Smiling Eyes

There is something to be said about the communication of the eyes. The smile in one’s eyes has the power to encourage and lift one up to the heights.

This last several years of wearing masks everywhere we go has certainly confirmed that. With faces covered, we have come to rely on the eyes to speak for us. Where before, it was easy to look away when speaking to a stranger, the wearing of a mask has called us out, has made us linger longer with our eye contact. If you are like me, I had to pause and look ‘harder’ to be able to hear what people were speaking because I rely on being able to see the mouth to hear.

Recently, my oldest grandson asked me, via text, if I wanted to do a ‘devotion’ together through the book of Psalms. Now, you have to understand that this grandson is ten years old and an avid gamer, AND we live 1600 miles away from each other. So for him to ask me to do this was a thrill to my old-fashioned ‘non-gamer’ heart! The first thing I thought of as I read his invitation, was his sweet face, and more specifically, his smiling eyes looking at me. That kid lights up a room with his eyes and they stand out in my memory like neon lights. He borders on shy and timid but when he smiles or has an idea he does not hold back. So now, every time I send a polo or text regarding our ‘devotion’, I am thinking of and seeing his eyes with that little light turned on in them.

This made me think about the power of our eyes. What do I say with my eyes? Is what I am thinking apparent in my glance? Fear? Anger? Sadness? Joy? Surprise? Love?

Words become secondary when I speak with my eyes and facial expressions.

The ‘windows to my soul’ is a phrase I’ve heard regarding the eyes. What is going on in my soul will be visible in my eyes. I have been preoccupied with something worrying me and smiling with my mouth and had people ask me what is wrong. I’m smiling, I’m fine! But the eyes tell the truth.

Oh that my conscience would be clear and my heart light and at peace that my eyes, the evidence of my soul condition, would be smiling and carefree and an encouragement to others.

"The eye is the lamp of the body, if your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness!" -Matthew 6:22-24

"Eyes are windows to the soul." -Shakespeare

Enlarged

It was just days before my mama left this earth. I was alone in the art studio. I was frantically moving out debris and old things saved for years in an effort to be busy with my anxious thoughts…

What am I doing? How can I be doing this when my mother is dying? How am I going to handle this God!? I was sad and mad and helpless and I was fighting to keep my mom with me, to hang on to her memories, to maintain her home and her studio like she was going to return to it. And finally I crumpled in a heap and yelled at God…

“God!!! My heart was shredded when my dad died. I was torn to bits and still haven’t quite recovered! What is going to happen to me when my mom dies!?”

I heard very softly and steadily through my tears, “I am going to enlarge you.”

“Enlarge me!? What do You mean, God. What does that even mean?”

No answer.

That shut me up. It seemed a positive thing. Well, a positive thing that could require some more work…the tears and ranting stopped and I just sat there thinking on that. I looked around that studio and allowed myself to be enlarged…whatever that was.

I have had this word brewing, percolating, simmering, stewing in me for several months. Every possible scenario has paraded through my thoughts.

Enlarge. Enlargement. Enlarging.

I know…obsess much?

“For I will cast out the nations before you, and ENLARGE your borders…”

-Exodus 34:24

My mother passed within days after I had that encounter. I did not FEEL enlarged. I felt bereft. I felt shrunken. I felt wilted.

Over the course of these last weeks I have been looking to see what it means to grow (to be enlarged) as a result of the last several years of struggle in caring for my mother in the midst of dementia; some days funny some not so funny. It was a stretching.

I have experienced the largeness of friends and family who have come alongside as I am growing. The sweet throbbing growth of LOVE.

Enlarged is so BIG!

There has to be so much more.

“You enlarge my steps under me, and my feet have not slipped.”

-2 Samuel 22:37

I am gonna keep on the watchtower; listening, waiting, watching…

What does it mean to you? To be Enlarged?

“I shall run the way of Your commandments. For You will enlarge my heart.”

-Psalms 119:32
brown and white stallions running in a field
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I am Seen

“Surely You are the God who sees me…”Genesis 16:13

I visited a little church this past weekend invited by my Niece. I was just an anonymous visitor, slipping in to be near to the worship and hear the Word of God.

