A Quiet Prayer Weekend

Mark 6:31 "Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while."  

Our world is full of chaos, hatred, and noise.  Jesus called the disciples to come away and rest awhile.  It would be good for you as well.

Friday, April 29-Saturday, April 30 I will be leading "A Quiet Prayer Weekend" for 10 women.  We will gather at Benet Hall on the grounds of the Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, Alabama.  Benet Hall is located on the banks of a beautiful lake.  The Hall has a lovely porch for quiet reflection, in addition to the rest of the beautiful Monastic grounds and buildings. 

We will explore various quiet prayer methods including "Praying in Color," journaling, praying the Liturgy with the Sisters at Sacred Heart, and quiet time alone.

Meals will be provided for Breakfast and Lunch on Saturday.  You will need to have eaten before you arrive on Friday night.

We will begin our weekend activities at 6:30 on Friday night.  You will be provided with a private sleeping room and a shared bathroom with one other participant.  A small kitchen is provided where you can store snacks, drinks in the refrig, and use the coffee maker.
  
The Monastery provides the bedding, sheets, towels, and washcloths..  Guests need to bring their own toiletries and personal items.  Comfortable clothing and shoes are recommended; however the Sisters prefer that shorts not be worn in the monastery chapel for celebrations of liturgy. Meals are served cafeteria-style.

There is limited availability for 10 participants only.  The cost per participant is $120.  A $25 non- refundable deposit is required by Feb. 20th.  The balance is due at the time of check-in.  Check in will begin at 6pm on Friday night.  You spot is not secured until the deposit is received.  

If you are interested in attending, please email me at kusmith@hiwaay.net to arrange payment. 

  

Inspired by Coloring Books and Colors

As I sat curled up in my Daddy's green recliner, I could hear my mother cooking supper in the kitchen of our little house on Chenault Drive.  Momma always had supper waiting on the table for my Daddy when he came home from work.  This scheduled, little ritual was soothing and made me feel safe.  Pushing a long blonde curl out of my eyes, I looked down at the Barbie coloring book in my lap and the big box of 96 count crayons tucked safely beside my leg. I was in little girl heaven. 

I love to color.  Picking out a new coloring book and box of crayons is one of my most favorite things!  It doesn't matter how many crayons I already have, I always seek the pleasure of opening a brand new box and smelling that incredible scent that wafts up from beautiful, new, unused crayon.  I don't believe there is any smell that inspires me so! 

At every single desk I have ever inhabited, I have kept a coloring book and crayons.  When I get stressed out, it is the most simple and cost effective way to decompress and relieve growing anger or frustration.  I have used the coloring supplies more at some jobs than others.  Many a fellow co-worker has been saved by a simple page out of a Minnie Mouse coloring book. I have always loved Minnie. 

As I've grown older, my love of coloring has remained. One of my guilty pleasures while shopping in Walmart or a bookstore is looking through the new coloring books.  And yes, I still adore opening a fresh box of crayons for the simple pleasure of sniffing them. 

It's the current "in thing" for adults to color.  I told someone lately "I was coloring as an adult when coloring as an adult wasn't cool."  Many artists are developing coloring books with themes directed toward adults.  I especially love the ones with scripture themes.  But I will admit my current favorite coloring book features winged fairies busy at their daily tasks. 

At the direction of my friend Tracy, I picked up the book "Praying in Color."  I have shown this method of prayer to many ladies and also children.  It allows for resting and stilling the mind while one thinks of those they need to pray about.  No one has to be extremely creative to pray in color.  One simply needs to consent to praying. 

Bible journaling is currently popular.  It is simply drawing and coloring illustrations on an actual bible page.  My old bible, the one I use the most, is colored and journaled in HEAVILY. My sweet bible is worn out, but I just can't give her up.  The cover came off so I bound her afresh with packing tape.  I have bought many  new bibles, but this old, taped version holds all my notes and thoughts from over the years of my adult life.  It is precious to me.

