Brave Strokes

(Revisiting Paris... )

It's only brushstrokes of color, heavy and textured, deliberate and intended, somehow brash and unrefined, and yet I hold my breath, hold this moment of witnessing. For it is that, the witnessing of something noble.

It's a painting. Just of sheets, a window, hooks, a chair or two. Nothing ornate, gilded, plush. Just a homely bedroom of a doleful, sometimes tortured, man, a man skimping by on money sent from his brother to buy food, to rent this humble place for a pillow. Hardly worth esteeming to canvas or the ages.

And yet...

"I had a new idea in my head... this time it's just simply my bedroom, only here color is to do everything and giving, by its simplification, a grander style to things...."

I stand inches from the frame, want to reach out and let fingertips touch this color doing everything, this simple thing doing a grand thing.

Daubs and strokes they are, swaths of oil shades, broad rich lines. Thick, layered color slashes across canvas stretched, like the underscoring of words. Like a statement.

My understanding of his language, his sentiment, is not cerebral but in the parts of me collecting, surging, with emotion, that tender place that speaks in colors, in movement. In that which the heart knows as inexpressible.

But what's burning within isn't so much about the striking, stark beauty of a bedroom in Arles, about that saturation of hues calling one to come lie down and rest. What's spilling me is about the grandest of all. This courage.

This ruthless mettle to forge the road rarely traveled. The fearlessness to tilt head, heart, and see beauty in the mundane. The tenacity to care little what others think but to sing the the song He's composed for you alone.

I lean into the textured white that fills the pillow. This is the work of the anguishing unafraid. A dauntless one who endlessly jousted his own apparitions.

"I went... still accompanied to the village, the mere sight of people and things had an effect on me that I thought I was going to faint and I felt very ill..."

Fear hounded every moment, agoraphobia stalking, and yet he laid himself out.

"The emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without being aware of working..."

He steeled himself, opened oil, and ripped open his chest wall to expose the workings of a fragile spirit. Dipping brush tip, he brandished a sword against self-doubts encroaching army. He listened to the tune well. And sang his solo despite interior cacophony.

It's only colors, a painting of a bedroom, I know. But for me, rooted here before 22 by 29 inches of soul pigment, it's this raw clarion to do what we must do, simply because we must.

Regardless of the naysayers, the loneliness, the giants we think lurk in this land, because He calls, and that is what matters.

Changed by old paint, I wander out of the gallery.

This life canvas stretches and He's asking for brave strokes.

Van Gogh's Prayer, written to his brother:

I want to be bound to Christ with unbreakable bonds and to feel these bonds...

To live in and for Christ, to be one of the poor of His kingdom,

steeped in leaven filled with His spirit, impelled by His love...

To become one who finds repose in Him alone,

who desires nothing but Him on earth.

Lingering with Scripture: Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you."

Lifting voice in response to Scripture: Father, if I desire nothing but You, what is there to really fear? You go with us, calling us to come to sing the song You meant for us, on the canvas You've given.

Living Scripture: Where is God calling me to take courage today?

Photos: Taken at the Orsay Museum in Paris of Vincent van Gogh's The Artist's Room in Arles

Shaped

I flew west to think about words, to meet women who write. That felt awkward, strange. For what do I know about words? I simply scratch in the dark, an act on the fringe hours of which I never speak. The thing I do, must do, that embarrasses me.

It's all new to me, this trying to grow comfortable in my own skin. This breathing deep and saying, "It's okay." Why is it excruciatingly hard to accept how He's formed us? The Potter must grieve over stiff, stubborn clay.

I keep returning to this long ago journal entry:






I picked a vase full of sunflowers, the final act in this Day of Preparation for Lord’s Day. The floors are done, the windows not, and I am tired. Indifferent to the lateness of the hour or the weariness of the body, I need to come and sit here, press these keys and watch letters shuffle into words on the screen. It is my streak across space, falling into words and landing softly.

