Holy Tongue.

I'm convinced.
I waste words.

I water down my life's effect with their drizzling grayness. Fill up relationships with flooded nothings and drown out power.

Violence to holy moments.

I blow up the sacred cathedral in each moment when I blow away the space where He could be with careless breath.

My ears stop working when my tongue starts wagging. And when my ears don't work, my heart goes hungry. For it is His words that feed...that man lives on, since bread for body is not enough.

Maybe Peter did mean a quiet mouth with that unfadingly beautiful gentle spirit. I am always the one fiercely shaking away the notion that this saint's charge to women for true beauty has no place for loud women of many words. He's not talking about personalities. He can't be.

But doesn't Proverbs paint the hard-to-swallow picture of femininity gone astray with "loud and wayward" words?

The adulteress's words are honey-sweet but empty lostness, spoken to seduce a wisdom-searcher into a bed of folly. And, if I'm honest, don't I try to seduce my world with words?
Isn't that what my personality really is sometimes?
Performing with words.
A frantic, flailing for approval, for attention, for an identity.

 Oh, I know it deep that Peter isn't trying to bury women's worth in silence. We have much to offer, and it is true that vibrant, outgoing women are beautiful pictures of godliness...just as shy, sweet ones are. He isn't talking about personality, if "personality" is the deep traits of only-us-uniqueness that God wrote in, on, all over us.

But I know too, deeper lately, that I have fled His invitation for a holy tongue...a life-giving rudder for the ship of my life's witness.... to cower behind my excuse, and call foolish peformance "personality."  I have left my conversations lately full of shame, aware that no one walked away closer to my Jesus because of a multitude of words. My loud, fearful attempts to win favor evaporate away and leave nothing of Him.

It makes me want to take a vow of silence.
To learn how to do life without my tongue, so I can learn to give life with my tongue.

But silence isn't the cure.
Presence is.
His presence....my being present with Him, with now....being here to listen.
Listen to His Spirit, and to the lives in orbit around my flailing planet.
Could I find the focus?
 Be pulled and driven by the gravity of the Son to be bent...aligned?...correctly, and constantly, only moving with Him as the center?


When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. Prov. 10:19

The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked, what is perverse. Prov. 11:32

There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. Prov. 12:18

Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life, he opens wide his lips comes to ruin. Prov. 13:4


A fool's mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul. Prov 18:7



Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. Prov. 18:21


God, make my mouth a witness of your life.

Help me hold my tongue until it is a holy tongue.

Eyes of Faith and Lips of Thanks...

Been reading (and re-reading) One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.... a mesmerizing, heart-transforming treatise on gratitude. Eucharisteo. The act of grace, of giving thanks. Her story--- the journey to name 1000 gifts with gratitude.

It does change everything, you know. Giving thanks. Receiving the gifts. Unwrapping them by speaking them.

"The truly saved have eyes of faith, and lips of thanks," Ann says....

Am I truly saved?

"Eucharisteo makes the knees the vantage point of a life and I bend the body, it says it quiet: 'Thy will be done.' This is the way a body and a mouth say thank you: Thy will be done. This is the way the self dies, falls into the arms of love."

Ah, yes. That place where peace prevails, joy emerges from broken down souls.

"Thy will be done."

And I will be thankful. Here, where my vantage point needs an adjustment. Go lower. Be small.

"Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy's fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love....and whisper suprised thanks."

From this aching, yearning, deeply eye-opening vantage point of my knees......joy's fire is flaming bright.

With trials breathing gasping life back in, the fierceness of joy pounds hard.

And I am thankful. It's a war, and to win I must weild that fierce weapon of joy.

 My weapon is being forged...its slow. But its glowing hotter and brighter. My parched lips are speaking thanks once again.

My count is as all counts are....one by one. But each one fans brighter the flame. Join me?

82. Blazing brightness reminding me that every winter does give way to spring.

83. Soul-aching piano chords--inviting soul-reflecting

84. Girls that miss me when I'm gone.

85. Italian tastes and flavors savored with precious family.

86. The reminder to believe.  John 6:29. Do the work.

Hmm.....
Perspective? Righted.
Balance? Restored. :)

Balance Check?

Nearly everything in my job is about finance....tracking income and expenses, budgeting,...balancing the checkbook.
In my personal life, however....I am a constantly failed experiment in diligence with financial matters. I will shamefully confess I have attempted to make a habit of checkbook balancing nearly every month, and fallen off the wagon within the first 2 weeks.

But, as I am characteristically unwilling to admit defeat...I have not given up the fight just yet! I've started again this month...This time employing the help of an excellently designed budgeting program recommended by a good friend of mine. :) Yes,sir. I have high hopes for this. (Don't you dare roll your eyes.)

But anyway, as I've pondered why this attempt might have better results than the multitude of failed ones on my record, I've discovered some beautifully appropriate applications of the whole concept of checkbook balancing....Perfectly metaphorical, of course.

That leads me to the purpose of this blog.

See....Keeping records in my checkbook is a fairly important way to keep tabs on the consistency, integrity, appropriateness, and availability of my income and spending. When it comes time to balance it against my bank statement, I'm forced to face any hidden costs, or secretive shopping in which I may have indulged. I must immediately reckon with the results of the way I've chosen to invest my rather minimal funds. And I must take a sober look at the way what I've taken in has covered and prepared for what I've spent. At the end, I see what I've done and where I need work, and I ask myself some important questions:

Where's my cash?
Am I balanced?
How am I investing my funds?
What does that say about the balance in my income and spending?
Am I  doing alright, or teetering on the edge of financial disaster?

Similarly, I'm setting forth with this blog for the purpose of....checking my balance. Asking some important questions:

Where's my soul?
Am I balanced?
How am I investing my life?
What does that say about the balance of my life with the Lord?
Am I  doing alright, or teetering on the edge of disaster?

Perhaps we all need a balance check from time to time.