I bought a bible specifically for journaling and I love it too.  This method encourages me to practice Lectio Divina, which is sacred reading.  In Lectio Divina you are encouraged to focus on one passage.  Read it over and over, at least three times, and see what words jump out at you. Then ponder those words and pray about what the Lord is saying to you.

There are so many ways to contemplate God's word.  So many methods to help you arrive at "be still and know." I encourage you to consider what ways you can "be still and know."  Do whatever it takes.  Just do it. 

Basics with no Fru-Fru

I cleaned out my refrigerators today.  We have one in the kitchen and a small one in the garage for drinks and overflow storage when we are preparing for big get-togethers.  Over the past 6 weeks or so, we have been blessed to entertain someone every single weekend.  We also were blessed to be invited to visit with friends and family.  This makes for lots of food being prepared.  I literally had so much food at times, I couldn't find one square inch of space left.  The food was all so good...so rich...so yummy...so heavy. 

After a month of that, I'm ready for lighter, real food without the addition of extra butter, sugar, cream.... It makes me full just to type that sentence. 

I also cleaned out our rather large baskets of reading material in the bathrooms.  Those baskets are where magazines and catalogs go to die.  I suppose I'm afraid that if I throw one of them out, I will need it at some point in future.  Truth is that I should toss them first thing and be done with it.

I'm also gathering up all the Christmas decorations.  Most of the knick-knacks are currently residing in the floor of our foyer waiting on me to box them up and rest up for next year.  I put out a lot of Christmas decorations this year.  When I first decorate a tree, I could sit and watch the twinkling lights and sparkling ornaments for hours...and I have.  The glitter, clutter, fluff, and fru-fru of  the Christmas season is beautiful. 

But now as I'm cleaning up and putting away I realize how much I love the clean lines, subdued colors, and uncluttered surfaces in my house.  I love a clean refrigerator and an organized house.  I honestly work better when things are in order.

When I first got sick, my house cleaning fell way behind and because I live with men, they never noticed.  But I noticed.  It made me sick, but I didn't have enough energy to take care of it.  My men did help with laundry and dishes, but it's not the same type of attention that the mom gives. 

I find I'm in a season of my life where I feel the same way about worship and prayer.  I like an uncluttered, fru-fru-less atmosphere of praise, worship, and prayer.  Give me a dark closet, my bible and quiet.  That is a recipe for a spiritually happy Kelley.

I know it's hip and considered "in" right now for there to be all manner of theatrical lights, rock or country-style loud bands, emotional dramas, colorful and power power-point presentations, headlining celebrity speakers, etc.  And while I have no problem with that on occasion, it's not what I hunger for on a regular basis. 

I hunger for the quiet, stillness of lifting the whispers of my heart to the God of all creation.  He hears those whispers.  He doesn't need it to be amplified by a high dollar sound system.  He sees me without the use of flashing, colored theatrical lights.

Fru-fru and fluff might be nice for a time, but not for all time.  

I am loving getting back to the basics of life. 

January Promises

Christmas celebrations are behind us, which makes me happy and sad all in the same breath.  I absolutely adore when the decorations are in full splendor.  My calendar is full of events to attend and to host.  Advent has filled my heart with expectation.  Most everyone gathers in close to family and friends, appreciating them as they rarely do during other times of the year.  But now we are on to those January resolutions, goals, and promises.  They all seem so lovely and chivalrous.

While cleaning out a basket today, I discovered a journal from 2011.  It had settled down to the bottom of the basket, long forgotten, yet still full of many empty, awaiting pages.  I flipped the journal open to see that on January 1 of the year 2011, I had been resolved to keep a gratitude journal.  The last entry was in March.

I had lofty intentions.  I wish I had kept my promise to continue this practice throughout the year. I was going to need a full strength attitude of gratitude. Little did I know that in December of 2011, after a year battling my own war with Dysautonomia, my best friend of 35+ years would be diagnosed with aggressive Stage C3 ovarian cancer.  We were literally in for the fight of our lives.

