Grace, God, & I

Well, I've decided to try blogging. I figure if Grandma Moses could learn painting at a much older age than I am...then surely I can blog. I'm thinking, "How hard can it be?" Of course, I've been known to be technically challenged at least for the first year or so of a new electronic gadget...so we shall see. I've still never fully learned our dvd player, nor do I comprehend all the buttons on a cell phone. What's wrong with just having a few, such as off/on, & start/stop? I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot of neat features, not ever daring to push any other buttons outside those simple-command ones...but as long as I don't know otherwise, I am perfectly content to know what little I do of such mechanics. The dichotomy is, I can digitize embroidery designs, and I did manage to make my own web page, so surely I will eventually grasp this new fangled type of media. The Word tells me I can do all things through Christ...thank goodness I've hidden it in my heart. Tough times call for tough measures, & so I'm believing there's nothing stronger for this techno-battle than the Word. (Of course, there's nothing stronger for any battle...)

So here I sit, the Word & I......blogging......for the very first time. I can remember a time when I looked at blogs, and thought, "Don't they have anything better to do with their time???" Now someone can ponder that about me. I've joined the rank & file...& I'm not sure if that's a plus, a minus, or one of those whats (as in "I don't know what it is"). What I do find especially interesting, though, in starting on this new adventure called "blogging", is that in my really younger days, it was called "keeping a diary", and any sibling caught reading it definitely caught one's wrath. It was then later called "journaling", and with that, the desire was still that no one read what one was writing. Now along comes "blogging", and the very point *is* for a person to share it with others, so that anyone, (including non-family members), can read what one's thoughts are. It appears the point I once knew has been completely stood on its head. I have to ask, am I the only one that this concept seems a bit befuddling to??? The idea that one not only bring it out from under the mattress, but that one also post it on the whole worrrrlllld-wide-web...well, it is just contrary to everything I've always known. But with that comment, I'm probably dating myself, so I think I'll leave well-enough alone....

Btw, the picture of the little girl with the dolls is of my mama, Yona, taken during the Great Depression. I love it because it heralds me back to a simpler time: a time that, yes, was full of much loss...but it was also full of much gain. My mama went home to be with the Lord in '86, but if one were to ask her, she would've said, I'm sure, that it was full of those truly important things that weave through the fabric of one's life. This picture is only a single thread of hers (& now my) fabric, yet it weaves such a story. There's my mama, sitting in a field on a cold day, playing with her dolls, quite content with the world the Lord had blessed her with...while her own mama was home probably fretting while trying to figure out what could be scrounged up for dinner. Yet all the while, throughout that moment in time, God's invisible, (& visible), loving hands, are all about. Do you see them? Not with your eyes, but with your heart. That after all, is what faith in God's loving hands is all about.

Speaking of God's loving hands, it is a glorious day in the Lord, with me having fun trying something I've never done before. Here am I, a middle-aged woman blogging, of all things. Yet I am. This is my thread in time. So I sit here at the computer, while He has blessed me with a rainy, cool day today to do so. The windows are open and the birds are chirping outside. And the Lord's presence surrounds me like a blanket of comfort. What more can one want? I am grateful for the simple pleasures He has given me, for it is in the simple and mundane that I have found the purest, most authentic joy. The mad chasings of the world...the rushing here and there and everywhere...none of those disclose what is found in the corner of life called solitude. In those corners, I find the beginning and the end...the alpha and the omega...from here to there & everywhere, the Lord. And at my city gate, He has sprinkled my corner today with rain droplets...the big fat kind that pitter & patter the whole morning long, making puddles that are scattered all about. But they also patter & splash on my soul...washing me in the thoughts of how purifying and cleansing are His love and mercy...so new are His mercies every day. Thank you Lord. The longer I live, the more I am aware that it is by grace go I. A rainy cool fall day of grace, God, & I.