Satin is MOVING TO FLORIDA!!

So, it is with great joy and trepidation that I prepare for a move that will take me another 900 miles across the country. That's right. I'm moving. Again. I'm moving to Florida, this time, and yes, that's my house! :) Two weeks from yesterday, I'll be hitting the road with my parents and all my earthly belongings, heading off into the wild yue blonder... Give me a buzz if you want to know more.

Much love.
L~

Quote for Today

"The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart."

~Josiah G. Holland~

Of Grace and Graciousness

If you know me at all, you know that one of the strongest words in my life is “grace.” The concept of grace is incredibly hard to grasp. It’s hard to explain a nebulous concept, even when it’s concrete, substantial in your own life. Grace is unmerited favor. Grace is an undeserved second chance. Grace is what ultimately gets us through life. Grace, in some regards, is life.

Grace is what creates an atmosphere that allows reconciliation. Grace breeds mercy. Grace provides a way out, when there’s no way out. Grace is what heralds love, kindness, patience, and myriad other qualities. Grace is indispensable.

Have you ever experienced grace? Perhaps a better question would be this: have you ever experienced grace and recognized it for what it is? I hope your answer is in the affirmative. If it’s not, take off the blinders. I am firmly convinced that there is not a soul in existence who hasn’t experienced some measure of grace. Stop and think about it for a moment. Have you ever made some harsh statement in the heat of a moment and then been forgiven for it? Have you ever made a bad decision, then been miraculously released from the consequences? Has someone been patient with you when you’ve been mean-spirited? Has someone applied the Golden Rule to you? Have you accepted the Salvation of Christ? Have you been relieved of responsibility for something that you couldn’t handle? Have you ever been loved by someone? Have you ever been treated kindly? All of these things are measures of grace—some large, some small, but grace, all.

I have, in my life, experienced great, heaping gobs of grace. It just piles up around me and runs down me. I can’t seem to wade through it all to even find where it ends, and yet, there are times when I am less than gracious to those around me. I suppose it’s something to which everyone must devote effort, but there are moments when I’m truly ashamed of my lack of graciousness, considering it all.

One of the new challenges in my life is helping me grow in the graciousness that I extend to others. Perhaps it is because of the fact that I pile up unmerited favor for myself and sometimes hoard it instead of dispensing it freely to others. Either way, I pray that the purpose of God is fulfilled in this challenge.

You know, sometimes grace appears in the strangest ways. My dad brought an instance of grace to my attention that I had entirely missed. This past weekend, my car broke down. Gasp! My steadfast, faithful car! Heavens, no! Yes. Sigh. Let me share the instances of grace with you. Dad pointed one out, and the more I think of it, the more I find.

The battery had died, inexplicably, with no warning, when it had worked fine a few minutes previously. Dead as a doornail. Dead. Dead. Dead. I went to the trunk to retrieve my jumper cables. I am anal-retentive about making sure that there are jumper cables in my vehicle. I always keep them in the wheel well with the spare tire, so that I don’t inadvertently remove them when I clean out the trunk or something. I opened up the wheel well, and, wait. What in the world!? No jumper cables. (The only thing I ultimately came up with is that when I had a flat over a year ago and the shop was putting the spare back in the trunk, they must have removed my jumper cables and not put them back afterward. Sigh.) Grace instance #1: my girlfriend and her boyfriend were there and were willing to jump my car with hers. Grace instance #2: someone else was nearby and was willing to loan us jumper cables. We continued with our plans, and when we got to our destination, we realized that my car was dead again. Grace instance #3: a very kind young man bent the rules to allow my insurance’s roadside assistance access to the area where we were. We finally got moving again, and my car died in the parking lot of a gas station where we had stopped (leaving the car running) for a potty break. Grace instance #4: a kind man offered to get jumper cables and return, and then he did. Grace instance #5: another kind man who had jumper cables with him loaned them to us. Grace instance #6: my friend’s car overheated while we were trying to jump mine with hers, and she just cooled it off, fixed it up, and hooked it right back up to mine. Grace instance #7: when we weren’t sure that we’d make it back, another friend offered to bring me back to pick up the car the next day if I had to leave it. I may have forgotten to mention that we were about an hour and a half away from where I live, at the time. I have free towing with my insurance, but it only applies within a 12 mile radius, so my car would have been towed to a station that was still an hour and a half from my place, had we not gotten it started. Grace instance #8: my friend and her boyfriend followed me all the way to my repair shop, which was out of their way, and then took me home afterward. Grace instance #9: the shop was closed when we got there. I had a dead car, no place to leave a key for the mechanic, and no way to get back to deliver it. There was still someone inside, and she graciously opened the door and let me leave the key and sign the paperwork.

