I go to the Ocean usually every year, but it has been a couple years since the last time,
the time of THE FOG. As I sat in my car, window down, feeling the gentle misty breeze caressing the side of my face, I didn’t need to close my eyes to ‘just listen’ I was truly sightless. I knew the ocean was there, I could hear it, I could feel it – I just could not SEE it. So I sat and truly rested, walked on the damp beach with the water shrouded in fog, a white type of darkness or separation from what I KNEW was there. I decided to step into the moment and listen.
Listen to the waves, hear the ocean,, feel the breeze on my face. Just BE. I can’t see the sky, I can’t see the ocean waves, but I know they are there. Just BE. I didn’t ask myself where to go or what to do. I just took the moment to BE. Be silent, listen and BE.
I was reminded of this scripture written by a wise man of God.
“But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shalll walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31
(Bible Old Testament – English Standard Version)
Stacey Britton | Journal Entry | July 26, 2021 | Just BE
What’s Important? Knowing Jesus. You might be rolling your eyes at this point, I get that. You might want to click escape and erase these sentences from your mind. But they will stick, because Jesus gently calls, consistently calls and guides us whether we like it, want it or think we need it 🙂 He is LOVE, love calls to the dark parts, the holes deep within that we try to fill with so many other things.
What’s important? Who’s important this Christmas? Might be a better question.
I’ve been in survival mode for awhile now, healing really, becoming, reclaiming what I thought was lost and realizing it wasn’t really lost at all. I was in a ‘pause’ mode for a year. A year of solitude and literal silence.
A year ago, last Christmas I was in the grips of a deep, survival struggle.
I began this 50newbeginnings site in December 2013. Ten years to date, writing each year, adding pages and stories, chapter books in edit form, sharing my life with a world I did not know and may never know. You might be reading this thinking – where is she going with this post? Hang in there with me!
December 2013 I held my breath and began this website journey with a Christmas snap shot of my family’s traditions and moments of sacred community. Last year, the ninth year, I was silent, I was silent for more months than I would like to admit. Not only in writing but also in communicating, strengths and freedoms had become difficult and physically painful. My life stripped down to the daily check off list so I would and could remember what I had accomplished. Hours segmented and ordered with repetition to rebuild the synapses connecting thoughts and motions in my brain that had been changed. I was rebuilding, or maybe just building.
This Christmas 2023 I begin again the journey of sharing and being known through words and thoughts.
Today I choose to share a message of HOPE for all of you reading this today – what ever day it is. The bottom line? Don’t give up!
Healing comes in surprise packages and sometimes in ways we do not see nor do we recognize. I’m learning another name for healing is growth. Like a plant when it is pruned and shaped by a Master Gardner, so I too, am shaped each day by my Maker, the God and only creator of the Universe, his son Jesus, guides my path – through the thick and thin of life – through times of change and drastic ‘make-overs’ not unlike the type accomplished at a SPA 🙂 and similar in purpose. A pause, a buffing, moisturizing applied to dry spots, steaming out the impurities of the flesh and renewing with moments of rest whether by message, quiet meditation or listening to music. My soul needed a re-set just as the break provided at said SPA experiences.
I’m not the person I was a year ago, or even yesterday, that is healthy!
It is as it is supposed to be, growing, and expanding, learning from mistakes. Each day becomes a battle for me even yet, life is not easy, nor should it be. Struggles build us, mold us, teach us what we need to know.
Who we need to know.
Why we need to know.
Jesus is the way the truth and the life, waiting for you, calling you to come.
Hear His voice calling you to come, receive His love purchased by dying on a cross to take all the guilt and sin in your life upon Himself, to make the way clear to Himself. No barriers, no need to do a better job, no need to try to be perfect in your own strength but become excellent receivers of HIS strength, HIS power, HIS joy – receiving and giving hope in the deepest, darkest pit of separation from the Living God, the one who created you, the one who calls you with the HOPE of eternal life of peace, no suffering, no more crying no more pain. In this world we will have all of those things, but Jesus showed us the way. God becoming human, knowing and experiencing life outside of heaven. Jesus stands in heaven now, beside the Father God, reminding God the Father of the price HE paid, to cover and cleanse our souls so we could
Know WHO is important this Christmas. Jesus.
He came to His own people and His own people rejected Him, but to anyone – anyone – who believes in His name, that He is the Son of the Living God, to this person He will give eternal life.
don’t miss the WHY of Christmas -learning of the one who loves you
don’t miss the WHAT of Christmas-the fact that Jesus is your ticket to eternal living life abundantly
don’t miss the WHO of Christmas – Jesus
In the Bible, different versions use language that describes and tells the story – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, found in the middle of the collection of stories are a great place to start, they told His story – THE Story of Jesus, come to earth for YOU and ME. The other books point to Jesus’ coming and how God tried for so many centuries to love a people that did not understand Him, Jesus came so we could SEE the Father God’s love for us.
