Smudged Mirrors

A backhanded slap from the end of fall teases festive leaves that have grown and turned color on the wiry twigs that sprout from the tree. It has no real branches. It’s a stumpy tree topped with a mess of twigs and garish leaves, and I think of this tree as a quirky old English woman. She wears red and orange leaves as a hat. It perches at a rakish angle and her sense of fashion is a bit loud among the statelier pecan trees.

There are other trees like her, but none wear their hats quite as well. To me, they are all like grand old ladies given to gossip. When the wind rustles through the wood, I hear them murmur. Their leafy hats bob outrageously and I amuse myself wondering how much of their gossip is about the lordly pecan tree standing at an aloof distance on this side of the fence.

Gossip

This morning my breath comes out in a silver chill. I pull up my hood.

I have smudgy bathroom mirrors to clean today. Well, actually, I have the whole smudgy bathroom to clean. My bottle of multipurpose surface cleaner with vinegar is nearly empty; it just spits at the mirror and the window over the bath tub. Spit, spit, wipe. Spit, spit, wipe. It is what it is.

I can’t entirely blame the smudges I see on the lack of glass cleaning solution. Some of the blame is on my eyesight. It’s a little smudgy, too. I don’t mind blurry eyesight enough to go to the eye doctor, and apparently I’m not overly concerned about the glass in my bathroom.

But there is the matter of seeing truth. I care about this. 

I need to see truth, because there are matters that plead for hope.

I think about the blind man. Didn’t Jesus spit on him? He did, and the blind man saw people walking about like trees. 

I pull the trigger on my multipurpose cleaner. 

I don’t fancy being spit on, and I wonder why there was no other way for the blind man or for me. 

But there wasn’t and still isn’t. 

Life itself makes that clear enough.

My eyes have been wounded on the battlefield and I'm pressed to see my husband and myself as we truly are-as Christ sees us. 

He doesn’t see us as we are in the flesh, but as we are in Him. 

I don’t want to see my husband and myself as trees walking around; and not even like the trees in the autumn wood. Never mind that it’s hard for me to say that Jesus spits. He does. It seems so unclean. But my surface cleaner spits too, and it’s not unclean. 

I just want to see rightly.

Blindness is thick, kind of like the toothpaste blotch on the bathroom mirror. Jesus spit on the blind man once and wiped twice before he could see clearly. Spit, wipe, and wipe again and the blob of toothpaste is gone; and I wish it was that easy to see clearly.

“How?” I ask Him. “How can I see my husband and myself as smudge-free as truth is clear?”

Reflection

I stare into the mirror and puzzle about us. “What about us? Oh Lord, please; what about my husband? What about me?” I want a straight up answer.  I’m not up to piecing a puzzle together because I’m like a puzzle that’s falling into pieces. I close my eyes, plead with Him, and the hard surfaces, the floor tiles, mirrors, windows, and glass shower stall add echo to my plea.

Aren’t echoes and reflections the same? They are. Sound reflects and it’s called an echo; light reflects and it’s called a reflection. 

I don’t hear anything from Him. 

“Okay, Lord. I don’t have anywhere to go."  I aim my multi-purpose cleaning solution at the mirror above the sink. Spit, spit, wipe. 

I spent time earlier just watching the woods, listening to the wind, and waiting to hear from God. He let me wait. He was silent. 

I used to become impatient in waiting, but now I choose to wait when He remains silent. We can be silent together. It's better than empty echos. It's not a waste of time. And there's something absorbent about waiting like this. 

Spit, spit, wipe. I watch as the cleaning solution dries, streak free, on the glass. 

I watch as my reflection becomes clearer as the mirror dries and, "Lord?"

He doesn't need to say a word.

I get it. Wait and see. 

Wait. 

And see.

Wait in the silence He gives. Absorb it.

Where hard things seem to echo restless, silence seems to absorb.

My cleaning solution absorbs into the cloth I'm using, and somehow this is hopeful to me. It's hopeful that the very silence He gives me is the solution. 

Absorb the silence He gives-just the pure brand silence He gives and not a substitute-and absorb what will bring clarity.

Wait and see.