Now we get to the part that my dad pointed out… All this happened on Saturday. That meant that I was without my car on Sunday, and until the mechanic could fix it on Monday. Without a car, getting to/from the church I attend is a huge ordeal, where I live. I stayed home. I sat and read my Bible, read some of the books that I’m currently studying, and then got started with some things over which I’ve procrastinated myself into a corner. I actually got a ridiculous volume of work done in my apartment on Sunday afternoon. When I talked to my dad, he said, “God knew what He was doing. If you’d had your car and had the ability to run around, run errands, go to church, and all that, would you have gotten all those things done?” The answer, when I thought about it, was no. I wouldn’t have completed some things that have weighed on my heavily, unless my car was gone and I was stuck. So the Grace of God figured out how to solve a half dozen or more of my problems by using car trouble. Furthermore, I’m getting ready to move about 900 miles away, and had my car broken down on the trip, or after I get to the new location (without a repair shop I know and trust), I could have been in really hot water. The protection that God provides is astounding sometimes, when you stop to think about it.

I don’t suppose that this post really has a point. Perhaps it’s more of an observation than anything, but if that’s the case, it’s a reminder to me that I should give out of the bounty of the blessings I’ve received. If the way we forgive is the way we’ll be forgiven, then it’s yet another measure of grace that the grace that’s extended to us will always abound exponentially over the grace we extend.

If you’re someone who has extended grace to me, I thank you. If you’re someone I’ve not treated graciously, I am truly sorry. My assignment is now to find some way to extend grace to those around me in some form or fashion, every day. May you be richly blessed with grace and graciousness.

Much love.
L~

Another quote

"You say that love is nonsense.... I tell you it is no such thing. For weeks and months it is a steady physical pain, an ache about the heart, never leaving one, by night or by day; a long strain on one's nerves like toothache or rheumatism, not intolerable at any one instant, but exhausting by its steady drain on the strength."

~Henry Brooks Adams~

A thought.

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more."

~Erica Jong in How to Save Your Own Life (1977)~

Introspection and Critique: Where is your Heart?

It has been said by wiser men than I that there are three paradigms by which an individual is viewed/judged: what he knows about himself that no one else knows, what he knows about himself that everyone else knows, and what everyone else knows about him that he doesn’t know. It was recently pointed out to me that what someone else sees in me as my “true colors” is a very contrary view to what I see in myself, and/or what has been conveyed to me that others see. That concerns me terribly, especially because this person’s opinion matters greatly to me. My daddy says that how anyone views you is exactly how you are, if only to that person. Thus, we must be acutely aware of the opinions of others, so that we may not become what they think we already are.

While I cannot speak to what others see in me that I don’t see in myself, I can speak to some of my intimate knowledge of myself. Perhaps contemplating what I know of myself could help me to see a way to salvage the good opinions of those I wish to know me well. Perhaps, I can un-become what they may think I am. Perhaps not, but it’s a start.

Here is my heart. Here is who I am. This is how I view myself.

I am the daughter of the two people I trust, respect, and love more than anyone else in the world. My parents have formed me, raised me, trained me. They and I are the same person, in some respects. I am a combination of the two of them. One need only know them well to know me. My father has a Type A personality, and my mother has a Type B personality. They are both dedicated, disciplined, well-read, educated individuals of sterling character. I aspire to be more like them as I grow. My dad’s drive and determination, commitment to action, and decisiveness are easily complemented by my mother’s gentleness of spirit, patience, kindness, ease of personality, and maternal nature. While I seek to grow the feminine side of me that longs to be seen as I see my mother, I am a combination of, what I see as, some of the very best of both my parents. I know their weaknesses, because their weaknesses are my own. But I know their strengths, because they have bestowed those on me with all the blessing that any parents could offer.

