Welcome to My {Not So Random} New Home

February 12, 2013 by 43 Comments

Shelly-9a

Welcome to my new blog home! I’m ready to take you on the tour of each room, hoping you will feel comfortable enough to help yourself to what you find in the refrigerator afterward. You know, every piece of furniture, paint color, and in this case, every tab, holds a story. If I could, I would stand in the center of each room and share them all with you. All my stories of the way God led me to each decision.

An armoire stands next to the wall in the entryway of my house, a towering piece of inlaid, meticulous beauty like a question hidden underneath your dinner plate waiting to be answered. “How did you get that piece of furniture through the door,” they ask wide eyed, every time, on the first visit through the door.

My answer is always the same, “It breaks down into several pieces. Yes, even the eight foot mirror that weighs several hundred pounds is a separate piece.” It is a beloved wedding gift from my in-laws, one we’ve taken apart and put back together like a jigsaw puzzle in eight household moves.

And just like that armoire, all the pieces in the architecture of this new space come together to create a piece of art; the scaffolding of story holding it up to welcome you into this community.

I called Michelle to ask about designing a new header knowing her skills were way out of my league. Though we share a mutual pastor friend, we’ve never met. She lives in Chattanooga but we felt like next door neighbors after the first five minutes of conversation.

When I told her how much I love this particular design, especially the script used in Redemptions Beauty, she replied with a story that still gives me chills when I share it:

“Since you’ve chosen that particular design, I’d love to share the story of the script that I used for Redemptions Beauty… My dad is a font designer and he based “Petronella” on his mother’s handwriting. I have never used it for any project before, but felt that it was perfect for your blog.
My grandmother lived two doors down from the Frank family in Holland and during WW2 she travelled to South Africa to serve as a nurse. She missed home desperately, so she filled whole journals with daily letters to her sister. Meanwhile, her sister back home was also writing journals. Whenever possible, they convinced various soldiers, doctors, etc. to deliver the books to each other. Petronella stayed in South Africa after the war and, after many years of waiting and much prayer, met my grandfather. She became a mid-wife and delivered all the babies in a small, poor, mountain town for years. After she died, my Dad’s aunt sent him her journals. They are absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful to read. I thought you might appreciate that there’s true heart and much redemption tied into the typography.”

God embodies every intricate detail of our lives, even in the design of a new blog site. He loves in the way that makes our heart sing, our tears pool, and cheeks hot with the revelation of being truly known.

The more I learn of Christ, the more I know that nothing in life is random. The font called Petronella that carries the handwriting of redemption for decades and rests here on my blog, that isn’t random. And your visit here today, that’s not random either. Go ahead, look around and then come back with a friend. We have a lot of food in the refrigerator.

I’m so grateful to Arthur at Outstanding SetUp for his tireless and quick response to all my emails that took my blog from a .com to .org. For Jeff Goins being kind enough to have a conversation with me about next steps for my writing life and Dan King for the way he so generously gave up his time to teach me the technical foreign language of setting up Mail Chimp. I’m thankful for Michelle Newton at Tiny Bungalow Design for making it all look so pretty and for Kandi Pfieffer’s photography skills and her enthusiasm about shooting on a freezing day in the middle of an empty field with a zebra chair!

Linking with Jennifer, Jen, Heather, Laura, and Ann.

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Letting Go of Expectations

October 4, 2012 by 6 Comments

Yesterday we talked about letting go of our schedule in order to receive the gifts He holds stretched out in divine interruption. But what about the agenda we have for someone else?

When your pastor could’ve said it better that morning.  Your daughter chooses to attend a rival college. Your star soccer player gives up a scholarship to pursue art. Aging parents decide to give their possessions away to neighbors. A teacher chooses a book for your children that you don’t like. A friend won’t admit they have a drug problem.

When your husband should read your mind and do the dishes because you’re exhausted.  And doesn’t.

 When we heard this, we and all the local believers all begged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem.

But he said, “Why all this weeping? You are breaking my heart! I am ready not only to be jailed at Jerusalem but even to die for the sake of the Lord Jesus.”

When it was clear that we couldn’t persuade him, we gave up and said “The Lord’s will be done.” Acts 21: 12-14

Is it possible to let go of our aspirations for others, our filmstrip of life with scenes that don’t match our imagination?

Perhaps we’re standing among the local believers consoling each other with shared opinions that meander down the road of selfish ambition. Taking scissors to blank chapters of fearful imagination. Forgetting about the final destination of the journey and missing the road signs along the way leading to, “The Lord’s will be done.”

