HELLO!

Hello! Even though my brain synapsis and individual grey-matter cells have all been in mutiny, I did promise you that a humorous blog post was on its way. I keep waiting for the humor fairies to come sprinkle my mind with some dust…well actually you can probably obtain that illegally, but here I digress.
Four out of the last five posts have been Uber-Serious…I just feel as though my brain is now the consistency of the snowy-slush that sits in great, giant, sloppy piles everywhere…
BUT---the sun is shining---Oh blessed rays! EXCEPT----*bitter irony* I had to close the blinds because I was getting a searing snow-blind headache! But it’s okay, because bare, green ground is showing….
Hello Spring!!! I see you. I know you are peeping at me from around March’s corner! Oh yes! I cannot see, but I can ‘feel’ the tender green shoots working their way up inside the snow drifts, banks, and berms. I can ‘smell’ the colors that are coming; every beautiful shade of green, pinks, creams, purples, scarlets, yellows...endless possibilities. Craving this coming Spring is like thirsting for water, or craving air!!! My very cells are impatient. They crave gentle breezes, and delicious earthy smells, and vast spaces….
Hello spaciousness. The birds in my little nest are nested elsewhere (except for the youngest…he nests and nests and I am so very much at peace with that!) Yes, all the bees in the hive are starting their own hives again! Oh, my I am bold to even think it, let alone say it! BUT----I have been putting my little house back together, piece by piece. What a stupendous thing! I walk around in the spaciousness and the peace. I pray out loud with praise, thanksgiving and laughter…..
Hello laughter! I have been getting waves of weirdness from Facebook, and they fascinate me. It seem, of late; I have had to keep taking certain stands on certain issues. Guess what, gentle reader? I got my first Facebook “unfriending”----for Jesus! It was awesome! I just spoke the truth in love, and did indeed love this lady. She said I was a “Sweetheart” but she knew I wouldn’t be able to let certain things go…well, she was uncannily correct. Truly, I am very careful to pick my battles. The only thing that really matters---for me---is to stand for my Jesus in an honoring and loving way. She didn’t want to hear that He is the Only Way ( if you can imagine)…so….she ‘unfriended’ me. Me---the ‘Sweetheart’. Ha-ha! It was classic! This calls for a toast….
Hello, green tea. I would like to introduce myself. I am a fan of yours---in theory. I do LOVE tea…but have somehow let the soda & diet soda whim-whams take me over. Like a ‘pod-person’ only way more effervescent! Soda, you are my bubbly, delicious ‘habit’…green tea…let us be friends. I am such a ‘sipper’ always and ever needing to sip on something! Green tea…..it sounds so Zen…will I suddenly be ‘at one’ with all things? *Snort, no I predict I will be peeing more frequently, probably every hour-on-the-hour. Still, it makes me want to paint some bamboo…PLUS my kidneys will like me better, and maybe I will think more clearly…
Hello brain cells…I know that you just simply cannot be as slushy /sloppy as you seem. I promised my friends a blog post….dear, dear brain cells, dance and sing and strike up the ‘synapsis’ band! Well, at least shuffle your little brain-cell ‘feet’…No? Okay then, just try to look busy! There may not be many of you left, and you may even be using little tiny brain-cell ‘walkers’ and ‘rascals’ but still commence the dance!....
Hello dusty-rusty blog thoughts! The inside of my head may resemble a rest-home ‘rave’ on a Friday night…but I feel those little cells and synapsis! They are firing up! I might even be able to find my car-keys---at will… Hello!

DISCERNING PATTERNS

Life really does unfold in a kaleidoscope kind of way. Looking at it in the grip of the moment can bring heartbreak and unendurable sorrow, but just one shift in perspective and light can bring stunning beauty and hope. It is really all about hidden, yet repeating, patterns.
It feels like I have NEVER, in my entire life, learned harder things than I have in the last handful of years. I must have thought somehow that the older I got, the more the lessons would stick. As in; “Ta-Daa, done with that one!” This does not always hold true, at least for me anyway. But Somehow in the midst of chaos, and what I thought to be the fairly tattered fabric of my life, continuous patterns have emerged, both good and bad.
Yes, it is true that I often have to keep circling the field before I actually ‘get it’. Sometimes it seems to be layers of “lesson over-lay” those kinds of transparencies that gets laid over pictures to correct, or show what could be. In my life there must be hundreds and hundreds of those over-lay days. But, because they are bathed in the golden light of God’s abundant love and patience, eventually I do ‘get it’. I think that "epiphanies" are just patterns that we finally ‘get’. Maybe the form is different, even abstract, but underneath it is the same life lesson that God has been gently working to show us.
The other night, through frustration and tears, it happened! I finally ‘got’ a point that Christ has obviously been trying to teach me, possibly for years. Does that mean I’m ‘all done’? Well, if you believed that then you would be even more obtuse than I. And that is going some! As the patterns swirl and merge and come in and out of focus I believe that, with well over half of my days lived, I am finally understanding the deep need for sitting and studying those seemingly redundant lessons in my life. In my twenties I could barely discern them, in my thirties they were clearer, but I was, more often than not, too busy to give them more than a cursory examination. My forties were spent with God waking me up out of the daily stupor which is called ‘living’. Since I was too imperceptive to really see, He began doing big and sometimes painful things to get my attention. An immense Spiritual Geometry Class was unfolding around me and school was in.
And now, now that my fifties have commenced He is demanding that I sit still. Sit with the patterns and pay attention. Even in grammar school the notes would come home: “Tonya would be an excellent student if she would stop talking and pay attention.” My public school teachers pretty much gave up, God does not.
I must remember that there is a godly beauty in the way He works in these life patterns, even when they are painful. As a ---passable--- artist, I do so love to study beautiful patterns in nature and design. How much have I missed by not slowing down to examine all the ways he tries to teach me? It is way past time to really pay attention to all the things that I need to see to stop the negative patterns and bring about the beauteous designs in my life. It feels like all of my existence I have moved through it in a kind of ‘attention deficit’ of the spirit, while He has been calling, “Peace be still!” It would feel divine to actually ‘get’ the geometry of each lesson the first time. Of course spending lots of time with the teacher helps.
Tonya Willman©2011