a place for gratitude

You know those beautiful little books that you just can't resist, but have no idea what to do with? Mine have become places for gratitude.

 I have them around the house and at the ready.....I can always spare a moment to record the things I am grateful for.  It is a practice that I have come to cherish.  IT IMPROVES MY VISION.....it helps me see the countless gifts of grace in my life.  It's better than carrots!!

The one below is sitting on my bathroom counter next to the soap.  I remember to wash my hands.  I can remember to be grateful.  The "thank yous" go deeper and deeper, and so does my contentment.  As I practice thanking God, even for the really difficult things in my life, I continue to see His loving hands more clearly.  These small pieces of paper represent a part of my praying life ---- my whispers of love and gratefulness to the Keeper of my Heart. 

WHAT PLACE HAVE YOU SET ASIDE FOR YOUR GRATITUDE?

Text and photos © melody armstrong 2013

Daily-ness.....

Will I ever learn to love it?  Or, at least be content with it most of the time?  Funny....when I see my daily life through photos, it looks rather beautiful -- even the things that usually bother me like piles of dishes not put away...

or those few shrivelled Christmas oranges that didn't get eaten and are hiding beneath the bananas (i'm Scotch, I hate waste.)

 or boots, shoes, hats, and snowpants decorating the kitchen...

or stacks of puzzle boxes yet to be packed away for another year...

 or completed puzzles stacked (on the piano??)...

or dining room tables that are only elegant as our every day life...

 or more completed puzzles (my husband loves the 3D ones - it's what we do during Christmas holidays) still keeping baby Jesus company half way through January... 

 or piles of paper that show my sketchy attempt at keeping track of the thousands of photographs I am always in the process of backing up and organizing (still using paper in this mess???  that should be an indicator right there.)

Does anyone else have a corner like this one???

I think you know what I'm getting at. Author Katrina Kennison, who practically saved my life while I was mom of 3 little ones aged 3 and under with her book Mitten Strings for God,  wrote another book a few years back entitled The Gift of an Ordinary Day.  This writer is one of my favourites.  I have re-read her books for reminders of her wisdom and for the beautiful images she presses into my soul. (I may actually have Mitten Strings memorized - I've read it for the last 11 years.)   Her words have reminded me to observe the beauty and gleam in every ordinary day.   This week, her most recently published memoir was released called Magical Journey: An apprenticeship in Contentment.  I can't wait to read it and I hope you will too.  More more information or to peek at her blog, please click on the following link:  www.katrinakenison.com

By the way, you might want to try taking some snapshots of your "ordinary day" too.  Maybe you'll be surprised at the beauty you see.

thoughts for 2013

 ...from the cover of one of my favourite journals

 may my response to God to be a 

resounding "YES" this year

YES,  I can TRUST.  Yes, I will follow.  Yes, I will listen.

YES!

text and images by Melody Armstrong © 2013

a quick favour......

Hi everyone....please do me a favor and peek back on my first post of the year called "after the pause".  For some reason it didn't publish so I have provided the link here: "after the pause....."

HAVE AN AWESOME DAY!

building character....

It's messy work this process of becoming me.  The stirring and churning and sloshing of things I thought I'd figured out, tips me right off balance sometimes...and I pour out.  

Is this what it takes to make a firm foundation?  It hurts making  something solid and lasting from the ingredients of my life.  It's labor intensive --this vigorous mixing of my emotions, my relationships, my questions, my certainties, my faith, till it becomes the right consistency for making rock.  

My soul reels and I'm off centre and everyone around me feels it too.

photos and text by melody armstrong © 2013

After the pause...

In the last couple days I've had two people tell me that they've been missing my blog (which I liked a lot!!!)  I realize that there has been a long, awkward pause these past 4 weeks.  The reason is simple.  I often just don't have words to express the really huge heart stuff.  So I spent time in my journal instead, where my thoughts flow, unedited, like ink flows through pen...sometimes blotchy, sometimes thin, sometimes in orderly cursive, usually in jots and scratches.

Through most of December, I struggled to communicate the deep longing I have to connect with the central character in the true Christmas Story.  Yes....Jesus (not the scrooge or santa).  I want to know Him deeply.  I want to understand how deeply known I am by Him.  (And in saying so, I don't want to scare away those of you who do not relate, at all, to this longing.) This Christmas I wanted the age-old story of Jesus coming to earth - God becoming man- to impact me the way it should....the way a personal, shocking, messy, scandalous, humbling, unfathomable, love-filled story should.

Nicole Nordeman, in her song Tremble, describes my thoughts more eloquently than I could ever begin.  If you are looking for something to contemplate, I urge you to take a moment and soak in the words and melody of this song from Nichole's heart.  Below are some of the lyrics that are especially meaningful to me:

"Have I come too casually? 

Because it seems to me
There's something I've neglected
How does one approach a Deity
with informality
And still protect the Sacred?

'Cause you came and chose to wear the skin of all of us
And it's easy to forget You left a throne

And the line gets blurry all the time
Between daily and Divine
And it's hard to know the difference

Oh, let me not forget to tremble...
Face down on the ground do I dare
To take the liberty to stare at You?
...Oh, let me not forget to tremble

The cradle and the grave could not contain Your Divinity
Neither can I oversimplify this love..."

