America, Do We Still Believe?

The stars and stripes still sing, 

their song of freedom unwavering.

O say, can you see it? Can you hear the flag unfurl?

The dawns light will come.

Do we still so proudly hail it?

Twilights are gleaming three nights until then,

the broad stripes and stars may gleam again,

against the fights of unfortunate peril, 

the flag can still stand, mend man’s broken land.


Do we still see it over ramparts, see it still streaming wild and free?

Rockets of words and riots blare, 

bombs bursting of bitterness and bribery through the air.

Hopeful rulers arise with less of a care 

of where she came from

and how she got there. 

Liars lay in wait,

mockers will scorn,

spit upon her stripes, 

burn a hole through her soul.


But some will come with courage to give sight.

To tell the old story of love and freedoms beginning fight.

Of a young George Washington not with gray hair and wig

but of 21 with sword and a steed, he fought and arose, 

from down on his knees, 

as his horse fell not once but thrice in one night. 

Then years onward he forged through

the Valley deep and beyond, to give us the flag and our freedoms song.

Other men arose as spy’s and soldiers, 

who fought the fight on freedoms side, 

to give us hope for years to come,

that freedom is for everyone.


Men of young and old desired to see, 

sons and daughters grow, 

free and with liberty, 

approved the declaration penned by Thomas Jefferson, at the age of merely 33.

Blood was shed, loves were lost, for the rights the Constitution cost.

The laws have protected the way of the land.

United, no other nation against her will stand. 

But some will come in the name of change.

Government becomes greed, less freedom they say

you need. Do not give hear to new governments folly,

of new plans and ways, to change the laws the constitution made.


And the men that signed that Constitution,

that lets us live wild and free?

The Founding Fathers whom some mock and disagree,

were most men under forty-four, who had fought the Revolutionary War years before.

Young, brave, and they knew the sound that freedom rang.


Oh, say can you still see it wave?

The men and women their lives they gave, for freedoms sake,

for children and their children to live in liberty their deaths made.

Does it still wave and over the free? 

Are we still the brave and do we still believe?

Men fallen in wars not in vain but in victory.

The fights were just, our motto  “In God we Trust.”


Will it still wave? And in triumph over the plains?

Will it still be the land of the free because of the brave?


Oh say, can you see it? 

Can you hear the flag unfurl?

Does it still give proof through the night,

that the flag means Freedom, Liberty, and Light.



B.E. Fair 










Why Home is a Family & We're all Sisters & Brothers

So I text him right out of the blue, almost two hours till midnight after he's been pulling a fifteen hour shift in between jobs, frantic to find some good words from a good preacher's son about what's trending in the Christian news

He says he's at the dump, dumping away wood. 

I know what he'll say anyways that my words are just as good as his as long as the Holy Spirit's at work. Faults leave you with fears and anxiety's got an awful anchor, but what the world hears from us women, us Christian women, matter more than the magnitude of doubts that hold you back no matter who listens if none at all.












The whole lot of it is going up in flames, right towards the heavens gates. I wonder what the Father feels? Does His heart grieve?

That those who have platforms would proclaim peace not drive division.. That we as women would not stoke the fire or find fault or finger point, but forgive as the Father. That we would not cast stones, but turn the other cheek to words that could wage crusades.


We, women, have a voice and what we give and declare in truth can never be taken from us or silenced by senseless words because we know in Whom we have Believed In and no ill conceived comment can crush that.

But this...We are all a family all under the same Father whose very foundation is built on love for all mankind. They are our brothers and they are imperfect and we are their sisters and we are imperfect and all the women in the Bible were imperfect and the men in the Bible were imperfect.  

Throw me a quote that Jesus appeared first to a woman and I'll show you a quote that a woman was the first to sin and to begin the fall of man.

Tell me that Sarah was the mother of all nations and I'll tell you that Abraham was the father of all nations and Sarah called him "master/lord" and how her humility toward her husband was noted in the New Testament as examples to follow.

Women became who they were in the Bible not through some effort to be heard or seen or evened with men, but by surrendering to God completely in genuine humbleness and adoration.

Let us not wage a war of words at each other, but let us raise each other up as the body of Christ, as a fellowship of forgiving believers for God sees us at our true hearts humility. 

Let us love because that is how the outside world knows that we are disciples by our love for another. {John 13:35}

Forgiveness is forever grace. 

Turning the cheek is the heart of catapulting God's love to all who see and hear. 

Bonnie



How the Telling of the Turn Takes You Back

{This post is part of five minute fridayA community of writers who write for five minutes on the word of choice. 

