Birdwatching!!

Yes, that's a bald eagle!
Look closely, there are TWO. The second one is below and to the left, partially hidden by the tree.
An incredible sight...
"They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." Isaiah 40:31.

Hitching A Ride

I only had about a gazillion things to do today, of course! But when I saw them getting out of the pick-up truck on the highway, I kinda knew I might not get a fast start on my day. Sure enough, they began to try to flag drivers down as they walked along the shoulder. I drove by, turned around at the next driveway and went back, slowing as I approached them..."Could you give us a ride?" "Sure," I smiled and in they crawled. The town they wanted was one town over but it was no big deal. Actually, they wanted to go across the river from that town but still...work would wait, right?

One was blonde, one brunette, and I would say they were in their early 20's. Whenever I pick up a girl, I can't help but remember the day I was the one walking the shoulder, feeling lost and alone, and someone was kind to me. I love random kindness.

They immediately began to thank me and then launched into apologies for the bother. "No problem," I said. Then they broke my heart. The blonde apologized by saying, "I know we smell like cigarettes because we smoke and I'm sorry because you smell so good and..." My heart cracked. It was just that simple. Why do people feel the need to apologize for being themselves? Maybe because most of us are so used to being judged? I explained that they were fine and no apologies were necessary. But they continued. They apologized for needing a ride, for making me late for work. I shrugged and said it was really no big deal; I was happy to do it. Then came THE QUESTION.

"Are you a Christian?"

I always cringe at this point.

"Not your typical one," I said with self-deprecation.

That caught the blonde off guard. "Don't you go to church?" she queried.

"I do, but I like to think I'm not legalistic," I answered with a grin.

"It's about GRACE," the brunette chimed in from the back.

I immediately turned and shook her hand and said, "YES! It's about GRACE!"

"I read that book," she said. And I KNEW, I JUST KNEW what was coming. "The one by that Mc...guy." "Steve McVey?" I asked. "I know him!" I laughed.

And then she started to cry. And she cried as she told me how the grace message had CHANGED HER LIFE. How for the first time she understood that God loved and accepted her unconditionally. How she had grown up churched but that hearing grace had set her free. And she kept saying through her tears, "I just can't believe this! This is God!" And I just grinned because of course it was.

I let them out on a street they asked me not to drive down in a not so great part of town. I handed them some cash and told them where they could find me if they ever needed help. They were crying as I drove away.

Scotty used to say, "You won't be around me and not be changed." The more I understand grace, the more I'm pretty sure I know what he meant. You won't be around the CHRIST in me and not be changed.

See, I don't have to save or judge the world.

I just get to love them.

And, yeah, that is God.

"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again." John 3:16-17.


Oh! this song is grooooovy!!! :)

What Love Looks Like To Me

What does love look like? It looks like taking a chance, risking your heart, and choosing to give of yourself. It looks like Matt & me, of course.

One year ago...

What does love look like? What does the bush experience when it is being consumed by the fire? How does it feel to walk on water? To raise the dead? Heal the sick? To be poured out and yet never run dry? Just how much of Christ can we give? Will we run out? Will we go lacking? Will the storehouses of Heaven be emptied if we love too much? Can we love too much? WHAT DOES LOVE LOOK LIKE?

I want to know.

I want to love until I am at the end of me and He begins and then I want to see what His love can do.

I want to live without boundaries, fears, insecurities, and hesitation.

I want to be so well loved that what you mistake for me is really my Lover because we are never apart.

I want to come out of the wilderness leaning on my Lover and start living life from that perspective. Totally recumbent on a Love that will not and cannot fail.

I want to live from the position of the Beloved of God. I want to know what it feels like to sit under an unfailing banner and recline on my Husband's breast and from THAT PLACE, while He and I are laughing into each others' eyes, I want to turn and invite EVERYONE to join us.

I want to never leave the bedchamber. I want to wear the flush of passion and stay pregnant with the evidence of my marriage. I want Christ to birth in me and through me His Life for the world to behold.

I don't want to touch people for Jesus. I want to touch Jesus and let people see.

