As Real As Apples

Brynn's new book of poetry has come out, and is available on Amazon for 14.95. Check it out!

Happy New Year

I have some thoughts to share with you heading into this new year 2011, and some great quotes. I think it's going to be a wonderful year, yet the unknown sometimes scares us. We want to know, and we don't. "No one knows what the next year will bring, but one thing is sure. He will be with us and He is enough" (Amy Carmichael).

Whatever losses we may have experienced already or are anxious about in our future, it's time to let go. It's always time to let go! We have a hard time with this, and so we have to do it over and over again. We can't change anything by clutching at things or people, but it doesn't stop us from trying! My favorite quote on letting go: "If you lose your reason, lose it into the hands of God. It's the only place where anything is safe" (Elizabeth Goudge, The Scent of Water). I have often made substitutions: If you lose your children, lose them into the hands of God. If you lose your joy, lose it into the hands of God. For me, this act of letting go produces peace, as I re-orient myself once again to the fact that God can be trusted when all else cannot. There is tremendous comfort and power in letting go purposefully, letting go--not that what you love will be released untethered into the vast darkness of endless space, but rather--into the safety of God's love and wisdom and timing.

And finally: "I said to the man at the gate of the year, 'Give me a light that I may go forth into the unknown.' And the man replied, 'Put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than a light, safer than a known way.'" (King George)

We are on a sort of safari into the wilds of our own lives. The crucial thing is to stay close to our Guide, and follow His map. He is the one that gets us through safely. He is the one who can be trusted.

NEWS BULLETIN!

As Real As Apples, Brynn's new volume of poetry, will be available in 6-8 weeks at major online retailers. The story of her love affair with the Lord, the book should come out just in time for Valentine's Day!

What God Says

Whatever is in your past, whatever challenges or disasters have plagued you in this past year or years, as we close out 2010, stop listening to despairing thoughts and fearful refrains. Listen instead to what God says:

"But this is a people plundered and looted; they are all of them trapped in holes and hidden in prisons; they have become plunder with none to rescue, spoil with none to say,

'Restore!'"

Isa. 42:22

"But forget all that...It is nothing compared to what I am going to do.

For I am about to do something new.

See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?

I will make a pathway through the wilderness.

I will create rivers in the dry wasteland."

Isa. 43:18,19

"Nothing is impossible with God."

Lk. 1:37

Nothing!

If I Could Just Understand!

Not understanding what's happening, and why, is one of the hardest challenges we face in life. When something goes wrong, we immediately want to know, "Why?" If we can't figure it out, it can be hard to recover, and it can be hard to let go of pain and sadness.

The thing is, God doesn't always tell us why; in fact, he usually doesn't. His thinking is so different from ours. He says, "Trust in me with all your heart, and don't depend on your own understanding." (Pr. 3:5)

When we finally manage to relinquish control of our lives, when we relax into him with trust and faith, we can also give up the quest to understand everything. "Since the Lord is directing our steps, why try to understand everything that happens along the way?" (Pr. 20:24)

"What will become of any of us? I mean, tell me honestly, Dora. Did you ever imagine that this would be your life?" (Caroline in The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards.

Have you ever felt like that, shell-shocked by life, wondering how some tornado had been able to swoop down, pick you up and set you stunned and reeling in the Land of Oz? I have.

Look around, even here, for the Tree of Life. Pick its fruit, for from it comes fresh-squeezed Life. There is nothing like it. Sometimes it tastes like lemon juice, I'll admit, but you can trust it, for the One who puts it before you here in this alien land is eminently trustworthy.

This is the One of whom is said, "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory; like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. John pointed him out and called, "This is the One!" (from John 1, THE MESSAGE)

This is the one I call "As Real As Apples."

New Book: Welcome to the Fresh-Squeezed Life Cafe

If you are looking for the book, Welcome to the Fresh-Squeezed Life Cafe, by Brynn Taylor Ashford, put in the author's name as a search term, and check out the online bookstores listed; you will find the best current price for the book.

If you have read the book and you liked it, please take the time to leave a review on the site where you purchased it!

Becoming Strong

I had a favorite coffee cup that exploded in my hands one day when I poured hot coffee into it. Quite literally couldn't take the heat. It was beautiful. It was comfortable to hold. But it fell apart under the very conditions it had been created for. The problem was that it was created from a mold, not by hand. It failed along the seam. You and I are not patched together, and there are not a hundred or a thousand others just like us out there. Each one of us is created to be a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, and each of us is created for an individual purpose. God continues to make and shape us, and sometimes the process doesn't feel so great. But he's got something in mind for you! Do you believe it?

Honor Your Own Heart

When disaster strikes, the damage can be far-reaching. We look around and count one loss after another, until it feels as if we have lost everything. We have a tendency to tell each other "chin up" messages at these times. If you've ever been in the middle of complete devastation, you know what it feels like to be told some variation of, "It's probably for the best," or "It could be worse." It's interesting to me that God doesn't respond to us this way. In Joel 1:8, when swarms of locusts had destroyed every crop, God told his people to mourn as if someone had died. We are expected to grieve when bad things happen to us. We need to grieve. Grieving is painful, and when you're in the middle of it, it seems to go on forever. In order to stop grieving, though, we have to go ahead and admit how horrible things are, how hurt we are: grieve. Don't let anyone tell you anything different. Honor your own heart by admitting how much you've lost. Your pain matters to God, and it will matter to those who know how to be true friends.

The Book Goes to the Printer!

Today a few last-minute revisions were handled over the phone, and I faxed the galley and cover approvals to the publisher. The book should go to the printer by the end of this week, and within 2-3 weeks Welcome to the Fresh-Squeezed Life Cafe will be available.

Somehow I managed to do my part to make this happen, despite my design consultant leaving my publisher as of today, my car battery going dead, prevailing on two different neighbors to buy and use jumper cables to get me started, the office store Staples for the second time in a row being unable to successfully fax my forms to the publisher, my neighbor letting me use her home office fax machine to get the forms in today, driving around and leaving my car running while I ran into various auto parts stores to see if they would replace my battery, and a family member having emergency surgery. All this happened today: We just never know what kind of a day we're going to have, do we? (Surgery went well.)

Life has probably squeezed you, today, too, in small ways--and for some of you, in big ways. Maybe nothing was tied up and brought to a nice close, and your mind is not at ease. Maybe you're unhappy with the way you handled things. Take a deep breath. And another. Close your eyes and imagine God's hand reaching down to you, to pick you up, to stroke your hair, whatever you need. You are imagining the real, not the imaginary; He really loves you. He wants to give you beauty where you've had only ashes. There is good stuff ahead. Wait for it!