My parents raised me with godly discipline. They ingrained in me some very basic beliefs about family life, child-rearing, how life works in the real world, and how one operates within a functional family unit. My brother and I lived an idyllic childhood, and I am more and more convinced that I have been blessed so much more than I ever knew by my family and life, to this point, as I meet and interact with others. We always lived on acreage. We always had places to run and play and things to discover. We always had work to do, things to contribute, and a place within the family. We were well-educated at an early age, and we were taught the value of hard work, of self-discipline, and the respect of elders. (I hope and pray that I can instill some of this into my own children, when the day comes.)

I say all this of my childhood, because it provides the foundation on which to build an adulthood. Now, at this moment in my life, I value hard work, discipline, the opinions/input/respect of my elders, my faith (and the reasons behind it), my education (both in school and out), and the lessons I learned through doing chores through four seasons of the year, whether we felt like it or not, whether the weather cooperated or not, because it wasn’t up to me. Others depended on me. I couldn’t just not feed the chickens because I didn’t feel like getting up. I couldn’t forget to water the horses because I didn’t remember. Their lives hinged on my discipline, and when my meager, childly self-discipline wasn’t enough to get my mind on the task at hand and my fanny in gear, my parents’ discipline was. I was a part of a unit. We all had jobs, tasks, chores, responsibilities, and together, everything was accomplished.

As my father’s daughter, I prefer action to inactivity. We work hard. We play hard. We rest hard. We devote all of our energy to what we’re doing. Our unofficial family motto, spurred on by this drive of my dad’s, is “It’s not done until it’s overdone.” I can’t tell you how many family activities we’ve undertaken that were characterized by that motto. I can’t tell you succinctly about the houses that we’ve turned into amazing, beautiful homes, through hard work—team work, not because we had to, but because it’s simply amazing what you can do when you set your mind to something. It’s incredible what beauty, and conversely, what havoc, we can create just because we choose to.

By the same token, one of my dad’s favorite sayings is “if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing wrong.” Even if things don’t work out the way you’d like, even if it turns out to be a fizzle in the end, if it was worth doing in the first place, DO IT! You can’t allow yourself to be paralyzed into inaction, just because you can’t see how things will all turn out in the end. As my mentor likes to say, “You can’t steer a parked car.” You have to move.

I’ve never known boredom in my life. My parents didn’t believe in it when I was growing up, and I don’t believe in it now. Either give me something to do, or get out of my way and I’ll find something. (Napping is something to do, just to clarify. Haha) If you want to drive me absolutely bonkers, put me in a holding pattern with nothing to do. Put me in a hotel room or a plane or some other enclosed space, without a book, without paper, and break my concentration so that I can’t even sleep or think or anything, and I promise you, I WILL go completely, stark-raving mad. (Unless it’s a specific program –preferably entertaining and/or uplifting, television does not count, and television cuts my focus and makes it extremely difficult to do anything, up to and including sleep. Television is an irritant. I don’t own a television for that reason. If I’m not watching it, it needs to be out of my hearing and out of my line of sight so that I can do something else.)

Some of the darkest parts of me, the battles I fight within myself, are very closely linked to some of the things I consider my strengths. My action-mindedness breeds, if I’m not careful, irritation with others who aren’t as focused as I, or even others who are focused on different things. I must be vigilant about that, and since my life currently lends itself to an abundance of activity, I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t think about it. I need to. I need that to be on my radar so that I don’t inadvertently hurt others with something that seems obvious (and obviously right) to me.

My appreciation of discipline breeds an inability to cope with others who aren’t disciplined in the same way I am. I have to realize that few others, in my peer group, were raised the way I was, and I need to learn to judge less harshly the things that I see as short-comings in others. I may be seen (and probably am by some) as overly disciplined, to the point of being harsh, and that is not my wish. I have come to know great joy in discipline, because it makes life so much better, richer, and easier in so many ways. Not everyone has experienced that the way I have, and I can’t expect them to know my perspective.