What I saw was a magnificent surprise. I saw fellow sojourners.

I have been looking for a church home for awhile; a place to share and be shared-with. The Bible encourages us to assemble with one another. We are so in need of community. We don’t even know it half the time, but when we do immerse ourselves in this sweet fellowship with like-minded believers something miraculous occurs. We give of ourselves and receive back one hundred fold.

So far, in my quest to ‘find a church’, I have felt invisible. I have been just a number; a pew warmer. Fill out a card. Sit over there. End of event. I have been on a search out in the wilderness and I have felt alone in this mission.

Like betrayed Hagar, Sarah’s handmaid, I have been lost. But God saw the whole event in Genesis 15 and 16. He was so gracious with this woman. He saw her right where she was in her woundedness as a rejected single mom. And He spoke life to her and to her son. God sees me as well and gifted me with the awareness that I am indeed SEEN.

This past Sunday I realized that not only did I feel seen but everyone gathered seemed to feel it too. The joy was palpable. The thanksgiving was loud. The community was REAL.

It wasn’t about what you wear, how you walk, how well you sing, what you did, or why you were there.

To be SEEN and acknowledged is a deep human need.

I did not realize this was that.

I have spent many years burying the deep hurt of feeling invisible and overlooked. So much so that when I am seen, I hide. It’s a strange conundrum.

I can honestly say, that in this, I have learned that God absolutely SEES me. He’s the One I care about. It’s His opinion that I need to cling to. When I rest in this truth, that I am seen, I walk in some incredible freedom. My quirky, wild dancing personality has no need to cower. My need to stand up for justice is released. I can be the woman that God intended, unapologetically.

And getting personal and real with God, I can actually name Him: El Roi- the God who SEES.

And like Hagar, He will lead me where I will be home.

man sitting on a pew holding a cross
“Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows…not one of them is forgotten by God.” -Luke 12:6-7

What We Don’t Take

little girl with chalk drawing on stone in park

There are so many things we teach our children. As they are growing, we lead them, we show them, we tell them, we live before them. Then we release them to be who they are. We must think they need to know things to survive on the earth and they will need to teach their young some day. We give them pieces of wisdom and then we ice it with gifts and beauties and nuggets of gold.

As a mama, I don’t remember ever thinking about what my children retained. I wanted them to learn to care for their bodies, their belongings and their responsibilities. I wanted them to learn to be kind and giving and to care for others. I wanted them to know God and to desire Him above all else.Those were the basics. The rest was just icing.

“Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, and when you lie down and when you get up.” -Deuteronomy 11:19

New International Version Bible

Today, I picked up the task, where I left off last month…of sorting and cleaning and finding homes for things that belonged to my mama and daddy. It’s a daunting undertaking, one that has reduced me to tears every time I try to do it. But today, I turned on the music and forged ahead.

The things that got me today were my mother’s collection of glasses and aprons…

They had purchased an extensive variety of drinking glasses in Taiwan. Sets of Martini, Sherry, Brandy, Wine, Beer and Liquor glasses were packed away in original packing with the stickers still on many of them. They were still wrapped in the original disintegrating paper from sixty years ago when they made that trip to Taiwan.

The aprons…oh my…every variety and color…well worn and used to wrap dishes in. I even found a thin ‘decorative’ apron that I remember my mother wearing at holidays over her silk dresses.

I just sat down and bawled my eyes out, thinking of how classy my little mama was. Cooking and serving dinner in her apron and sipping after dinner sherry from the tiny, fragile glass from Taiwan.

I could not wrap my head around how I did NOT do ANY of that myself. Or how in the world I didn’t learn it since I grew up with it my whole life. I didn’t take it as my own.

I am pretty sure these things, that were so engrained in my parents, so worthy to be saved all these years, were beheld as ridiculous and unnecessary by my younger self.

Why wear an apron when you can just as well wipe your hands on your jeans…? And what does it matter what kind of a glass you drink from? My first alcoholic beverage was from a keg out of a car trunk into a plastic cup…

We must, as humans, file away things in our heads as the necessary, the irrelevant and the icing files.

