Psalm 16 - Lofty Visions

I recently wrote about my dream house, the one nestled on a hill overlooking a pristine secluded beach with majestic ocean views. That has always been the house which inhabited my dreams…the one I retreated to in my imaginary perfect world. Recently I was watching HGTV’s House Hunters. I have no idea why watching people choose between three houses is so fascinating to me, but I will pry my eyelids open at 11PM most nights just to tour their choices and try and guess which home they will choose as their dream home. This particular episode featured a couple searching for a condo or loft in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon. As I became immersed in their possibilities, I found myself formulating the beginnings of my second dream home. I never viewed myself as an urban dweller necessarily. Maybe that was because the crime, congestion, crowded spaces and cacophony of noise which defined city life to me just weren’t appealing. My curiosity with this alternate living situation was tweaked a few years ago when I had the opportunity to spend a couple of evenings in a loft style condo in Phoenix. I was surprisingly drawn to the clean lines, the open feel, the high ceilings, the idea of an outside seating area overlooking the city, the incredible views and interestingly enough I was intrigued with a whole different style of architecture than I had been exposed to previously. But there was much that I would have done differently and so it just remained tucked away as a seed of possibility….forgotten….untended…..until HGTV watered the memory and the seed began to grow into a dream. I think one of my favorite unexpected delightful treats was the night that I spent in a hotel in Dallas, Texas, during a YS convention. I had a room all to myself on something like the 26th floor that overlooked the city. I loved relaxing and being lost in my thoughts at the end of the day while looking at all of the lights left on in the surrounding buildings from my darkened room. It felt like my very own “window on the world”. It brought to my remembrance being a little girl looking at the lights from a lookout point at the top of South Mountain and pretending that all of the lights were jewels….emeralds, rubies, diamonds, topaz, sapphires. No amethysts….there aren’t a lot of purple lights! So, now my mind began to formulate my grown-up urban dwelling. Not just any urban setting would do, but one that was filled with specialty shops and stores owned by those passionate about their wares much like the little neighborhood bookstore that Meg Ryan’s character owned in the movie “You’ve got Mail”. The store front, the set up of the shop…everything about it invited you to casually browse through the shelves looking for that perfect next read. As much care was given to the atmosphere of the shop as the product that was offered for sale. This neighborhood would be a perfect setting for the music store that I have dreamt about and that I described in a previous journal. From my wrap around terrace I would be able to view not only the city lights, but also the flower filled park across the street that formed an oasis in the middle of the “concrete jungle” of the city. There are trees, but they are far enough away and my home is high enough that they don’t obstruct the view…but rather enhance it with green….my favorite color. It also affords a barrier of protection that ensures no eager entrepreneur will construct a high rise directly across from me that would destroy my perfect view. During the day one would also be able to see the river winding its way through the edge of town. Inside I am drawn to the clean lines that seem to match the linear construction of the architecture of the cities high rises. The furniture is more modern than I have been attracted to in the past, but comfortable still reigns, and it seems at “home” in this setting. I can, after all, retreat to my beach home of “California casual” when the mood so strikes. So, as I continue to dream I will leave you with a few snapshots of my lofty vision from my mind’s eye. Enjoy the view!!

Psalm 15 - Vacant Chair

I was sitting in church last week and two rows in front of me I saw my past. No, I wasn’t delusional. I wasn’t hallucinating. I saw five girls, five young girls, all in their early to mid twenties, all part of our worship community at Open Door. They are being given the opportunity to express and use their gifts in music. They sing…beautifully. Their hearts are directed towards expressing their love to God through worship of Him. The vehicle that facilitates that for them is their voices. I watched as they enjoyed worshipping Him together. They purposed to be there to worship Him and they purposed to be together to worship Him. That was once me and that was once my friends. There was a bitter sweetness in realizing that there no longer was anyone next to me, figuratively or literally. The chairs on either side of me sat vacant…available. Things change. Passions change. People move on. It is good and right that the next generation have the opportunities that we/I have had. I realized that by the age of the youngest of them, I had already been in a band for probably 4-5 years. My season in the band ended by age 26. That is still young. My journey as a Mom started then and my music took a backseat for the duration of my “Mom” years. I have had many years of pursuing my heart and passion and expression of music through singing on the worship team in a supporting role. Through these years I have seen my peers gradually move on. I am not sure to what always. When I was little I used to think that when I grew up that I would “grow into” what I thought was adult music and that is how things changed and moved on. At some point I would be listening to Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, you know the music that “big people” listened to. That never happened. My music grew with me. In fact, my music keeps evolving. Sometimes I feel like I am a displaced person because I don’t continually tune into the “oldies” station or “classics”. I enjoy the freshness of music as it evolves. I want to believe that the best is really yet to come for me. Moving on implies that you are moving TO something else. I don’t want to be stagnant and I don’t want to live in the past and I definitely want to give opportunity to the next generation to pursue their passions. I am still waiting for what that something else looks like for me. I do know that it doesn’t mean that I have to sit around reminiscing about the past, singing songs considered “classics” or “oldies but goodies”, ordering from the senior’s menu, and becoming a spectator in life. I just don’t know yet what it does mean. In the meantime I will trust that the chairs beside me won’t remain vacant forever.

