Smell the pansies

Ok, so pansies don’t smell.

But if they did, I wouldn’t have time to notice.

Shoot, I don’t even have enough time to know my flowers. I called the flowers in this picture VIOLETS before my friend Kathy oh-so-gently corrected me. (Too bad my mistake will linger forever in the permalink.)

Ever have those times in your life where your margin–for time, for sitting, for even thinking–is nill?

I was touched by a post by Mad21 over at Make A Difference to One’s blog site, where she talked about all the precious words her kiddos create. We still have some of those words . . . still have some of those moments . . . from the bygone days of chubby toddler legs and dimpled knuckle bedtimes that disappear all-too-quickly into the engulfing mist of time.

And after I read it, I realized . . .

. . . I’m not taking my time.

Let alone, taking time for them.

Those whom I love most.

Oh, sure, I could chalk it up to a busy season of end-of-school events and projects, a sports season, and other not-so-small changes in our family (two puppies, to be specific).

But still.

God wants me to be still.

I can barely hear Him through the chaos.

But I hear Him.

“Be still,” He whispers. 

“Be still and know,” He encourages, with a hand against the side of my worried face.  

“Stoop to smell the pansies,” He says, as He leads me to my own front porch.

“You might not get the scent of a rose, but you’ll get the sweet fragrance of Me.” 

So on this Tuesday, I’m unwrapping the pansies on my front porch.

And I hope, after reading this, you’ll get a whiff of the bouquet, too.

Consider the lillies today.

Or the pansies.

Whichever you can see from your front stoop.

“Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,
       and he brought them out of their distress.

He stilled the storm to a whisper;
       the waves of the sea were hushed.

They were glad when it grew calm,
       and he guided them to their desired haven.”

Psalm 107:28-30

All things new

“But our moment of solitude is precisely a moment in which we want to be in the presence of our Lord with empty hands, naked, vulnerable, useless, without much to show, prove, or defend. That is how we slowly learn to listen to God’s small voice.”

~Henry Nouwen, Making All Things New, p.76

Question for my readers: Where have you found solitude today?

Magnolia photograph taken by my Middle Son, a boy of many talents and a giant heart of goodness and gold.

Stop the world, I wanna get off!!!

Okay, I didn’t come up with that phrase. Carl Wheezer did. (Carl’s the one in the back of the space ship. Love him.) The first time I heard him say it I thought I might pass a kidney stone (if I’d had one) laughing so hard. Considering I’m known to get motion sickness on a straight road and even driving on occasion, the world does make me dizzy.

Especially lately.

It’s the last month of school for my three kids and my husband got a flat tire and the electricity was shut off because I don’t have enough time to sit and keep my bills straight (even with online bill pay) and our basement electricity isn’t working because of a broken GFI switch (that my husband thinks mice ate through) and I need to get the mulch spread before it rains and one child has a play this week and there are at least two lacrosse games and it’s “appreciate the teacher” week and I have to fill out all the kids’ registration packets by Friday and I need to update my facebook status and tweet my twitter peeps and exercise because it’s almost time for the pool to open and I need to have coffee with the ten people I really, really, really want to have coffee with (you know who you are!). . .

. . . and on and on and up and down the carousel goes . . .

I’m turning quite green.

Just when I thought I had all that under control, people started twittering about incorporating twittering and twitter posts into church services (even keeping a run of them going on their big screens!).

I was inclined to buy some bird shot and borrow a neighbor’s shotgun.

I do enjoy twitter and there are benefits to it. But during church services?

Come on.

Curtis has some wise things to say about this totally rude and absurd phenomenon on his blog, Just Wallpaper.

In the meantime, it has me thinking about solitude.

Silence.

Peace.

Emotional.

Psychological.

Even virtual.

Just yesterday I was thinking about how God whispers. I think He whispers because He wants us to put our hands out and tell the world to hush–even for a moment–so we can really stop and listen to what He has to say to us. I was led to this passage:

Then he was told, “Go, stand on the mountain at attention before God. God will pass by.” A hurricane wind ripped through the mountains and shattered the rocks before God, but God wasn’t to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn’t in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper. (1 Kings 19:11-13, The Message)

What did I get out of this and what does it have to do with Carl Wheezer and twitter?

1) We have got to make time to get away to a quiet hillside and give our full attention to God.

2) God will come to us, but not in the earth-shattering, selfish ways we hope and expect.

3) God whispers, and when He does, we better put everything else down (including twitterberries) and listen.

4) After the fires in our lives, He comes . . . gently, and quietly.

Can you think of some of the best teachers and leaders you know. . . and when you think of them, can you also remember the times they have mezmerized a room with a whisper?

A whisper  . . . not a twitter.

Lastly, brace yourselves or run to a bunker, because I’m going to drop a ”Nouwen Bomb” (as Curtis calls it):

“In our chatty world, in which the word has lost its power to communicate, silence helps us keep our mind and heart anchored in the future world and allows us to speak from there a creative and recreateive word to the present world.  . . Too often our words are superfluous, inauthentic, and shallow. It is a good discipline to wonder in each new situation if people wouldn’t be better served by our silence than by our words. . .

“. . . solitude, silence, and prayer allow us to save ourselves and others from the shipwreck of our self-destructive society. The temptation is to go mad with those who are mad and to go around yelling and screaming, telling everyone where to go, what to do, and how to behave. The temptation is to become so involved in the agonies and ecstasies . . . that we will drown together with those we are trying to save.”

Take a moment today.

Find a quiet hillside.

Tell the world–and your sweet soul–to shhhhhhhhhhh.