My mama lived a life of necessities and of icing. I cried today, because I did not think the icing was important enough to add to my life.

Here I sit, on the floor, in the middle of my tears puzzling how this all came about. Me, without aprons and brandy glasses, having to decide about the importance of a great wealth of glassware.

It’s absolute irony.

Surely, my Heavenly Father sees me here…in the midst…He saw me back there too, when I disregarded the ‘icing’…He has walked with me the whole way, loving me just as I am and probably chuckling at those aprons that I frowned at. He knew that I would be here today, sorting through a lifetime, trying to honor my parents. He holds my hand, even now, as I try to get up from the dust and pass on the icing to my children and grandchildren…

So, along with letter-writing and book-reading and story-telling, I will add apron wearing and …special glasses for special drinks?

Nahhh…I think I will just stick to the letter writing, book reading and story telling for now…That’s my icing…

“Children, honor your mother and father, that it may be well with you all the days of your lives.” -Ephesians 6:2

King James

More For You Bess

My mama wore her little hoe down to a nub. She worked that garden every chance she got right up until the year before she died.

I guess she came by that work ethic honestly. She grew up on a farm, picking cotton at the ripe old age of five. Everyone worked. The heat of summer, the hard work, the mosquitoes, the poverty…all of it was a part of her history.

She wanted more for herself. She watched her daddy lose their farm during the depression because he gave away the last of the family’s money to feed the poor folk on their farm. Mama decided then and there that she would have to be the one to take care of herself. She decided she would get an education.

When I decided I wanted to become a nurse, my mother said, “Don’t do that! Become a radiologist. Nurses have to work too hard to make a living.” I guess she would know. She had gotten that education by the sweat of her brow and became a nurse when nurses were educated by staffing hospitals. She told me that as a student nurse she often had the care of a ward of thirty or more patients by herself.

I distinctly remember her telling me over the years that she had hoped for so much more for me.

I felt I was a disappointment to her. Because I did not become ‘more’.

But…

I pretty much have always done exactly what I have wanted to do. I may put on that I bend and go with the flow to do what others want me to do…Pretty agreeable…but passive aggressively getting my own way or doing the ‘thing’ my way. That’s the truth.

I clearly have enjoyed working hard all my life. I feel restless when I am not working or sweating or helping someone else. The hours that I gave in nursing, ‘working too hard’, were food to my soul. And even now, the richest days are the days that I have spent toiling in the dirt, with my hoe, casting out weeds and creating beautiful spaces for plants.

So, yes Mama, I know YOU wanted more for your Bess, but your Bess got her MORE because she is doing everything she is meant to do…

“The Lord shall increase you MORE and MORE, you and your children.” Psalms 115:14

Perhaps moms think that the things they want are the best things for their children.

Perhaps that the design on a life looks completely different than mama thinks it should.

I caught sight of this worn old hoe standing next to a new one that I bought for my mom. She had more, but she was content with the old hard working tool that she had used for many years.

I know she wanted more for me, but her more was not my more.

My more is serving my Savior by serving others. I am content to use the old pattern that my mom laid out. The pattern of giving a life to others, to feed the poor, to care for the wounded and sick, to stand by and hold the hands of the laboring; and to love unconditionally. And then to rejoice and to dance and to sing!!

That is MORE than enough…

“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet MORE and MORE…” Philippians 1:9

Asparagus Garden

“Better is a hand full of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.” -Ecclesiastes 4:6 ESV

I learned to work a garden following after my mama.

I still remember being little and putting the seeds and dirt into my mouth as she worked among the plants. She laughed at me and asked, didn’t I know that I would grow a great beanstalk in my tummy if I ate the dirt and the seeds. My immediate response, imagining the giant beanstalk coming out of my head, was to spit out the mess.

It occurred to me today, as I toiled among the asparagus, that my mom had left me a beautiful gift with this gardening thing, and better still, she left me this Asparagus patch. It is a lot of work with the Louisiana grass trying every day to overcome everything in its path. Yet, here I am, every morning up to my eyeballs in dirt, cleaning and preparing the beds for spring; Bit by bit, step by step.

But…it’s MY dirt.

