It’s mental clutter. In disordered piles, that gyrate and swirl in my head like little leaf whirlwinds, restless, chaotic.

We laughed about it, my friend and I, in emails yesterday: ADD symptoms we saw in ourselves. I even mentioned reading about ADD as a gift, about how often creativity and amazing outcomes accompany it, born of surprising riveted on-task attention for remarkable hours. (Edison was ADD.)

I was never so diagnosed. No one, methinks, even described the disorder and assigned it a symptoms list till recent years.  But I know this about myself, and it’s all too true today:

1) I sometimes have so many ideas wrestling each other in my mind, competing for me-first position, that none can get out the door!

2) Noisy distractions can unnerve me, because auditory is my mental intake mode. I often can’t seem to help tuning in to whatever sound stimuli surround me (read, interrupt me!) I hear five conversations at once in a roomful of people, get disabled more by faintly whistled tunes than flashing lights beyond a window. So, unless I’m really fixated on task already, or unless the Holy Spirit supernaturally empowers (both really) I. need. quiet. Sometimes, even with a riveting subject, compelling motivation, and appeal to the Holy Spirit, I still need quiet to produce anything.

This morning I’m not getting it. One after another, distracting noises keep badgering at unbelievably early hours.

So I revert to a repost — of a sweetly still day when a different kind of plans got thwarted. Maybe with God’s aid, and a little white noise (nearby bathroom exhaust fan plus clothes dryer), I may secure some serenity like the post describes. If not, now able to drive any highway, I can escape to a softly carpeted public library I know — or someplace with similar stillness.

So here, for you and me, is today’s [re]post:

A HOLY PAUSE

Moments of stillness. Sunlight and shadows play tag on a tabletop, over books and papers, across index cards bearing precious Bible verses, and up and down my corduroy sleeve. I sit, letting Light call the shots, orchestrate all the dancing – outward on the table, inward on the heart strings and soulworks.

It’s a change-of-plan day. I had big ideas… But…

I’m thanking God I’m not out there, chasing foolish ambition, on this sunny but chilled windy day – not trying to build a whole large “lasagna bed” in the old herb garden, with wild gusts stirring up a tomorrow head-cold, and a today frustration of wind-whipped black plastic and dampened newspapers, compost-chopped leaves and wispy grass clippings, flying in manic fits, everywhere.

I resigned that battle.

I’m not losing; I’m choosing. Choosing to relinquish the (over)ambitious – the kind of thing I too easily indulge before “counting the cost,” too often loading myself with unneeded burdens (as Crumbs from His Table so wisely warned, yesterday).

Putting all this together with today’s Bible verses and printed devotions I “just happened” on, I strongly sense my plans were not God’s!

The gist of the printed matter: (S)he with the task of encouraging others in Christ, of sharing God’s truth and good purpose, must first sink them down deep into [her] own soul, must draw aside to commune with their Author, drink rich from His wellspring, gather His leading – so there’s something to draw from the storehouse – so that what one draws out is God’s choice for the sharing.

“The hardworking farmer must be first to partake of the crops” (2 Timothy 2:6).

Just feeding and ruminating in speckled dancing sunlight today.

Joy. Quiet joy

***

Question: How do you deal with mental (or physical) distractions?

*****

Addendum:

To answer a comment question, some photos of Husband’s Bible verse index box, one taken with flash, one natural light, both doctored a bit to try to make labels show up better…

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[This post includes an update on 31 days (or less) of hands on what’s on hand: fabric, fiber, and the equipment to work with them, which began here, and continues here, and here.]

It gives me great pleasure…

to pull from my stash

neat-folded fabrics

in all their varied patterns and hues and tones

of color and texture and culture

that evoke the Orient or Africa or Craftsman America…

to create some object of practical use and beauty.

It gives me great pleasure…

to take into my hands the fiber of wool or silk or cotton-linen, bamboo or even cornhusks

and spin or weave or knit or coil it up into something new…

Today I think I’ll take this multi-color gift yarn and warp-wrap it into a mat or basket, as far as it will go, and see what evolves in the doing.

