The Comfort of Women

Women have a wonderful camaraderie and comfort amongst themselves. There is nothing quite like it. Men cannot really achieve it in their relationship. I think men are capable of great depth in relationship, but they express it and experience it differently then women. Maybe it is the all the "cereberalness". Don't get me wrong...logic is needed. Logic is dependable, structured, foundational to sound thinking; but the emotions of the heart, the ability to express something from a deeper level which happens in a rich way between women is something to behold.

Women are the expression of the feminine side of God; not as an afterthought, but on purpose. Eve was not an answer to a mistake..."Woops", said God to Jesus and the Holy Spirit..."Adam is lonely, quick get your heads together and let's come up with a fix!!!"" Jesus says..."oh, oh (snap, snap of the fingers) what about a wo-man for the man? Similar, but different" Holy Spirit ponders "Wait...wait....YES!!!! By-jove that is brilliant Jesus! Wish I would have thought of it"

We all know it didn't go that way, but at times our society, our family and even our friends have treated women as a less then, or something to tolerate or deal with.

The Word of God indicates Eve was made out of a rib taken from Adams. Hebrew definition translate the word "rib" as "side". I like this better. Not because I am some Nazi feminist who swings around by her bra straps shouting "I am woman! Hear me roar". I like it because I think it gives a more accurate picture of what happened that day in the garden when God birthed Eve.

Imagine it...

THE God, came into the Garden, put the only man the world has known up to this point into some sort of sleep state and then took a side of him to make something similar, but wholly other than. When the creating was all said and done, God then decreed that in male AND female the world would see the fullness of the image of God and by HIS words set in to motion a principle that it would take looking at and knowing BOTH to see and experience the full expression of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Without man, our view of the trinity is lopsided and mis-adjusted. Without woman the view is also off balance, tilted and not complete. Just the man and we can get an overpowering amount of strength, boundaries & task oriented action (we also get a whole lot of honor, warrior courage and determination). We miss the more intuitive side of life; the depth of emotions is skewed. Nurturing, tenderness, long suffering, graciousness, quiet strength, fortitude, beauty and resilience get lost in translation. Without the feminine, I am not sure we could understand the layers that come with a statement like "Jesus Wept".

I don't want to paint a picture of woman as weak and full of emotional mumbo jumbo. She is far from that. Any wise man knows that to understand a women he will have to spend YEARS digging diligently at the layers and if he persists there are treasures to be found inside her and he is all the richer for having found it. Any wise man knows that to dig until he finds the treasures GETS to be his delight...that it is a gift to know woman, because in doing so He can know God more.

To know women is to know mystery and taste beauty. Women are also warriors and fighters - they just carry that in a different way. They are God's answer to Adam's cry of loneliness, but more so they are God's answer to the whole earth's travail to understand just a bit more of the fullness of the Glory of God.

Women are partners of equity. Maybe not equal in skill or strength, but most certainly in value. They are Adam's ezer kenigdo; man's help meet. This does not mean that they are the perfect cloth folders or dishwashers or kid tenders. It means they are equal to the task given to man, by God in Genesis, to rule and subdue the earth.

Adam was the first human created in the Garden, but Eve was the last and she was a Glorious crescendo. God ended creation with woman. She was the crowning jewel, the apex, the final part of a masterpiece and then God said ...now ..."it is good".

Wow!!! That year flew

I am laughing!

I knew it had been "a while" since I had posted anything on my blog, BUT I am a bit surprised myself that it has been a year.

A crazy, wild, painful and glorious year. Well - honestly - it doesn't feel like anything really glorious happened. Mainly, just life.

The kids grew up - I regressed. (smile)
Carpets got cleaned and then were dirty (way too quickly)
The garage was organized (mostly) and then got messy
Ideas were tossed out and some tossed away.

If I were to title this year it might be "Feeling betrayal, experiencing loss and finding myself".