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig 

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Cramped Knees and Giving Thanks-a Devojournal

These are the names of the mighty men whom David had: Josheb-Basshebeth the Tachminite, chief among the captains. He was called Adino the Eznite, because he had killed eight hundred men at one time. And after him was Eleazar the son of Do-do, the Ahohite, one of the three mighty men with David when they defied the Philistines who were gathered there for battle, and the men of Israel had retreated. He arose and attacked the Philistines until his hand was weary, and his hand stuck to the sword. The Lord brought about a great victory that day.

—2 Samuel 23:8–10

What's a devojournal?? 

It's what I call the connection between my devotional (Bible reading, or Bible Study, or prayer time) and my journal. 

It's how I get the word of God from my eyes and ears to my brain where meditation happens till I can put it into my own words. Isn't this how thoughts get transformed by the renewing of the mind? Isn't is by meditating on God's thoughts? I think it is. 

It's how I get some transformed thinking from my brain, down my arms, to my fingers. That's where the connection is made on journal pages with my pen, not on the screen with my keyboard. 

I don't pray at my computer desk, but even if I did I would hand-write thoughts because there's just something about forming the letters and seeing my own handwriting. I'm sure there's some kind of neurological whatnot which happens when my knees, eyes, ears, brain, arms, hands and fingers all participate together to get some truth and transformation from God's heart into mine. It reminds me of the old, "the head-bone's connected to the neck-bone, the neck-bone's connected to the shoulder-bone" basic anatomy song! Well, my knee-bones are connected to my eye-bones, and my eye-bones are connected to my head-bone, and all the way down to my finger-bones connected to my devojournal!

So, it’s morning. My knee-bones are cramped, and my heart-bone's on the word of God kind of like David's mighty men and their hand-bones on their swords for so long that their muscles cramped and sort of froze there. 

I won’t let go of the Word of God. It's my sword. 

I won't take off my armor because it is saving righteousness and truth, peace and faith. And if my knee-bones get stuck on this yellow life preserver which cushions them, I'll just remember the mighty men.  It's real.

That’s what the life preserver is all about. First I knelt on carpet in front of the white couch. That was where I began to go heart to heart with God. The carpet was cushion enough, partly because my knees were two decades younger and partly because I was just learning to pray. “Teach me to pray.”

We don’t have that couch anymore. We moved and the floor by the bed was wood. I placed a rug there when my knees and my prayers were still young.

We moved again, and I used a rug and then a nice quaint “prayer pillow.” Then I needed the big guns because my knees were getting sore and my prayers were growing up. They had to. Life as I knew it hung in the balance, and all I could do about it was pray, pray, pray.

I learned to pray God’s own words right back at Him. The boomerang Bible is powerful and effective. It’s true that the prayers of a righteous man avail much. Such a man is made righteous through Christ, and only through Christ. And the righteous who pray God’s heart straight out until their own hearts know no other language are transformed. God Himself says it, and I know it’s true. Hear God’s heart. Learn God’s name. Speak His heart in His name. Now pray.

Do this and you’ll be going to Home Depot for a pair of gardener’s knee pads or searching your garage for a spare life preserver. Mine’s yellow and square.

Pray like this, using His Word, and you’ll be praying His name, and your prayers will be answered.

Connect with God’s Heart

 I have included excerpts from my prayer journal to help you get started with your own journal.

The Lord brings victory! He does! He has! He does what He says He's going to do. I have that

assurance. And I'm beyond grateful that He says good things. 

He said He will heal-and He has. 

He has given victory in the battle against this disease and has given me rest from the fear of it.

Thanksgiving is my “not forgotten,” my “remember truth,” my active amen. That’s because amen finds its root in aman, Hebrew for “truth.” And truth is a compound word in Greek, a-lethei, meaning “not forgotten.”

It’s odd to say that my thanksgiving is related to my “not forgotten.” But isn’t that what the holiday Thanksgiving celebrates? And isn’t that the meaning of “Do this in remembrance of Me”?

I don’t own a clothesline, and I don’t hang the wash, because my brand-new washing machine has an aged companion at its side: my trusty drier. It doesn’t stop on its own anymore. It just dries until someone opens the door and it pants to a stop. Sometimes I pull warm clothes from its old mouth and bring them to my nose. I remember doing this when my grown sons wore boy clothes and ran through grass and crawled through dirt. The sweaty scent of their T-shirts mingled with boyhood scent until grimy hands pulled the tops off. I remember the scent that never quite washed out, and I embrace it still. I hold it and fold it up, and sometimes my heart is like a dresser drawer. Is it okay to say “Thank You” and “Amen” in the laundry room? I do that with God because somehow in the little thank-yous I find an answer to the question, “How was trust in You strengthened in me today?” Sometimes the answer goes way back to things remembered.