How do you know when it’s okay to speak into someone’s life versus letting go of your agenda for them?

 This is the fourth post in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up your post on the topic in the comments on Friday of each week so we can glean from your perspective. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.

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Because Timing Is Everything

September 23, 2012 by 25 Comments

How swift the summer goes,

Forget-me-not, pink, rose.

The young grass when I started

And now the hay is carted,

And now my song is ended.

And all the summer splendid;

The blackbird’s second brood

Routs beech leaves in the wood;

The pink and rose have speeded.

Forget-me-not has seeded.

Only the winds that blew,

The rain that makes things new,

The earth that hides things old.

And blessings manifold.

 Excerpt from The Everlasting Mercy, John Masefield (1878-1967)

Sometimes we expose our roots just above the water line when the season of the soul shifts in the middle of stacking clean dishes. We’re all showy and colorful on the outside, bare knuckling hope down underneath, until someone trades a bouquet of  forget-me-nots for your dish towel. And you smell the rain coming through the screens and watch the leaves shift cameleon.

Welcome to Fall friends. May our hearts rejoice in the hope that change carries.

There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth. ~Ecclesiastes 3:1, MSG

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When Life Lets Go, Before You’re Ready

August 20, 2012 by 71 Comments

Sweat drips down my back standing among tall grasses framing the lake. I twist the lens to focus on five boys pushing each other off the dock into muddy water. Through their raucous laughter, I hear H call my name from the porch. “Your Dad just called,” he yells.

It’s Harrison’s thirteenth birthday. My Dad never calls on his birthday.

I walk a little closer to the boys and twist the focus blurry. I’m capturing the precipice of manhood before they jump into it.  Sometimes blurry, it’s the perfect stage.

They’re comparing armpit hair and muscle tone and I’m wondering how these boys will grow into men. What will they reel in from deep water that leaves an imprint on the world? Will they be big fish that feed hungry souls waiting on shore? Or will they stay at the bottom, sucking life from the food left by others, too afraid to venture toward the light.

I’m hearing my daughter’s voice telling me I do too much for her brother, asking me if I want him to turn out like mine.

Human life is a struggle, isn’t it? It’s a life sentence to hard labor. Like field hands longing for quitting time. Job 7:1 MSG

And after I snap the lavender redemption among the thick weeds, I turn around and walk soggy back to the farmhouse. The landscape vibrates with a cacophony of insect chorus.

I listen to my Dad’s message.  He’s cotton-mouthed, struggling to tell to me to call him back. This isn’t about my son’s birthday.

He tells me my brother’s dead. How he breathes his last while sleeping on the couch downstairs and they’re still waiting for answers.

How does a boy grow into a man? The question echoes through my mind like elevator music filling up the empty space on the phone.

O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! ~Psalm 39:4 ESV

I’m watching the boys from behind the window now. My son’s lying on the dock, everyone leaning over as if they’re looking through a microscope.

My brother grew up in oxygen tents struggling for breath. He grasped for manhood the same way, suffocated by addictions. He strains for freedom in a prison cell of voices shouting lies too loud to hear the whisper. Perhaps the noise became too dizzying for a man to stand up straight.

I’m asking my Dad what I can do. How I can love the people that ran the marathon and crossed the finish line before they were ready to stop. My cup of water seems too small for this kind of thirst.

I’m holding the phone, watching one of the boys run toward the house. He says it’s not an emergency, that Harrison just hurt his foot. He asks if he can drive the Gator to the dock, to carry him back.  My husband hands him the keys.

This how is how a boy grows into a man, I hear Jesus whisper.

Yesterday, my Dad answers the phone clear. I hear the hum of voices in the background. He says the house is a revolving door of casserole dishes and he’s trying to navigate his way through funeral plans.

H opens the door to my writing room. Says we need to pray for three young men that collided with a semi on their way to church tonight. How the one who invited the others lies in the hospital without his spleen.

How does a boy grow into a man?  He grows into a man when he lets go of the world and holds on to Jesus.

You have decided the length of our lives. You know how many months we will live, and we are not given a minute longer. ~Job 14:5 NLT

I never imagined I’d be writing about the death of my brother today and I can’t thank you all enough for praying. I covet your continued prayers for my family as we grieve the end of days, the loss of breath. May we live each moment like we haven’t another.

