Some broken red stumbles

    Why did I ever think I had it all figured out? Like I had some answers that would pour out like miracle salve on anyone who read my words? 

    I'm finding that it's not gonna happen. This blog might help someone, but it will more than likely be me - a place to bleed a bit on some pages and wipe away the splatters so it looks like perfect red lettering, marching politely across the screen - so I can smile incredulous at the beauty that doesn't look like me.

    I'm scared, I think. Scared that if I left my raw wounded letters stuttering through sentences... that it would turn you away. Because since when did raw bleeding stumbles heal the hearts of the wounded? 

    But wait a second. They did. 

    How could I forget that my heart was healed, my life made new, by Jesus' blood dripping red? What kind of irony is this? That the raw hurting of one would pour healing on another? 

    If someone figures this all out, just let me know. 

    In the meantime, I'm back to my own bleeding. I've got struggles, you know - lots of them. I have daily inward battles concerning my eating, for example. I'm not anorexic or overweight, but the inside of me is wearing away from the corrosive idol of food set up in my heart. 

    I just love it too much, plain and simple. I realize that I was crafted to be a worshiper - God made me to have a burning desire for Him and His kingdom - but somehow I keep pushing Him aside and putting pizza or ice cream in His place.

    So right now I'm begging God. Begging Him to knock over the idols in my life and set up camp Himself. 

    Because I know I'm a worshiper. 

    A passionate, emotional being that runs on a fuel of driving desire. 

    And if I'm not wildly desiring God? 

    I can't run on empty. So if He is not my driving force, something else will be. And this old insatiable desire for food - it doesn't fill me up, leaves me stranded, guilty, hungry, again and again. 

    So I'm begging, begging God. These idols are awfully heavy, and could you please knock them down? Cause I can't....

    And fill me up, Jesus, with your agenda. Give me a desire and a tangible goal - something to strive towards - to drive me to joy. Give me orphans to love, things to make, cards to write... anything, Lord. To keep me worshiping, worshiping You and not food.

    Because I know I'm a worshiper. A worshiper begging God. 

    And the words run red, struggling raw, and I realize it's not the broken itself that heals others. The spilling hurt is only the vessel through which God's resurrecting power flows. 

    Just like at the cross. 

    So I don't have it figured out, and if you want pretty words all in line, don't come here. I'm fixing to keep pouring raw and open, because I believe in a story about a God who used the red flowing pain of a man to heal the broken-hearted. (Luke 4:18, Isaiah 53:5) 

Purple Swishy Dress - Transformed!

So I found this gorgeous dress at Goodwill for under $4.00.

I loved the color, flow, and fit but not the strange halter/high neckline or wide-open back (thus I wore a t-shirt underneath for pictures :P). With a bit of imagination and work, I was able to transform the dress into something I can't wait to wear to a dance! Hang in with me for a bit while I show you how I did it, and hopefully you'll be inspired! Oh, and please pardon the backgrounds in these pictures... I didn't have sis handy to be my photographer so I had to use the mirrors in our spacious bathroom. :/ 

It's actually still the same color... different lighting makes for a different look in these pictures.

First off,  I found this shirt at Goodwill.

It looks kinda wrinkly and ugly in that picture, but it's actually a nice cream color with lace puffed sleeves. I would have loved to wear it by itself, but sadly it's too tight to be considered modest and is fairly see-through. :( .....but it looks lovely under my dress!

My first order of business was to fix the neckline of the dress. I simply tucked the extra bodice/fabric under to make it look like a strapless dress and pinned it in place.

Basted it...

Then I cut the unwanted fabric off at 3/4 in allowance and removed the beading on the parts I folded under. I also made sure to tie off the extra strings attached to the beads on the front of the dress, because otherwise it will keep on unraveling and spewing beads all over. :)

I quickly whip-stitched the layers at the cut edge together to keep the fraying down. Pretty fabric like this often frays really bad. :/

I folded it under twice and then I sewed it by hand, catching everything but the outside layer on the front so the stitching doesn't show.

Voila! I have a strapless dress! But you know the problems everyone who wears a strapless dress has keeping it *ahem* hiked up in the front? Well, this dress isn't going to be any better... If anything, it'll be worse because it wasn't originally made to be strapless. To fix this problem I used three safety pins. Since the shirt is so stretchy, I actually had to pin through the dress, shirt, and my bra. Sorry if that was TMI... But it holds the dress up like a dream!

The dress also had a small rip in the hem...

And since it was going to be tough to replicate the tiny hem, I used a trick learned from ballet class. ;) To keep the ends of our pointe shoe ribbons from fraying, we used clear nail polish. And what do you know? It worked on my dress as well!

Can you tell where I fixed it?

So there you have it! My "new" dress is now modest, comfy, and beautiful! And the whole outfit cost me under $10!!! 