* Confusion in friendship - some resulting in going deeper in a most precious way, some resulting in feeling betrayed by what you thought you perceived.
* Sorting through a house and selling most of the stuff in that house for some dear friends who had left for South Africa and are not returning.
* Watching my father move closer to death due to lung cancer and farther away from the Lord due to choice.
* Lack of integrity in some business dealings with some fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that never got resolved in the right way.
*A major stab in the back from someone who worked with us in our business. Knowing that it was out of his own childhood wounding and so trying to give grace, but feeling like our tails were really far out in the wind.
* Still having no contact with my only sibling who, because of my relationship with Christ, cannot seem to be in relationship with me.
*Watching one of my best friends walk through death and loss herself and not be able to be near her and feel her pull away to try to cope.

Some of the feeling and finding has just been a part of the ebb and flow of life lived in a broken world. Some because of realistic expectations dashed, but ultimately, I am discovering that the deepest pain, the greatest betrayal I have felt, has been by my own hand, my own heart as I have reached out for dreams and come up a bit empty.

I am not even sure how to articulate it well.

I think I am just starting to walk around everything I am weakly expressing. I am trying to give myself space to feel the pain in such a way that it propels me to look deeper into myself. I want to do it without obsessing about it. I want to explore with honesty and integrity without finger pointing or blame shifting, yet also give myself the freedom to admit that people fail us. We fail each other. I want to discover wisdom and use it to walk away from some old habits, old cycles, old thoughts AND use it to walk into greater things.

I know...I am talking all mystical and vague. Partially because I want to process, but I want to protect. Partially because the details don't matter, it is where I end up in my heart that will mark me.

I have a raw idea. When we feel betrayal or rejection by another it is either because:

a.) we got completely bamboozled by someone who was really good at snookering people. Usually this entails tangling ourselves up with a narcissistic personality. (a part of my experience this year)

b. ) we kept giving "that person" or "that situation" the benefit of the doubt and never confronted (really...who LIKES confrontation? ). Fairly quickly the quirks or hairball oddities, or sins, that were not healthy, became the norm. There comes a point where we either say "What is the use with saying anything...I have lived with it for this long. Why bother" and in doing so condone a thing into acceptance in our silence.

c.) ultimately - the real betrayal TOWARD us is usually felt because it is allowed, BY us. In essence, we betray ourselves. Swirling around inside of our souls are tipping points. Moments where we made a choice to adjust in order to be around a certain person. The adjustments were not wrong....we all make small changes in relationships to accommodate personality, quirks, likes, dislikes....This is normal. I am talking about the changes we made that went in direct conflict against what we hold to be true, loving or genuine. What is not healthy is knowing down in your gut that the way a person is undervaluing you has become a common theme in your interactions. What is not healthy is involving yourself in more of a word based relationship then action based....they say they value you really well, but they do not show it....the use of the word friend is strong, but the priority of being a friend is low. What is not healthy is when the value scale is unbalanced...when there is always a reason or excuse for why they can't be healthy. I find myself here and frankly...it is awkward and painful.

Maybe, maybe, maybe....maybe if you find yourself here.

Maybe I will write more about the problem with finding yourself after you have taken a sabbatical from some of the truer parts of you.

OR, maybe I won't write for another year.
Maybe...because it is too raw or too real.

Reality is - A LOT of wonderful and good and poignantly beautiful things happened in the last year. Things I am grateful for. Events I wouldn't trade. People I hold close to the heart.

I do remember those!

The Low Down in Bullet points

I feel like I have been behind the 8 ball when it comes to keeping up with the stuff of life (like paperwork, blogging, laundry, making proper meals for my family) but here is the scoop....

• Potty training Riley (we had a relapse when dear Phineas came on the scene and are coming out of a long recovery mode. I think I was recovering as much as Riley. Thanks to my mom who was here for a week and determined to get her granddaughter back on her potty game.
• Dealing with broken down cars....we are in desperate need of a work truck. Ours leaks power steering fluid like a sieve, you have to push it to start it, etc. etc. etc.
• 2 Weeks of various "Inner Healing" type training.
• My sweet G is starting 1st grade....proud, concerned...will he be challenged enough? obedient enough? cool enough? uncool enough.....
• Having my kitchen overtaken by Kombucha mothers, Caspian Sea Yogurt and Kefir and some sort of KimChee veggie. Scott is all about the fermented stuff and I think he needs his own special little kitchen complete with sink, stove top and fridge.
  