I have spent much of my life, as a mom, a wife, a nurse, taking care of other people. I’m pretty sure I started taking care of people when my little brother was born. I sure was a bossy older sister and always had my nose in other people’s business. I made everyone else’s business my business….I remember making lists of chores for my brothers to accomplish because I was disgusted with clutter and dirty dishes. They pretty much laughed at my efforts and I still wound up doing the dishes somehow.

All this to say, the line between what is my ‘stuff’ and what is just NOT my responsibility was pretty blurred growing up and has continued up til now. I have often ‘done it all’ to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. I willingly take on many things that are just plain too much for any one human and usually are not my jobs…And by golly! I’m going to get them done and done well!

I read a little question that was posed in a devotional this morning that gave me pause and led me on this little stringer of thought. The question: “Is this something God wants you to do, or is it something others are asking of you?” The devotional continued on with saying that stress comes from taking on burdens that Jesus never asked us to carry….

Ummm….Were you talking to ME?

Well…the asparagus patch…I am quietly tending my own weeds and dirt and having a little bit of asparagus for dinner. I’m focused on JUST that which is my responsibility and I feel fine. I do not feel guilty or required or late or early or even exhausted…I am delighted to be following after my Mama still…Learning, growing, sitting in the sunshine and dirt.

Thank You my dear Lord for leading me down this garden path…I know I tend to trudge and whine and cry a lot, and I continually question Your judgement in leading me a certain way, but sitting here playing at doing chores and minding my own affairs has given me great rest and peace.

“He Himself is our peace.”-Ephesians 2:14 NIV

The Scent of a Life

We cling so tightly to this earth. We hold ‘things’ so dear. We save and store and display and fill our houses with the pieces of life along the way. This collecting is part of ‘hunting and gathering’ and preparing and protecting our families.

We pass our treasures along to our children and our children’s children. The little nuggets of wisdom, the stories, the history, the travels and conquests. The pictures, though tattered and torn and yellowed along the edges, speak for us after we are gone.

First hand, I know about letting go my tight grip on the ‘things’. That is not to say that I am any good at it. I am still shrieking and moaning about the losses. But I speak from a place of understanding how it feels to have to let go of the things that I loved and valued.

I confess that as I have walked the last years with my mama, that I have often criticized her obsessive need to keep things. I have judged and cleaned and thrown away. I have rolled my eyes and walked through her house all huffy and actually asked, while laughing, “WHY are you keeping THIS?!” She knew herself how bad she was, but as the years turned into ‘not remembering’ she got worse. She hid things, important things, because she was afraid of losing them or somebody stealing them. The daily searches for purses and phones and money, and more were no longer funny. I lectured her about trusting God and not being so fearful; about releasing her tight hold on the stuff. I quoted scripture and prayed with her…Really Betsy!?

Yes. I had become the lecturing parent and she the wayward child. She certainly eyed me with the look of disgust that I probably gave her when I was a teenager.

Things didn’t get better, even moved to a different, safer environment with less stuff. She hid her stuff there too, accusing the staff of taking her money. She even hid other people’s things thinking they were hers. So tight was her hold on the belongings she called her own.

When my mom began to lose interest in the things, I was alarmed. She really had no idea about her phone, her purse, her jewelry, anything. This was my first clue that she was done.

One day she told me to stop bringing things and to take her pictures home. I didn’t listen and I brought more. She just lifted her hand in an “I don’t care” manner.

As mom began to release her hold on life, things became clear to me.

In her effort to hang on and continue living, the grip got tighter and tighter to the point of complete mental dysfunction. But as the end drew nearer she tried to show me how to let go of all the things that seemed so important before.

Her ninety-four years in that body were about finished. She was releasing her hold even upon that.

I cannot let go. yet.

I am clinging to the scent of my mother on her sweater. I am holding tightly to the old familiar and worn shirts. I can’t remove my dad’s old shirts, that she had squirreled away in her dresser. Every step in her house causes me to cry and every photo a journey down a very long hallway in my memory.

Thank You Father God for showing me, for leading me along this weary path…no judgement, no condemnation, only love along the way.