     -the song Tremble by Nichole Nordeman

And so this December I waited.  I listened.  I prayed as honestly as I could...in my often distracted way.  And as I wrote in my journal:

"I let my soul travel the distance to stillness

to settle into the waiting on bended knee

offering Him the gift of me."

Now, with January 2013, comes the living.  The doing.  The being.  Feet hit the cool, hard floor running and most of us spend our days trying to catch up.  Already?!  What am I trying to catch?  What is this "real living" that is so far out in front of me that I must catch it?

Hmmm....what about right now?  This moment?  This day in all its ordinary, gleaming possibility?  It seems to me that it's all about my vision, my way of seeing.  How will I view the events of my day?  What about the fire alarm waking our family at 6:00 AM and the real fire gaining momentum on my glass kitchen table...the fire that, anywhere else, would have had our home in flames by the time we reached it? (....more on this later!)  What about the news that more than one of my dear friend's marriages are ablaze with the heartache of uncovered deception?

December represented my waiting for God to come to humanity.  January is the reminder that HE CAME.    He came to save us.  Really.  And He does.  Do I have the eyes to see His saving hand everywhere I look?  I keep asking for God to heal my vision.  If only I could see and remember that He came to bring us life -real, true, abundant LIFE.  And He is faithful.   EVEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIRES, HE SAVES.


photos and text by melody armstrong © 2013.

a hard look at me

 I took this shot yesterday afternoon on my way home.  I didn't stop for a self portrait.  In fact, the whole reason I pulled over was because of "the red barn" - a favourite landmark I pass driving to and from my house.  It is so old and tired, barely standing, but somehow still beautiful --especially yesterday, cloaked in the bright dazzle of winter sunshine. I stood on the fence so that I could shoot as much of the barn as possible.

And then from the corner of my eye,  I see the image that I hadn't stopped for, the surprise beauty, the shadows, the lines, the patterns....and ME, right there as a part of it all.

Life, even abundant life, is so strange and full of paradox....that there is beauty in the shadows, and patterns in the random chaos of a day....that what I come for, thinking I need, is so seldom what I leave with...that I see so much more in places I'd never even thought to look at first.  I see Him, the true Beauty and Wonder of it all.  And I see me, off to the side, looking for ways to capture Him on the lens of my heart, yet struggling still.

There is much about me in this portrait that you can't see.  You can't see that I'm wearing a wool toque because I didn't bother trying to fix my bed-head from this morning, or that I have no make up on because I'm miserable and I just don't care.  You can't see that I'm snowed under with feelings of self-pity because I have a lousy cold, a running nose, a headache, a cough, and because I really just want to go to bed (just as soon as I take these photos!!)  But what really makes me feel worse than anything is knowing that I'm feeling sorry for myself when a boy on my son's hockey team has a mom and a sister both being treated for cancer...when a neighbour just lost her young niece to the same disease...when a homeless man I know is out in this cold somewhere trying to get through another day...when there is so much excruciating hurt and pain and sorrow in this world. And beauty. When there's so much exquisite beauty in the mix.

I resign myself to the fact that I'm lost for words again.  I can't seem to express the deep knowing --of God's grace and ultimate goodness-- that resides at the core of who I am.  My words just trip and tumble and land flat today.  And maybe that's okay.


        p.s. here are the pictures I stopped for in the first place.

photos and text © 2012 Melody Armstrong

"reach into the waiting"

I'm shivering and smiling under extra blankets because I've swung wide the door to winter.  I do it because I want to drink in as much of this view as I can.  

 

While the fire blazes hot beside me, a cool mountain wind is an unexpected but invited guest.  It has echoed along the valley past tunnel mountain and blown itself right through my door and up into the sloping rafters of my room. 

 I don't mind this guest. I just furrow in a little deeper, listen to the fire's breathy crescendos and decrescendos and watch flame-shadows dance pink across my page.

All is music

All is symphony

All is praise to the Holy One - Jesus

for Whom I wait

from whose mouth come

the cool winds and warm flames

that blow across my life.

I can be cold and warm...content with the change and uncertainty.  I can trust Him with the seasons of me that don't make sense.  I can "reach into the waiting," LETTING MY SOUL TRAVEL THE DISTANCE TO STILLNESS, where I bow before my everlasting King and offer Him my humble gift of everything.

(a special thanks to Judy McVean whose phrase "reach into the waiting" has not left me since I read it.

For a thoughtful reflection on this most precious advent season, please follow this link to Judy McVean's honest and revealing blog SeeingSacred. http://seeingsacred.blogspot.ca/2012/12/small-things.html  )

(photos and text © 2012 Melody Armstrong except where otherwise cited.)

You are winter

"...And everything in time 

and under heaven

Finally falls asleep

Wrapped in blankets white, all creation

Shivers underneath...

...And still I notice You

When branches crack

And in my breath on frosted glass

Even now in death,

You open doors for life to enter

YOU ARE WINTER."

-Nichole Nordeman's song Every Season

what's on your wish list this Christmas?