I tell no one of these rendezvous with 26 letters. Like the Perseids, this act of dancing with curves and lines occurs in the out-of-the way hours, unbeknownst to they who call me daughter, friend. Day dawns, the bell tolls, and I slip away home.

Every apprentice knows, painfully so, of the chasm to be crossed in the journey towards skill. Loose and awkward, my knitting of words is not something to be paraded. And who would understand?

“You are the mother of six---you don’t think your life full enough? And writing? Maybe gardening, baking, quilting…but writing? What kind of a product is that?”

But it is not about product. This writing is about process.

“Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals what is alive.

The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write.

To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know.” — Henri Nouwen

This scratching, trying and difficult, probes new, tender spaces within. No, I know not the destination, but I know the direction: the essence of me.

Gentle questions muse in my inbox: how do you mother, educate, keep home…and clumsily work at casting on rows of words?

My whispered, tentative answer: And how do I breathe? Some soothe with rocking while needles click. I settle with the pattering, however maladroitly, of keys. You make time, no matter. To enrich and under gird the rest of time. Breathing hangs in the balance.

And sometimes I simply do all of it, the job of me, rather poorly:

“Indeed, the great paradox of [the life of one who writes] is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.” ~ Betsy Lerner

But this, all of this, is about learning. And when it matters, we become good studies.

A star shoots across the inky night draped outside my window, skimming the drowsy sunflowers.

Like Perseids, I am His handiwork, made this way.

And it's okay.

Lord, You formed each clump of clay uniquely. What can I do today to accept how You shaped me, a work of Your hands?

Living into a Good Story

I am not there in the kitchen when she spills the ink bottle across the counter, there to see it run down her arms, splatter cupboard fronts, pool on planks of trees under her bare toes.

She calls for rescue and, after slight gasp, weak smile, feeble rebuke (for, really, had I been there?), I wipe up smearing black, return cap to smudged bottle, the grooves of these fingertips stained with word paint.

Little Girl and I, we scrub, soap lathering thick, foam piling. All to no avail. Today, we wear ink. And somehow it feels right.

For I bleed stories, and these stories that we live mark, permeate, me. And I wonder as I measure salt, sift flour, make bread: Do the stories come from without or within? And maybe both, simultaneously. The stories of our days saturate us, soak into our pores. And we leak our stories. One, we are.

I scoop dough from stainless steel bowl, knead out its warm softness on countertop. I touch tentatively, hesitating. Will these inky fingertips of mine sully bread dough? I smile at the thought, understanding: doesn’t story nourish us, feed us?

I was four and they were old, skin wrinkled soft, and I’d climb in between them both, toes under flannel sheets, and ask, “Tell me stories of when Dad was a little boy?”

And Grandpa, wearing cotton undershirt, would lace gnarled fingers behind his head and start slow. “Did I ever tell you about his dog, Sandy?” Although he had, I’d only say, “Tell me that one!” and Grandma would chuckle and together they’d take me back too.

I was twelve and he was ageless, and while the school bus careened with talk of Teen Magazine, Michael J. Fox, and what hairstyle to wear with dangly earrings, I wrote down the stories Great-Uncle Elmer told us all over porridge bowls and sunrises and honey-sodden tea biscuits.

Great-Grandpa Joe tracking bees to trees full of the sweet stuff, he and cousins nabbing foxes down in the fence bottoms, Bill Chambers’ team of horses carefully backing up, wagon and all, over railroad tracks too, when Uncle Bill stepped out door of the mill and whistled for the chestnut pair. Great-Uncle Elmer dipped biscuits into porridge and we dipped too into stories from before that became the stories of now, of us, explaining who we are, how we’ve traveled here. I can still hear his voice, time-rusty, see his eyes, transparent as water, letting me see that which once was.

