty lost wanderer. There she treats those wanderers, helps them, feeds them because she is nourished and she sends them on their way again, with renewed life. Solitude does not mean loneliness, it just means stopping, joining, following where the Pillar of Fire and Cloud moves. There she stops when told to, she connects deeply with others, but she is not called to stay, though love from her heart remains. It's pretty deep. I wrote something, a small snippet of my own journey.... I now understand why I was so keenly aware of the certain ways we as women exclude one another, forming inner circles where others could not get in to. I understand now more, because I have a heart for the ones and the twos. For the woman walking alone or called to - this is truly the Grace and Mercy of God on my life. May the wilderness women out there embrace who they are and know they are called for that solitude!

The Wilderness Woman

I found acceptance where I did not think to find it,
in the eyes of unsaved women,
in the caring touches of “ungodly” women.

And I found rejection where I never thought to find it,
in the frowns of saved women,
at the fists of “Jesus” women.

Out from the borders of tribes, I travelled.
Out in to the open plain. I travelled out in to the blowing sands of the desert,
a Sarah called to leave the tents of Ur with her Lord.

I marched through the sands content with the solitude.

The unmarked road curved between the body of dues and there I met a woman,
a copper skinned woman, her eyes so much like my own.
We walked together across the cables of wire that joined out two different homes.

Our hearts and hands suddenly ministering to other wilderness women, women with no homes, no cities and no place to fellowship.

For some years, our footprints lay side by side in the sand, until our journey brought us to a crossroad.
Our eyes heavy with unfallen tears, a warm embrace and we both turned, until we were alone. I walked drinking in sisterhood from my Brother Yeshua. I am a wilderness woman, called out in to the plains. Alone, without a tribe, the surface face of my life it’s in this beautiful place called home.

Then it happens quite by Providence, the emails come with cries between the lines.
Women thirsty for grace, no one to bandage wounds, no groups to try and break in to. I can speak from my heart because I know the habitation of solitude. A Sarah in her tent with her Lord.

Wilderness women, I meet them across the distant plains, the one woman on the other side. Some strong and powerful, walking in the Roar of the Lion, women I love for who they are.

I understand the woman without a tribe, she was not called to stay but to move with a fluid like gait across the desert sands, following the pillar of cloud and fire. In the solitude of life, she has learned to see, in the desert of her abode, she has learned to listen, she sings the song of the Wind. Not all women were called for the cities, not all women were called for the tribe, some women were called to dwell in the desert, in the arms of sand and Love. Wilderness women, beneath her palm tree, home.

Sharing with an amazing woman Lisa!

at #GivemeGrace

Friday, 15 April 2016

Begin Again - FMF

Five Minute Friday, this week writing on Easy! GO!

April, a hard month. Sometimes the darkness falls thick and we struggle to overcome. But comfort is drawn in the fact that, when the dark clouds are heavy and thick, it may be that we are caught up in this storm, but the clouds are dark because they carry rain. Rain that will soon water the earth. Rain that will soon bring life. Rain that will soon nourish and hit the desert, feeding its thirst. Rain that touches life gently and feeds again. When the clouds finally part, the beauty of the great blue sky and the smiling sun, appear so much more beautiful then before. As though you see it for the very first time. Everything is new, even the air.

Continue at the work you have been given I hear. Continue when it's difficult. I pick it up again and feel the trembling aftershock of this earthquake of darkness, the way the clouds have roared and thundered. Work hard at the work being given to you, keep going, do not stop, do not allow this enemy of darkness to take the holy work placed in your hand and render it as nothing. I pick up these tasks again and feel life peek slowly back in to the cracks, gently coming in, not rushing. As though learning to walk again. Out of practice, out of my usual gait, I wrestle with how hard this is, not easy but tenderly there is a whisper, Sshhh, Sssh, I hear. A whisper to my child heart within, the comfort of a parent to its child, Ssssh Ssshh, slowly, begin again.

Stop! Sharing at Kates Usual Five Minute Friday