Linking with Multitudes on Monday and thankful for the gift of life, for the way He holds every moment like a gift waiting to be opened. Also joining Playdates with God, Hear it, Use it, Soli Deo Gloria, Just Write, Into the Beautiful.

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Of Fireflies and Smiling Glances

April 18, 2012 by 63 Comments

Light casts her ethereal glow shadows in early morning and I want to capture her like fireflies in jars. Put her on my windowsill to remember her hope when the clouds of mundane roll in and darkness hovers on the horizon.

Like the day Harrison and I sit bent over an IPod and phone passing time until his name calls for surgery. The appointment we didn’t plan for on his spring break.

I think about how this interruption will impact our day, how much time it will take away from other things, until the distraction of perspective walks through the door behind me. When two white collared EMT’s push a long gurney into the room holding a man lying flat on his back, cocooned in beige blanket.

His head wears snow halo on chocolate skin, breathing tube rests beneath his nose, and eyes fix target on the ceiling. I wonder why he is here alone in the office of a podiatrist.

My son keeps his eyes down on the game he holds in his hand. He’s about to have his toe cut on and just looking at this man, it makes him queasy.

A woman in a sheer red dress gets up, hobbles slow with cane across the room and stands over the frozen man. She leans in, right beside his face, and talks to him as if no one else exists in the room. His chestnut eyes, they roll to the side, meet hers and she teases him. “So you’re not going to talk to me today,” she laughs.

A burly man motions to her from where she was seated and pleads, “Grandma, come back and sit down.” She pretends she doesn’t hear him. Walks over to the row of chairs facing ours, sits down and smiles at me, waves her grandson over.

This kind of contented joy, it doesn’t usually present itself on the frame of worry.

We exchange smiling glances like a tennis match, so I ask her how long she and the man on the gurney have been married. The writer in me needs to know her story, how she can have this kind of peace when her husband lays there immobile. Before the calling of my son’s name echoes me back to reality.

“Fifty two years,” she says proud. Then she opens her jar of fireflies, and the gallery seated around the room hush in the glow of her story.

Esther tells me about her four kids, the one she lost to deep water in the inlet when she was seven. How she can’t go to the beach anymore because that day haunts her like living a bad dream awake.

She points to her grandson Steven, tells me she cared for him when he was two weeks old. And all the weeks following until he became an adult.

A few others know Esther as mother too. One with snowy white hair and another carrot topped. She says the family is still good to her but people raise their eyebrows when those kids introduce her as part of their family, now that they are grown up with children of their own who call her grandma.

And just when she starts to tell me about a time the family quietly accuses her of stealing a childs missing Easter dress, and I feel like Kathryn Stockett taking notes for The Help, the nurse stands with her clipboard in the open door and calls Harrison’s name.

I take Esther’s hand in mine and thank her. She tells me she wants my phone number and her grandson laughs. He’s heard this before. I tell him maybe I can take her out to lunch so I can hear more, because I’m sure she has enough stories to fill a book.

“You can take her to lunch, and she has hundreds of stories,” he smiles, “but she’ll come and pick you up.”

Today I captured the loving glow of wisdom and excavated joy let loose among the chairs of waiting.

We’re all fireflies with a story, waiting for the lid to be unscrewed in the ask, so our words can fly free and light up the room.

Also linking with Walk with Him Wednesdays, Imperfect Prose, Word Filled Wednesdays, Thought Provoking Thursdays.

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Surprised by Redemption

March 28, 2012 by 74 Comments

Sage green corduroys and bell-bottom jeans with frayed ends hang next to the three shirts in the empty closet.  All of thirteen and I stare at them like paintings I am tired of looking at on my wall. It isn’t until my mother catches me going through her drawer to find something different to wear to school, that she realizes I only have five pieces of clothing.

My mother wakes up with bags under her eyes and swollen fingers from the manual labor she does at the shoe factory on most days.  I sit on the edge of her bed; weave my fingers through the cigarette holes in the blanket while we talk.  Reassure her that I still love her, even after the events of the night before.

The guilt lingers over her like the sour smell of cheap wine and ash trays lying around the house.

We eat a lot of boxed macaroni and cheese. Trips to the grocery store make my stomach hurt when we push the cart down the liquor aisle. But all that changes the day she decides to go see the Reverend Bill Cunieo.

The first time I met Bill, I sat in a pleather chair next to my mother in a church office that smelled of Old Spice aftershave.  His smile, like the crisp collared shirt he wore. Every hair slicked back perfectly, sitting stiff behind his brown particleboard desk.