Living alone, I have become far too self-reliant. I have come to depend on solitude to recharge my batteries. (In psychology this is referred to as introversion—drawing strength from within instead of from without, needing solitude to recharge, no matter how much you love being sociable. Some people—extroverts—need social experiences to recharge.) I have gotten so used to the fact that I have no one else’s schedule to contend with, feelings to consider, or agenda to navigate that sometimes I don’t even see how selfish I’m being, until after the fact. Being single and living alone is a breeding ground for selfishness of thought, behavior, and attitude. I need to make a point of considering others. I need to fight that circumstance-borne illness, because it will kill my relationships if I don’t. I need to make time for solitude so that I can adjust my attitude and thought processes, however I can, and when I need to, and I need to make clear my reasons for seeking that solitude.

I prize communication. Sometimes I prize it too highly. Sometimes it’s ok to shut up. Sometimes it’s ok to let things go. I need to learn to relax more about communication. I need to be less vocal about some things and allow others to be how they choose to be. The danger here for me is that I hurt others with unkindness. I must strive to remember that unasked advice is criticism. My need to communicate is not more important than my need to be kind and loving. I must learn to balance the two.

I think this all boils down to the same thing, and it’s hard to correct this through introspection. I am a selfish person. I don’t always think of others. I think of my thoughts, because they’re the only thoughts I have, and I don’t take the time to try to see the perspectives of others. I judge people against a standard that is clear in my head, but one by which they may not judge themselves or me. What I see as “how life works” based on my experiences, education, training, etc., is not necessarily how others see life or experience it.

So perhaps it’s not so difficult to see why someone else may think my “true colors” are less than I believe my character to be. Perhaps how I have acted has spoken so loudly that others can’t hear a word I’m saying. Perhaps, because they can’t see my motives, my struggles, the desires of my heart I can’t expect them to view me through those things the way I do. No one, outside of my closest confidants, knows the battles I face within myself and how the true desire that screams inside me is to be loving and kind. Perhaps all they see is a terribly selfish, unkind, unloving individual who cannot be better than the worst that she fights within her.

Lord, have mercy on my broken, humbled spirit. Help me to undo the damage I have done in my relationships. Help me with these struggles. Draw my attention to the things in me that don’t bring honor and glory to You. Break me. Change me. Grow me. Protect me from the worst of myself. Prepare me for the things You have for my future. Make this the prayer of my heart and the focus of my spirit, through Your unending (THANK YOU) grace and mercy. In the all-powerful Name of your precious Son I pray, Amen.

Much love,
L~

Glimpses of His Love

As previously mentioned, I’m reading The Way of the Wild Heart by John Eldredge, and he discusses the six phases of the masculine journey. (I encourage you to read this book and Wild at Heart, whether you’re a man or a woman, because it’s very enlightening. I also highly recommend Captivating, which is about the feminine journey.) They are Adored Son, Cowboy/Ranger, Warrior, Lover, King, and Sage. I am just beginning the chapters on the “Sage” part, and to this point, the most difficult part for me to read has been the “Lover” section. However, one thing in the Lover part of the book struck a chord in me, and that was when Eldredge was speaking of this communication between God and man. He spoke of the way God has shown His love over the years, and that resonated with me, because I understood. I have been there. I know what you mean. Shortly after I read that section, I had one of those little things happen that communicated to me that God longs to be intimately connected with my life. That experience led to the poem that I posted yesterday and began this post brewing in my head. Some things are really clear in my mind, but become much more complicated when I try to get them out and put them in words, so I hope I’m not confusing this issue too much in the telling…

Someone once said that when you talk to God it’s called prayer, but when God talks to you it’s called schizophrenia. :) I still think that’s hilarious. Have you ever spent time thinking about the ways in which God carries on conversations with His people? Chances are, if you’ve spent any time in prayer, ever in your life, you’ve at least considered the reverse. Perhaps you haven’t spent much time thinking about it. Perhaps you’re one of those people who think that it just doesn’t happen. Perhaps you’re not even sure that God exists. On the other hand, maybe, like me, you’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about it and have begun to enjoy a more regular intercourse with your Creator because of your careful consideration.

The two typical interactions that people automatically assume you’re talking about when you refer to the voice of God in your life are the Bible, and other people. It’s true. Those are great sources of interaction with God. I firmly believe that the Bible is our primary source for understanding the Mind and Heart of God, because it is His love story that He put in writing for our benefit. I believe, like many before me, that the Bible is the divine Word of God, that it is a living Word, and not a dead writing. I believe, as the Bible says of itself, that it is “able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” In addition to Scripture, I believe that God uses people to speak to one another to convey His thoughts. In my life, He has used many people, even some unlikely sources.

