With Open Hands

With open hands, I bring my prayers, my questions, my people, my anxious fears, my happy tears,
my gratitude spilling over,
my laughter and love.
I offer it to You,
a sacrifice,
my soul sings of doubt and despair, of delight and dancing.

With open hands, I step into your embrace,
Enveloped in the lavender scent of love everlasting,
A chuckle of welcome reverberates in Your chest, “My child. Mine.” The words warm me down to my sandaled toes and I know Your love for me flows over me, engulfs me, radiates through me.

With open hands, I approach the day,
Praise on my lips, come what may,
Mundane or marvelous, irksome or incredulous,
A day of ordinary or extraordinary.
The beauty of life in each.

With open hands, I reach for the glass carafe and pour coffee, hot and fragrant, steam wafting.
Heavy cream swirls and creates fawn-colored patterns. The comfort and aroma warm me to the tips of my fingers wrapped with solidarity around my labyrinth pottery mug.

With open hands, I whisper words for guidance, words for acceptance, words for steadfastness, words for contentment, words for self-assurance, words for hope and trust and peace, words of abiding, words for open hands when I would rather clench them closed.

With open hands, I receive this life, this day, the delight You have in me.

Kaleidoscope:
Combined from three Greek words:
kalos (καλός), meaning “beautiful,”
eidos (εἶδος), meaning “shape,”
and skopos (σκοπός), meaning either “watcher” or “thing looked at.”
Kaleidoscope: beautiful shapes to look at,
observer of beautiful forms.
Kaleidoscope:constantly changing pattern,
medley, mixture.

Kaleidoscope living.
An observer of beauty. Paying attention to details. Noticing shapes and nuances. Giving gratitude for aesthetics and texture.
Our lives are stories.
Our stories are a constantly changing pattern made up of a mixture of excitement and pain, new and old, adjustments and routines.
A medley of music and beauty and creativity and inspiration runs along as the soundtrack.

Delightful Incidentals

A Home for Borrowers….I adore this!

I love pottery mugs and these beautiful handmade mugs with words of introspection are lovely.

If you love quizzes and creating cozy home, hop over here and take The Interior Design Quiz. It is fun!

Come over here to vote for what you are most anticipating as autumn approaches ~ we’ve had a large number of days in August topping temperatures at one hundred degrees plus, so autumn is sounding rather lovely.

This bag has been spectacular as a cosmetic bag for me. I’m delighted! Finally, a bag big enough to hold my curling iron and shampoo and my glasses case and contacts and, and, and…….

I requested this holder for my laptop to review through Amazon Vine and I’ve loved it much more than I was anticipating. I like trying mew things and I’m always excited when they are more useful than I expected. It puts my laptop for our farm officework at just the right height.

I’d long eyed these warmers for coffee mugs and felt like I might kinda love one. Turns out I do! I drink my coffee slowly. The warmer keeps it hot and thus, NO MORE MULTIPLE TRIPS TO THE MICROWAVE to reheat my coffee. 🙂

Read

Birds of a Feather
14 Ways To Make Chores More Joyful

Sensory for the Soul

I see beauty and color and splendor in the lisianthus blooms.

I feel the wispy softness of ribbon and gauze as I run it through my fingers.

I hear the notes and words and guitar chords as Andrew Peterson sings of planting trees from my Victrola Lily Mini.

I smell the lemon and citron swirling from my newest Mercy House candle.

I taste the cool refreshment of blueberries and lemonade over ice.

Sensory for the soul.

What renews you day by day in the midst of the demands, the dinging alarms, the dust and dirt, the dread, the distance, the dirty dishes, the dissonance, the disconcertment?

What and where do your senses breathe in delight?

BookList

Traveling Light by Eugene Peterson with foreward by Karen Swallow Prior
50 Ways to Draw Your Beautiful Ordinary Life
The Princess by Lori Wick
Keep Going by Austin Kleon
The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds

Against All Odds

Bring beauty to the world. Against all odds.
Create. Sing. Dance. Play. LAUGH. Admire. Hope. Love. Notice.
Find “a cause for optimism against all the evidence.”
Even a pinprick of light pierces darkness.
Perhaps it’s not in less fear, but in more courage.
Courage to show up. Courage to speak up. Courage to share our creativity.

I read ancient words and they remind me ” the Light shines in the darkness and the Darkness can never extinguish it.”
Against all foes, all woes, all throes of anguish.

Send the text. Smile large. Hug hard. Paint the sunset. Wrap the gift.
Buy the coffee. Cheer for children. Go down the waterslide. Offer effusive thanks. Keep counting gifts.
Keep counting grace. Hold hope high.
Invest in souls. Look in eyes. Loop the music.
Plant a tree.

I love this story and this song by Andrew Peterson.