I don't have a work to do; I am the evidence of Jesus' Finished Work and He wants to show me off. Not because of my goodness, faithfulness, or love. Because of His.

What does love look like? I don't know. But I think we are going to find out. Matthew and I are going to find out. WE ARE THE BELOVED OF GOD....

Lucy & Linus

Has it been a YEAR since we first met Matt??? Good grief! I'm giving myself an early birthday gift: Lunch with Boo. I'll love him up real good for y'all!!! :)

It's A Girl!

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

~Walt Whitman

from "Intimations of Immortality"

Just in case you didn't see the announcement on Facebook, Julie of Voice of Grace has had her baby. Baby Amilia has arrived! Congratulations, Jul, Aaron, & family! What a wonderful, marvelous blessing!

On Being Real

My sister celebrated her birthday yesterday.

I gave her a Malibu Barbie...

to replace the one I bit the nose off of when we were kids. (Just the tip!) :)

Barbie is still looking good at her age, I must say.

Of course, that's easy when you're plastic, isn't it?

I'm not absolutely sure, but I'm fairly certain, that MATTEL is not stamped on my butt.

I secretly think some people's say CHRISTIAN, though.

What about you?

Alive Again

For YOU, my friend, with love, Jamie

Gracing Others

I used
to count the cost
'til I
reckoned my life lost
Now in
You I breathe
and live
and Your
love
I freely give.

Judging Good & Evil

I love November. It's a beautiful month to live in the country. The soybeans have lost their leaves and are a deep gold as they await harvest. Drifts of white cotton adorn neighboring farms. From the glowing cypress in the swamp to the deep green of Carolina pines, the russet leafed dogwoods to the fiery maples, even the green flash of mistletoe festooning otherwise barren branches, all is aglow with a deep, rich brilliance under cloudless, Carolina blue skies.

Sunrises and sunsets are heralded by a chorus of geese and ducks as they take flight to feed by day or find shelter by night. Cardinals add their festive red to the more sedate browns and grays of meadowlarks and mockingbirds. And on the pond, great herons, white egrets, and kingfishers are often joined by the occasional osprey or bald eagle.

And yet I know that within weeks, if not days, the fields will quickly change their appearance. Cotton, like snow, only holds its beauty for a short time. Far too soon the stripped fields look bedraggled and the roadsides are littered with soiled, tattered cotton leavings. Appearance certainly matters to our perception, doesn't it? Because white and spotless or filthy and matted, cotton is cotton, not because of its external qualities but because of its genetic make-up.

Which begs the question: are we good or bad based on what we do? Or, far more importantly, are we to categorize each other as good or bad at all? And, I don't mean just Christians, I mean everyone. If I understand 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 correctly, we aren't to consider each other according to the flesh but rather according to God's act of reconciliation at the cross.

To judge, weigh, or measure according to behavior is to make morality the issue, not life.

Do "good" people do "bad" things? Do "bad" people do "good" things? And does a person's acts determine what they are?

I recently came across a list of what so-called good people do. You know, because good people should behave in a certain way as should bad people. That way you can always tell the difference and treat people accordingly, I guess! WHOOP! You just slipped from the "good" to the "bad" pile; so sorry. Seriously, it disturbed me because if we can list the qualities of "good people" and "bad people"and we judge based on performance then, frankly, we JUST DO NOT GET IT!!!!! There seems to be some idiotic notion that we are what we do! And mainstream Christianity and PBA religion promote that fallacy.

Let me ask you something? Are you a good person? Do you ever do bad things? Is it remotely possible that bad people might also do good things? See, the whole rationale is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!

Morality is not the issue in life, people. LIFE is the issue in life. Identity is the issue.

We like to think...hmmmm, get saved. Great! One ticket to heaven: check. Now, let me go out and live a good and moral life based on my intellectual ability to judge good from evil. And EFFORT COUNTS!

If we had any understanding of mercy, grace, forgiveness, and unconditional love, if we realized that God has extended these to all, uh, all means ALL, if we could begin to comprehend that LIFE, NOT MORALITY, is the issue to God, we might begin to see that our identity defines us, not our actions. There is no good or bad in the eternal equation, there is only life or death.