A layer. A peeling and revealing of some greater truth is underway. Our lives do not consist of just this plane. It is NOT just the sweater but the fragrance of a life shared. There are whole lifetimes rolled up in the carpet of an old house.

How can we grow and learn and pass on the glimmer of truth we’ve received? I hold tight for now, but as the dust of ashes is released from my fingertips, let it be wisdom, grace, peace, and love that was the sum of the years. 

"...lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." - Matthew 6:19-21

Fort Building in the Valley

silhouette of woman looking out window
“…He will provide the way of escape…” -1 Corinthians 10:13

When I was a kid, I loved to build forts. My brothers and I spent most of our time outdoors, constructing stuff. We lived in our tree in the front yard. We dug tunnels. We used sheets and blankets to make elaborate houses. When my dad cut the grass, I would use the grass clippings to make little stables and fields for my horses, the boys made battle lines and DMZ’s with their army men. Our lives were one long adventure through imaginary worlds we created ourselves. It didn’t stop as we grew older. We graduated to fancy forts high up in the trees using oranges as ‘ammo’ in wars with our friends; and there were the foxholes dug in the sides of mountains and battles for possession of ‘land’ and countries.

This departure from the real world. The escape from chores and homework were the golden hours of childhood.

I’m afraid that I still want to escape from the realities of life’s hard stuff. I want to run away.

I make my list of things to do. I carefully cross the tasks off and feel accomplished when I do. But lately…ain’t no crossing nothing off…

The list looks like a mountain I cannot climb. I have tried every possible escape route and still I am standing in front of the giant mound of a list.

Mostly I have felt like I am floating in this vast sea. I have no oars. I have no engine on my boat. There is no current and my little vessel just turns here and there with every breeze. I drift around making no progress.

…I sit in front of my mosaic, placing tiny pieces of glass; then I am up, and slowly poking around in the dirt. A load of wash is started but not finished, I forget what I am doing and leave everything half done. It is five o’clock and dinner is not ready, in fact, I hadn’t even thought of it. Do we have food in the fridge?

The floundering is making me crazy…again. I hadn’t realized I was such a slave to order and control…

So…today… spontaneously, My husband and I played in the dirt. Me with my ancient scraping tool…some old thing my mom repurposed, a metal pipe with a scraper attached; him with his big John Deere tractor. We cleaned a section on the bank of our creek so I and the dogs could walk down to the water. I felt like a little kid again hollowing out a fort through the sticker bushes and branches. I felt that same determination and excitement that I felt as a kid, building my three-hundredth fort.

All for fun. Totally a ‘waste of time’. Right?

NO! I feel so accomplished!!

Somehow, THIS escape, was a good one. Somehow, my husband knew, and played along. Every bug bite, every drop of sweat, every moment was pure joy. Even to the point of knowing I had to stop, ’cause I could come back and work on it tomorrow…kids, throwing their tools down and running home to the sound of the dinner bell…

I needed the redirection. I needed to run away to never, never land for a time. I feel such a confirmation in my spirit that God provided this sweet time for me to show me His plan in the valley…

When I returned to the pile of things to do, it didn’t seem quite so tall. I could take one thing off the pile and do it and I didn’t feel like I was going to disintegrate or melt into a puddle of tears on the floor…

Breathe in. Breathe out.

“yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…Thou art with me…” Psalm 23:4

I Can’t

“Do not fear or be dismayed, tomorrow go out to face them. for the Lord is with you…” – 2 Chronicles 20:15-17

“Can’t never did anything until he tried.” Those words ring through my head. Usually on the tail of some episode in my life of complaining, bitter crying.

My mother recited that overused saying to me on many an occasion.

I must have been a whiny child in the face of difficulty. Oh, the burdens of childhood. Cleaning a room, carrying something heavy, making a bed, folding clothes, clearing a table, picking up a towel, taking a bath, walking to the mailbox, doing homework, going to school, climbing out of a tree, walking up a hill, going to ballet class….the list goes on and on. All the miserable things that I did not want to do. It wasn’t that I could not, it was I did not want. It wasn’t my idea, my plan, my way.

I feel that way now…I scrunch up my face and moan…I can’t.

