poetry, love, and a snowgirl

unfortunately i seem to have lost the cord that allows me to download photos from my camera to the computer. i was holding off on sharing this blog post until i had found it. i cannot find that cord anywhere. therefore, i have to proceed without the proper photos to complement the words. imagine them as best as possible.

tonight we had a special guest at youth group. a woman named jill who is a reformed pastor and also poet who has been friends with denise for about 15 years. it was an interesting and different experience in which she shared some poetry, talked about her love of poetry, and gave us time to write some of our own. though she doesn't write overtly "Christian" poetry, she often has underlying themes and a faith perspective that a fellow disciple can pick out. when she challenged us to write some of our own, she guided us by encouraging each of us to write about faith, hope, love, trust or charity - to follow up a beautiful and poetic reading of 1 corinthians 13. although the "love chapter" is not about marriage or romantic love specifically (as she pointed out, it is actually about spiritual gifts), i chose to begin writing my poetry about love as it related to my snowy saturday.

love is oblvious to below freezing temperatures

creating a snowman with fluffy, light, unpackable snow

molding and shaping frozen slushy ice buckets into round stackable balls

chiseling out sockets for russell stover chocolate eyes

searching and scrambling the house for red string smiling lips

with numb gloveless hands and a sniffy dripping running nose

refusing to give up when the head crumbles to pieces

not settling for anything less than perfection

all for the joy and desire of his soon to be bride

(since the photos are not accessible at this point, imagine a snowgirl - we thought it looked like a female because of her "hips" - that is somewhat smaller in stature, standing on a bench by a tree. she has oak tree twig arms, a carrot nose, a brown north face winter hat, a green fashionable scarf, red string lips in the shape of a half smile, and russell stover chocolate eyes. she is...was...beautiful. i will add the photos as soon as i find a way, or the cord)

amazing grace.

how very cliche of me, i realize that. but there is nothing cliche about grace.

we who speak "christianese" use the word very frequently. we can even define it (and by define, i mean recite a sunday school or catechism learned explanation of it). we experience grace all of the time, every day, over and over again. yet, despite how often we talk about grace, it is often something that we struggle to truly grasp and recognize. worse yet, we (and by we, i mean i) fail to realize and admit how much we need grace.

most of the time, i do not realize how much grace i need and how often i need it. i walk around thinking i am doing a pretty good job at life, feeling as though i am a pretty good person. false. i am constantly sinning and struggling and the very thought that i feel so comfortable with myself shows that i am sinning. pride. pride needs grace.

last night, jay and i watched our netflix rental. to be completely honest, neither of us were completely in the mood for it. in fact, it had been mailed to us several days before and we had put it off until last night (in our defense, we are pretty busy these days and don't always have time to sit down for a 2-hour movie). but normally we are pretty quick to jump on whatever movie shows up. we both admitted, though, that we probably wouldn't ever quite get in the mood for it, especially not at the same time. 'the passion of the Christ' isn't exactly a sit back and relax kind of movie. but we watched it last night anyway, and it was just what i needed.

the thing is, i need to watch it every day. i'd like to be able to say that the impact of watching it last night lasted into today. but that would be a lie. i am very selfish today...and every day. but especially lately. i am in dire need of grace today.

thankfully, Jesus died once and for all for my sins. based on the visuals i saw last night, grace is very amazing. how He loves.

those around me have shown me an incredible amount of grace lately too. i am thankful for that. i am thankful that God's grace overflows into them so that they can pour it out on me. i pray that the love and grace of Christ so overflows the cup in my life that i can grow in my abilities to reflect it to those around me.