Thunder

January 29, 2022 / Jaimie / Leave a comment

I was a human once.

I lived, I breathed, I knew who I was.

It was somewhere between where husband number one left me a puddle on the floor and husband number two decided I wasn’t enough.

Maybe I’m not.

Maybe they’re not.

I’m not qualified to say.

Tonight, I’m thinking I am beyond expectations and they are the fault.

Regardless, I’m here with the pieces.

Pieces are a funny thing. They fall in random intervals. They collide with ideals. They stick themselves in places you didn’t see coming.

But you hang on, groping for tomorrow because maybe it will be better and maybe peace can be found.

Maybe, instead of the ideal that someone will rescue me, I can find solace in me and my faith and the promise of tomorrow. I am tired.

I’m tired of picking up pieces and expecting gold.

Still, I am an optimist. I believe in tomorrow.

But today is real and I need to feel it to gather the gold.

So I struggle and rest in the same breath.

I am me and for tonight, that is enough. Tomorrow may be another story.

Shine when the darkness covers.

Shine when you can’t find light.

Today is a day gone…tomorrow is eternity, so live!!!!

Random thoughts from the lost and tired.

Be you!

Bring the thunder and the light will follow…at least that’s the hope.

One foot…keep walking

October 15, 2021October 15, 2021 / Jaimie / Leave a comment

The wind spins circles around my head

I see the life before me and I wonder if I’m supposed to be who I am

What is life but the continuing of one foot before another?

Every breath, a choice

Every moment, an opportunity for a voice

Yet, I am so often silent.

This is humanity…

A million moments of the mundane, followed by a hundred moments of impact.

But the mundane…the cleaning, the dishes, the listening to my kids talk about their day…the laundry…

In these moments, I become me. The woman I’m called to be.

So I’ll write and create and care for children, and sing, and process invoices, and update databases and go on..one foot in front of the other.

And in that, I will be more than I ever imagined.

Somehow, in the grind, God created destiny and legacy and that is enough for me.

Hello, tomorrow. I’m ready to do my best. We will see what God has in store. It may be great. It may be monotonous, but if it’s for Your glory, it’s entirely worth it.

One foot in front of the other…this is life.

365 Days

September 13, 2021September 13, 2021 / Jaimie / Leave a comment

Today marks 365 days around the sun since you joined us here. I remember the call. You were gone. I miss you more than I can say but I know it’s okay (I swear I didn’t mean for that to rhyme).

In my heart, I see clearly the serenity of the place you last walked. In my head, I want to call you and tell you about my day, my week, the weather, the sound my car is making, the dinner I cooked tonight…the stupid, little things.

I miss you! I wish you were here to run home to. I wish you were here to remind me it’s all okay. But I’ll have to wait until we meet again. “Remember who you are”, comes to mind.

I hope this year has been your best! I hope you’ve done your “special daddy dance” (which I demonstrate for my kids often) around the streets of heaven. I hope you’ve looked down on us and smiled. I smile for you daily!

One year, 365 days and everything has changed and everything is the same. Without you…

A hole in the center filled with light.

I miss you Daddy but I know it’s alright. (Oops with the rhyming again…whatever…I’m leaving it.)

Listening

August 4, 2021August 4, 2021 / Jaimie / Leave a comment

The dark can be so daunting

The light can seem so dim

Still, from heaven, you are calling.

Can I hear your voice again?

No fear in death or life, though all of hell presses in

Your voice, the roaring lion, shatters mountains and hangs on the wind.

Still small voice, speak to me. I’m listening!

It is Enough!

July 23, 2021 / Jaimie / Leave a comment

This post is a little different from my standard posts. I’m sharing with you what I wrote this morning while reading my Bible. Last night was a particularly difficult night for me. This morning, Is brighter because His word brings life and hope. Hopefully, you can glean something from it that will encourage you today. If you’re unfamiliar with the stories I’m referencing, read I Kings chapters 18 & 19.

It is Enough!

God showed Himself mightily through Elijah. In I Kings 18, he proves himself by sending fire to consume the sacrifice and turns the hearts of the people back to the Lord. Then he hears the “sound of abundance of rain” and prays until the clouds form and outruns Ahab’s chariot. Still, he (Elijah) was under a tremendous amount of pressure and adversity. By chapter 19 of I Kings, he’s running for his life from Jezebel, and it finally overwhelms him. He prays in verse 4 that he would die, “It is enough! Now Lord take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!” He is tired and feels like a failure.

