Today's Post Is Brought To You By the Letter N:

So remember that time I took a break from my blog?  It turns out the Lord had other plans for me.  As I embarked on my recovery work tonight, I felt an all-too-familiar tingle in my hands... an itch to let my fingers write the truth my heart knows but my brain does not.  The Lord has given me the gift of expression through the written word, passed to me from my grandmother.  I may never be a published author -that does not matter.  What does matter is that when I feel the tingle, I write.  Tonight, I know I will not rest until I've written.  Writing is how I learn, express, feel, teach, and live.  I live by words, thrive on them, compose with them, dwell on them, and apparently can't break up with them -even for a week.

"I don't know how to quit you." 

nor do I want to. 

 "Ugh," my daughter presses the pencil's eraser onto her homework and rubs her frustration out on a misshapen letter 'n', "Why am I so dumb?"

Such a small phrase, uttered so many times by her mother.

But hearing it come from her lips, her tiny, precious, perfect lips... was heartbreaking.  I immediately reach out to her.
"You're awesome.  You're the best.  You're so smart, and I love you.  I made you and I would never make anything dumb," I say.

"Okay," her cheeks flush.  She doesn't doesn't really understand why Mom is being so serious.

I think of my sponsor's challenge issued recently to stop using language that undermines ME.
I think of Martha, of Mary and Martha (and Lazarus, while we're at it).

The Lord has prodded me to study Martha.  He has done this in the past.
"Yes," I say to Him, "I know, I get it.  I'm Martha.  I'm Martha, period.  Careful, encumbered about... busy, busy, busy, too busy to sit at the Lord's feet... but I'll study it again."
I turn to the passage in Luke and read the words I know so well.
"The Better Part."
Mary chooses it.  Martha does not.  tsk, tsk, and shame-I-know-your-name. 

But the Lord prompts me again -read more, read more about Martha.
I flip to the book of John, and I read about Martha.  Jesus loved Martha.  Martha went out to meet Him.  She speaks freely to Him.  She tells Him, "If you had been here, my brother had not died.  But you're here now, and I know you can do anything."
Jesus weeps.

The account of Martha in Luke is NOT the period to the end of Martha's sentence.
One experience does not a Martha make.  There's no such thing as "Martha, period."

I'm not "a" Martha.  In fact, there's no such thing as "a Martha."
Martha is like unto me -a sister, loved by Jesus and our Heavenly Father.  We're busy, Martha and I, we're worried, we have on occasion put our busyness ahead of sitting at the Lord's feet, but we've received the Lord in our homes, we've gone out to meet him when all seemed lost. 
It took courage.
Martha and I -we understand one another.

{ I PLEAD with you at this point to not read any farther until you have clicked HERE and read this small passage.}

And, Lord, I am sorry for speaking down to your daughter for so many years.  For a brief moment over a misshapen letter N, I saw me as you see me.
I am not what I believe I am.  I am a sacred creation, valiant, brave, beautiful in the ways of the heavens, unique, vibrant, soft and hard at the same time, powerless and empowered, wise and clueless, helpless but capable.
I am YOURS.
You made me, and today you took my chin in your hand, stretched forth Thy hand and held Thy creation.  You tilted my eyes up to meet Yours as You spoke the truth that went straight to my hardened, soft soul.
"I would never make anything dumb."

One experience does not a mortal make.
A culmination of choices, trials, afflictions, and consequences does a masterpiece make.

Courage, sisters.  Courage.