I was sure he would get tired of us like everyone else. Wear that hospitable Christian smile, and then weary from the neediness we wore like rags. He proved me wrong.

After that meeting, my mother and I began attending church regularly. I exhaled a bit easier, worried less about the frenetic afterschool scenes.

When we moved away from that small Midwestern town a short time later, all those connections ended like the internet dropping in the middle of an upload.  Until one blustery day in a hotel room in Greensboro, North Carolina, thirty years later.

After H’s responsibilities in front of the crowds finish in the grand ballroom, we kick off our shoes.  Change into jeans, grab the wine opener and welcome friends into our suite. Laugh until the eyes see blurry and then do it again the next evening.

During one of those gatherings, in my socked feet, I extend my hand to welcome the Air Force chaplain I heard about from H over a dinner conversation.

“Steve Cunieo,” he says as he shakes my hand firmly.

Memories filed away decades ago suddenly open to a tab forgotten in the familiar tone of his voice. Words roll off my tongue like I am in a magician’s trance. “I once had a pastor by that name Cunieo,” I recall, “at a little church in Missouri called Faith Assembly of God.”

He looks down, then back up with a smile and says, “That’s my Dad.”

I take a step back, lean onto the back of a chair and my chest rises and falls heavy.  I can’t decide if I want to laugh or cry. And now all eyes in the room are on us, including those of my daughter, tucked next to her Grandma on the couch.

We went to the same church in a town I would just as soon forget. Moreover, his Dad, he introduced me to Jesus. What are the chances we would meet here in this hotel room in North Carolina? That my husband is his endorser.

So I asked him again.  Just to make sure.

Steve admits his Dad often questions the fruit from his time at that little church.  Says he grapples with wondering why God had him there.

He steps out of the room into the hallway, dials his Dad on his cell phone, hands it to me.

I remind Bill of the house where we lived, the one at the top of a dead end street with tilted floors and cockroaches crawling out of the walls.  He remembers it. The one he visited with a bag of groceries under his arm a time or two.

Maybe it gave that humble man, the one who made Jesus so desirable, some comfort knowing my life took a divine bend on the journey because of his faithfulness to the call of God.

Nothing is lost in this life.  Every minute, every word, every circumstance is useful in God’s divine plan. Because God calls out the beauty of our redemption in the most unexpected places, to extract the best of who we are.

Have you been surprised by redemption?

This story is a repost, rewritten for today’s link-up with God Bumps and God Incidences.

Also linking with:

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Like Snow in Summer

February 12, 2012 by 30 Comments

Faithful messengers are as refreshing as snow in the heat of summer.

~Proverbs 25:13a

A Sunday Reflection 

She wears a colorful striped sweater, lays her bible and purse on a chair, and sits next to me in the circle of women. Leans over with a cell phone cupped in her palm, asks for my phone number before we start talking about the teaching we just heard. It’s been a while since we looked each other in the eyes and let’s do lunch sometime, it rarely collides with kids, mini-vans, and to-do lists.

*****

The next evening, lounging on the couch in reading glasses, furry blankets and the Distant Hours spread out over my lap, the cell phone startles midway through paragraph two on page 201. A text message from a number I don’t recognize. Someone asks if I will pray. Pray for a young man, the son of a mutual friend, who waits for a doctor at the hospital to look at the burns on his face and eye. They ask if I would tell the group to pray too.

 I respond that I will, and ask, “Who is this sending the message.”

Learn, it’s the friend in the striped sweater who came to the group for the first time and asks for my phone number.

Our mutual friend and mother of the young man with the burns, she sat in the circle with us too.

I ask my daughter, lying prostrate on the couch across the room, to mute the noise so can we pray.  Together, we close our eyes and ask Him for peace and to heal this one He loves.

When my eyes open after amen, I compose an email, ask the group to pray and one by one they respond: Praying.

*****

The next morning, I zip up my boots; hear the muffled sound of my cell phone underneath the covers of my bed. Pick it up and read the message: God is good, the diagnosis is promising, thank you for praying, and He is doing a mighty work in and through that boy!

Standing at the foot of my bed in my brown boots and jeans with fingers clutching tight around my cell phone, I smile and whisper thanks to Him.  Decide that there are no coincidences in God’s time. He’s doing a mighty work in and through all of us.

Today, wherever you sit, may you know that each day is a providential gift. Happy Sunday friends!

 

 

 

 

 

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