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

(adapted from my devotional-PISTEUO!)

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The Broadside of Thanksgiving

 

 

 

As my soul has fingers, I relate to the washing machine's frozen grip on the spigot. I, too, grip. 

Grip at the source of Living Water. 

Hold firm to the Living Word of God. 

As David's mighty men gripped their swords till their hands were frozen to them, grip the Sword. 

Don't relinquish the Word of God. Hang on to it. He'll give you the strength to.

 

There is the belt of truth that stays firm even when trust on my part slips. He is truth, and the truth is that He won't let my trust in Him slip away. He keeps it secured in place.

And there is a breastplate of righteousness. Sometimes the wind gets knocked out of me, but the breastplate takes the brunt of the pounding. He is that breastplate.

He is righteous covering, and tells me I am His righteousness in Jesus Christ. Now that's in the realm of too good to be true-but it is true! 

It is mercy! 

Miraculous mercy and grace. Grace. Grace. 

 

 

"Is it true?" My knees are cramping in my warrior stance, and I hold the sword before me. Ready. 

"I promise rest. Enter My rest." He loosens my grip.

 

 

Tears wash soul wounds. Salt water is healing, and the healing is
sometimes in the tears.

"Thank You. Thank You!" I've unsheathed the Word of God

and battled against disease that 

aimed to destroy my husband-that big, strong
German of mine-one bottle at a time. 

The battle for hope is a mighty one.

This was my battle and it became glory.

Hope is glory unsheathed! 

 

 

Thanksgiving is my "not forgotten." 

 

My "remember truth." 

 

My active amen.

 



Hanging the Wash

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

(from my book, PISTEUO!)

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When the Heart Stampedes Wild Horse

Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep already dressed, five seahs of roasted grain, one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and loaded them on donkeys. And she said to her servants, “Go on before me; see, I am coming after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. So it was, as she rode on the donkey, that she went down under cover of the hill; and there were David and his men, coming down toward her, and she met them.

—1 Samuel 25:18–20

This is a fitting theme for today because my heart stampeded last night. I suffered a panic attack and I don’t know why. And it had been so long that I thought I was over this. 

So I labored. 

I separated breath from breath and thought from thought and remembered to breathe “Thank You.” 

And I listened to Jodi Penner sing “Be Near Me Still.”

                                                           

Then I wrote to God in my journal-

      

You reminded me to breathe “Thank You”

     

You introduced me to “Be Near Me Still” two days ago so that I had it for last night

      

You timed it so that this is where I'm in my Bible today

And I wrote a song.

I have journals for lists. 

I write my grocery lists in a Grocery Journal I made from a reusable cloth grocery bag. 

I plan meals for the week in my Bread-n-Butter Journal which I made from a kitchen towel. 

My to-do lists are in the Honey-Do Journal I made from rugged texture fabric and tied one of those spiraled wooden honey scoops to a string of twine which serves as a place holder so I know where I'm at and what I've done. 

And I have my Prayer Journal. This is where I write down the things which God's Spirit speak into my spirit. There's a physiological connection which happens when Spirit speaks to spirit, and then every neuron in my brain connects to the way my heart beats and charges down mental, muscular, and nervous pathways till my fingers hold pen. This is my Connect with God's Heart Journal. I have many of these and each is made with assorted fabrics, sometimes lace, always buttons.

Well, I don't know about Abigail, but if she didn't have a grocery journal, she should have! Goodness! 

Two hundred loaves of bread? How much flour would that be? 

Five seahs of roasted grain 

One hundred clusters of raisins 

Two hundred cakes of figs

Two skins of wine 

Five sheep already dressed

And I thought I had a large grocery list!

Wild Horse

This is Abigail. Her heart stampeded wild horse. Her household was at stake. Her husband was inaccessible. 

I can relate. 

My husband has fought his battles and been inaccessible, and I’ve loaded donkeys for the sake of my household. 

Abigail went undercover when the one she feared approached. Her heart was probably beating right out of her chest.

