Christ-Like

Talking with a friend one day.  She is talking about how she tries...was trying because this was a bit of time ago...to show a Christ-like image, in her finances, her marriage, her parenting...you get the idea.

What does this mean?  What does it mean to show Christ's love?  To bring Him glory?  What does it look like in my life?  I so struggle.  There is this side of me that wants peace, to live for God alone, to find satisfaction in Him.  Then something catches my eye, my heart really, and I want to have that freedom of a fast car, I want to listen to that music that makes my heart, just roar really.  I want the music that floods my being and brings every bit of my being into focus. Because that is what I lack...focus.

Is it possible to be whole?  Is it possible to bring these two halves together and make a whole?  Is there a way to sanctify this half of me that rages within?

I am weary and burdened and He says I just have to come to Him and He will give me rest.  Rest for my soul.  Aaron Shust sings this song "Come to Me" and I just want it to play over and over in my head. 

Come to me,
all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30

Changing My Name

Recently, I changed my email address.  Okay, I am undergoing the process of changing my email address.

Long story short, "just jayne" was taken.  "jayne and the daffodils" was available.  I want to be "just jayne", but the more I try to be that, the further away it takes me from God, from my family.  The more I try to carve out time for myself, the less I can find it. 

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth is my favorite poem.  To me, the busyness of life is talked about, the overwhelmingness that comes with living life...the journey.  He closes his eyes as he sits on the couch and he remembers the daffodils...beside the lake...beneath the trees...fluttering...dancing...in the breeze.  The circling, the twirling of life.  The violent ways that we spin and become confused...then we have a moment of utter calm and remember.  We remember the daffodils...the children that came into this world as helpless infants, the moment we first laid eyes on our love...  Our own violent spinning stops and we see that we can move independently of the spin of the world.  We have our eyes focused on a "prize"... 

My husband, AKA, The world's greatest (LOL)
My children
That grey elephant fabric
My Chinese red sewing table

How about these for a prize, what about these for daffodils....

God is who He says He is
God can do what He says He can do
I am who God says I am
I can do all things through Christ
God's word is alive and active in me

I BELIEVE IN GOD

So, I am changing my name.  Because I am not "just jayne", though I still love the bareness of it.

jayne and the daffodils

Bare...not there

It seems like I am so lost these days. 

Really struggling...wanting to go somewhere...but not wanting to put the work in to move. 

Have you ever had something awful and unexpected happen?  Like a death?  There is this emptiness that consumes you.  Almost a numbness that passes over you. 

I feel that way...except there is not a death, nothing tragic has happened. 

Some days I awaken and it is not there, and I think that maybe that feeling was just a dream, that I really can deal with "this" not really knowing what "this" is.  But then it comes back, unexpectedly, and I am hit again.

I am such a doer.  I want to do things, I want people to see the goodness inside of me and the goodness that I can do.

But I am not good, and I wonder what am I really doing? 

God has a plan for me.  These things that I busy myself with, they are all for naught...if it isn't within His plan.  So, I wonder why I do it.

What would He have me give up?  What am I really willing to give up?  My sister and I talk and we wonder what we haven't given up, I feel stripped sometimes.  But then there is my sewing, secret fabric purchases (guilty), novels, TV shows, a bookshelf of sewing books that I admit, I totally covet them.  I don't want to give in...so I cling to these things because I deserve them, right?

I wonder what I would look like it I could just strip down the clutter that is inside my heart and within my life.  Would this dread that suffucates me at times visit less frequently? 

What can I live without?  What can I purge so that I can be bare and receptive to God's will?

I love all things Japanese

I lived in Japan for about two years when I was growing up.  I loved it there.  I love Japan.  I am trying to think in my head right now (not sure where else you think) how to explain the way it makes me feel. 

Japan...cherry blossoms
Japan...colorful coy fish
Japan...intricate beauty in the most simplest of things
Japan...every little thing has these amazing layers of beauty

I can't do it.  I cannot conjure up words that describe the images, the feelings of peace that surge through my being when my thoughts turn to Japan. 

So, you can imagine how surprised I was when I found out that there was something that I did not like about Japan.  Hashimoto's.  It is an auto-immune disease that destroys your thyroid.  I have Hashimoto's.  I am grateful to have a diagnosis.  Grateful because I didn't cause this.  It is not my life that is causing me to be tired, lose my hair, be depressed.  Sure, I do have a busy life and it leads to tiredness, but having four kids, homeschooling has not caused this bit of anguish in my life.  Even though there isn't a cure for this, I cannot take a pill to take away the symptoms, I can find relief that I didn't do something to deserve this. 

Just a word to pass on.  If a friend comes to you saying she knows that she is sick, but cannot figure out what is wrong with here.  Don't tell her she is tired because she has kids and a busy life.  It is not helpful.  Well, it wasn't to me(:  Not sure what you should say though...

Thinking

I have been thinking lately.  Thinking lately that I would rather blog than spend time on FB.  Rather send emails or better yet letters...distance myself from technology.  I don 't really spend a lot of time on FB...or do I?  I find myself checking it when I going from one event to the next.  I think that it might be time to rearrange my life.  So, stand by for more posting...hmmm...we will see(:

Of Lovely Things in Japan

Far away toward the sunrise, in the blue waters of the Pacific, lies the Empire-of-Myriad-Islands, the Land-of-the-Dragon-Fly, Japan.  In Japan there is wealth of sunshine, of flower-bloom, and of bird-song, and the people love these beautiful things.  They love trees and breezes, butterflies and birds, moonlight and starlight, and they love these things so much that for hundreds of years they have been writing verses about them.

Anyone may write verses in Japan,-that is, anyone who listens with all his heart to the song of the nightingale among the flowers, to the voice of the frogs in a star-lit pool, and the music of the wind, singing in the tress.  Little girls, little boys, men and women, grandfathers and grandmothers, all may write poetry in Japan, and they write about the things they love,-about birds and blossoms and butterflies, and the shadows of the clouds that go racing over the fields at noon-day.

They write little verses on pictures, on gaily embroidered screens, on cups and plates, on painted fans, on towels, on handkerchiefs,-in fact, they write verses anywhere!  The farm-girls with bare legs and wide straw hats, standing knee-deep in the muddy water of the rice fields, make verses and sing them as they work.  Fishermen, fishing by the flaming light of torches, with those queer birds, the cormorants, make verses as they fish.  Porters, trudging up to their necks in the tall grass, with packs on their heads, make verses as the trudge.  In joy or sorrow they makes verses, verses, verses.  Indeed, in no country of the world are all the people taught so truly to love poetry as in Japan, and they know quite well, these little folks of the Empire-of-Myriad-Islands, that every single thing that has life, nightingale, butterfly, bee or flower, is always, somehow, making a poem of its own.

~From Little Pictures of Japan, a collection of Japanese writings translated into English

Somewhere along the line I must have changed

I have completed my first week in Virginia. I have gone to church the first time. I have gone to the landfill twice. Been on just one walk and only been to the park once. Unfortunately I have already lost count of how many trips I have made to Target. Oh and I did make one trip to a new fabric store.

I am lost though. I have already encountered a super rude aggressive driver, a pizza MAN wearing a push-up bra, a church where I was not greeted and my greetings fell on deaf ears, a park that warned that it was being treated for fire ants and to play at your own risk.

I have been here a week and I am tired. Left wanting to feel at home but knowing that this is not my home. I am not suppose to make this Earth my home...but how do I live with the exruciating void that is within me, this homesickness that is inundating my system? Homesickness but I know no specific home.

It has been an interesting week.