Psalm 14 - Beaches, Oceans and Dreams

I’ve never lived near the ocean. In fact, I live in the desert. So, why does it beckon me like it is “home”? It took me years to be able to call Arizona home. I was born in the Midwest and yet was uprooted to the arid confines of the southwest as a young girl. Every summer we would make the trek back to the heartland of America to visit all that we had left behind in my Dad’s quest to start life over. It never felt fair that his decision to need to “begin again” necessitated me giving up everything that felt comfortable and familiar….friends, family, green, trees, the smell of newly mown grass, the fresh smell of summer rains, lightning bugs, seasons, snow, the fourth of July with sparklers and home fireworks…all of that good stuff. So, for years I would refer to Illinois as “back home”. Now that I no longer refer to those roots as home, for some reason I have that same sense of “going home” when I visit the ocean.

I love walking the beach and feeling the sand being pulled out from underneath your feet as the tide ebbs and flows. I love that the crash of the waves drowns everything else out but the sound of my thoughts as I mentally process life. I am energized by the cool breeze as I just lay on my towel on the beach. I can lay there for hours listening to music lost in my own world, outlasting even my sunscreen and the batteries in my IPOD. I love walking piers. In fact, one of my favorite places to eat is Ruby’s Diner on the end of the pier in Huntington Beach. There is really nothing special about the food, it is all about the environment. I love being able to eat, watching the ocean, without ingesting sand at the same time! I save the bonfires, not necessarily for eating, but for just the perfect ending to a perfect day. There is nothing more beautiful than watching a sun set over an ocean. The colors are majestic and so captivating to me that I think I have every conceivable picture of ocean sunsets in my image file. When I dream about my perfect house, it is always a home set on a hill overlooking a secluded section of beautiful sandy beach with majestic views of the oceans. There are windows galore in every room so that I can do everything with an ocean view….eat, sleep, bathe, sit by a fire, watch TV, listen to music…..everything with an ocean view. Of course, in my “dream” world somehow my windows are always sparkling clean and free of all that salty sea residue! There is a path leading from the back porches through the gently sloping green grass of my backyard down past the rock breakwater with a short, easy climb down to the white, clean, sandy beach. I even have this amazing wooden staircase down through the rocks, of course perfectly weathered, that allows for easy access to the beach even in the darkening hours of dusk. Ideally, there is beach glass and shells that wash ashore but the beach is free of human litter, broken glass, and cigarette butts. From outside I can smell the salty, fresh smell of the ocean and feel the cool ocean breeze from either my porch swing hanging from the rafters of my back porch or from the hammock in the Gazebo that is perfectly perched on the grassy knoll at the edge of the lawn. I can stroll the beach, alone with my thoughts, removed from the din that accompanies the crowded beaches of the cities. Somehow the inside of the house is not as clear to me. The décor changes periodically based on whim and somehow the only necessity seems to be comfort. There is, however, a music room. One for playing and recording music and for dance because in my dream world I can do all of those things beautifully! I told you it was a dream world! Of course, the dream is not complete if it cannot be shared with those you love. You need to have someone to share the porch swing and hammock for those times of processing life and sharing your heart. I suppose in some ways just writing this is that…..sharing the dream. Thanks for taking a stroll along the beach with me!

Psalm 13 - Tapestries and Mosaics

A tapestry is a textile art form weaving threads into a colorful image or pattern. The pattern remains indistinct until completion.


A mosaic takes small pieces of glass, stone or other material to create a pattern or design. Like the tapestry, only when completed does the mosaic pattern become distinguishable.

I am becoming more and more aware of how closely our lives resemble the assembling of tapestries and mosaics. We have all of these threads, individual events, that take place throughout our lives that don’t make sense at the time. Why did God direct our path there? What was that all about? How can that come to good? Yet, once the tapestry nears completion, once those threads in our lives start revealing the pattern…then we can begin to understand the whys, hows and whats. Those little fragments of events that were pieced together blindly begin to take shape as they fit into the schematic that God had designed for our life. I am beginning to see purposes to those crazy seemingly insignificant events that suddenly loom large as I see the big picture. At the time, it wasn’t my passion, it was just a little part time job to earn some spending money. Now I see how that particular job yielded a skill that fits into what God had designed for my future. A chance meeting, an old friend, or just an acquaintance from our past suddenly plays a role in our life that we could have never envisioned. We realize they had been strategically placed there for the plans that He had designed for us. When you come to that point where you can begin to see the beauty of the creation that is being woven and pieced, you stand in awe and realize that every little thread, every little piece of stone, was not just by chance at all but had been carefully placed by the hand of a loving God who had a clear picture of exactly what was being created...even when to me the threads seemed so complicated and confused and mismatched and the pieces didn’t appear to be fitting together into any discernable pattern. The tapestry of my life, when woven by God, yields a fabric far more beautiful than I could have ever designed myself. The mosaic of my heart is being pieced perfectly by my loving Father to fulfill the passion He placed within me. I am finally beginning to actually catch a glimpse of that truth and it is so overwhelming that it almost frightens me.