When We Fall

   We call it the swamp. It's nothing much really, but when a low-lying area next to a pond collects water and grows trees with sticking-up roots, what else can you call it? 

    Little brother and I tramped through the woods today, snapping thorn bushes and ducking low to avoid getting decapitated by the brush. When we arrived at the swamp, it was frozen-but-thawing, a thick sheet of ice with liquid ravines enclosing each tree struggling through its cold embrace. 

    46 degrees and cloudy? Sure, the ice will hold... so we slid and sloshed across the ice... until - you guessed it - I broke through the ice. I believe my first thought was about how my boots might be ruined since they're insulated and all, but before I knew it, I'd splashed out of the above-knee-deep hole. For some reason, a thought that has been popping into my mind a lot recently visited me again as I haltingly dripped towards a tree for support: "why do we fall? So we can learn to get back up again." (That came from the first Batman movie, yes?) 

    I fell, but when I picked myself up again I had learned something - never trust the ice. After falling, I was smarter, wiser. And sometimes I think the only way to start making progress in the right direction is to hit rock bottom - to fall so we can learn to get back up again. 

    My friends, never give up hope. Even if you are scrabbling to climb but slipping lower and lower, that falling has a purpose. Because if we never knew the low spots, how would we know to strive for the heights? 

Make Your Mark

You know when something just tugs at your heart-strings? Tugs hard and sharp, like a child's cry. Last night I was reading over at Ann Voskamp's blog, and her heart spills right out on the page. She writes of impact, of our mark on the world. She writes and it grabs me, reaching right for my heart. 

How she loved on a girl - thirty-eight dollars a month and letters sent to Guatemala then kept as if treasure. She sponsored Xiomara and I can see the girl's grin, leaping right off the screen. 

Thirty-eight dollars a month, some prayers and stationary... so little, but God used what Ann had and changed this girl's life. 

And Ann's sentences are the catalyst for Holy Spirit conviction, the words rip out the selfishness, exposing it raw:

     "I know where she slept last night, how she’ll sleep under tin and tarp again tonight. I know how right now a starving child just gurgled their last bloated breath. And by the time I get to the end of my next sentence, another child will starve to death. One every 3.6 seconds. 16 people die every minute because they don’t have enough food. And 3472 pins are pinned every minute to Pinterest." 

So I click her links and find Compassion and stare at the sweet faces, each waiting for someone to give what they have, to be used by our God and to change their lives. Time after time, child after child, I give them what I have. I cry out to God, this deep longing ache. I wish I could sponsor them, hold them, smile with them - something! But thirty-eight dollars a month... and I just give what I have, a hearts-cry strong and deep. I gave what I had, and God will have to do the rest. 

But one more thing before you click my words away. Will you make your mark, give what you have? A sponsorship, a prayer, a commitment to pray. Step on over to Compassion and just give what you have. 

Because, you see, God will use what we give. He can multiply the marks we make. 

What is the product of zero times a million? Zero. But as soon as that nothingness is bumped up to one - one little mark, one little prayer - the equation totals one million. My friends, it's time to make your mark.

(Read Ann's post here, yes?)

Hurts and a Masterpiece

    I just saw a quote on Pinterest from Ernest Hemingway. Write hard and clear about what hurts. All right then; I'll write about something that hurts. It hurts 'cause I've sat here on the couch for a long long time, thinking I should be writing, I should be running, I should be doing school. 

    The slow motion falling I feel when I eat too much chocolate, when mom said she wishes she could iron out the worry-wrinkles, furrows covering the "should be's" and "what if's" and "why me's" of my brain. 

    It hurts to spend my days chasing a perfection that was never meant to be; holding up a shimmering mirage of beauty-perfection beside the clunky realism of 1,440 minutes each day. 

    What hurts is having a growing, unraveling to-do list and a sniffly nose all at once. 

If perfection is so perfect, then why does it hurt to look into its depths? 

    But I've been aching to say this, to heal the hurt: God is sovereign. If something should have happened, it would have. God knows I could have been running today while I poked and proded my heart on the couch to find life-words to bleed onto this blog. But in God's perfect plan, I didn't run. 

    To heal this huting holding-up comparison I need to rewire my brain. To remember that God's perfection doesn't look like world-perfection and skin-beauty and crossed off to-do lists. God's perfection is happening, unfurling, growing in me. Each moment is beautiful, a gift from God. But unless I see the moments for what they are, I will continue to seek a hurting perfection I've conjured up.

    A masterpiece. That is what my life is becoming. And all those little bumps and the strange dabs of color?

That's where the beauty comes in.

Because God's perfection is not a world-perfection. 

God's perfection is a masterpiece.

Mr. Hemingway, I'll write about what hurts; I'll write hard and clear. But I'll also write about the masterpiece that's blooming from the big-ness of my God in the soil of my hurts.