As Only Your Mama Can….

Precious daughter, these blogs become more meaningful to me with the passing of each day.  While I am not “old” in my heart, spirit or belief, I have reached the age where I realize that every day I have with you is a gift to be treasured and that no day is one to take for granted.  This knowing is not a somber thing, it is a gift from God….for, it gives direction to my life and the ability to grow a grateful heart and a purpose to my time spent.

This week is “V”…..

V is for Voice, Venia and Voyage

V is for Voice

When God gives us life, He gives us a voice.  While at first, our voice consists of cries out to our parents, and later to sweet child-like chatter, still even later it becomes our avenue for communicating with others…with the world.   I sincerely am coming to believe that so many people struggle in their lives because they do not feel heard….they have joys, sorrows, happy happenings and painful struggles which they strive to share in hopes of having their living shared, but often feel unheard….and, therefore unloved, uncared for, unfulfilled….

They have a voice….but they do not have a soul who will listen.

Bless and bless those who are able to listen.

Bless even moreso those who are able to share that there is one who is faithful to listen to our voices….every single moment of every single day of our lives….one who loves us, loves our voice, loves it when we speak.

That is my challenge to you precious daughter as you live your life…

Find your own voice…..search for it as you would the most golden of treasures.  Come to know who you are and do it on purpose (nod to Dolly Pardon)

And, just as importantly, listen to others who would need to share with you their voice in a world where listening is a lost art and opining is the order for the day.

And, share with your voice, your words, your ability to those who do not know….that God, our maker, creator, counselor….the very one who created our voices as we were knit in our mother’s womb, is the very one who knows the value of our voice and whose great desire is to hear it spoken….

In words, in song, in praise of Him…..in prayer, in meditation, in joyful noise!

Tell that to those who do not know….tell them about Him.

For in your telling, there you will find your own….

Voice.

V is for Venia

Venia….such a beautiful Latin word with an even lovelier meaning.

When someone offers venia to another, they are offering “grace in abundance”

Pardon

Forgiveness

Mercy

We all have things in our lives for which we seek venia…..mistakes, wrong-doings, hurts we have caused others either out of ignorance or, at times, even on purpose.

We all have things in our lives for which we would need to offer venia…extending pardon to one who has hurt us, who has laid bare their sinfulness on our hearts and has forever branded us, our hearts, our spirits.

I challenge you in this as well….offer not only venia…..but venia in abundance.

Grace.

For His word tells us…

“It is by grace you have been saved.”  ~Ephesians 2:5

 

For, if God’s grace has had the ability to save us, shouldn’t we offer it back to others in our submission to His example?

Grace does not necessarily require that we stand and permit another to harm us with our blessing.  What it does allow, is in the process of moving ourselves into the shelter of God, we give all things over to Him and grow in our venia…..God has promised He will “fight for us; that we need only to be still.” ~Exodus 14:14.

V is for Voyage

There is a common saying that “life is a journey”…..a long trip or passage of time….

And, it is…

“Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble.  They spring up like  flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.  A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and set limits he cannot exceed.”  ~Job 14:1, 2, 5)

Our lives are not only journeys, but how long the journey will last is not something we can even know or hope to know.  That is why we do not squander our days….it is why we need to find our voice and use it…it is why we should show venia along the way.

I did not know this at twenty-three.  It is something I want you to understand and want my legacy to be to you..

This understanding that life is a gift….each day you have on this earth has meaning and value.  The same Father who counts the numbers of hairs on your head is the same Father who knows the numbers of your days.  His gift to you is life.  Your gift to Him is in how you live out His gift. 

I don’t believe God wants us to stress out over our every waking moment in fear that we are not doing, being, giving, helping, sharing, studying, praying…..enough (for there is never enough), but what I do believe God desires of us is to live out our days with a purpose….making the most of our voyage on this earth, sharing His love, His grace, His compassion and His truth with others, starting with ourselves and paying it forward to those around us.

And, baby….I’ve told you since you were little that “love is in the details.”…….Loving God is in the details of how you live your moments that He gives you….it’s the little obediences in your daily voyage which will enable you to walk into bigger obediences as you walk your life.

Enjoy your voyage…your journey….your road traveled. 

In fact, Delight in your voyage…relish it’s blessings and joys.

ADORE….your life.

It is His gift to you….