I knead these stories, this ink, into live dough rising. As Ezekiel heard from God, “‘Eat this book’” (Ezekiel 3:2), so we too will eat our words, the words we speak, read, listen to. Like Ezekiel, we too will open our mouths and eat stories. Words, living and rich, nourish.

The first words spoken into the cold expanse of the cosmos are words meant to reassure: “In the beginning…” It is all story. We live in narrative; the epic of existence is His story. And it is His story: “In the beginning, God….” God is the central character. His story flashes with Him. Our stories are not our own, not even really about us, but spotlight His heart. I forget that, listening to my story, these days, to know more about me instead of Him. How often had I missed the point of the story?

I wash dough off my hands, indelible ink stubborn, permanent. It won’t come off, dyed into being. Isn’t that way with love stories, the passion bathing you? He’s writing a romance. The bridegroom woos: "And when I passed by again, I saw that you were old enough for love. So I wrapped my cloak around you to cover your nakedness and declared my marriage vows. I made a covenant with you, says the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine" (Eze. 16:8).

In the late morning light, bread rising, I trace fingertips black with ink and know how this story ends. In Him, there are only happy endings, lovers united. No, I don’t know how the middle chapters will read. Yes, with embarrassing frequency fear strangles me and I wrangle against turning the page. Regardless of angst, the next scene comes. But this is a story I can trust, an Author I can believe in. He’s writing a story with a beginning, an ending---this middle must make sense. Will I remember when the anxieties loom, bear down: I can trust His storyline.

Our lives are not random, haphazard, absurd. The story has a Storyteller Who is making meaning of these moments. Nor do I have to slip a peek at the last page. He’s already told us the words inked there: "I have plans for you... plans to prosper you..plans to give you a hope and future Jer. 29:11 ... I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am John 14:3... No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him 1 Cor. 2:9."

My hands are stained with the ink of a good story.

Because The Word came, His hands stained red.

Visual Homemaking Journal

A place to scratch it all down... menus, tasks, funny children remarks, things to remember... and the place where I keep a running list of daily gifts from His hand, that for which to notice and give thanks...

“Nothing has really happened unless its been described [in words].

Keep a diary.

Don’t let a day pass without recording it,

whether something interesting happens or not.

Something interesting happens every day.”

~Nigel Nicolson (Vita Sackville-West's son) quoting Virginia Woolf

Be inspired:

How to Collage your Life

Debi's Homemaking Visual Journal

Clarice's Personal Visual Journal --pt. 2, pt. 3 --

Planning Days

Leaving Grace Marks

Journal Inspiration

Known and Loved

I met you!

You were just perfect: warm, gracious, broken and Jesus shining brilliantly through the cracks.

It was all gift to slip out of this dim place and meet you face to face, to whisper words and encourage each other on The Way. A gift to hear your hearts, to pray with you and for you, to give glory to Father...

Thank you, my friend. I count it a privilege to quietly, simply, worship Him with you in this place. Another 1000 posts? Only by His grace...

You are loved. This I know.

You are known. This I love.

Tanya from Happily Ever After has a love note from our heart--and His--winging its way to Wyoming...

And my heart takes wing to give thanks for unique, special, precious you.

All's grace,

(And if you'd like to consider hanging your own love note, a link to the sign... )

Journal/Schedule Inspiration

...inspiration from Lani's Journal of Days... (using the MomAgenda layout)
...beauty from Debi's Visual Journal
...and for ideas of what to include in your visual journal, a creative place to gather the scraps and threads of your day into this heirloom fabric, a visit with Dawn.

Potpourri

In which I ramble and smell the roses....

• Laura read. Laura liked. Laura made.
  Go check out how Laura made her own Learning Planner, tailor made to her own specs, after the planner preview here. I am inspired!

(Her blank, lined journal was purchased at Borders Books, with plain craft paper covers for only $4.99. With a little paper, Mod Podge decoupage glue, some ribbon and 30-45 minutes, she has her own personal learning planner, with Charlotte Mason inspiration! Home learning, or not, a very helpful Mom journal to keep track of lists, events, children and activities.)