I can use my illness as an excuse for not keeping up with the practice.  I could tell you all about how busy I was during that time with my oldest son moving away to college and my youngest son busy in high school.  I could tell you all about how busy I was with a new job.  But the bottom line is that each day I chose not to continue with the practice of daily writing down the things I was grateful for that specific day.  Then after a time of choosing to leave behind the practice, I just simply forgot about it. 

Life is a series of choices.  I will be 50 in March of this year and as I look back, I see all the forks in the road where I had a choice to turn left or right, or even to remain.  As a child of God, I have always wanted to do the right thing, but honestly sometimes I didn't even consult Him when I arrived at the fork in the road, much less when I determined which way to turn.  I made a choice to move forward without Him.

Sometimes I wonder if these were deliberate choices or if I was so caught up in the moment at the fork in the road  I simply forgot to consult the maker of the universe.  (Funny how when you type things out, it sounds so ridiculous.)  Either way it was a choice to forget Him.

Which gets me to the topic of January promises.

I looked back at my calendar for late 2011, 2012 and 35 days into 2013, with the hindsight of Angie's illness and death.  Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have spent much time considering my resolutions. With only one month left with her, I would have been better at living in the moment, not looking forward or backward, just being with her.

January promises/resolutions/ or whatever you call them are important.  But I know that I've been guilty of choosing to focus on the future and not enough focus on the now.  So this year, my resolution, my promise, my goal is to be more present in the moment where I reside, not looking behind or before, just being in the moment.

I wish I had the first 35 days of 2013 to live over.  I'd sure savor the moments more. 

New Traditions Begin...

I love traditions.  I love old stuff.  I love really old stuff. 

When I was about 4 years old, my mother made some lovely wee stuffed Christmas ornaments using coloring book pages as patterns.  I ADORE those ornaments.  She passed them down to me a few years ago and they are proudly displayed on a white feather tree on our kitchen island.  The wee tree is topped with the angel that sat atop our family tree the entire time I was a little girl.  Along the way her arms fell off.  Mother was going to throw her away because she was "disabled."  I was  having none of that.  Our wee disabled angel came to live at my house and now guards the feather tree full of those coloring book ornaments. 

Traditions comfort me.  They remind me who I am, what I'm about, and what to expect in the future.

Santa doesn't deliver individual gifts around the tree at our house.  Since the time my baby boys were quite small, our tradition has been for Santa to deliver a big Santa bag for each boy.  Some of my favorite memories are of the boys as they crawled inside those huge bags so that only their feet and little rear ends showed.  My boys are now 20 and 24.  Just a couple years ago, I suggested wrapping the presents like normal families do it.  They were appalled that  I would even suggest such a thing!  Apparently the Santa bag will continue to be the normal for us. 

When I was a girl, we always had Christmas on Christmas Eve.  Daddy would take me out to see the Christmas lights all around the neighborhood and magically Santa had always just left when we returned.  I kept this tradition with my own boys.  Our normal Christmas even since the boys were born is to have supper with my parents, open gifts with them and then come home to have Christmas with just the 4 of us.  That tradition has served us well. 

This year we are making a wee tweak.  Adam got engaged to Bekah last Friday night and so we now have a girl to celebrate with and also additional family schedules to consider. I have asked that our family be able to claim Christmas eve as our special Christmas time. 

Tonight my parents are coming to our house instead of us going to their house.  That way the kids can arrive as they can after working, clean up and let the festivities begin.  Mother is bringing her jambalaya and I'm making a big pot of potato soup.  We have Irish Coffee Pie, Cracker Candy, and Sticky Toffee Pudding for dessert.  The plan is to make this a relaxing evening with no big dishes to prepare or clean up. 

Bekah will be joining our Christmas Eve celebration for the first time since she is now "official."  She will even have her very own stocking and Santa bag.  After 24 years in a house full of boys, we finally get a girl!!!  I'm super excited!  After presents and food, we will pop some popcorn and watch a movie together. 

In the morning my wee engaged boy will go celebrate with his future in-laws and then we will all gather together at Mom Smith's house for our traditional Smith family Christmas. 