There is a world full of dead men walking around doing "good" and moral acts.

There is, also, a world full of New Creations who miss the mark of Christ's life and nature in them sometimes.

Effort doesn't matter in either one's case.

Listen, Beloved, the knowledge of good and evil isn't what we are to aspire to so that we can choose good. NOPE!

The knowledge that we have been grafted into the Tree of Life and can rest in His life in us is what we are to renew our mind to.

Life is NOT A MATTER OF A MENTAL TALLY SHEET that we keep of ourselves and others!

Life is NOT A MEASURE OF THE GOOD THAT WE DO!

Life is Christ.

Christ is righteousness.

If we are alive in Christ, we are righteous.

Who we are is not a matter of what we do but into whom we have been born.

What we are is not a matter of judging good or bad but of choosing life or death.

We are better than we know because our righteousness is not of our efforts!! It is by faith alone!

And that is the offense of the Gospel.

That is the beauty of grace.

Bad & Good People

"There is no such thing as GOOD and BAD people. There are simply people who do good and bad things. Just like there is no such thing as Good and Bad Christians!! In reality, there are dead and alive people; those who are in the Tree of Life produce good fruit and those who are not produce dead works. Fruit is the result of a living, vibrant union life. Works are the result of the flesh's effort. "

Best Behavior

Though they said that I should
I never quite could
Master the art of being
Good
So I gave up.

Galatians 2:20 (New International Version)
20I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

It's an 80's flashback!! YIKES! Scenes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off come to mind...
Awwww, dat baby is CUTE!

The Good Christian's Guide To Holiday Correctness

When we first got married we had a Halloween Tree. It was so cute! I adored it! It was actually my small, artificial Christmas tree strung with a string of spooky seasonal lights. I thought it was a simple, fun way to celebrate the season. One of my cutest memories of that tree is of the exasperated, but cheerful, mom who laughingly told me that she had just finished explaining to her confused toddler, moments before arriving at our door for "tricks or treats", that decorated trees were for CHRISTMAS, not Halloween...ah, well, the little girl was thrilled!

But that little string of lights along with so many innocent, simple pleasures were not long meant for our home because in our earnest attempts to please God, and seemingly everyone, we quickly became acquainted with something I call that "faintly disapproving" air. The one that good Christians master over time so that with only a raised eyebrow or a sudden, heavy silence or just an "Oh?" they can make you feel weighed, measured, and found wanting. The one that makes you feel worthless based on the fact that your behavior is subject to constant monitoring and scrutiny by God and his select. Suddenly, you realize you'd rather improve to the point of being able to judge others than be judged yourself!

Because isn't that the name of the game in religion, people? Life is really all a matter of which side of the fence you're walking on...no fence straddling allowed! Good Christians learn to TRY. Good Christians learn to JUDGE. Good Christians learn to MEASURE. And if you don't, well, can you be sure you're a Christian?

I remember as a young mother sitting in a large church when the question was asked, "Does your child know the names of the apostles or the names of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" I was so ashamed by the implied criticism that when my daughter was given a Ninja Turtle sweater for Christmas by loving grandparents I promptly and sincerely explained why we didn't indulge in that kind of worldliness! I was the keeper of my child's SOUL, the watchdog of her CONSCIENCE, heaven forbid I be found lacking. If it didn't have the James Dobson, right-wing, Republican, conservative, moral, I attend church every time the doors are open and tithe, G-rated but not for Disney who supports the homosexual agenda, true-blue convicted, sinner saved by grace stamp of approval...well, I wanted NO PART OF IT! I didn't want to hear Jesus say to me, "Get thee from me, you worker of iniquity, I know thee NOT!!!"