• I teach. They learn. We read.

The first four were taught to read with The Writing Road to Reading and the WISE Guide. Four voracious readers now devour words, words and more words.

If you have a young one, learning to nibble on letters, and you are wondering how to teach them to eat books, I highly recommend this DVD: You Can Do it! Practical, personal, thorough encouragement on how to teach your child to read.

Our four readers continue with the WISE/Spell to Read and Write program , using the CDs for daily dictation review and mastery--letting Mama snuggle in with read alouds for the littles instead of dictating review spelling words while chopping carrots.

Our fifth, turning five in October, is learning the wonderful world of words with All About Spelling. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic, sequential, incremental, cumulative, and based on phonograms: excellent program.

Malakai giggles over the color-coded tiles as he forms his words, daily asks to work through his phonograms, and said today, "I think I can say all the sounds in these words--you just help me if you hear me getting it wrong, okay?" I have not only been very impressed with All About Spelling, (and, I believe, it had much to live up to after our completely positive experiences with WRTR), I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Malakai teaching these lessons. Not only are we learning phonograms, syllable types and developing phonemic awareness , but we are smiling, laughing and having fun! The wonder of learning together! Five stars.

• Our oldest, Caleb, went far away to camp. He met folks. Like readers to this space.
  
  This past weekend, Caleb accompanied Dad V. to a Christian camp. Grandpa needed someone to fish with him, someone to play Phase Ten with him... someone who knew and could remember Grandma with him. Caleb went and did. And then a note in my inbox:

I can't remember if we've ever communicated before....but yesterday we had the pleasure of meeting Caleb here at the Lodge. (Here I gulp hard.) What a fine young man he is! (insert heavy sigh). Our son met him at the pool and then we invited him back to our cottage.

When he told me his last name I mentioned that I vist a web site written by a Voskamp every day. When he asked if it was "Ann" I said yes and he said, "That's my mom!" This morning I met your father-in-law! What a precious man! He told me about losing his dear wife last month.... Small world, eh? (You can catch up with this fine blogger here.)

Happily, a small world, indeed.... the body of Christ reaching out everywhere.

• A humble privilege to share this space here.

Listening to Poems

"The Bible tells us that we are God's masterpieces (poiema in Greek);
not only creatures, but his creations, his poems (Ephesians 2:10).
We are living epistles (2 Corinthians 3:3).
And so, our lives are meant to be listened to,
because it is God who is speaking into and out of and through the symphony of the years,
and the masterpiece of a lifetime."

~Michael Card

Lord? This life? A poem? A masterpiece? Dare I say: the beat feels off, the rhyme not quite. I shall just be out with it (You'll understand, yes?): this life haiku reads more like a disjointed limmerick.

I know, yes, I know. You are the faithful poet, the persevering sculptor. But hear me on this, Abba. Sometimes I listen to this life--to me--and, well, Lord? All is grating, wearying, cacaphony. Yes, You know this too, yes.

But then, just for a moment, there it is: A flash. A strain. You. You speaking through this life. This life, unbelievably, too.

Father? Sometimes, I confess (You already know, yes?), I doubt whether this place, this corner of the web, is where I should scratch out this listening to You, this listening to this life. Other poems read... of You, more clearly, more distinctly. This letter I am living has messy, scratched out lines; inky, blotted out words; thin, worn spots. This web place catches but fragments of the letter. You know the other parts, creased and wrinkled.

And, funny, You just keep smoothing out the paper, writing more, turning the story so. Redeeming.

This life may be quite the piece. But, it is true, You are quite the Master. The Master greater than the piece, with its broken shards.

Yes, Father? Alright, I will take up the shell and listen. To this day. To this life. To You.

It sounds like the ocean rolling in, like a symphony thundering, lifting, transporting.

Is that what Grace sounds like?

