Tag: dreams

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Words of Encouragement Are Never Wasted Words

dana2day

Today I attended the funeral of a sweet man. Every Sunday, without fail he would greet us at some point, whether it was as I entered church with my family, or scurried in late looking for a seat. He would walk up beside me, or one of my daughters, and give myself or them a side hug and then inconspicuously hand off a peppermint or pack of gum, then give us a wink as he moved on. He was faithful, he was enthusiastic and he was perceptive of who needed a little encouragement.

At the end of the service I was walking slowly up the aisle to leave and I spotted a precious lady in conversation who I love, respect and admire. She is a beautiful woman, full of energy and a zest for life. She is creative, and industrious and her home looks like a Southern Living Magazine. I saw her catch my eye as if she planned to say something, but finished her conversation. As I was about to pass her, she reached out and began to encourage me about something she read in my blog. I was caught off guard, forgetting that these things I write here are actually read by others…..not just me exercising my thoughts in life. She looked into my eyes and said “You are a writer, Dana. I love what you you said in your blog.”. My heart warmed. Just when I thought this silly writing dream was a waste of energy and time……that I really don’t have any talent…..or direction…..or validation for this thing I love to do. God tapped me on the shoulder and used someone I long to be like to whisper words of encouragement to this often melancholy heart. Writers are weird people who are constantly in a state of putting words and sentences together to create something that tells a story, or describes a moment or changes the heart of the reader. They long for validation, but struggle with creating something worthy to be read by others. The sad truth is the work of most writers will never see the light of day, much less make it to publication. But they keep on writing.

So today, I received a gift. Encouraging words from someone who read what I wrote and felt the emotion and meaning behind the words. Thank you sweet lady for blessing me. You are a jewel. God used you in my life today.

God is paying attention to us and He knows our hearts, our dreams, our hopes…..and He knows when we need to know that what we love to do isn’t a waste of time. He cares enough to encourage us through unexpected words from others. So don’t hesitate the next time you feel the need to inspire someone with supportive words…..God may be using you to tend a dream in someone’s life.

cancer, escape, friends, Laughter, Life, Uncategorized, Writing

Rock and Roll, Baby!

dana2day

Last night something was confirmed about me that may surprise many of you. I am not a rocker. I know you are shocked and surprised. I’m not even a poser. (I had to look that term up, fyi) It was evident by my lack of knowledge about the music or words to the signature songs of the band. I spent more time entertained by the people in attendance than the actual concert. My husband and I were given tickets by sweet friends to a concert by The Black Jacket Symphony: A Night at the Opera and The Best of Queen. My big guy was very excited about hearing favorite songs of his younger years. I confess that I wondered what kind of opera the symphony would play. I honestly expected an orchestra. I was wrong! I am not completely in the dark, I do know who Queen is, but I didn’t realize it would be a real deal rock and roll night! You may not believe this, but I’ve never been to a rock concert. It’s true! I know I’ve surprised you again.

Parking was the first step to getting to our night of rocking and rolling….obviously not an easy task in downtown Mobile when a rock concert is about to happen! We finally parked in a church parking lot with a sign that said “Private Parking for…(and I’ll leave the church name out here just in case someone wants to report two rebellious fifty somethings!): Violators will be ticketed or towed at owners expense. I was a little anxious as we got out of the car and proudly walked toward the theatre, impressed by our night of living on the wild side. I secretly asked God to forgive us and please allow the car to still be there when the night was over!