Blessings,

ILYAOYMC

Mama

 

 

 

 

 

…..As Only Your Mama Can 

U is for Unfailing, Unseen and Ubiquitous

 

U is for Unfailing

 

You and I have a favorite movie, A Walk to Remember.  Toward the end, when Landon is aware that Jamie is dying, Jamie gives him a gift of poetry and quotes which her mother had collected.  This was one of Jamie’s greatest earthly treasures.  In it was I Corinthians 13…which she quoted to Landon as she lay dying.  And, it was at this moment that she promised Landon her unfailing love.  Then, at the end of the movie as the scene leaves their wedding and moves to the sky outside the beautiful little church, Landon uses this term to describe Jamie’s love…of God, of him, of her father…. 

Unfailing….

Love that is unfailing is the kind of love God wants us to have for one another.  Unfailing love is the kind of love of which you are “always able to supply more.” 

It the kind of love God calls upon a husband to have for his wife.  The kind of love a mother has for her child.

It’s the kind of love which does not have an end, but which grows and grows and grows… 

That is my Mama’s prayer for you….to find and to give unfailing love. 

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.  What a person desires is unfailing love.”  Proverbs 20: 21-22.

I love you, dear daughter, with an unfailing love which will always grow and which will always be….. 

Wait for that kind of love in a mate, for with unfailing love, your own love will be complete.  And, once you have found that kind of love, guard it, nurture it, invest in it…. 

Love it back….unfailingly. 

U Is for Unseen 

Something not observed or perceived is said to be unseen and in my fifty-one years, it has seemed to me that often is the occasion that those things which are unseen are those things which are of greatest significance to me and my life….and, yet, I know with great confidence that they exist. 

God….in faith I believe in Him, in my life there is evidence of Him 

Love…in living I experience it, in sharing I give it….

Joy…in suffering I find it, in truth I live with it 

God, Love, Joy…..I cannot see them, but like the wind, I can feel them…. 

And, I believe. 

It is in our faith in these unseen things which brings to us hope. 

“Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly, we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4: 16-18 

Take to heart in your life the power of those things unseen and give them over to God…. 

They are not unseen because you are blind to them.  They are unseen because God pulls you to Him through them…

U is for ubiquitous

I confess that as I prepared for this week’s blog, this word kept tumbling itself inside my head…I could not shake it off, I could not invite it to leave.  As I walked and prayed in the early morning, I kept thinking of ubiquitous…so, I looked it up… 

Ubiquitous means something which is seen everywhere at the same time…existing everywhere….omnipresent

So, I thought….am I supposed to talk about God and His omnipresence in your life?

Am I to discuss the use of cell phones which seem to be all over the place and for which we have a fetish?

But, the more I read of ubiquitous and studied its Latin roots, I realized, ubiquitous is not necessarily a good thing. 

When something is everywhere, all the time, in all places, surrounding all things, it is often taken for granted, overlooked and unappreciated… 

We often take things that are ubiquitous for granted, until they disappear. 

I have experienced that in my own life….having blessings so abundant that it was not until they were gone that I fully appreciated what I had.

I have lived on both sides of ubiquitous, and both were painful. 

As Kathleen Kelley and Joe Fox say in You Got Mail,

 

Joe Fox: It wasn't... personal.

Kathleen Kelly: What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me. It's *personal* to a lot of people. And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway?

Joe Fox: Uh, nothing.

Kathleen Kelly: Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal. 

LIFE is personal.  Kathleen Kelley got that right…she understood that to be ubiquitous was not necessarily a good thing…

Choose not to live a ubiquitous life….it’s not important that you be everywhere, all the time, in all places, being all things to all people.

What matters is that you are present where you are…with the people you are with….

That you are personal with yourself and with your life.

You and I are learning in our counseling studies that individuals who learn to “be present” in their lives are those who are the most healthy.  That makes sense to me in light of this term ubiquitous.  If you try to be everywhere, being everything to everyone, you spread yourself so thin that there is little left of you to fully be.

Would it make more sense to choose to “be” where God puts us?  To live in the moments of where we are until He moves us to a new place?

When I bring to mind those individuals who are strong in faith, strong in health, strong in life, it is those individuals who seem to have this figured out.  They are personal with others but they do not try to be everything to all people.

They live in the moment of where they are….allowing God to use them as He will.

Un-ubiquitous.

I love you unfailingly,
      as only your Mama can,

Mama