The things that must be done weigh me down, all of them have become a giant mountain before me. I trudge heavily up the trail, dragging my lip behind. My backpack is weightless compared with my heart. The bruising will heal, the scars will soften. The sheer quantity of memories and tears held within are what burden me and slow me down. I can’t.

The desire to hide, to shelter, to run away, rears up. I sense that there is a call to be still, where I am, here and now. Be still and feel the pain. Be quiet and listen. Let others care. Stop charging ahead. Quit trying to run to the finish line. It is in these moments where you rest, my precious one, that I can give so much. It is here that I have you, for such a time as this.

I can’t.

“Can’t never did anything until he tried.”

Okay. I’ll try.

For you mama.

Eyes To Behold Wonder

“In My Father’s House are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.” – John 14:2-6

His extravagant love poured out on all of us. It fairly drowns us with living water; quenching thirst, feeding hunger, dressing wounds, healing our blindness.

Dark, dark trail of sorrow…I have felt consumed by you in the longest nights and palest dawns. In blindness, I have groped, climbing steep mountainsides, searching for footholds and hand grips upward out of the pit of despair.

Awakened one day with the words of a song on my lips…” Through it all, through it all… my eyes are on You…through it all, through it all…my eyes are on You…” Over and over this few lines danced through my mind and heart, bathing me in Light. This simplicity let me SEE the way in the darkness. I determined to take ONE. STEP. AT. A.TIME.

Another moment, I was the walking dead.

The next day, the words in my head…”he who is not busy living is busy dying.”…my dad’s wise saying…My aching, puzzled heart wanting so much to revive the dying soul before me. Me carrying LIFE daily, going to the water hole and trying so hard in my own strength to carry water to the broken before me…

Ohhhh…I have to keep on living and allow the dying to separate from the physical, to release hold of their tight grip on the things they loved…I wanted so much to go with her; to hold her hand on the path; to ease the dreariness of the departure…and she was doing the same for me…

What a strange conundrum…two souls tightly entwined…with history and story and blood between…walking through this garden neither of us is familiar with…discovering hidden treasure and unsightly weeds…navigating in the dark until we both walk into the Light of understanding…

Another night, restless turning, soothed again by a song in my heart…words sung and covering me…old hymns and sweet worship…I woke from this dream place with the verse on my tongue…”I will rejoice over you with singing. I will quiet you with My love.” Zephaniah 3:17

Tears! Oh Father! How I needed this!!! Thank You!!

The morning brings realization…Eyes To Weep…bring forth Eyes To Behold Wonder…

All around me are the things that speak to the character of my mother.

“…a woman who fears the Lord, she will be praised. Let her works praise her in the gates.”

Proverbs 31:30-31

Surely today she will stand at the gates and her works will be evident.

I SEE the wonders. Little birds flitting freely about, eating the seeds she faithfully spread on winter ground. I see the Paperwhite bulbs and daffodils peeking through the cold dirt, carefully planted in years past; her works. I see the lives she has influenced and hugged to her heart. I see out of the ugly-only the lovely.

As her little body shrinks daily, the spirit of Thelma grows larger in anticipation of ascent to freedom, to life forever with Jesus…

February First. Awakened to a verse in my head, and a word from a friend.

”Lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him.” Proverb 3

“…only the Refiner knows how long or how high the temperature needs to be to produce that pure gold….one must walk out the process…”

TEARS….Yes Lord I want the gold! Mama would want the gold. Okay…I will walk…

In the greenhouse…looking at the miraculous flower I saved from Mom’s house when she left…enjoying the sweet warmth and fragrance…phone rings…

Seven Thirty. Mama is finally flying free. She is dancing. Her broken little body no longer holds that amazing strength and presence.

And I behold the wonders…

… that have taken me along this path with her. I UNDERSTAND! I can see clearly as I look backward…How funny is that?! I was so blind in the dark, struggling at every single turn, bumping into walls, falling down slippery slopes.

Glancing back now, I see only a well-lit path strewn with flowers and glittering gold and nuggets of truth…surrounded by a great cloud of people gone before and living still, covering me with LOVE.

white bird flying over body of water
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