And I TRIED. God in heaven knows, I TRIED. And when I failed, as I ALWAYS did, I confessed, asked for forgiveness, and rededicated my life and EFFORTS that much more to getting it RIGHT. And I slowly died inside as the weight of condemnation crushed me. When my beautiful, precious daughter started pre-school at three years old, no one's child was held to a higher standard of performance, after-all, what is higher than perfection? As a stay at home mom, I felt it was my DUTY to have the perfect child, perfect home, perfect life. Wasn't that the point of being home? So when Devon innocently confessed to me that her teacher had reprimanded her for TALKING IN CLASS, I stood over her as she laboriously wrote and rewrote an apology to her teacher for her behavior. She was THREE YEARS OLD! How God's heart must have longed for me to understand HIS unconditional love so that I could extend it to my own child. It wasn't that I didn't know John 3:16; it was that I truly believed that God may have loved the world but He was still MIGHTY DISAPPOINTED in us when we were less than perfect. The truth was I believed I was accepted on sufferance, that God could just bear the sight of me as long as I was faithful to confess my sins and continually worked to please Him.

The first time I heard a person say that God wasn't disappointed or angry with me I sat and cried and cried, and continued to cry, Sunday after Sunday. The first time I heard that same person say that the Ten Commandments weren't for Christians I gasped and felt my inner pharisee get her hackles up! The first time I understood that GRACE isn't based on what I DO but what Jesus FINISHED I was SCARED to believe it!!! It was simply too good to be true!

And when I FINALLY, FINALLY came to the realization that GOD DOES NOT LOOK AT US WITH A FAINTLY DISAPPROVING AIR I knew for the first time in my Christian life the joy of full and total acceptance and unconditional love.

God's relationship with His children is not based on how well we PERFORM or how well we BEHAVE or how MORAL we are. It NEVER WAS! God's relationship with us is based on His UNCHANGING LOVE. And from before the foundation of the world, God's relationship with us has been from the perspective of the cross. The Lamb was slain in God's view BEFORE man ever drew breath. God's plan was redemption and reconciliation. Religion has made it about regret and re-dedication. God looks on the heart. Religion looks at the flesh. God has given the Christian the Law of Liberty in Christ. Religion still holds the Old Covenant Law before our eyes.

God doesn't think, "If you were a good Christian, you wouldn't do that." The Christian LIFE is so much more than what religion has reduced it to! The Christian life is simply: Christ in us, the hope of Glory. What we need is a revelation in our understanding of our new identity. To have our old sin consciousness replaced by a Christ consciousness through the new life we are indwelled by: Christ's Life. To know we have received the mind of Christ. We are trusters, not tryers. We are not workers of good. We are a good work wrought by God and we produce evidence of this based on WHO WE NOW ARE AND WHOM WE ARE IN. The cause is not guilt and the effect good behavior resulting in righteousness. The cause is CHRIST and the effect is righteousness resulting in LIFE, which is good.

Beloved, God doesn't weigh us against Christ on His celestial scale. He placed us in Christ. We are forever approved. That is the Gospel. No trick. All treat.

Happy Halloween! Mwhahahahahaha!!! You know I love me some SPOOKY. :)

Grace and love,
Jamie

Home Is In His Arms

When you look into my eyes
And you see the crazy gypsy in my soul
It always comes as a surprise
When I feel my withered roots begin to grow
Well, I never had a place that I could call my very own
But that's alright my love,
'Cause your my home

When you touch my weary head
And you tell me ev'rything will be alright
You say use my body for your bed
And my love will keep you warm throughout the night
Well, I'll never be a stranger
And I'll never be alone
Where ever we're together that's my home

Home can be the Pennsylvania Turnpike
Indiana early morning dew
High up in the hills of California
Home is just another word for you

If I traveled all my life
And I never get to stop and settle down
Long as I have you by my side
There's a roof above and good walls all around
You're my castle, you're my cabin and my instant pleasure dome
I need you in my house 'cause you're my home

Pardon The Interruption, # Iforgetandamtoolazytoolook

In a complete and utter reversal, I'm exercising my womanly prerogative and changing my mind. Hence, my FEEDJIT is back. I love my FEEDJIT. I missed it. Just so you know. Yeah, I'm a fibber-pants. So sue me. :)

Celebrating the Season

I am loved by the One Who Paints the World just for me.

( Okaaaaay, and for YOU, too! )