This thought always reminds me of the little girl who was afraid of the dark. She called for her daddy, and he came into the room. She told him of her fear, and he said, “Don’t you remember that you learned that Jesus is with you all the time? You don’t ever have to be afraid of anything, because Jesus is there to take care of you.” She replied, “I know that, Daddy, but I just wanted someone with skin.” In our frailty as humans, we sometimes need someone “with skin,” and God faithfully provides that. He places people in our lives to help us through things, and for that we are grateful. On the reverse of that is the fact that sometimes you and I become the someone with skin to help others through. Sometimes we know it, and sometimes we don’t, but it’s a blessing to be that someone, either way. But I digress…

There are many other ways that God shows us that He is present, that He cares, and that He is interested in even the most mundane details of our daily lives. Sometimes He speaks directly to our spirit, using words that are almost audible in our heads. Sometimes He conveys an emotion or alleviates a negative emotion. There have been moments in my life that I could very clearly, in my mind, hear God’s voice speaking to me. Those things have not always been life-changing words, in fact, most of them were just moments shared between two close friends, but some of them have been very eye-opening. The first time that I felt God joking with me startled me and delighted me. But when I thought about it, I thought that if we’re created in His image and we joke with each other, why wouldn’t He joke with us, too? There was a time, a little over a year ago, that I had found a song that I loved, and I was listening to it one morning while getting ready to go somewhere, and I heard Him speak to me, in echo to the words of the song. That song has, ever since, been my love song with my Lover, my Lord: OUR song. Every time I hear it, I smile, and it renews my commitment to Him.

It’s interesting to note that trying to explain to someone else these moments is nearly impossible, even to someone else who understands. There’s such a POWER in the voice of God that it’s impossible to convey, so the re-telling of the experience loses something big. I’ve learned that those moments are generally to be shared only between the two of us, and in the sharing of those moments alone with Him, a precious intimacy is developed.

For those of you who know something of my spiritual journey, you know that it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve begun to grow by leaps and bounds. I had the foundation, being raised in a Christian home and being “saved” since the age of 4, but the personal relationship side of Christianity was, for me, a roller coaster ride. Sometimes I wasn’t even near the theme park, and sometimes I was at the height of the highest hill in the throes of the ride. I just couldn’t seem to get a handle on the supposed intimacy that God offered. He’s so big, and I’m so small. Why would He care about the little things in my day, when He has so much else to do? (This is why I intensely dislike the song “God Must Be Busy” btw. I understand it, but I detest the theology of it.) In thinking that He wouldn’t care about the little things, I effectively cut Him out of those parts of my life. When you consider the fact that the majority of our lives revolve around the little things, that cuts God out of the biggest part of who we are. I didn’t, at that time, see how those “minor” exclusions broke His heart. He wanted to be a part of those things, and I just didn’t want to “bother” Him by sharing them. It makes me sad to think about that.

One of the best things about God is that even when we hurt and reject Him, He keeps pursuing us. He keeps blessing us. As David put it in Psalms, “He knows my frame. He remembers that I am dust.” He doesn’t let it get Him bent out of shape. He doesn’t say, “Well, if she’s going to exclude me, I’m just going to forget it! Let’s see if she can make it through the day without me being there to fix things for her. Hmph!” He just continues to woo. He loves us, demonstratively, overwhelmingly, each day, even when we fail to notice. It’s really incredible.

You know, when I thought of the gifts of God, as I was growing up, I would think of the really obvious things: life, health, salvation, prosperity, etc. I didn’t think of actual gifts. My parents gave me the gift of life, too, but when I think of gifts they give me, I think of the littler things: a book, a memento, a card in the mail. It took a long time, but I started realizing that God gives little gifts, too. He gives us evidence of His love in tangible form, much the way a suitor would give his beloved when he’s wooing her. This is where we get the imagery of Jesus as the Lover of our souls. All aspects of human experience directly relate to aspects of divine experience. Our relationships among ourselves mirror the relationship we have with God, and He did that intentionally.