As we entered the door of the Saenger I was asked to open my purse for security. I looked at my big guy and asked, “Are these people famous?” The security guy asked him if he had any weapons. He confessed to a pocket knife and suddenly the guys hands went up and said “You can’t enter with a weapon, sir.” I looked around at the other security people standing ready to pounce, beginning to wonder if the real Queen was in the house. My sweet husband informed me later that the lead singer died in 1985. He handed over his knife, it was obvious to me that it was worth the sacrifice to hear the band! We then walked to another security checkpoint and were scanned with a wand for any other concealed weapons. This didn’t make me feel comfortable about the obvious possibilities of events that could happen if there was this much concern for what people would carry into the concert hall! We finally got to our seats and waited. We were in the balcony, third row, dead center. Perfect view of the stage. I noted the massive speakers hanging from the ceiling, both sides angled right at us. This wasn’t going to be good. There was an atmosphere of excitement all around me. As I watched people, which I love to do, I realized the average age in the room was somewhere in the mid fifties. But the energy was more like a crowd of twenty somethings! I noted the lights, the instruments and party like atmosphere. Suddenly the lights went down and the band ran out. The crowd went crazy. The lead singer belted out lyrics and people were screaming. I looked hard at the singer trying to recognize him. I did not. But then a familiar tune came, Bohemian Rhapsody. I looked at my big guy and said “I know this!”, but my words were lost somewhere in the midst of the screaming crowd and the blasting music. He leaned down and I got as close to his ear as possible and I repeated my words. He smiled and nodded. I still don’t think heard me….but I saw the smile on his face as he took in the loud music and I knew he was having a good time. I found myself watching people more than the concert as they got lost in the music, reliving the moments of the 70’s and 80’s when they first heard the songs. People were standing and dancing, hands in the air and singing at the top of their lungs. These people knew every word. Then I heard a familiar beat….the crowd began to stomp, stomp, clap, stomp, stomp, clap. I looked at my man with shock, it was my high school senior class song! I found myself following along and singing “We will, we will, rock you”. I was no longer a fish out of water. A square peg in a round hole. I was a rocker! They sang Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Another One Bites the Dust. I suddenly felt cool because I knew these songs. I didn’t know all the words, but I knew the songs. At the end of the night, my ears were numb and I honestly was glad to be headed home. I observed something as I left. It was 10:15pm and the crowd that had just been jamming out for two hours were leaving in an orderly manner, laughing and chatting as we exited the nearly 100 year old Saenger Theatre. Forty years ago, these same people would have been jumping up and down demanding an encore still full of youthful energy, demanding to be blown away by the rock band, Queen. We made it back to the church parking lot (along with many other concert attendees) and our car was still there and no ticket on the windshield. Prayer works! We drove home and I listened to my sweet man talk about the band and how good they were and how fun it was to hear some of his favorite songs. I listened and thought how thankful I was for the gift of tickets for us to enjoy a non -typical night out for this “square” chick, and to sit next to my man who has had such a difficult year. All I can say is…..rock on!

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Rest

dana2day

I am floundering around in a new place in my life. I became unemployed the first of September. That experience alone is it’s own blog entry. For a month now I’ve been trying to figure out what my next steps were. God has allowed me to be thrown for a loop, left standing empty handed staring up at the heavens. I’m 56 years old. I have accomplished no great earth shattering feat, nor have I written some great masterpiece that touched the hearts of all who read it. Even yesterday as I drove down the road, I was pondering the thought that I don’t sit and write anymore! Not even to blog. My soul is still. My heart thoughtful. My mind is chasing so many thoughts that I am struggling to settle on one path to walk down. I have felt lost….not knowing what direction is the right one. I have felt guilty for not pounding the streets to find a job. I have sat in front of my laptop trying to decide if I pound that super highway for a job, or put words to a word document expressing this strange season I have stepped into… and then done neither. I have sat quietly thinking about what I want to do…. and been clueless! I took a road trip to the island to get clarity from the sounds of the waves and the beach. As I sat there, feeling awkward sitting on the beach in the middle of the day in the middle of the week, I cried out to God. Out loud! Thankfully I was enjoying solitude on my portion of that sandy heaven. I heard only one word in that moment “rest”. I said “What?” I stayed there for an hour, both confused and a little agitated that this was all He gave me. I needed more explanation. I needed clarification. I needed Him to elaborate!

I wish I could tell you seven days later that I get what He was saying. But I do not. Does He even see my life right now? Does He even see my financial situation right now. He is an amazing God. I love Him. I desire to know Him better. I want to glorify and honor Him with my life everyday. But God, could you just be a little more specific! And just for the record, you and I both know I am not good at this “resting” thing! Instead my thoughts are: Why do I need to rest? What’s coming down the road? Isn’t resting also being lazy? I don’t know! Now I’m more uptight than before!!!