How many times in my life, have I felt exactly this way? The heaviness of it all gets to me from time to time, no matter how hard I try. I don’t think Elijah was suicidal. He wasn’t trying to hurt himself and if he really wanted to die, he wouldn’t have bothered running from Jezebel. He just needed to rest and find the voice and peace of God in the middle of the pain.

God was there and shows up to sustain him, just like he always does for us. For Elijah, he sent an angel to tap him on the shoulder and feed him. The angel says to him in verse 7, “The journey is too great for you”. God know what we can handle and when it’s too much for us. He doesn’t expect us to do it on our own or in our own strength. He is there with compassion and provision when we don’t have the strength to keep going. His provision strengthens us. Elijah went, “in the strength of that food” all the way to the “mountain of God”.

“What are you doing here Elijah?”

God could have been asking him this because he should have been somewhere else and he was hiding out in a cave instead, but I think God asked him this because He wanted Elijah to see where he was. He wanted Elijah to see his purpose and who he was and who God is.

“Then He said, ‘Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.’ And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” I Kings 19:11-12

When Elijah heard the “still small voice”, he wraps his face in his mantle, the symbol of his prophetic authority and “went out and stood”. “What are you doing here Elijah?” It’s then, when Elijah knows why he’s there and recognizes who he is and that he’s not alone, that he goes back and follows the instructions of the Lord and continues the work of the Lord.

Sometimes this life, these trials, are too much for me. I lay down just like Elijah and pray “It is enough!” God is there for me as well. He sees and provides and leads me through. I need to lean in. I need to trust Him. When he says, “Arise and eat.”, for me that means devouring the word of God and letting His word sustain me. I need to realize that though the winds, and earthquakes, and fire, break the rocks into pieces, He is still, unmoving, constant. The seemingly smallest of things contain the most meaning. I need to lean in and steady myself in that! I need to remember who I am.

Elijah wrapped his face in his mantle, his purpose. My purpose is to glorify God in and through everything…to show Him to the world. When I remember why I’m here, I can stand up.

Like, Elijah, I also need to remember I’m not alone. God has placed people around me strategically to fight alongside me. I don’t have to find alone, and I can rest in that. Still, Elijah had to go out and appoint and anoint them. I need to stop being afraid of being vulnerable and be willing to reach out and accept help and support. That’s a tough one for me, but I’m working on it.

Optimism

July 16, 2021 / Jaimie / Leave a comment

I don’t want to be here. This place, my soul hates, this void of existence….but here I am. People talk from the outside about who I should be, who I am, the next moves I should make in this existence that is my life. What do they know?

This place is a place of pain, of heartache and grief. No one else knows the ache. Similar stories are of no relevance here. This moment is mine and I am alone in it.

So a word of advice from the depths of a bleeding soul…don’t say you understand. Don’t say it’s okay. Don’t try to minimize or trivialize. Just be there. A person with skin on who actually cares is all that’s required.

Grief takes many forms and actualizes for many reasons. You probably can’t fully understand so be someone to lean on. Empathy takes many forms. At the end of the day, we’re all different. We’ve had different histories, different struggles. What feels one way to you may feel entirely different to me.

Embrace the difference. Hold in your hand the willingness to not understand but care anyway. Humanity brings its own version of struggle and wholeness. Don’t try to assess mine based on yours. Just be there.

Tomorrow will be better and even if it’s not, life goes on. We grow. We learn. We change. Tonight I’m not settling. Tomorrow I may be a pool of self loathing. The next day, I might be a warrior. We are human.

God sees. He knows. He heals. He helps us grow. Don’t shirk from the hard things. Don’t minimize them in others. Be kind. Bring truth. Love without abandon. And just like that the world is a better place.

Sincerely, a broken hearted optimist.

Dive

June 12, 2021June 12, 2021 / Jaimie / Leave a comment

I’m just a girl

Standing on the edge

Ready to jump

Knowing I can fly

The water waits below

His word

And I can never dive deep enough

There is no bottom

Only grace

The Light

June 11, 2021 / Jaimie / Leave a comment

When the light turns on, the darkness becomes inconsequential. The glory appears in the brilliance of the light. It’s all in your perspective.

