Human potential,
though not always apparent,
is there waiting
to be discovered and brought forth.
~Unknown
I heard a voice that told me I’m essential,
that all my fears are limiting my potential,
that it’s time to step into the light
and use every bit of talent I have.
-Edited excerpt from a quote by India Arie
**Image via Pinterest
Embrace sorrowful thoughts
for they sweep the house of your heart clean,
scatter the withered leaves,
and pull out the twisted roots,
preparing the ground for
the
new shoots of joy.
~Rumi
Listen to your heart.
It knows all things,
because it comes from
the Soul of the World,
and it will one day return there.
~Paulo Coelho
Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more; the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end. ~Isaiah 60:20 ✝
**Image by French artist, Anne Marie Zilberman, found on Pinterest
Life is too ironic to understand.
It takes sadness to know
What happiness is,
Noise to appreciate silence,
And absence
To value presence!
~Author Unknown
Not too long after I graduated and began working in a secretarial position, the grant that funded James’ job at the blood bank expired and so he had to be let go. After a few months he got another job, this time with EPA working in air pollution control here in our area, and thus we continued moving forward in paying off the debts incurred from his illness in our first year of marriage. On a side note, as a requirement for his job, James had to attend conferences on air quality and pollution controls. When one came up which required that he fly to North Carolina, I learned for the very first time that James was very much afraid of flying, and though I hadn’t thought of it for several years, it occurred me then that that probably meant the end of any chance of ever getting to Paris. But I told myself such is life and just let the dream fall by the wayside again. Soon after that I decided to stop wasting the education that my parents had worked hard to fund and went back to school one summer in order to get a third teaching field. In the fall of 1968 I finally got my first teaching job, and then 2001 I retired after having taught English and/or Spanish for 31 years. And go figure! I never did get the opportunity to teach French. And so whoooosh! The dream’s tiny, remaining flame is all but snuffed out one more time. However, all had not been lost. Life had gone on in spite of all the setbacks and dashed hopes. Over the course of our now nearly 53 years of marriage, I had given birth to our one and only child who was and is the delight and love of our lives. But wait! Are you ready for this one? She met her future husband while they were both working on their Ph.D in graduate school, and they married shortly after their graduations. So? One might ask. What’s the problem with that? Well… Where do suppose he took her on their honeymoon??? Why, where else but Paris of course and for a whole, entire week! To be continued…
You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light. ~2 Samuel 22:29 ✝
**Image via Pinterest
Drop the last year of your life
into the silent limbo of the past.
Let it go, for it was imperfect,
and thank God that it can go.
~Brooks Atkinson
Have you ever had one of those stagnant years where the lackluster of life seems to have dulled and you are stuck in a kind of limbo? Well that’s the way life seemed during my Sophomore year in college. Not only had my father’s death at the end of the previous year dashed me against the hard rocks of an excruciating reality for the first time in my life, but my faith had been shaken, deeply shaken by events in and around his funeral. Not only had I to contend with his death and hypocrisy in the church but also the reality that some anger “business” between Dad and I was now never to be resolved and forgiven. That combined with some deplorable actions by the clergy and leaders in the church lead to what would become a decades-long derailment in my walk with the Lord. So indeed something had snapped inside me. I was barely 19 years old and I had commenced to fall apart which became clearly reflected in my first semester grades that year. By midterm I found myself on scholastic probation both for the University as well as for my sorority. Even my dreams of living in Paris had paled under the duress of my heartache and befuddlement. And for months and months nothing changed; lines had been blurred, dreams had faded, and hope had grown dim. I was stuck, stuck in limbo, stuck in unfamiliar waters of being, and all the while suffering, hurting alone since I’d been told by elders I should put my grieving aside and be strong for my mom and two younger sisters. But life has a way of moving on whether one feels its progression or not, and by the end of the second semester, my grades had come back up and a tiny ray of light began to break through the gloomy cloud cover that had been shrouding my world.
A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. ~Proverbs 15:13 ✝
**Photo of La Tour Eiffel taken by Natalie Scarberry
A single sunbeam is enough
to drive away many shadows.