#8 Hands On

It gives me great pleasure…

to sense the presence of the Lord here with me as I “work” (or is it play?)

to realize the greatness of the multitude of gifts He gives,

in materials and abilities and fingers that can function and eyes that can see and a mind that can imagine and create.

Praise be to the Giver of all good gifts!

Counting MORE REASONS TO PRAISE GOD — from Exodus 35:

• 508 – Because the ability to spin skillfully is a gift from God
• 509 – Because He fills people with special wisdom and understanding
• 510 – Because He imbues some with knowledge of all kinds of workmanship to design artistic works.
• 511 – Because He bestows artistic giftedness for working in silver and bronze.
• 512 – Because He gives giftedness “in cutting jewels for setting,”
• 513 – Because He gifts others “in carving wood,”
• 514 – Because He puts in the hearts of certain people the ability to teach.
• 515 – Because He fills some with “skill to do all manner of work of the engraver”
• 516 – Because He enables the designer…
• 517 – and “the tapestry maker, in blue, purple, and scarlet [thread], and fine linen,”
• 518 – and the weaver—
• 519 – and all those who design artistic works.

• 520 – Because to be able to enjoy the work one does is a gift from God.

*****

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Quarter to three, late August, cool, breezy day. I sit under old pines at the lake’s boat launch, where we drove with a picnic, to settle into pine fragrance and sun shimmer off water and just enjoy the quiet.

Another group, but with voices subdued, have unpacked their picnic at a spot not far from me, but only minutes ago. They’re eating now, and may leave soon after they fill up with food and fleeting fellowship.

I sit here alone now because Husband was chilly in the shadows, and the table they claimed was the partially sunlit spot to which he was about to migrate. So he’s gone up the hill a bit to bask in warmer air. But it’s all sun there, too glaring for my eyes to read or write, and not near the lake’s light lapping.

So I stay. Whenever my sandaled feet and Capri-bared ankles chill, I walk them to patches of light nearby, let sun rays toast them warmer, then return. I’m glad that before I left the house I grabbed the wool cardigan now cozying my back and shoulders. And glad I grabbed something else…

The water shimmers in broad stripes of sun and shade-water made green by tree reflection from the opposite shore. A crow caws in the distance, light laughter floats over the water, crickets drone all around.

He did this for me, I think gratefully, drove me here like this, to give me respite from the sequestering my fading vision’s bringing on. Here feels a bit like lakeside Canada, without the loons, and oh, I was so wishing for lakeside Canada!

Yet this is also a revisit to where, exactly where, I used to come sometimes to write when things got noisy at home, or just because I felt like it. Right here I’d park my laptop, on this weather-warped rough wood and tap out words as they’d come in intermittent runs. I think maybe I could still safely make this trip alone, via some back roads. But this is nice, with husband near, yet at some distance, solitude yet not oblivion.

I can almost hear the conversation from the nearby group. They seem to be telling bear and skunk tales to one another, talk not unpleasant to have nearby, talk made soft by courtesy and pine needle’s muffling and just the tone of this place which seems to whisper, “Hush.”

I have a quarter bottle of Snapple left from lunch and a still untouched Baby Ruth from the ma-and-pa store on the way here, my camera, my pen, my journal, and a cache of books I grabbed just before heading out the back door and stuffed into the canvas bag now beside me.

I draw out my volume of choice, open it, read but a few words and sigh more gratitude, thankful I have this with me, thankful for what I’m reading.

For God’s voice comes through it, echoing what He’s lately spoken via other means:

“Breath” or “breathe” have come repeatedly this week, and in this context of God’s life in us. First from Husband, then from a fellow blogger, then from her blog’s comments, and now here at this picnic bench, in Andrew Murray’s Waiting on God:

“Even in the regenerate man there is no power of goodness in himself: he has and can have nothing that he does not each moment receive; and waiting on God is just as indispensible, and must be as continuous and unbroken, as the breathing that maintains his natural life.” (Chapter 1, “First Day.”)

[This was August 29, first day of my vacation from blogging. I came apart to meet with God. And by His grace I did. Since then, God has done an amazing thing with my eyesight. You can read about it here.]

