Beautiful Things from Dust

I am a very tactile person.

I walk through clothing stores fingering the fabrics rather than examining their colors.

I once called a hanger "sensuous". (Look it up - it's not as bad as it sounds, and it's a fantastic vocabulary word when you're being home-schooled through high school).

I will probably never sleep without something soft - a blanket, a shirt, a scarf, a something - bunched up under my cheek.

Turns out, I also adore words. There is power and freedom in using words that few other actions have.

So between being tactile and loving words, I spend a good portion of my time writing things down, usually in my swirly, spiky, old-fashioned handwriting that's my journal-standby.

Sometimes though, I just write words with my finger. I leave messages in the dust on the backs of cars as I walk through parking lots; I swirl a line across the foggy mirror after a shower; I write a word or two in the dust on a table or a paint can at the paint store where I work.

I put words everywhere. They are powerful to me.

Today, I didn't have a very good day. Up-and-down-and-around-and-over-and-through-and-repeat seemed to be the way my emotions wanted to roll today; I caught myself moping, cried over a journal entry, didn't clean my room or wash the dishes, and generally spent most of my day being in a bad mood.

I don't like days like that. I want my life to be chock-full all the time with happy things and sunshine and people that don't annoy me.

Still, I've been in a foul mood for most of the day - it's just a fact - and when I sat down in the middle of my closet floor to try to bring some order to the chaos in my room, if not in my head, I found myself doing what I always do: tracing invisible words with my finger on one of the tiles of the floor.

I am Loved.

I am Beautiful.

I am Holy.

I am Chosen.

I am Worthy.

I am Righteous.

All these truths about who I am in Christ, slipping out under my fingertip. As I sat there, tracing phrases in the dust, I sat in the moment. I didn't think about yesterday, or tomorrow, or even earlier in the day: I thought about now.

And all of those things are true right now.

That makes me smile.

Sometimes, the beautiful things that God forms from dust aren't as complicated as a man and a woman that He called good. Sometimes, it's just words of truth, spoken (written?) at the right time.

Be content with what you have, for He has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." So we can confidently say, "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?" ... Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. - Hebrews 13:5, 6 and 8