Archive for Isaiah

When The Rain Comes

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on August 25, 2023 by Her Broken Wing

“…… I have called you by by your name, you are mine. You are precious in my eyes, because you are honored and I love you…”
(Isaiah 43:1)

As I looked outside that particular morning, it looked like rain. Dreary. It resembled my life lately. Cloudy, dark, uncertainty.

Broken would best describe it…

A friend,,,,once said,”You are in a good place.” He meant, I was right where God wanted me. However, not what I wanted to hear when I was hurting. As a matter of fact, I think it made me angry at my friend, the world, life’s circumstances and yes, even God. It made me cry. The blubbering, snotty, chest heaving and ugly cry.

Time passes and I look back.

Now I can sit and smell it… The rain…The unperfumed pureness of my Father reminding me that His rain falls on us all. The just and the unjust, those who love God and those who have rejected Him. Those hurting and those who are broken.

Brokenness reminds me of the drowning man. The ideal time to save him where he doesn’t drown both the person making the effort to save him and the drowning man is when he is about to go under“……Otherwise, he will fight in his panic. Both shall perish.

Am I living as a broken man, living ready, reaching up to grab the arms of Christ as He calls my name?

All of us. This Reminds us of His promise of love.

My Beloved

Outside Looking In

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on January 21, 2012 by Her Broken Wing

I had a friend ask me last night, “How have you done it?”

“Huh?” bewildered.

“You have your act together and have done so well.” It was all I could do to not laugh out loud. If she or anyone else knew the truth. The days I have spent in my counselors office crying, I just don’t think I can do this another day.

I heard someone say the other day how our outsides rarely match our insides. How true. We paint ourselves up in pretty packages most days or I do. I actually do remember a time in my addiction when it was all I could do to get ready each day. But now..I have become an artist of hiding flaws.

I could tell something was bothering my friend so I told her how most days were for me.That I struggled with depression. Some days I had to  make myself go to meetings even when I didn’t feel like it. That I still struggle with daily routines and some days it is all I can do to get dressed.  She looked relieved.  I think she was glad to know she was not alone. I did laugh and say “no one has it together as they appear to.” I have this found to be so true. We all have “issues”.

We talked awhile longer and I could see a light come on. I smiled to myself. Maybe I am not officially counseling now which I do miss but God still puts people on my path to speak to and touch through my story. Maybe that was God’s plan along. Not quite what I had planned but “Your ways are not My ways” (Isaiah 55:8)….

I don’t run from my experience now but have learned to embrace it and share it. I give it away freely now. And I will be telling my story for the first time in a few weeks and I must say, I am excited. Who knows what God has planned.

For Life just Simply is….

Beautifully Awkward

From Ashes To Beauty

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on May 14, 2011 by Her Broken Wing

“…He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,…
   to bestow on them a crown of beauty
   instead of ashes, the oil of joy
   instead of mourning, and a garment of praise
   instead of a spirit of despair…” Isaiah 61


The Phoenix story is told that it has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again.

While I might not have that long to live, in likeness, my short life I must die to live. (Matt 26:25)

So out of my rubble, I become something more beautiful than I was before. Free of the bondage that brought me to despair– That I too may be bestowed a crown of beauty.

From the ashes I arose to a garment of praise…

Beautifully Awkward

Daydream Believer

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on January 29, 2011 by Her Broken Wing

Shaped my world were games of Eeny meeny miny moe, he loves me he loves me not and dreams of sailing away from my world with my make-believe lover.

Daydreaming, I believed I would be rescued from the Demons that danced and twirled in my pain-ridden world. I waited endless nights for my Prince Charming.

Restless inside, I drank the deep. I dreamt of another world of peace and happiness.

My secrets, however, would soon be found and the world had its way with me.

Daydreaming, I believe I would be rescued from the Demons that danced and twirled in my head.

Buried by my many walls, I walked on this side of the world.Thinking I was protected. Praying I was. Finding I only excluded my Prince Charming from ever finding me.

And then, my once sacred pearls scattered abroad. I had held on too tight. Now,they knew. I was exposed.

My dream world was shattered.

I never saw it coming. I never saw Him coming. The change was subtle.  My soft foundation shifted and I fell.

Only then did the Prince Charming greater than my wildest dreams reach down and pick me up. (Isaiah 9:5)

All through a Daydream Believer.