I took a hiatus. Five minutes to write took more than five months to find. 
The "always something that gets in the way," always seems to be what brings us back. When part of you's lost, you dig to get it back. No matter how it appears or measures up,  or what you've missed out on or lost, you can never stop the telling. 

It's good to be back.

Today's word: Turn.}


I took a wrong turn somewhere. 

I believed a lie.

I spent too much time living it and still spend too much time unbelieving it.

The clock turns the handles of time.

I watch it. 

The turning of this or that, instead of the turning of it all unto You;  I fall prey to it all and life slowly loses its love.

He hands me this flower. He's no more than six. "Look, Mom, this flower looks like you. See the petals spread out? That's you with your arms high when you sing worship."

I pause. 

A bit of sun slices through the dark and it's just enough to bring you back and you hold onto it for dear life.

Everything is noticed and nothing is left unseen and everything is matter taking up its space and what matters to you, matters to them.

So I turn a prayer into a praise and sing it over the making of eggs and buttered toast while little feet pound away up the stairs.

  "Turn our eyes upon the Savior.
Turn our eyes upon the only One who sets us free.
Our chains are no longer bound.
Turn our eyes to Him, the light of the world, who we praise,
and you'll never let us go and we'll never see you go when our eyes are turned
towards you. 
You are the faithful, the chain crusher, the bondage breaker,
the manna of all our miracles and the mornings echo your mercies 
and we turn."




Worship Wins Even When You Lose


I'm almost to 40.

Don't know how except for the good grace's of a great God that I'm still standing here physically all in one piece, but with a heart and soul that's cracked and ripped and ruffed at the ridges.

I might as well stand tall and wait, eyes closed for the next ice pick to be hurled my way.

Life's full of them. Things that pierce you straight through to the deepest  heart of you and breaks you into a million tiny pieces.

And you're just begging for something or Someone to piece it all back together, to help you make sense of it all.

There's a bunch of us out there who are still standing strong and it's only because of a Savior who surrounds us and begs to just be Seen in return.
I can feel it sometimes going a little a flutter, that heart. Whispering that it's feeling the failures and frustrations that life's beaten over this back.

Like a fog rolling in over the sunsetted sky, I can hear my grandmother softly asking me if "I want a pen," yeah to write down my will or a will to live, to burn bridges or  to build them, to be laughed out and to just not care anymore, to paint the town red and live a life of laughter.

There's so many things I wish I had done.

That we would have done.

That you and I could do.

But life's a cycle, a ride that you hold onto for dear life, and you get up and sometimes fake a smile, and just keep on truckin down the lane, because you have to, because down deep you really want to have a voice to be listened to.

In a home with kids and husbands and family and people everywhere, you just want for crying out loud someone to listen to you for a few seconds.

I've always lost at almost everything I've ever tried.

I've stepped on a million cracks.

But You. You listen.  You are the truth holder. You, the light that holds the dark at bay. 

But You, You make the lost the saved, the broken the beautiful, those who feel meaningless~Your word gives them a mission. 


You mend the pieces of every wounded heart back together.


If I just worship you, I have won.


If I just worship you, I have crossed a million finish lines and never looked back.


Comfort is an Unclogged Toilet

{This post is part of five minute fridayA community of writers who write for five minutes on the word of choice. Today's word: Comfort.}

Comfort is an unclogged toilet silenced of its gurgling commands.

It's sound asleep children and a floor swept by a husband who also made dinner and washed the dishes.

It's a knowing that all this running around will someday lead to a settling down, and then a wish to have it all back again, right back where it was.. crazy, busy, and beautiful.

Comfort is a slice of pie made by your own tired grateful hands to be eaten alone in the dark at the kitchen table in silence.

It's a promise that though rejection happens, our highest status is that of beloved by a great God and nothing is without hope, when He makes the impossible, possible.







  
Comfort is grit and sharp objects clung to bare soles, because life lives here. 

It's warm coffee, gut-honest friends, truth proclaimers, and worship warriors who never give up and always give in to Him.

Comfort is a chance given by another.

It's that rest-assured feeling that no matter what blows past our sails, comfort can be had because peace was purchased by a Presence upon those wooden beams.

Comfort, it's a bone-tired soul, an unmade bed, a soft ac breeze, and sounds of a thunderstorm hovering in the distance.

It's a proclamation that all is well with the soul even though wells spring up all around.

Comfort, it's there to be had in all things.  

When Saying Grace Becomes A Blessing

{This post is part of five minute fridayA community of writers who write for five minutes on the word of choice. Today's word: Blessing.}

It happened every evening over heaping plates of warm food that were ogled and eyed by every little being (such as myself) whom sat upright, stiff with elbows off the table, wishing the blessing was over so that tummy's could be filled and throat's quenched.

