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.

Christmas

I woke up too early this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. So I got up, and eventually was rewarded with a beautiful, quiet Christmas sunrise pinking the sky. It was my first grateful moment of the day, welcome after a very emotionally difficult Christmas Eve. As unbearable as yesterday was, knowing I would not see my daughters this Christmas, today has been peaceful. My point is that our negative feelings can be overpowering, but they aren't forever. If we can wait it out, joy is very near. There is joy to be had, in spite of grief and disaster. Reach out for it. Joy to the world.

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!

Give What Matters

As we enter the season of gift-giving, it's so easy to get caught up in the material aspect of it all. Here it is: the time of year we celebrate the greatest Gift we've ever been given, freedom from trying to find peace and happiness through acquiring more and more things so that we can find deep joy and healing in Christ--and what do we do? Stampede into stores at 3 a.m., elbowing each other out of the way; cut each other off in parking lots; get depressed because we have gone into debt to get the newest latest things.

George Macdonald had it right when he wrote, "If instead of a gem or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give." The presents and parties are nice, and I hope you have plenty of them, but the greatest gift you have to give your family and friends is the gift of your time. The best present is your presence. Give what matters this year!

Oh, the Roses!

It's Thanksgiving. Our President and his family have a tradition of going around the holiday table and, one by one, sharing the rose and the thorn in the previous year. We all have thorns, and it's important to acknowledge them, yet we can get so wrapped up in our pain that we fail to open our eyes to the roses. Like you, I can list some thorns from the past year, but oh the roses! I am so grateful to God for the roses! How about you?

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!

Fresh-Squeezed Life

Life springs full tilt and joyous; with astonishing speed and verve, the new lambs fly upward.

Life, in all its juicy sweetness, life, full of promises, bursting green and luscious.

You can't have oil without the crushing, the pressing. Out of all that squeezing comes LIFE.

Speak Life. You can never have too much.

(Above quotes taken from As Real As Apples, a book of Brynn Taylor Ashford's poetry due out soon. c. 2010 First Poet Press)