                            

 I, too, went down undercover last night, and my heart beat out of my chest. I practiced the hard pisteuo. The hard faith and hope. 

I’m learning.  

I didn’t have words with God. Is that because I’m becoming more mindful to ask, “How was trust in You strengthened in me today?” Maybe. Not long ago, what would have come out of my panicked lips is not what came out in the darkness last night. It was pisteuo speech. This is the language spoken by those who practice believing, trusting and hoping in God.

Calm

My heart is practicing a new beat—an “I believe in You” beat, an “I trust You” beat, an “I hope in You” beat.  My life has become all about this because it is all about His love for me. And that’s enough. I dare say this in humility before God.

It’s enough to keep me wanting more pisteuo and more awareness of Him. When my heart stampedes wild horse, God's love for me is the rein which He himself holds with tenacity and skill. It's enough. 

Faith and hope know the wild places where wild horses go. 

Faith and hope don't stay in the pasture. 

Faith and hope leap the fences and maybe it looks too wild-feels too wild-but God holds the reins. I don't see them, but maybe that's because they're hidden in His able hands. 

Believe, trust, hope. That three-in-one word, pisteuo. 

May it be lived with such purity that the scars it produces are proof of the presence of the three-in-one God I live for.

Be Still

Psalm 46:10

 Be still, as still as the night

When all the stars twinkle bright.

Be still, as still as the sea

When Christ told the storm to cease.

Be still beneath the constellations.

Lift your heart to praise Him

Underneath the wild sky.

Be still when the thunder rolls in

And God is throwing lightnin’

Dancing in the night sky.

Be still, though the earth be moved.

Be still. God’s still your refuge.

written by Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

(adapted from my book, PISTEUO! Connecting with God's Heart)

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When My Heart Stampedes like a Wild Horse

It rained, and I toasted the pecans with oats and honey into a granola, the way my mother made it. I use a recipe card written in her own scrawl with some of the blue ink smeared.

I feel so close to her right now. Cereal bowl in hand and a heart full of warm, I sit at the patio table. The yellow dog sits at my side, hopeful for a crumb, but nothing falls.

I chew and swallow the sweet crumbles. And something else not in the bowl—an unease. I’ve almost forgotten what it tastes like. But it’s there this morning.

It’s weekend unease from too many weekends that didn’t have enough honey, brown sugar, and oil to hold the crumbs together savory and warm. Too many weekends where the ingredients for nourishing sweet times lay cold on a baking sheet and were bumped carelessly and scattered to the floor.

I have cried sweeping weekends up off the floor. I have tossed them into the trash and buried them down deep. It’s a hard lump to swallow.

How do I keep swallowing when it tastes like broken trust? Feels like soul indigestion? It just doesn’t go down right. I have curled into a ball just breathing through it, breathing through the panic when everything that was supposed to be a certain way, wasn’t. Even though now the honey is sweet and warming, I think of when the crumbs were scattered and stomped on, even though now they are not.

It can’t really be explained. There are just reasons because life gives reasons. And I guess I’m really separating the then from the now, what was from what is.

My heart stampedes like a wild horse, and sometimes the reins fly out of my hands. 

So I cling to His Word-His Word is reign. I grab hold, and His Word gets the stampede under control. I lean across the sheets of holy pages in bed, and wild horse is subdued. 

I have needed to separate the kernels, spread them out before me like sesame seeds, oats, pecans, and wheat bran on a baking sheet, just to see what is what. I've divided the kernels into what is known and what is mystery and what is buried deep and causing my lungs to burn, my heart to scare, and my head to spin light.

I've separated kernels as much as I can. It’s a little sticky and yeasty because life's a little messy that way.

But there’s communion also and Communion with a capital C. Bring life to the table. Set it up around the table, and seat it there—the Judas stuff and the trustworthy stuff. Christ breaks the bread, saying, “Partake of Me, and remember Me even here and now.”

I’m at this table, and I’m remembering Christ with every breath for life. He knows all about sticky family history and messy life, and His heart has raced too.

I swallow truth. Every kernel is clumped in honey. 

I partake of the Bread. 

Sweet and wholesome-Truth and Life.

Bread.

Bread of Life.

Bread come down from heaven.

This bread of the hard thanksgiving is broken, and I’m told what it is. “This is My body,” Christ says.