I want to give you an example, because this was the event that got me thinking about this post in the first place. I attended a business conference over the weekend, and Saturday morning I wound up parking a significant (in 4” heels, 8-10 blocks is much more significant) distance from the convention center and walking. It was the first spot I could find, and I was in a rush because I was running late. Little did I know that the distance was orchestrated by God. With hands full of the things that I “needed” to get through the daytime sessions and into the afternoon break, I was trotting down the sidewalk (yes, trotting) toward the conference, and something caught my eye. It was a flower, or rather a little batch of flowers off some bush like a lilac. I saw it, pristine, beautiful, recently cut, unbruised, untrampled on the sidewalk. I looked around for the bush, and I didn’t see it. I thought, “Oh, that’s nice, God, thank You,” and I kept walking. I felt a little twinge of guilt for not stopping to pick it up, but I was running late, hands full. I didn’t have anywhere to put it. I kept walking. “You could put it in your hair.” True. I could, but I’m a block away from it by now, and I’m still late and I’m still carrying stuff. “Alright.”

I thought about that flower off and on for the rest of the morning/early afternoon. Before the evening session, I decided that I needed to take some of my stuff back to the car so I wouldn’t have to deal with carrying so much after the late night session ended, so I hauled my proverbial cookies back to the car. I didn’t see the flower, but about a half-block down from where I remembered it being, I saw the bush it had come from and thought, “How could I have missed that bush? It’s so beautiful and has flowers all over it.” The answer was, “I meant for you to see the flower I wanted to give you, not the bush it came from. If you’d seen the bush, the flower wouldn’t have been as remarkable.” I took my things to the car, dropped them off, reorganized and started back, at a slower pace. I was looking for my flower now. It was still lying there, a little wilted from the heat of the day, but unbroken and untrampled. I thought, “Oh, it’s wilted. That’s too bad.” I got about 10 steps past it when I thought, “I’m an idiot. I’m not walking by that AGAIN.” And I stopped, turned around, and went back and got it.

Now, had someone been with me, they would have thought I was crazy. I turned around and went back and picked up a wilted flower. I carried it in my hand back into the hotel, into the restroom where I changed my clothes, and then placed it in my hair where it had belonged all day. No one said anything. It would have been beautiful in my hair when I arrived, because it just matched my dress, and it was fresh then, but I had, as a friend of mine says, “delayed intelligence.”

The rest of the walk, after I picked it up, I realized what it meant. God gave me flowers. He gave me a little bouquet, for no other reason than that He loved me and wanted me to be happy. He knows that the question of my heart and the journey of my life is the quest to be beautiful. He blesses me with little bits of beauty that He leaves for me alone to see because He knows I’m searching for beauty in my heart. He gives me beauty that complements my own beauty (matching my dress, even) as an affirmation and in answer to my question, “Am I beautiful, God?” “Yes, my Love. You are beautiful. You are more beautiful to me than anything. I love you. I delight in your beauty, and because you delight in the beauty in which I surround you, here is a token of my love. Wear it in your hair as a gift from your Lover.”

My primary love language is gifts. God was speaking my language, physically, so that I could hear, see, smell, touch, and experience His love. I love flowers. I’ve only received flowers from a handful of people over the years, and they mean the world to me. I told my daddy that if I ever got married that it would be his job to make sure that my husband knows how I love to receive flowers. He said, “When you get married, your husband should know that without having to have me tell him.” Well, God’s my Lover, and He knows my heart so well that He gives exactly the gift He knows will delight me. And, not being a gracious lover in return, or perhaps more accurately, not always being in the frame of mind of being the Beloved, I noticed, but didn’t really notice. It took Him several tries for me to acknowledge His gift, and being as boneheaded as I am, it took me a bit, but I got the message.

God speaks to us. He gives us glimpses of His love. He showers us with gifts, even tangible ones, and we are so wrapped up in our tiny, little lives that we miss them, but He keeps trying. He woos. He calls. He loves. He leaves it up to us to open our eyes, to be receptive to His love, and to share the amazing lives that He longs to give us. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to work at keeping my eyes open, at being available when my Lover calls me to come out and play, at hearing His voice. May you see Him in your life. He’s there, just pay attention, and you’ll see Him.

Much love.
L~

P.S. Yes, the picture above is of the actual flower from God. And, yes, I still have it. :)