Prayer For Guidance

Lord, fill this weak and mortal cup
With passions of your praise
Until at Your dear feet I sup
In Heaven’s endless days

These fumbling, erring hands of mine
Lord, guide them by Your Spirit
And fill each humble task of mine
With heavenly joy and merit

Earth’s happiness is a vague shroud
Of Heaven’s priceless measure
Fix our eyes above the cloud
To high and holy treasure

Though now we strain through darkened glass
To understand life’s story
This little life too soon shall pass
Into eternal glory

Janet~

Greater Beauty

He pours His love into the dawn
A pale blue glow ascending
Extending from a heavenly throne
His mercy never-ending
With verdant breath He clothes the hills
And sighing woodland tresses
As from the apple orchard spills
A thousand flowered dresses

He reaches deep beneath the earth
And probes the seed still hidden
Nature responds to heaven’s mirth
To do as it is bidden
Then out across a barren world
Stripped bare by winter’s taking
Nature’s glory is unfurled
In springtime’s grand awakening

Twilight creeps across a land
A new and silent splendor
I am drawn toward the Hand
Patient, kind and tender
For all the beauty of this day
Could never be sufficient
If guilt could not be washed away
By One; perfect, omniscient

I close my eyes to see a cross
Upon it the Creator
Where mercy’s blood-red river flows
Forever and forever
He clad the earth in beauty fair
His grand and glorious garden
But its beauty can’t compare
To nail-scarred hands of pardon

Janet~

Giver

He gives us the laughter of children
To sweeten the toil of our day
He gives us the softness of evening
To soothe our cares away
He gives us warm shoulders to lean on
Should we need to rest for a while
And He gives us little babies
To make children and old men smile

He gives us sunshine and shadows
He paints the blue sky and gray
He gives us mountains and meadows
And sleep at the end of a day
He gives the moon for a candle
When the whisper of daylight grows dim
And He gives us just enough trouble
To keep us leaning on Him

He gives us the hill and the valley
The storm shrieking down from above
He knits them all together
By the threads of His wonderful love
How empty would be our boasting
How shallow our faith and dim
If He did not give us life’s trouble
To keep us leaning on Him

If we had the fruit of our wishes
How foolish our wanting would be
Never a weeping horizon
And never a storm-tossed sea
And never an earnest pleading
On our knees as the light grows dim
Never a reason for needing
To keep on leaning on Him

Janet~

Beholding God

Someday we will not awake
To see the sun, a golden lake
Melting over field and hill
We will not hear the song-birds trill

We will not wake to soft refrain
Of raindrops on the window pane
Nor will we wake to hear the breeze
Sighing in the willow trees

Someday we will not wake to see
The river laughing to the sea
The flower will not lift its face
In another day of grace

But someday we will wake to see
The proof of life’s great mystery
Though body rests beneath the sod
We will wake beholding God

Janet

Prelude to Parting

We ordered lunch at the little café on the corner
We didn’t talk much,
As we watched people passing by
Like waves on a concrete sea
Lovers arm in arm,
Children laughing and shouting,
The self-absorbed strider
The hapless straggler
The scolding mother
The jogger,
The dog-walker
The mini-skirt and heels
The fellow in over-alls…


We order a second sup of coffee
Prolonging the inevitable
With long and reluctant pauses
Between each sip
You reach across the table
Touch my hand to your lips
Again
And walk away
Lost in the sway of the crowd
Children laughing
Lovers arm in arm
The strider, the straggler, the mother
And you

J~

Prelude to Parting

We ordered lunch at the little café on the corner
We didn’t talk much,
As we watched people passing by
Like waves on a concrete sea
Lovers arm in arm,
Children laughing and shouting,
The self-absorbed strider
The hapless straggler
The scolding mother
The jogger,
The dog-walker
The mini-skirt and stilettos
The fellow in over-alls…


We order a second sup of coffee
Prolonging the inevitable
With long and reluctant pauses
Between each sip
You reach across the table
Touch my hand to your lips
Again
And walk away
Lost in the sway of the crowd
Children laughing
Lovers arm in arm
The strider, the straggler, the mother
And you

J~

I must have hit a lucky air-wave!!!
...still no internet to speak of:(
It only took 20 minutes to post this...
yes, that is sarcasm!!!!

