ashamed moment

just yesterday
I finished reading the autobiography
of one of my heroes -

I wept my way through every page .......

every page that is filled with the tender sharp edge of reality -

this lovely gentle man
who has helped countless others
find peace
acceptance
love

to learn how to love
and how to be loved

never himself has been able to dwell in that reality ...........
he has visited there
but never found a home there

never loved by his mom
never affirmed
never wanted

I so relate to his pain

and his picture at the end of the book
broke me into tiny jagged pieces ..........

sitting crookedly in a chair
with his caretaker at his side

his hired caretaker

alone from family

every day absent from a hug
a touch
a kiss

I don't understand ...........
and yet
I do

near the end of his days
he decided to be honest
with himself
and with his readers

the brutality of his honesty is piercing

makes me ashamed of me

truth moment

have been thinking about truth

about how my truth is not necessarily another's truth

read a book once called "Absolute Truths" (thanks D.M.)
filled with stories about indviduals' truths
which in most cases turned out simply to be
rationalization or convenience or excuse
a manipulated truth

even when reading scripture looking for truth
and hanging onto a verse, or a word
someone comes along and says
"but that's not what it says in the original language"

a friend would often encourage me
saying "you always speak the truth
and I really appreciate that"
and yet
when a truth was spoken to her
knickers were twisted
and a door was slammed shut

just yesterday
truth was spoken
revealing an inner brokenness
a pain
a festering wound
that had been causing this one to run so fast
and so hard
that his ears were only filled
with the sound of his own feet pounding the pavement
and the spoken truth ignited an anger
which simply was covering up a fear ...........

truth births freedom
but sometimes our chains
the bars on our windows
have become so familiar
so comfortable
that being a slave
is preferable to running free

being dead
is preferable to breathing

existing
trumps living .......

pride moment

pride is the dandelion of the soul
its root goes deep
only a little left behind sprouts again
its seeds lodge in the tiniest encouraging cracks
and it flourishes in good soil
the danger of pride is that it feeds on goodness

hearing moment

to be willing to hear
can be dangerous
or so we think .........

prayer moment

prayer is ............a life of absolute surrender to the Holy Spirit
Who is the source of prayer
because He brings the will of the Father to us .............

living continually under the mastery of the Spirit is to live in
a natural flow of prayer as an unconscious stream
ever communing with the Father
to the extent that a simple thought
is heard as a prayer to be answered
and every desire has come from God's own vision

under the blessed Spirit
prayer is breathing ..........
a thought, a sigh, a groan, a want (Rom 8:26,27)

Martha Kilpatrick

ask moment

in a class of eight year-olds one Sunday morning
one boy continually would disrupt the lesson

finally the boy was taken aside
and the lesson explained to him one on one .............

the thrust of the lesson was about our friendship with God
which offers us an opportunity to ask Him for things ........

this young boy was asked if he wanted to ask God for something

he very quietly responded

"I would like to ask God to tell my dad to stop hitting my mom"

true story