Still counting REASONS TO PRAISE HIM, because it is good to praise the Lord and to honor all that He is and does…

Today, from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-6. Matthew 7 to follow later–because there are so many reasons already):

• 491 – Because He draws aside to teach His disciples more intimately and fully than the crowds
• 492 – Because great is the heavenly reward of those persecuted for His sake
• 493 – Because He, the Light of the World, makes us, His children and followers, the light of the world also, which cannot be hid, but that gives light “to all who are in the house”
• 494 – Because He teaches to the depth of the heart, far deeper than surface legalism
• 495 – Because loving our enemies, praying for those who speak evil of us wrongfully makes us to be called His children
• 496 – Because He rewards the secret giver 
• 497 – Because He rewards those who pray to Him in secret, not to be seen of men
• 498 – Because we can pray to Him without a lot of vain repetitions because He knows all our needs before we ask
• 499 – Because He will forgive us our trespasses if we forgive those who trespass against us
• 500 – Because the Lord rewards those who fast in secret
• 501 – Because we are of much more value to Him than sparrows, and He knows all about each sparrow’s individual life and death
•  502 – Because our “eye” needs to be “single,” without double vision, and we cannot serve both Him and someone or something else — specifically, Mammon
• 503 – Because He who clothes the lilies of the field will surely clothe His children
• 504 – Because He who provides food for the birds of the air will surely provide food for His children
• 505 – Because if we seek first (primarily) His kingdom and His righteousness, He will add to us all those things we need
• 506 – Because, on account of Him, we need not (and should not) worry about such things
• 507 – Because, on account of Him, we need not (and should not) worry about tomorrow or concern ourselves with its evils till that day comes and He equips us at that time to deal with it.

Blessed be the name of our wonderful Lord!

A blessed weekend to all who read today!

*****

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10,000 Reasons

During my September “blog break” I had a couple of days when I couldn’t keep my hands off my blog. Not to add to it—but to subtract!

Sifting my blogging through The Sermon on the Mount (SOTM) left me red-faced-rebuked and pushed me urgently to remove a few posts! They’re still in my computer, for my own record and benefit, but they did. not. belong. in a public forum!

I “re-found” a lot of Christ’s teaching I had been missing—no, disregarding (for wasn’t it there all along,  readily available for me to read and apply at any time? And hasn’t it been long familiar to me? Don’t I even know much of it “by heart”?…) I guess you could say it re-found me!

There’s a lot we Christian bloggers can hastily post that would be better left unpublished—okay to say in private, but not to all the world, sometimes not even to any other human…

For one thing, reading Matthew 5 and Matthew 6, right after Matthew 4, brought them all  together in context with one another, which I must not have considered before! I now saw Jesus’ teaching on the Mount as the utter antithesis of Satan’s temptations in the wilderness. I also saw that what Christian bloggers, and writers in general, are encouraged (even pressured) to do often seems to lean toward the temptations more than toward Christ’s instructions.

SOTM says do your charitable deeds in secret. Yet we are encouraged, even pressured, to announce our giving and kind deeds before the world! 

SOTM says pray in secret. Yet, unthinkingly I’ve described “private” prayer times in the most public way now known to man (blush!) and sometimes even publish the specific words of my “secret” prayer online. (Whoah! Some “secret”!)

SOTM says fast in secret. Yet we give a play-by-play of our experience in fasting. Guilty there, too. 🙁

And so on.

Even as aware as I was of some of these slippery slope errors when I began blogging, I still fell into “running at the keyboard” and hastily hitting “Publish,” in “oblivious” but obvious disobedience to Christ!

The reason, the snare, lies in the very nature of blogging. The word “blog” is a contraction for “biographical log.” Its format is so like personal journaling that we can easily forget we’re telling the world!

Matthew still gives further relevant wisdom, as does Proverbs (about mouth and tongue), and during my break God also taught me some interesting lessons from “everyday” life. But this scripture portion was the most like an avalanche pounding down on me.

Yet I’m still blogging. As I said before, God hasn’t yet given me a blunt yes or no, to blog or not, but lots of wisdom and instruction that I must apply to this medium!

Making course corrections.

*****

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