Celebrate Today : broken...

Thursday, September 13, 2012

broken...

Tracey sent me this below today, and tears streamed down my face as I read it since it seems to have been written for me...

What Can I believe - Ted Loder

O God, I am so fragile:
my dreams get broken,
my relationships get broken,
my heart gets broken,
my body gets broken.

What can I believe,
except that you will not despise a broken heart,
that old and broken people shall yet dream dreams,
and that the lame shall leap for joy,
the blind see,
the deaf hear.

What can I believe,
except what Jesus taught:
that only what is first broken, like bread,
can be shared;
that only what is broken,
is open to your entry;
that old wineskins must be ripped open and replaced
if the wine of new life is to expand.

So, I believe, Lord;
help my unbelief
that I may have courage to keep trying
when I am tired,
and to keep wanting passionately
when I am found wanting.

O God, I am so frail:
my life spins like a top,
bounced about by the clumsy hands
of demands beyond my doing,
fanned by furies
at a pace but half a step from hysteria,
so much to do,
my days so few and fast-spent,
and I mostly unable to recall
what I am rushing after.

What can I believe,
except that beyond the limits
of my little prayers and careful creeds,
I am not meant for dust and darkness,

but for dancing life and silver starlight.

I admit it... I cried like a baby when I opened a box and saw my sweet watermelon bowl (not pictured above) that I found in Chicago last summer that had a chip in it. (I had packed the boxes very carefully with professional packing materials given to me from a friend who had just moved to Knoxvile, and it was clear that our boxes had just been thrown around and not stacked properly in storage and on the truck by the moving company that we unfortunately used this summer.)

Seeing this bowl was the straw that broke the camel's back, and I was just so sad at the wreckage that was delivered to us and overwhelmed at the task before me of filing claims, etc. Our items had been totally mishandled, and it felt like the time when our house had been robbed when I was a kid in Nashville. Crying was certainly needed. Then the fog began to clear, and I was able to take my stand again regaining perspective.

GREAT reminder and fabulous tin from Nicola :)

my "cup of joy" made it without a crack...

"When we seek to follow the kind God offered to us in the Bible and when we long to live a life awake to our own selves and to the world God has given us, at some point we find ourselves asking: God, why all the mourning?

And, perhaps annoyingly, the Psalmist doesn’t do much to answer the question. The Psalmist doesn’t break into a metaphysical soliloquy or chide the query. So far as I’ve found, there is no tight, logical response to the repeated request for clarification. The Psalmist simply, with songs and prayers, says: “Put your hope in God.' " - Winn Collier http://winncollier.com/why-the-mourning/