So. This blog post will have to be continued” as I chew on this while “rest” thing, and try to understand what He is telling me!!

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Breath held….fingers crossed…..

dana2day

Peeps….it has happened….I finally got a response from a literary agent that wasn’t a reject letter!  It’s true!  I mean, at least I don’t think this is a dream…..I keep checking to see if the email is still in my box…it is….it’s right there in black and white.  So it must be real…right?  She asked for the first 10 pages.  Heart drops.  Are my first 10 pages good enough to make her want the rest?  It’s almost worse than getting a reject letter!  Now I must wait to see if I’m good enough in 10 pages to be asked for the remaining 70 pages!  This is going to kill me!  I almost fell out of bed yesterday morning when I casually scanned through my email snuggled under my covers in the early morning hours.  My husband ran to my rescue when he heard me gasp loudly.  I scrambled for my glasses so that I could make sure I had read it correctly!  I did.  It was right there in black and white!  One small drop of validation.  Let’s pray that drop doesn’t dry up in a matter of minutes!!!

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dana2day

Isn’t it crazy how God will use things that are filtering through your life unassuming and unexpected.  It’s amazing to me how He will take the words of someone else and stir something up inside you that cannot even be explained out loud, only through the flying of fingers on a keyboard as you type out the thoughts and feelings building up inside like some long dormant volcano about to explode, spilling lava in every direction.  Today.  Today I happened upon one of my favorite writer and speaker’s excerpt from her new book.  You know, the teaser pages they attach to the advertisement.  As I read her words, I was immediately pulled into her life.  I understood exactly her words pouncing across the page “Nothing helps me hash things out like a blank Word document with a blinking cursor.”  I get it, Beth Moore.  I’m there.  The need to write causes a million words to swirl uncontrollably in my head until they form some wild tornado trying to find a place to make it’s mark.  It cannot be denied.

I’ve resisted.  I’ve closed my eyes to squeeze out the stories.  To erase the thoughts that need paper.  I cannot continue to write aimlessly.  It seems like a pipe dream always out of my reach.  Publication is some kind of validation for a writer.  Some reward for being good enough.  It is painful to long to write something incredibly profound and God honoring, only to find yourself reduced to writing in a journal that no one, hopefully, will ever read.

She expressed so perfectly a shared thought of how God can use a book to mark a life.  Maybe it is because I have been marked by the greatest book ever written, the Bible.  Maybe it is because my life has been changed by words from her Bible Studies and her books.  God uses phrases and sentences from random books to reach out and touch that raw place inside of us that needs changing.

She had read a book, 21 Great Leaders: Learn Their Lessons, Improve Your Influence authored by Pat Williams, a motivational speaker and senior vice president of the NBA’s Orlando Magic.  I find it amusing that she was undone by what she read in that book.  The questions asked were these: What is your dream?  What is your vision for the future?  How is it I am affected by these questions. What purpose does God have for allowing these two questions that Beth Moore read in a book a year ago to slap me in the back of the head as I read her words about those questions and how they rocked her world in this excerpt from her new book.  If that even makes sense to you….you and I are on the same wave link.    Beth Moore.  Wow.  She is the one Bible teacher, the one author, that has stirred up something in my heart so many times.  Maybe not her, necessarily, but God using her.  I want to have her ability to paint a picture so vividly that for just a moment, you think you are sitting across the table from her sipping iced tea and enjoying a great friend conversation.  And then I read her thoughts, and they resonate in my heart.  “What is your dream?  What is your vision for the future?”  Both wrenching questions that make me suddenly find it hard to breathe and try desparately to hold back the tears.  Why?  Because I only know the answer to one of the questions.  Why?  Because I am not even sure the answer I am thinking is even a possibility!    Even now, I am faltering as I write because I don’t even know what the point of this blog is at this point.

