Shielded

When I have just eaten a five course meal and dessert, I'm full. I might, shortly after that, walk into a  different dining room or restaurant with the most wonderful smells, sights, and sounds of eating and festivity, but I'm full. My belly reminds me it's there, and my appetite says to my wandering eyes, suppress, suppress. It shields me from foolishness and over indulgence... if I heed it's message.

It's 10:00 AM on Easter Sunday, and I have on my new Easter dress and white patent leather shoes. I'm ten and I know I look so pretty in my pink ensemble. I walk into my closet to grab a sweater before leaving for church, and I see two other pretty dresses hanging from the closet. I quickly grab my sweater and leave the room. I'm dressed. I don't grab the other pretty dresses and start pulling them over my head and forcing them on top of my clothes because they have drawn me in with their enticing colors and patterns. I'm dressed, and I casually glance their way, turn around, and leave the closet... if I'm thinking logically.

Or there's this one, "Just because you see Johnny jump off a building doesn't mean that you have to do it, too." The name may change, but the message is the same. Of course you wouldn't jump off a building if Johnny does it... unless you let Johnny make you think it's a must do on your bucket list.

After filling your mind with peace and love and the messages of God, thoughts lovely and of good report, and you leave that place of peace and walk into a room, or house, or work, or where ever, and someone is angry and loud or filling the space with drama while negative thoughts and words swirl around the room so thickly you can see them on the walls and in the air, you don't start pulling the words out of the air and stuffing them in your ears and drawing the negative thoughts into your head letting them  catch you up in a wave of drama that beckons compellingly...or do you? You wouldn't if you were shielded, but you are shielded, and you can't leave it in the car. It goes with you. Always. Always.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit. Jeremiah 17:8

Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Psalm 71:3

Peace. Love, Linda

Spring

I wrote the word "spring" on an orange, sticky note and pasted it to the wood of my enclosed desk at the shop. It's early for us this year, in spite of named blizzards trekking across the nation dumping much dreaded but much needed precipitation in the form of snow on buildings, highways, trees and people. 

I've been watching the early arrival of green as it fills in the landscape, subversively, at first, then with a gaining momentum.  With awe, I notice it has filled in almost every gap and cranny of the trees along the roadside. The pollen piles high on the sides of the roads and in uncomfortable sinuses, and there is nothing any one person or allergy pill can really do about it. It's spring. The date is not on the calendar, yet, and the blast of cold air tunneling down to us for the next few days remind us of that, but it's spring here in Central Florida, a time that always reminds me of grace and renewal. I like that in a season.

...and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Isaiah 55: 12b

Peace. Love, Linda