And there is this bread of the wilderness. I’m not told what it is, just manna, meaning “What is it?”

I think about the bread at my table, the oddly shaped loaf that I occasionally pull out of my oven and serve at dinner. It’s easy for me to forget the kernel when I make my five-pound-bag purchase of King Arthur whole-wheat flour. I even watch the yeast bubble alive.

I think about the clumpy granola just cooled and bagged for breakfast—kernels and seeds and the bran and even the honey-sweetened oil. Hmm. Yeast and oil. Something spiritual here.

I’m more in touch with the “Do this in remembrance of Me” mystery when I’m cracking pecan shells or kneading, and somehow I see it more clearly when I pour the granola or slice the bread.

It’s what goes into it, and it’s seeing what it is—known and unknown.

The body of Christ is given as bread. I eat this bread at the Passover table to remember Him.

Sometimes I swallow manna bread when I have no idea what’s going down.

I’m curious about manna. How could I not be when it’s called “What is it?” I Google and find that in Hebrew it means “bread of the face of God.”

Ah, I really like that.

I separate kernels, grains, and some nuts on my baking sheet. It’s not just about baking. It’s also practice that I need when separating the seeds from the nuts that are part of my genetics, and my husband’s. We are grainy folk. He is hearty rye from German ancestry and, what am I? A Scotch-French not-so-hearty baguette and short bread.

Can I separate life issues as Christ did? Can I care about the issues of loved ones, the wrong things and the right things they have held or resisted holding in their hands, and not be controlled by any of it? How do I care without becoming controlled? Christ was not controlled by anyone at the table, or by their issues, or by anything they represented. He knew what was at hand and on the table and did nothing to control any of it. I eat bread in remembrance of the One who shared the last meal, undaunted when Judas’ hand received the bread. Christ gave it to him. He did! And He did not miss a beat.

And maybe this is the unease. I am controlled, altered, by what’s at hand. I am! And this little codependent admits to controlling the whats in life in an attempt to be unaltered by them. Only it doesn’t work, and Jesus did just the opposite, and that does work. I don’t know how. Yet methinks I have a lot to learn from this.

Can I gather kernels, twist and roll sheaves, and eat the bread remembering the body of Christ? With my head in the right place? Heart steady? Unaltered by whatever else is facing me?

Can I do the hard pisteuo even one labored breath at a time? Inhale, “Thank,” and exhale, “You,” because the bread is the body of Christ and is the “bread of the face of God.”

I must. It is relief.

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

(adapted from my book PISTEUO! Connecting with God's Heart)

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Because He Is My Hope

She leans back and drapes herself on the kitchen table, this college girl of mine. I sip loose-leaf tea from Tibet, I think. It’s a gift from tea connoisseurs, my daughter-in-law and her lanky husband, my firstborn son. It’s a gift from a piece of their own story.

Her feet dangle off one end of table, fuzzy pink-polka-dot socks tap the kitchen air all lark.

My tea steeps in a traditional Japanese teapot with the spout and handle side by side, unlike the English style. The teapot is a gift from my Japan-traveling German husband. I pour the Tibetan tea in a liquid stream of amber. My china cup fills—steady, slow, careful.

And this girl in pink hoodie over black shorts over brown stockings stretches across the table, and her long hair pours brunette waves over the side of the table. She is laughing, and her eyes dance brightly in one-two-three, one-two-three waltzing laughter, jigging chatter on the tabletop.

Amber liquid washes over the red peony painted inside my teacup with the bright-blue handle. A red china flower blooms in a blue curve just above the curl of my finger. This cup is also a gift, from the son who knows more about the weight set in the garage than about teacups. But he knows me.

And this college daughter. I raise an eyebrow, and my straight line of a mouth finds a curve. It curves up. And what flower blooms in the curve just below eyes that smile too? The laughter is warm, and it is mine. If laughter had a color, it would be amber. My heart is all red peony washed amber and drinking in laughter. We’re soaked in tears of laughter, a joyful rain like the one falling from the sky today.

Then this same daughter spilling amber all over my tabletop grabs my hand and pulls me to the rain-soaked patio. She twirls dizzily there, soaking up laughing rain and soaking herself in splash falling from God’s smiling eyes.