I know one thing for sure and that is I love the Lord.  After this many years of ups and downs, of struggles and victories, I haven’t lost interest in Him.  He’s so incredibly worth it.  He has and continues to rock my world.  He watches me closely just as a parent watches their child as they go through each season of life, standing ready to catch them if they fall, hold them if they cry and high-five them as they conquer!  Jesus is way bigger than I ever thought.  He shows me over and over that knowing Him is an incredible journey.  So whatever the answer is to those two questions, I’m sure He’ll give me a peep at some point.  I may be 54, I may feel like the time is lost for me to accomplish a dream, I may not be able to even imagine Him using me as a writer….but I will rest in the truth that He’ll show me when it is time.

Laughter, Life, People, Uncategorized, Writing

Who am I? Who are you?

dana2day

Who am I?  Or who do people think I am?  I ask myself that sometimes and ponder deeply who I am and what I am here for, or I wonder what people really think of me.  I wonder myself sometimes about other people.  Who are they really?  Have I just determined who I think they are because of their actions or their relationship to me or what they tell me?  Do I look beyond the chatter and actions and see the person behind the mask.  Because believe me, people wear masks!   I am beginning to believe that I do not really know anyone!  I only know the person they want me to see, the person they present to me. Which brings me back to my to my first two questions of who am I or who do people think I am.  Better yet, who is the person I let people think I am.  Complicated, huh!  We seem to present a different persona to different people, depending on the environment and situation.  It’s true!  We want people to like us.  We want people to respect us. There are those rare individuals who are the same, whether at work, home, church or at play.  But, I think they are rare.  I want to be that person.  And I think I am that person.  But I can’t be certain.

Among believers, the people who I worship with, the people who I see several times a week at church whether in worship or in service, the people who have been walking this walk of faith with me for years, these people are the people I seem to be most susceptible to believe they are who they say they are.  But, I am wrong.  It has a deeply disturbing effect on me when it turns out they aren’t who they say they are!  I chew on it for days!  I lay awake at night searching through memories trying to figure out how I could be so gullible!  I ponder on how they could go in a direction that is so contrary to the words I heard from their mouths over the years and I try to figure out a plan of action to bring them to their senses!  I waver between getting them alone and talking sense into them or throwing a bag over their heads, taking them to a secluded location and beating some sense into them!  But, sadly, that is not my job.  How do I know that, God told me so!  I can’t fix everything.  He can use me but I can’t make them change their path.  That stinkin’ free will thing always gets in the way!!!  But God knew what He was doing when He created us this way, and I don’t want to go second guessing the Creator!

But seriously brothers and sister in the faith, be who you really are!  Quit trying to fake people out!  Quit trying to play some stinking Shell Game where we have to pick the right shell to see the real you!!!  Life is hard enough in this world without having to be suspicious of every person calling themselves a Christian.  If you are a Christian, you should walk, talk, act and make decisions like a person who believes the ENTIRE Word of God, not just the parts that are convenient.

Who am I?  I hope when you answer that question you would say “Dana is a woman who believes every Word in the Bible.  She loves the Lord with all her heart.  And she tries as hard as she can to live a life that honors Him.  She is loyal.  She is compassionate.  She is merciful. (no snickers from anyone!).  She speaks her mind sometimes when she should be quiet and ponder. If you don’t want her real opinion, don’t ask her.  She is fierce when it comes to her family, her children, her friends and the students she teaches.  She tends to be self-condemning, but she knows it and is working on that.  She believes people can turn around and do great things for God.  She believes people can make a difference in other’s lives and in this dark world.  She tries to see the positive, but is sometimes anxious and overwhelmed by the ugliness of this world, but likes to reclaim the truth that GOD IS IN CONTROL!  She wants to make a difference in this world but is not always certain as to how that looks for her.  She is sometimes unrealistic. (but thanks to her loving husband of 23 yrs she has learned to overcome some of that) She believes in marriage between one man and one woman (it’s in the BOOK people, read it).  She believes there is a positive side to everything (except sin).  She loves family vacations with her hubby & 3 girls with no fussing!  She believes we are all called by God to do something specific.  She gets more frustrated with believers who know right and do wrong than she does with lost people who do wrong.  She struggles with wanting everyone to like her and believing that most people don’t.  She struggles with feeling like she is invisible.  She gets mad at herself when she does the right thing even when she doesn’t want to do the right thing. (what is that about!)  She hates being overweight, and hates that as hard as she tries she just can’t lose the weight.  She wants to be a published writer, but thinks it will never happen.  She does not struggle with “gray areas” contrary to some peoples opinion (because you guys, there aren’t really that many gray areas).  But I hope people would mostly say, she is not a fake.