For God so loved the world that he gave is only son, Jesus, that whoever believes in Him will not die to an eternal place of separation from God, but that they would have eternal life WITH God – beginning NOW with the step of belief. (John 3:16 in The Bible)
What’s Important THIS Christmas? Knowing that Jesus is waiting just for you, completely seeing and hearing your cries for something more in this life here on earth and offering so much more beyond what we see and hear. Believe. Receive His love. Read His story in the Bible.
There are things that happen, or things that are said that it is a wonderful new skill to actually not remember!!!
Not be responsible to be the ‘brain of the household’ knowing where all items are located at all times, for all purposes.
Not the ‘housewife’ just a wife that lives in a house. – there IS a difference folks!
Not to be the encyclopedia of answers or know all the conversations that happen within the space of an evening – IF the TV is running non-stop in the background.
AND
Not being able to cook, carry on two conversations, make sure the cat is fed and has water, while the TV is playing my favorite movie – well folks my brain has a dickens of a time switching from one thing to another quickly, well actually switching at all from one thing to another – no go friend :(. So…no go on doing more than one thing at a time! Multi-tasking? Huh? Nope? Ain’t happening! 🙂
Then… that still, tiny, worry voice crops up from the bottom of my heart and says, “Stacey, will you ever be able to be ‘you’ again?” Answer: NO
TRUTH: No one person is the same from day to day.
I have just gone from my zany self to a very simple, one track minded person, and even then the one track gets easily de-railed. “Choo Choo, I think I can” story = comes to mind and off I go on another train of mind – literally (good grief:).
I smile at myself. And giggle. Then silence, my mind goes blank and nothing brings back what was supposed to come next – even if I rest – it is just gone, lost, and now I think that is probably a good thing?
In all this… I find the grace that is needed, from the source that is perfect and full of everything I need. The source of all things, the creator, the redeemer and my friend = Jesus. (Bible)
It’s a good place to be right now… Healing from a head trauma 🙂 Stacey
Prayer: Lord, keep me ever mindful that You have given us all gifts. Gifts and strengths that we can share with others. Please help me to remember that my weaknesses and places of need are also a gift, that when I reach out to others for help they are then able to give as I receive. In this way may we become ambassadors of Your Love. ~Stacey
What do you hold in your hand?
Ken Medema has graced the Christian music arena for over forty years. I first heard his music the summer of 1979 as I attended a concert by Living Faith, a music travelling group from Central Christian College, McPherson, KS. The song was titled: Moses.
Simple, but in the hands of a master musician, impacting, so much so that at pivotal times in my life, times when inner discontent or a strong yearning to readjust is needed I am reminded of the ending lines of this powerful song.
As a masterful story teller Ken retells the story of the leader with a huge failure in his past falling from being a leader in the land of Egpyt, a son of Egpyt to tending sheep in the desert for forty years. One day he finds a bush that is burning and when he comes close to the bush it speaks to him, the Lord, His God Jehovah speaks and he is told to take off his sandals he’s on holy ground. At this point the song picks up the Biblical narrative and focuses on the only tool that Moses has in his hands: a staff, a shepherd’s staff. God asks Moses to throw it down.
Then a conversation begins as Moses explains why he can’t throw down the staff, in the end Moses throws down the staff and it becomes a snake and as Moses picks it up again the staff returns to its former state. It is at this point that God let’s Moses in on the ‘call’ on his life: set my people free… Moses fights him, argues how he cannot possibly do what God is asking. In the end we know the story, how Moses becomes the great leader as played by Charlton Heston on the big screen – a classic. (smile)
It is at the point where Moses ends the conversation with God that the master musician turns the same question towards the listeners. In the final stanzas of music he asks us to apply the lesson of Moses into our lives:
“What do you hold in your hand today? To what or to whom are you bound? Are you willing to give it to God right now? Give it up, let it go, throw it down.”
These are the lines I return to time and time again, what am I holding onto that is keeping me from going forward with God’s plan, where is He calling me to step forward in faith and obey? Am I clinging to things in my life that are not good, that get in the way of His voice In my life – whether that is through His word, others’ influence or when I am impressed by His presence in the life happens through the course of time?
What am I holding in my hand? Am I using those things to further the Kingdom, am I walking by faith not by the way the just ‘makes sense to me’ in my head? Am I willing to lay down my own will, my own way, my own comfort zone to embrace the ‘Pharaoh’s’ in the land, to free the oppressed, to lead the leaderless?
What am I holding in my hand?
These questions either bring peace and a ‘continue’ or ‘as you were’ or this still small voice begins to speak into my life re-directions, realignments, but mostly peace fills my heart and I continue on my way refreshed and ready for the next step.
I share this because sometimes this whole process takes weeks and sometimes a few moments. Sometimes I go through seasons of hearing and knowing that change needs to happen but not knowing exactly what to do, or how best to wait. It is a process, it takes time and attention and sometimes using a song helps me center on important questions that bring clarity and cut through the clutter in my mind.
What do you hold in your hand?
The story “Moses” discussed here is from Exodus chapters 2-4 in the Bible.
The song “Moses” by Ken Medema can be found on YouTube