Unbeknownst to my parents, my older sister and I would wink and stick our tongues out at each other, or kick each other with our feet while trying to get the other to laugh. Whomever squealed would get in trouble by the blessing sayer.

But it was also during those blessed meals with eyes closed and heads bent, my sister would reach over to my knee and softly press three fingers one at a time on the top of my leg.  

It was our code. 

Or I guess you say it was  handed down from my Grandmother and Mother. 

One of those things you'll never forget and always remember. Each finger pressed, meant one word. "I love you." 

And we would always both look up and smile at each other, because then in that moment you'd remember the faces of those loved and lost and still present and you'd remember each other. 

And still to this day I'd surprise my sister with those three words from fingers pressed and she still smiles and remembers.
















Those were the days.

Grace was blessed and the blessed sayer would pray for country and men and friends and foe and for blood that washed away sins, never forgetting to give praise to the glory of a good God.

The blessings always seemed to be the same with different words placed sporadically here and there with the usual ending of, "Amen" and a chime in from Mama who would say, and "Thank you God for this food," as if the blessing itself had forgotten to bless the food.

Those were the days. Those days of endless evening meals, dish wash after supper. 
One would wash. 
One would dry and one would inspect, of course that was the blessing sayer as well.

You'd never think it, that something so ordinary as saying grace becomes a blessing with many memories made around tables and across plates.

A blessing that can be had by all, by all who give grace.


To My Ten Year Old Son, "You're Not Going to Make It."

{This post is part of five minute fridayA community of writers who write for five minutes ( sorry a little bit over today) on the word of choice. Today's word: Steady.}

She told me your weren't going to make it. 

Even before you were ten minutes old, there was no way you were going to make it.

I can remember it as clear as day. 

That's the thing about most Mom's. 

We can never forget when the hearts pained.

With belly still bloated and insides newly emptied and swollen they carried me to a wheelchair and rolled me into a room where they head pediatric nurse stood before me, straight faced and unsympathetic and all she said was, "you weren't going to make it and they didn't know why."

I knew something was wrong before that. 

I could tell by the look on my sister's face as she pursed her lips and shook her head from side to side at the very first sight of you. 

Blue. 

Your cry, a silent little plea. A soft whimper, steady and short.

I watched as they placed you in the cart and your little lungs shook hard and violently, struggling to release each breath that the little plastic frame that covered you would move with each inhale and exhale.

I wanted to reach in there and fix you. Fix your oxygen tubes in your nose, wrap you up nice and warm and hold you and tell you that "you were going to make it."

Fast-forward ten years on Saturday and you're here and maybe I've been told a time or two that you're still not going to make it.

And their right. You're never going to make it your going to surpass it, all.  





 You're tall and lanky with blue eyes and blond hair just like I wanted and what you now wished were brown. I tell you, you're rare, my rare bird. Your legs run their own race with limp arms that you wish could pull you up a little bit higher. They will one day. 

But you laugh, a laugh that's rare these days and you sing a song to your own rhythm. 

And you keep right along belting it out steady. I won't stop you. 

I'm not perfect, but I might just fix you though and tidy your hair one last time and tell you to watch out or you might slip and you just wave your hand at me and nod because you know. 

You know the road ahead of you is long and hard and much harder for you than some children, because you see yourself and they see you. A boy who jumps in the wind and whose blue eyes dart this way and that, and it's hard for you to sit still and make a friend, but when you do they stick with you because they see the you behind all the labels and your one cool dude once they know you.

You know the days will be long and that this Mom of yours will not give in or give up or let you quit or ever see yourself as being less than, because you'll always be more than with God. You'll be more than enough.



And no, I won't let you lay in waste and spend your hours in front of blackened screens and electronics that scream at you and pull you further and further away even though it's "in" and everyone does. I'll bring you back as I always do.

No matter how hard, I won't give in and you won't give up so you can go ahead and be that boy that jumps in the wind and who knows the numbers and names of moons unheard and who can swim hundreds of  yards in a day and who writes stories and the alphabet in Hebrew and Arabic and other languages. 

Because I believe all this is His plan, I have to and if I have to I'll set your sails high and I'll show you what I know and what I don't and we'll journey it all together. I'll make mistakes. You'll make mistakes. You're not alone there are others who love you and who will help you find, "You."

You'll find Something. 
You'll be Someone. 
You'll be just You.
Whoever God made you to be. 

You seek after Him and any door you believe is closed will become opened.

Your passage is never a dead end when you walk hand in hand with the Lord God the Creator of all men. Power does not come from you, but from Him.  Seek Him First and Steady your Sails to His winds and you'll more than make it you'll surpass it, all.