~St. Francis of Assisi
Birds sing after a storm;
why shouldn’t people
feel as free to delight
in whatever sunlight remains
to them.
~Rose Kennedy
The top picture above was taken a month ago of a river in our area. The photo beneath it is that same river now, a month later. But today the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all’s right with the world. Praise the Lord! Thank you for the rain and for the end of this awful drought here; thank you now for the sun that’s blessing this Sabbath.
The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the Lord binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted. ~Isaiah 30:26 ✝
**Top photo via Pinterest; bottom two aerial photos via local news station
You cannot help but learn more
as you take the world into your hands.
Take it up reverently, for it is
an old piece of clay, with millions
of thumbprints on it.
~John Updike
This is my lovely granddaughter. She was two years old when her father and our daughter, Nikki, got married. So I have been a part of her life almost from the get go and like to think that I’ve had a positive impact on her, if not by a blood link, then by a shared heart link. Like my daughter, Annie is beautiful and bright and has a compassionate, loving heart. She will graduate soon from high school, and then in the fall she will be headed off to college. Since her life will soon change in profound ways, I pray that she continues to follow the Lord and the holy nudgings of her own heart. Part of my desire for her is best stated in these quotes above and below and in what Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.” And I pray that she always knows that the “all” of who and what she is more than enough since she is made in the image of Almighty God. For a better insight into her sweet heart, check out some of her posts on her blog where she expresses her love and desire to serve the Lord at: https://alwayslivingforhim.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/little-moments-big-blessings/
To be nobody but yourself in a world
which is doing its best, night and day,
to make you everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight;
and never stop fighting.
~e.e. cummings, 1955
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. ~Marianne Williamson
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. ~Proverbs 3:5-6 ✝
That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful
means that we are less alone, that we are
more deeply inserted into existence
than the course of a single life
would lead us to believe.
~John Berger, English Painter
POPPIES
by Mary Oliver
The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
in this world that doesn’t
sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it’s done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—
and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?
~ from New and Selected Poems, Vol. I (Beacon Press, 1993)
Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. ~Psalm 37:4 ✝
**These are all poppies grown in my yard from seed I sowed last fall, and as Beecher said, I shall never have a garden without them because they wash me in a river of earthly delight as Oliver puts it.
Of all the senses,
sight must be
the most delightful.
~Helen Keller, deaf and blind
American author and lecturer
May your inner eye
See through the surfaces
and glean the real presence
Of everything that meets you.
May your soul beautify
The desire of your eyes
That you might glimpse
The infinity that hides
In the simple sights
That seem worn
To your usual eyes.
~Excerpts from a blessings for
the senses by John O’Donohue
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. ~Matthew 6:22 ✝
**Image via Pinterest
Love’s secret is always lifting
its head out from under the covers,
“Here I am!”
~Rumi, as interpreted by Coleman Barks
Morning’s first light
kisses the day to wakefulness
and announces Yahweh’s presence.
See it!
Feel it!
Taste it!
Touch it!
Hear the secrets
the dawn has to tell!
~Natalie Scarberry
The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy. ~Psalm 65:8 ✝
We live in between the act of awakening
and the act of surrender.
Each morning, we awaken to light,
and the invitation to a new day
in the world of time;
each night, we surrender to the dark
to be taken to play in the world of dreams
where time is no more.
~John O’Donohue
We become not a melting pot
but a beautiful mosaic.
Different people, different beliefs
different yearnings, different hopes,
different dreams.
~Jimmy Carter
but
God’s gifts put man’s
best dreams to shame.
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The name of this wonderful pink rose is Belinda’s Dream, and since she is one of my favorites, I have two of them planted in different places my yard. Her blooms, especially in the spring and the fall, are always and definitely the stuff of which my garden dreams are made. And whenever I photograph her, I always think to myself, “What beautiful dreams, she, whose name this rose bears, must have.” I wonder who she is!
For God does speak–now one way, now another– though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision in the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds. He may speak in their ears… ~Job 33:14-16a ✝
Sacred Touches 