• Lot's of yard work...new beds, bamboo, play area complete with huge sandbox and special kiddie mulch.
• Healing from a 2nd degree burn on the chest and tummy from a tea spill at Starbucks.
  
• Falling in love more and more with my children.
  
• Vigilantly protecting my date night with Scooter
• Thinking about old friends...the ones that got away because of time or offense.
  
• Sorting our garage - not an easy task with all those tools, etc.
  
• Dreaming of the ocean (always dreaming)
• Praying for those lost in my family with a new sense of urgency and grief over the ramifications of their choices thus far.
  
• Figuring out what I actually like to do in my spare time.
  
• Sorting kids clothes since they grow like weeds.
  
• Correcting my children for the umpteenth time
• Thankful for air conditioning and electricity.
• Had a garage sale with a friend.
• Went to Montana to visit one of my best friends and then met my mom there for a visit.
  
• Planning to exercise :)
  
• Off of coffee for 6 months.
  
• Craving ice cream
• Doing a lot of laundry.
  
• Cleaned my utility Room
  

The Storm & The Dream

A few days ago I had a dream...

My family was on the ground being covered up by a huge canopy/tent like thing. In the dream....I said...oh this is the Kabod of God.

Kabod (Hebrew) - the glory, "weight", or power of God.

I don't usually spout out Hebraic words, in dreams or awake, so it would not be normal for me to surmise, in the dream, that this was the Kabod of God . There were many bodies under the canopy and my family was on the outskirts watching the final portion of the tent being folded over us and being tucked under.


Last night there was a mother of a storm over our house. Full of the kind of thunder & lightning that rattles windows. The kind where it feels like the eye of the storm is directly above you. It makes you feel small and a bit powerless. When I awoke I immediately thought about the kabod being around us and I felt safe. I also was thinking about the earthquakes and thunderings Revelations refers to and how much more intense those shaking will be.

They are coming soon and those who are not living under the Kabod of God will be living in a volatile world.

The Basket.

We have a basket in our house full of rocks and shells. Stuff we have collected from various trips. It is our little stockpile of memories.

Some have names written on them like; Masada. We grabbed up at the top after a long walk up.
Some have nothing written on them, but have been given a name; such as a rock the size of my fist that looks a bit like a women's bodice. She is dubbed "Mother Love" because of her shape. We found that rock in the middle of a Wyoming field with our friends Nyla and Lynnea. The details are fuzzy, but I do remember walking single file through a dirt field because we were trying to get to an eagles nest and Scott got us to believe some sort of nonsense that if we walked in a single file line the eagles might not realize four people were encroaching on them? I still laugh about it.

There are shells and agates from the Oregon Coast, polished stones from a family member, a rock from our honeymoon in Hawaii, a smooth river stone which turns a turquoise color in water from some trip through Idaho.

The basket holds reminders of some of our best times together. The ones when we were able to slow down, listen and love easier. Times when we were quickly reminded of why we choose each other, why we choose a family, why we said yes to God.

Garage Sale

Garage Sales have been good to me over the years.....I love browsing and buying, but holding my own is akin to having bamboo shoots shoved into my nail beds. They just take a stinking lot of work. Sorting, pricing, setting up, breaking down, selling, bartering. UGH!

A friend of mine mentioned she was having a garage sale and I knew this was my golden moment. I politely asked if I could crash the party and join. Her place is a better locale, she is uber fun to hang with and there will be tasty snacks which always makes the day smoother.

Just think...I can make money on my junk so I can go and buy someone Else's junk!

If you need a good laugh...

Need to laugh? I double dog dare you to check out this site and see if you can get through a few pages without chuckling a bit.


http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/