June, A Month of Celebrations

Is it seriously June already?
Sigh! Life has been just sooooo busy lately... as evidenced by the silence on this blog. I've missed blogging... yet can't seem to find the time to sit down and blog at all.

Many good things are happening... and June is a month of celebrations for my side of the family! There are multiple birthdays, one of which is mine... and multiple wedding anniversaries, one of which is hubby's and mine... yet this busy-ness has me looking around searching for my celebration mood. I seem to have misplaced it somehow!

Honestly, I am feeling like I want June to just zoom by... forget all the celebrations that come with it... so that Summer will be here already... so that life will slow down just a tad bit... so that we, okay... so that *I* can catch my breath. Does anyone else know what I'm talking about? Does anyone else identify with me? Anyone?!?

But... I am determined!
Determined to slow down and smell the roses. Determined to not let the special moments in June pass by without celebrating and giving thanks... because, there is much to celebrate and much to give thanks for! Yes, friends... so, so, so much! 

For starters... my boy is getting baptized this coming Wednesday during our church's year-end pool party for the youth group. This mama is beyond ecstatic... beyond overjoyed... that he has come to this decision all on his own... and that he has requested that hubby be the one to baptize him! We are so thankful to be part of a faith family that allows for this to happen!

I am so looking forward to Wednesday. I'll be sharing photos and videos, for sure! My boy has even prepared a short blurb to share during the baptism, words that bring tears to this mama's eyes every time he practices saying them. Just so very heart-felt and genuinely his! I tell ya... I am one proud mama!!! 

So, to get myself into my celebration mood...
I've been counting gifts... yes, hunting for grace-gifts amid my busy-ness... choosing to feel joy in the messy... looking for beauty in the chaos!

And God is sooooo very good to me. During these last two weeks, as I sat down to work each day at my desk... a quote from Ann Voskamp's God in the Moment desk calendar greeted me. Each quote has been a balm to this frenzied and anxious soul.

Here are a few of them, interspersed with grace-gift photos from my Instagram feed from these last couple of weeks...

Thanksgiving makes time. 

Really? Give thanks and get time? Give thanks... slow time down with all my attention... and my basket of not-enough-time multiplies into more than enough time.

The real problem of life is never a lack of time.
The real problem of life - in my life - is lack of thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving creates abundance; and the miracle of multiplying happens when I give thanks - take the just one loaf, say it is enough and give thanks... and He miraculously makes it more than.

When my soul doth magnify, my time doth magnify... I redeem time from neglect and apathy and inattentiveness when I swell with thanks and weigh the moment down and it's giving thanks to God for this moment that multiplies the moments, time made enough.

I am thank-full. I am time-full. 

Gratitude invites me to the here grandeur, to the embrace of I AM, to come multiply my little time into enough time and the glory of now. 

More work? More stuff? More stress? I can feel my pulse quicken fierce. Entering fully into the moment can overwhelm, river running wild. I will forget, and again, and again, but today I do remember. I breathe and I reel and I hold my ground and my tongue in this torrent coming down. I've staked my claim to the miracle. I know the way to the promised land. 

I preach to me. The skin's tugged hard by rush of time and I say it aloud in current pounding past, words I need like water, "Calm. Haste makes waste. Life is not an emergency. Life is brief, it is fleeting, but it is not an emergency." 

I can always give thanks because an all powerful God always has all these things - all things - always under control. I breathe deep and He preaches to me, soothing the time-frenzied soul with the grace river in whisper.

Life is not an emergency. Life is eucharisteo. 

Life is so urgent it necessitates living slow. It's only the amateurs - and that I have been and it's been ugly - who think slow and urgent are contradictory, opposite poles. 

I can feel time's current in my blood ease... meander, is this what the life experts know?

That in Christ, urgent means slow. 

For a moment, longer, I hold life - and I hold it mindfully... attentively... thankfully. Life at its fullest is this sensitive, detonating, sphere, and it can be carried only in the hands of the steady and unhurried... a bubble held in awe.

I think of the strangers walking briskly, blithely along to Emmaus, oblivious to the God skin before their eyes. Only in the slowing, the sitting down at the table, when His hands held the bread and the thanks fell from His tongue, do the open-eyed, the wide-eyed, see the Face they face. 

I sit down at the table.

My drained empty body has stopped and my soul has caught up and if I give thanks here, who might I recognize? It takes a full twenty minutes after your stomach is full for your brain to register satiation. How long does it take your soul to realize that your life is full?

The slower the living, the greater the sense of fullness and satisfaction. The body and soul can synchronize.

I don't reach forward and I don't reach back and I weigh the moment down with full attention here.

Life is dessert - too brief to hurry. You don't wolf it down.

"Wherever you are, be all there," is only possible in the posture of eucharisteo. I want to slow down and taste life, give thanks and see God.

As I continue to count grace-gifts, with unending thanks... to The One who sustains us with His grace... these are the things I am thankful for these three weeks... #2938 - #2970:

:: Delivering food to an inner-city ministry.

:: Purging and cleaning and de-cluttering

:: Acupuncture treatments.

:: Exercising more and eating better... to alleviate a health concern.

:: Our trusty 16-year-old Subaru being towed away. It served us so well!

:: Picking up our new car, another Subaru... one God found for us!

:: Planting veggies and annuals in the garden!

:: Working on a garden bed in our side yard with my girl. ♥

:: Family get-togethers.

:: My boy attending baptism class.

:: Starbucks with my girl.

:: Sunday night worship & baptisms with our church family at The Attic.

:: Great ministry year-end meeting with our Lead Pastor. I am thankful for his leadership.

:: Morning coffee with my sister and her friend, chatting about being missional families! ♥

:: A new month --- celebrations in June!

:: An awesome Leadership Team at church, so thankful to be a part of it! Great example of the Body of Christ working in unity together to advance His Kingdom.

:: A much-needed haircut!

Hello Monday and hello June!

Here are some thoughts from 2 Peter 1:5-8 (The Message), encouraging words.. great words to live by. They were part of our teaching at church yesterday.

So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus.

Choosing to live a surrendered life... because Christ's love compels me... and giving thanks for everything that my good God so freely bestows, so lavishly gives and so extravagantly showers!

Compassion is a command, an act of worship, a song of thanks to Him.

Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God!