The Power of Words

Today I stepped out in the Birmingham air.  It smelled better than coffee, it smelled like a prayer.  It awakened my spirit, it awakened my pen. All at once, I missed every place I've ever been. Thousands of mornings, I've had new starts,  new mercies, all fresh, they clean up my heart.  Mercy is scented: it smells good, you know.  It smells just like new-fallen, sparkling white snow.  Mercy was there in those eggs and that bacon when Grandma used tried-and-true skills to awaken. Mercy was Saturday sheets on my head while teenager me stayed forever in bed.  It smells like croissants in a patisserie in Nice,  It smells like Montana, the river, the peace. Mercy is toast on St. Giles before class,  while really smart footsteps click-click-clack past.  It's the first whiff of turkey on Thanksgiving morn,  It's the smell of a baby who has just now been born. It's the smell of the windows left open all night,  It's the smell of my journal when I start to write.  Sweat

I was standing at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem when a little boy ran past me with this shirt on. True story. It captivated me. I came straight home, found the shirt, bought it, and wore it until it was threadbare. Reactions were visceral. What's yours?  Writing children's books will help with this Peter Pan way of thinking, which a pretty big piece of me believes in completely. ***Photo taken just before zip lining across Niagara Falls with my mother. She was turning 60. I was turning 40. Niagara was...older than either of us. 

Lately, my thoughts have been so cluttered with details that I’ve needed some quiet in the ole brain. I’m finding it in three second increments. Starting small. Instead of glancing, I’m trying to gaze, for three short seconds that take me out of the clutter and into what I was made for.  It’s helping.  (Pic of my sister, Steppie and me in Colorado, a place packed with things to make you wonder.)

If God whispered a special secret about himself in one ear of each of the seven billion people on the planet, all those secrets compiled wouldn't fully paint the picture of who he is, not even when combined with all the billions who came before us.  However, he has done this very thing. He has given each of us a gift and a perspective that only we, with the help of his Spirit, can process into a tangible message. Once shared, this message reveals a bit more of his beauty to the world. Of course, it can't just be our processing, but it must be pressed through the sieve of his Word. It must align perfectly with his written Truth to escape being heresy. Why would he, after all, speak contradicting messages? He is Truth and Truth does not contradict itself.  The message he has given me is this: children must hear that they can feel God's love for them through his good Creation. ( For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—h