I pray that you and your family will take a few minutes to reflect on the tiny King of the universe that arrived so many years ago on that first Christmas.  Whether it was actually in March, August or December, the point is that He came.  He lived.  He died for us and praise God, He is coming again.  Soon. 

May your Christmas traditions bring you joy and may you love those folks God gave you just a wee bit better in the coming year. 

Advent, December 14, Little Altar Boy

I am a life long fan of the Carpenters.  As a wee girl, I used my little red and white box record player to listen to Karen sing and learn the art of their lovely harmonies.  I've told many that Karen was my first vocal coach.

One of my favorite of their albums is "Christmas Portrait." Its full of classical music, contemporary and traditional carols sung by Karen and Richard.  Their tight harmonies and artful arrangements make for, in my opinion, perfect music.

One of the songs on this album is beautifully haunting.  "Little Altar Boy" is a plea to a child to pray for a sinner gone astray.  Our Lord asked us to be like little children.  If you have ever listened to a child's innocent prayers, you know they are unique, sacred, and precious.

Here are the lyrics of the song:

Little alter boy, I wonder could you pray for me?
Little alter boy, for I have gone astray
What must I do to be holy like you?
Little alter boy ,oh, let me hear you pray

Little alter boy, I wonder could you ask your Lord
Ask him, alter boy, to take my sins away
What must I do to be holy like you?
Little alter boy, oh, let me hear you pray

Lift up your voice and send a pray above
Help me rejoice and fill that prayer with love
Now I know my life has been all wrong
Lift my your voice and help a sinner be strong

Little alter boy, I wonder could you pray for me?
Could you tell our Lord I'm gonna change my ways today?
What must I do to be holy like you?
Little alter boy, oh, let me hear you pray
Little alter boy please let me hear you pray!

During this Advent season I encourage you to pray with your children, whatever their age.  We know without doubt that our Lord hears their tender voices, calling out to Jesus.  Their sweet words just might teach you a thing or two.  

Jesus, come quickly, 

Kelley

 

Advent, December 11, The Same Direction

Consider Jeremiah 17:5-8
Thus says the Lord,
“Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind
And makes flesh his strength,
And whose heart turns away from the Lord. 
 “For he will be like a bush in the desert
And will not see when prosperity comes,
But will live in stony wastes in the wilderness,
A land of salt without inhabitant. 
 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord
And whose trust is the Lord.
“For he will be like a tree planted by the water,
That extends its roots by a stream
And will not fear when the heat comes;
But its leaves will be green,
And it will not be anxious in a year of drought
Nor cease to yield fruit. 

As we wait in this season of Advent, its important to notice who or what we wait on.  Jeremiah tells us what happens when we wait on the wrong thing or person.   And praise God, he also shares with us what happens when we wait on the proper person.  The Lord.  

Last night while thumbing through Facebook I noticed that someone I love just got a divorce.  I sat with that for a few minutes and then thought back over the year.  This has been the year of divorce apparently.  I counted 9 couples that I know who have gone through divorce in 2015.  My heart has broken for each one of these families.   

John and I have been through some knee deep piles of poo in our married life.  We've hated each other.  Not just the "I don't like you" kind of hate, but the, "If a car hits you I don't think I'd care" kind of hate. We have been terrible to each other.  We have acted in ways that have brought shame to ourselves, our boys, our parents, our extended family, and even our friends.  Most of all we brought shame to our God. Our hearts were "turned away from the Lord."  We lived in a  "stony waste in the wilderness."  

It took desperate measures to wake us up.  Those desperate measures were linked to holding on tight to the Lord.  That sounds corny I know, but its truth.  When we, as a couple, turned and faced Jesus together, things changed.  Life changed.  The barren, dry landscape where I waited each day for the next shoe to drop turned into a land full of life.  I won't lie.  It took a while.  A long, long while.  But together we chose to wait on the Lord together.  


During this season of Advent look to your spouse,  family, and friends and make a decision to wait upon the Lord together.  Its so much easier when we are all faced the same direction.  

Jesus, come quickly.  

Kelley