I confess, I’ve been lost in the shadows for awhile. I can’t explain why I let the light hide. I can’t explain why I couldn’t find it, but I lost track of it somehow. I let my pen fall silent. The same pen, I’ve so often prayed to “be a pen in the hand of a ready writer”, as the Psalmist says (Psalm 45:1), I tucked away deep inside of myself. I soaked it in tears. I allowed my story to become a side plot in someone else’s book.

I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t know that we ever really possess that capability. We’re all walking through our journeys with different points of reference, different experiences, different packs strapped to our backs carrying the remnants of yesterday’s climb. That’s where empathy comes in. When our understanding falters, we can choose to hear. We can choose to dig deep with compassion and find the eternal spark in each other. The humanity veiling divine destiny in another person can lead us to love deeply even when we don’t get it. But I digress.

I feel like I’ve, too often, used the phrase, “It’s been a hard season.” It’s a great Christian cliché to hide behind. Mainly, because this time, I’m sick of it. I don’t want to say it all again. I don’t want to admit that I’ve been wandering around in the desert for forty years in the same shoes. Now I’m realizing that maybe I needed the desert to find the sun.

If the eye is the lamp of the body (Matthew 6:22) and Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12), and He lives in me, shouldn’t I be seeing things through His perspective and not my own limited one? Shouldn’t I be shining the same light to others instead of closing my eyes tight and thinking if I don’t look, maybe it will all disappear? Shouldn’t I be holding my head high in the middle of the struggles, knowing that He’s got me?

Maybe I can stand again, pull up my socks, lace up my boots, and continue walking. Maybe I need to stop and rest and breathe in the moments that make me human. Maybe I need to trust. I am surrounded by light.

So I throw these words into the air defying the silence. They may not mean anything to you, but to me, they mean I’m alive. To me, they mean I’m done wandering. To me they mean, I will fight for myself, strengthened in weakness, until I become who I really am. To me, that’s enough.

Wine & Airy Dresses

November 18, 2013November 18, 2013 / Jaimie / 2 Comments

We can’t always trust our eyes. They lie. This morning I kept glancing at a magazine on my table (pictured above). I could have sworn it said “Wine and airy dresses to indulge your sweet tooth”. I kept thinking it just didn’t quite make sense. It wasn’t until much later when it caught my eye again that I looked closer and realized “dresses” was actually “dessert”.

Life is like that too. My pastor always says, “Lord, stamp eternity on my eyes so I can see things as they really are and not as they appear to be.” We look at our lives through earthen glasses and miss the bigger picture. God is looking from beginning to end with a plan in mind. We need to trust that He’s got it all under control and not let our senses fool us.

I encourage you to trust Him fully today! Have a wonderful Monday everyone!

Random Beauty – Grace

August 17, 2013 / Jaimie / 11 Comments

We’ve had a lot of rain over the past month here in Southwest Florida. The ground is saturated and consequently when more rain comes, we flood. The odd thing is that most of our street is high and dry, but our yard is a swamp. It’s inconvenient in a lot of ways. We can’t mow certain areas so the wild is overtaking the manicured. Bugs are invading the house more than normal.

If you’ve never visited South Florida, I can tell you that it is an education in strange bugs and arachnids. We have some mega spiders and odd-looking creepy crawlers. Most of these don’t bother us a bit, but I have to admit that spiders the size of my hand appearing in the bedroom (as a general rule) do not inspire happy thoughts in me.

I warn my son daily to be on the lookout for snakes and gators when he’s playing in the yard. Living by a canal, we usually look out for these anyway, but with the extra water, comes extra cottonmouths and you never know when and where a snake will pop up as we learned earlier this year (The Snake in the House).

Despite all of this, I’ve been intrigued by the water. It’s random beauty standing out from the otherwise consistent. The fact that it’s just our yard strikes me as well. It’s like God sending a little beauty just for us, washing us with the water, changing the landscape. Sure, problems sometimes come with the beauty. God never promised us a life of roses and relaxation. The greatest character is built through the storms and the chaos. In the midst of these, we learn to trust him and find the wonder. In that, he is glorified and we are changed a little more into his image.

I pray I always find the wonder in the midst of the flood, that I find the beauty in the chaos, that I look for the ways he’s romancing me and reminding me of his love. Nothing he does is haphazard. He paints the skies with us in mind. He plants flowers to amaze us. He smiles at us in the midst of the brokenness, wraps us up in his love and inspires us to be completely his. There is truly nothing better than that.