I wonder how many raindrops fall because God is giddy with joy. I wonder at thunder. Is it the roar of His laughter? Is lightning His eyes lighting up brightly as He jigs the Texas two-step over the earth table?

“Look around you, and see through it to Me,” God said something like that during autumn fire last week.

I haven’t forgotten. Faith, trust, and all hope. Seeing faith, believing truth, hoping through all. God-hope regarding God, regardless and because.

Because He is my hope.

Unseen but, oh, so real. Glory-hope, now-hope, forever-hope. Faith is wrapped up in it. My own faith endures because of it, and I am looking around me, looking to unwrap faith.

It’s happening slowly. I’m slowing my world to see fewer blurs. I’m watching leaves fall slowly in a morning wind that can’t make up its mind which way to blow. The wind is a blur, but the leaves aren’t. A swirl flocks on wings speckled yellow and brown, and what’s this? A leaf drifts and lights upon my finger as I hold my mug of morning coffee. It really does! It’s no special color, not red or bright orange, just brown and yellow speckle. But it is a gift.

I bend over it, looking, and I simply see through it to God. It sounds too simplistic, too easy. But last week was all autumn fire. I gladly hold one plain leaf today.

There are so many on the ground now. Tree limbs are being stripped leaf by leaf. And if rain is sometimes happy tears of God joy, couldn’t leaves falling be the same? It’s not a new thought. It’s redemption, really, the belief that what is stripped away gives way for joy. But it’s new right now because I’m seeing it right here, watching it happen. I watch a leaf’s tenacious grip break, and the leaf free-falls. I know what it feels like to break grip because I can’t hold on any longer, to free-fall without any idea where I’m going to land. And I know what it feels like to be stripped down like the branch—vulnerable, exposed. I know what it feels like to wonder how to keep trusting when everything is falling away.

Things are changing, falling away. I’m changing and impatient for a few things to just blow away. But pluck a leaf before it’s ready to fall, and it will bleed. Let it fall when it’s ready to let go, and it will dance. But it’s a hard dance too.

I carry the leaf inside and set it on the kitchen counter. Its veins are old, and its skin is paper-thin, fragile. But it’s free, whether it wants to be or not. It’s free, but sometimes faith is most challenged in a freedom that is kind of painfully gotten, just like trust is challenged in the fall.

Letting go is sometimes forced by a sudden blow, and hope is challenged too.

I place the leaf between sheets of paper and press it there. I rub a simple trace beneath a flat length of charcoal. I see it in its nakedness, and hope holds my own faith. “Press Your word against my heart, and leave the trace there,” I say to Him while looking at the leaf trace.

I have hope for emotional and mental healing, hope for chains to be broken and for beauty out of ashes, hope for all that God has said is but that I have not seen yet.

I tug on hope.

Jesus is my hope, and didn’t Jesus endure for the joy set before Him?

I tug harder on hope.

I tug on pisteuo till I connect with God’s heart to the end of joy. It’s all tied together somehow. Hope hangs naked while faith endures trial, and joy fills even now.

It’s beautiful, but I’m afraid of it too. Because it seems the deepest joy comes by way of troubles. The most profound joy was set before Christ in His moment of deepest trial.

It’s beautiful and hard at the same time. It’s faith and anxiety at the same time. This joy, this hope to experience and enjoy His glory, is not without trial. It’s not without painful birth to character.

But what sort of character is birthed by God’s love poured out, birthed through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us? Christ character.

I have desired and feared four times birthing pain, and I have given birth to four characters. I look at them all around me, and it’s a joy to see through them to God.

It was easy to see through to God when the youngest, head full of curly blonde hair, bent to hands and knees on the sidewalk to watch roly-polies bend into little gray balls and then unfold and move a few inches. I too slowed to watch patiently with her just in case they should do something rather spectacular like crawl extra fast, which they never did. And it’s easy still to see through to God when she strums her guitar and sings beautifully as she did last night. It’s easy to see through tears of laughter.

I fumble, urgent for faith when there is change, fumble when there is a season that strips things away till they fall like leaves. Yet, I connect with God’s heart most clearly when I am most urgent to believe and trust Him.

I connect with God’s heart most clearly when I am most urgent for hope.

I connect with God’s heart because He is my hope.

And that means a tree-load in the backyard of this little life.

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

(Adapted from my book, PISTEUO! Connecting with God's Heart)