Visit: Five Minute Friday

Today's five minute prompt is the word "Visit". Here's the link-up over at Kate Motaung's website.

My husband and I met in the summer of 2003. I came out to visit my best friend from grade school and the job she'd set me up with promised to pay for my last year of college.
I never got to go on a call, but I met my best friend for life and we did a short-distance summer dating before I drove the 1,000 miles back to my college.
During our long-distance separation and many phone calls and letters, he gained my trust and won my heart, asked my dad's blessing, and proposed over the phone.
He came out then, for a visit, at Christmas. I did not know he'd secured my engagement ring, as he'd told me a tall tale about not having the resources until Spring Break.

So, the word visit, to me, has always been bittersweet. It's always temporary, and though wonderful, the parting is awful.

My parents live in another state, about 400 miles away, and we love to visit, but the times between visits are long.

I hope that my relationship with Christ is not at visitor status. I don't want Him to simply pop in for a "visit" from time to time when I need a friend or encouragement, but that He would be a permanent member of my family. That He would be a fixture in my house.
I don't ever want to be saying goodbye to my One and Only Savior.

If He lives here all the time, I am not putting on a show of a clean house to impress Him, but rather, letting Him experience the clean and the messy, the great and the awful, and knowing that He loves me through all of it. I am raw, real, and sincere. There is no pretense of anything, but the deep, undying love of my Jesus.

~Tammy

Open: Five Minute Friday

Write for five minutes without stopping, but that's all you get. No edits, no extras, just writing from the heart. The link up is over with Kate Motaung every Friday. It's wonderful and exciting and takes hardly any time (five minutes!).

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, open the eyes of my heart, I want to see you, I want to see you.

Perhaps it's my analytical nature, but often when I hear a word, I think of its opposite in order to explain.

For us to be open, it means that we perhaps once were closed. Certainly, in my own heart, there are areas I still have cordoned off, not ready to let God in and permeate them with His Holiness.

A certain amount of burning will have to happen in order for the refining to transform what was dark into light.

And yet, I long for that transformation from impure to pure.

That my heart would become so clear that when God's light shines into it, there are no obstructions casting shadows any longer.

That God's light would be so brilliant within that it could not be contained within but that all areas of my life-every relationship-all of the lives touched by mine would be marked with God's fingerprints.

I am open to this.

He has been showing me lately that our hearts can be filled and then He can multiply what is within to reach others. If we choose to hold onto hurts, we are closed off to His healing, and the darkness and bitterness and woundedness just spreads from our heart to all the hearts around us.
Would it not be better to spread love, life and joy?!

I want to open my heart, open my hands, open my deepest soul to the only One who will never discard me once I have served my purpose.

God does not view us as disposable, but as eternal. In our disposable world, He is the only safe being to which we can open our hearts.

~Tammy

Life is Priceless

Sometimes, you can't keep quiet.
The words are burning like a fire within you, needing to be written, spoken, heard.

This week, I awoke too early (we have cats and they use the great outdoors rather than their backup box), and almost couldn't get back to sleep with the words running through my head.

Occasionally, I have written letters to the editor, but it has been a while.
This time, it had to be written immediately, and it published the very next day.
And to my surprise, I received a message via Facebook from a person I don't believe I know, thanking me for my letter.
"Thank you for that amazing and brave letter to the editor today. I'm sure there will be some negative feedback but so many of us appreciate what you said."

The editor titled it "Evil disregards the value of human life"

Here is the letter:


The core principle of humanity is that human life has value. What dollar amount can equal a human life?

Yet this principle is exploited by terrorists such as ISIS with their executions. Evil disregards the value of human life.

Evil straps bombs to young children and women and sends them running toward others. As a society, if we fail to value life at its beginning, then our tears are false at its end. Ask an infertile couple what the value of human life is.

The Pregnancy Hope Center offers free ultrasounds, and seeing is believing in many cases. When as a society, we and our doctors view life with more value than dollars, we will have no need to legislate abortions. We will rejoice at the miracle of pregnancy.

Our young women will receive support to make the difficult decision of raising their child or sharing that life with another couple and allowing an adoption. We will begin to heal some very deep wounds, and once again, we will set ourselves apart from others. Life is priceless.

Tammy Belau