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I'm antsy.  I'm doing everything right, but the mountains aren't moving.  If they are, it's so slow it's hard to see.  What makes mountains move?  Earthquakes and water: instant and catastrophic or slow and majestic. Take your pick.  Once I have an idea or make a change, I long for it to happen fast. Our culture is conditioned to believe we deserve quick results.   The lies we tell ourselves can cost us our dreams.  The mountain view teaches me how devastating a fast yes can be.  "Earthquakes" happen.  We can all pinpoint the moment when chaos struck in an instant.  Life shook, and everything...

PART 3   The light draws me, the hope on the other side.   I see shimmers through the tree branches—the exciting new growth finally evident after the agonizing wait—the tree I planted with tiny faith in the good soil of prayer and fasting.  As the roots show the magnitude of their impact, mountains fall away.  Large and looming, cold and impassable suddenly melt?  Crumble?   I realize I don’t even care where they went or how they moved; I am mesmerized by the other side.    Is this how the Israelites felt when God allowed them to cross into...

PART 2   It was the middle of the night.  My eyes popped open with a holy revelation: Look for Roots.   I went to sleep wrestling with the second painting in this series:  how do I depict mountains moving in the wait?  Let's be honest:  sometimes it’s miraculous. God moves so fast we can hardly keep up, but more often than not, He wants us to mature in persistent faith.  He isn't growing an audience; He's growing disciples.    With Jesus, it's always more.  When He used the analogy of mustard seed-size faith, He was tending to bold disciples...

PART 1   "If you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can tell the mountain to move!"  I've heard this scripture my whole life and assumed my faith was just too weak when the mountains I saw blocking the life I wanted remained stuck…   As I pondered my expectation of this scripture, it hit me: I tend to view mountains as external things:  lack of money or resources, a job or partner?    But what if the mountain is something inside of me?  What if the mountains Jesus says my faith can move have taken such deep...

Today, a piece of my childhood was laid to rest.  There is a cost for spreading your wings and leaving the nest.  In some ways, sections of your life morph into a caricature of someone you once knew but have lost contact with over the years.  You don't realize that organic reminiscing is collateral damage to a life you left behind.  Memories fade without reliving them until they don't feel real--like a dream or a story you read.   When significant people from earlier chapters pass away, you are left to grieve the layers alone.  Grieve for time that slipped away...