Listening... Why Journal

Update:
How writing benefits health of cancer patients
How to Write to Bring Healing

For daily therapy, I never have to dab my wrists with L’Occitane magnolia perfume beforehand, nor worry if I’m ten minutes late, or bother sitting in some paneled waiting room for a receptionist in Birkenstocks to open a hollow-paneled door and call my name.

For this office is out in the orchard, or down in the flowerbeds, burst into flame of sunflower and zinnia, and the only ones who call my name are mop-heads kids who have my eyes of robin-egg blue and their daddy’s mile-wide smile.

And the space and the time is free.

So sometime after the hour of three, I look up and see those hands calling me to come to the keys, and tap away. And lo and behold, doors open wide and I enter in, to stumble upon things I never knew, right inside the meandering halls of a soul. And in His Light, the best light, that which is discovered is dusted off and redeemed.

Daily key therapy unlocks to places one didn’t know had doors or vast expanses behind. Who knows what will be found in this tapping place?

In the beginning was the Word, who comes again every day, just after three, and asks one to tap and knock.

There are things to be found.

"Writing can be a creative and invigorating

way to make our lives available to ourselves...

we may discover that the better we tell our stories,

the better we will want to live them."

~Henri Nouwen

Lord, I don't know what lies within. But this writing is to take the time to listen to You and find. And then, to take up a different life.

*Photo by Caleb of these hands tapping, knocking and finding, under His skies...

Telling

"Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but spiritually....

In these pages I tell secrets...because that is one way of keeping track and because I believe that it is not only more honest but also vastly more interesting than to pretend that I have no such secrets to tell. I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets.

Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it is to be human." ~Beuchner, Telling Secrets

Around

Some scratchings from this pen can be found in print in this month's San Antonion Christian Beacon and online at Christian Women Online. Browse around both publications. Some articles that you won't forget. And God desires to use.

Scratching

In the midst of cleaning this week, I may be sparser in this corner... if you are looking for some humble farm-girl scratchings, Remembrance Press' beautiful The Girlhood Companion carries an article--(our daughter slipped away with our copy, completely smitten with the whole magazine, including Mrs. Betty Dickerson's column and Spunky's daughter's wise words... such encouragement for young girls.)

If you live in the San Antonio, Texas area, you may also pick up some of these quiet scratchings in the Christian Beacon (or read the April 2007 Christian Beacon here online)

During the week, I will also be importing archived posts from The Sacred Everyday back to this out-of -the-way corner... and revisiting those thoughts--good ruminations for cleaning...

With Great Care

I am lost.

Does anyone know the way home from here?
Maybe I have the map all turned around?
None of this looks familiar, expected.
Which way to turn? Which direction? Which decision?
Helplessly, I simply don’t know.
And I have to keep moving.

Disoriented, trying to stave off panic, I rustle about for a compass. Surely I can figure a direction out of all of these decisions? The more I dig about, searching, the more tangled the fear knots. Turn left up here? Or right? Turn around and head back? Stay put?

Somebody?

There. Someone there, coming over that knoll. A fellow with a staff is likely to know the lay of the land and His way around.

I don’t have to say a word. The cry of my eyes, the wringing of my hands, show how utterly vulnerable and lost I am. He reaches out His hand.

“As a shepherd watches over His flock, so I will lead you home with great care.” (Jer. 31:9, 10)

With great care. Hear me breathe again. I don’t have to figure this all out. I will be led home—to my real, forever, perfect Home---with great care.

I can’t get lost.
The scenery may be unexpected.
The path may seem too hard.
But I can have confidence: Father God is leading me home with great care.

Lead on, Lord.

About writing...

"In struggling to say what we are, we become what we say." ~Thomas Kane, New Oxford Guide to Writing

Lord, I scratch it out here...praying that You will become me into all that is wisely and rightly said. And that in pouring it out, You will cleanse me of what I am and shouldn't be.