My Way

You ask me to show you I love you
And wonder at things that I say
You tell me the things that would move you
But I need to love you…my way

I cannot rehearse my emotions
This is no scene in a play
But if you look closely, my darling
You’ll see that I love you…my way

Love is not love when pretending
At words that we may choose to say
But I’ll show you love unending
If you let me love you…my way

Some see love in dark chocolate
Some speak it with poetry
But darling, let’s just love each other
And be who we are, naturally

I would not ask you to love me
In words you would not choose to say
Second-hand lines do not move me
So darling, I’ll love you…my way

Janet~

Forty-five

I bet you think today I am going to write
About birthdays and getting old
How I just can’t remember quite
What I have or have not been told
Bet you thought that this was the day
I would celebrate and lament
But all I can really think to say
Is I am ‘middle-age content’

I don’t mind the years that are slipping by
As my youth slips farther away
I don’t miss the dream that shone in my eye
In some by-gone yesterday
I really enjoy the ache in my bones
I’ve earned it, don’t you agree?
Lamenting my age is like kicking stones
And who wants to be twenty-three?

If I look in the mirror to bemoan its truth
I would not trade it away
For a couple more years of brimming youth
Without words like ‘stiff’ or ‘gray’
It’s a great day to be alive
If I could I would not turn back the page
To be something other than forty-five
Or, in other words…middle-age

No, I’m not crazy or losing my mind
To middle-age insanity
But if you believe this…may I be so kind
As to suggest that you might be?

Janet


...a little chuckle:)))
the ad that popped up in blogger as I posted this was...

'Improve your pregnancy chances over 40!!!!'

Forty-five

I bet you think today I am going to write
About birthdays and getting old
How I just can’t remember quite
What I have or have not been told
Bet you thought that this was the day
I would celebrate and lament
But all I can really think to say
Is I am ‘middle-age content’

I don’t mind the years that are slipping by
As my youth slips farther away
I don’t miss the dream that shone in my eye
In some by-gone yesterday
I really enjoy the ache in my bones
I’ve earned it, don’t you agree?
Lamenting my age is like kicking stones
And who wants to be twenty-three?

If I look in the mirror to bemoan its truth
I would not trade it away
For a couple more years of brimming youth
Without words like ‘stiff’ or ‘gray’
It’s a great day to be alive
If I could I would not turn back the page
To be something other than forty-five
Or, in other words…middle-age

No, I’m not crazy or losing my mind
To middle-age insanity
But if you believe this…may I be so kind
As to suggest that you might be?

Janet

Impossible Choices

I can choose to stroll through the garden with you
In the warm arms of the afternoon
And we could dance a slow dance or two
Beneath the wisp of a moon
But I cannot choose the things that I need
I cannot paint the sky blue
I cannot coax one flower from a seed
Nor choose to forget about you

I can choose which seeds to plant in the earth
Tucked into darkened soil
I can smile and brighten the hour with mirth
To soften the day of toil
I can choose to fret or pine for the past
But what good would it do
I cannot return to the shadow it casts
To remember or forget about you

I can choose to be happy or languish in sorrow
To be envious or content
But I cannot choose what will happen tomorrow
If higher hands circumvent
Sweep back the stars and blow out the moon
These things I cannot do
I cannot choose the breezes tune
Or choose to forget about you


J~

Forgive me for all the picture-less posts...
(VERY SLOW or non-existent unreliable internet service
for the past week or two)
...hence the sporadic posts:(

They keep telling me it will all be back to
'normal'..... soon!

Almost You Left Me

Almost you left me…
As the night lay flat against land and sky
Darkening the gaze of its azure eye
As sliver of amber moon lounged languidly
Upon a misty, mellow sea
The hint of lilac blooms fingered the air
Touching my out-stretched thought; vulnerable, bare
The tight-fisted walnut tree relinquished at last
The delicate greenery held in woody clasp
Tonight its charcoal silhouette
Longed to whirl and pirouette
As silence played a haunting tune
Across a perfect night in June
A soulful, soothing melody
Of love and loss and dark blue sea
Almost you left me beneath midnight’s spire
Almost you left me with nothing…
…but desire

J~