So, friends, if you are still with me and still reading, ask yourself the same questions.  And if you are really brave, and want to know what other people think about you, ask me, I’ll probably tell you.

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A Hug From Mom….(re-posted in honor of my sweet Mom for Mother’s Day)

dana2day

I leaned my arms against the side of the shower, pressed my forehead on my arms and stood there weeping while the steaming hot water beat down on me.  Why was I crying?  Why, now, a year and a half since Mom had died?  The tears flowed freely in the shower, no worries of my daughters becoming distressed by my sobbing.  It was a week before Thanksgiving, Mom’s favorite holiday.  Maybe that was it?  It was late and I was extremely tired.  Maybe that was it?  I was stressed trying to plan our first Thanksgiving meal with family members, and feared I would not do her justice.  Maybe that was it.  I knew one thing was sure, I missed my Mom everyday!  I was going through each day, doing my best to mother my three daughters, but one thought ran through my mind constantly, “I wish Mom was here for me to talk to….”

I felt the water from the shower beginning to cool.  I turned my face toward the flow of water and allowed it to rinse the tears away, hoping it would also rinse away my thoughts so I could go to bed and rest peacefully.

I dressed for bed and towel dried my hair, taking note that I really could use a haircut.  I would love to be able to sit in my Mom’s chair at the beauty shop and have her snip away, chatting and watchng her laugh as she joked with those around the shop.  For a moment I was lost in the scene that had played out so many times in my life as the daughter of a hairdresser.  My Mom was a people person and she had a unique way of making each person feel special, whether they were getting a haircut or were one of the many young woman that she taught to sew or smock.   I was not as gifted as she was at connecting with people and I needed her here to mother me for awhile longer.

The house was very quiet.  My husband was out of town on business and my three daughters slept peacefully in their beds.  I put on my favorite praise and worship music and slipped between the covers, hoping to quickly fall asleep.  My mind kept reviewing memory after memory.  I faught the urge to resume my tyriad of tears again.  So I prayed.  “Lord, why am I so melancholy?  I’m a grown up!  I know she is gone, but its been 18 months and it feels like yesterday!  Lord, right now I could use one of Mom’s hugs.  I could use her way of encouraging me.  I could use her shoulder to cry on.  I need her, Lord.  I don’t understand why she had to go home to you now?  I need her so much, I need to still feel like the daughter. ”  I wiped the tears away and tried to fall asleep.

After awhile, out of frustration I got up and walked around the house picking up toys and clothes and putting things away.    I smiled thinking of my Mom’s wise words about leaving the house clean before you go to bed, so you can wake up in a good mood and to an uncluttered home.  It was 12:30am and I dragged a blanket to the couch, hoping a new venue would allow me to fall asleep.  Weariness overtook me and I drifted off to sleep on the comfy couch.

I slowly became conscious of myself facing the back of the couch and tears once again flowed down my face.  I was whispering over and over “I miss you so much Mom, I miss you so much.”  As I lay there, I felt the pressure of arms wrapped around my waist and I realized that my own arms were lifted and clasped together as if around someones neck.  I didn’t move.  I could feel the familiar cool softness of my mother’s skin against my cheek, I could smell the comforting aroma of her favorite lotion.  My eyes were closed tightly, but I was awake, the visions of my dreamworld mixing with consciousness, I was being hugged.  My face was pressed against Mom’s neck and she was holding me tightly, rubbing my back with her gentle hands.  I am not sure how long I lay there relishing in the moment.  But I know that during that surreal embrace, my troubled spirit ceased to struggle.  Peace surrounded me.  I was comforted.  I had been given a precious gift from the Lord, a hug from Mom.