(John 3:16)

Beautifully Awkward

The World’s A Stage

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on September 26, 2010 by Her Broken Wing

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,…”

William Shakespeare…

My world is a stage…you…you are but a player on my earth.

I was quick to judge you as you were quick to judge me.

I looked at my own flaws through your eyes. I sought perfection in myself as I did you. But often, you failed me. Repeatedly, I failed you.

Recently, I heard someone say, “I found that if I was not the problem, there was no solution.” I had to drink these words, allowing them to flow lightly over my tongue as I swished them around in my mouth so I could savor the statements reality.

It was up to me (through God) to find serenity–not you.

 

There is a “bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us ” (from the Big Book of AA) reminding me that we are all flawed and just trying to endure the performance of our life— each day we try-out for a new scenario.

But we are good too.

Survival–life. Maybe more. Abundance? (John 10:10)

But I have come to believe that my addiction is the best thing that could have happened to me. Proving to me that I know very little about what I need and what is in my best interest. So, maybe you judge me by my failures–my addiction. But God judges me by failures and how I rise from the ashes of destruction –”for My ways are not your ways.” (Isaiah 55:8)

Thus, I have learned that all the times I thought I had the world figured out, you figured out and gave you long endearing advice, I really didn’t know what was good for you for I did not even know what was good for me.

So, today I resign from having all the answers.

And whatever is in front of me at the moment, whatever I find peace in at that instant…IS God’s will for my life.

Humbled? Maybe but I am content in living in the background of my stage of existence.

Beautifully Awkward

ThE LiLy pAd

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on August 14, 2010 by Her Broken Wing
 

  

The life of the frog seems pretty benign. He lives hopping from one lily pad to another, may even occasionally drinks of the water below. The frog deliberately avoids the deep waters beneath remaining vigilantly on the surface.  

Who knows… maybe he is awaiting his princess… that never comes…day after day… for she awaits his call in the depthless places he will never travel.  

I too have (and still do–at times) existed by remaining only on the surface. Playing, laughing, crying and well just living the life of the frog. I have avoided the deep immersion at “all cost.” To plunge into the deepness of who I had become and how I got there would mean to surrender my control (which I really never had to begin with) and turn briefly around to face a past, my past, and yes even embrace it– otherwise, I might never understand its impact nor the gratitude of where I stand today .  

To plunge into the deepest waters of my past will not only allow me to say good-bye, but to also surrender it to my Papa and leave it where it needs to be–at the Wooden Cross.  

Ironically, to give me control back–in my life!  

To be free would allow me–as one small frog to jump into the deepest places of my heart where I might find my Prince. (Isaiah 9:6)  

Beautifully Awkward  

Color The Sky

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on July 19, 2010 by Her Broken Wing

Lest I forget where I came from, let me go back to the beginning of my blackened sky.  

I remember a dark abyss…surrounded by demons, circled by a haze of uncertainty and confusion. …Voices calling me by name – unworthy, pitiful, shameful, selfish, unloved, unacceptable, ugly and evil.

The axis of my beliefs was and at times still are to quiet the voices in the only way I knew how.

In fact, had I not been faced with grave consequences I am not sure where I’d be now or if I’d even be alive. But I eventually succumbed to a Force greater than I.

Coerced into sobriety in a sense—by a family that loves me, a career I love and by a sickness that rages my body now and forever.

Someone asked me last night about how “it” (sobriety) came to be. I thought for a moment and said, “I came in kicking and screaming, very angry.” It was every one’s fault, not mine. The world had its way with me—I was in complete denial. I minimized the effects of my disease and yes, I lied. But the baffling, cunning and all-powerful disease was all too familiar to those around me. They just smiled. “What did they have to smile about,” I thought. Slowly though, my tightly crossed arms, loosened their grip.

Just maybe…Hope?

I am learning to live life—on life’s terms…”For your ways are not my ways” (Isaiah 55:8)

Truth is I do have one more “high” or “drunk” in me, I just don’t know if I have one more “period of sobriety” in my path. You see even though I am sober, my disease will continue to get worse. If I chose to get high, it will be worse on my body, it won’t be like starting over. I will die.

But for the grace of God I am sober, I am clean, I am living…

Today— I color the sky with my mark.

Beautifully Awkward