Jesus made it possible for feelings of rejection and being unwanted to leave me. I had been born with clubfeet. That is, my baby legs had no heels, they stretched out down to the toes. Through the years those internal feelings followed me and shaped my life.
   A friend Larry asked Jesus to heal those emotional wounds in me. In a time of tears and grief, Jesus held me in his arms and let me cry. He replaced that grief with a rootedness, a sense of being loved by him. I was not unwanted, I belong to him. He brought a calm into my little heart, in my grown up adult body. And he brought a rest that was not there before.
Larry said the prayer for me. But Jesus healed the wound. (Gardena, California, 1989 entry)

The tendency to judge yourself without mercy--to have difficulty having fun--to take yourself very seriously--I could relate to that.

Learning about co-dependency opened my eyes. Patterns of thinking were glued to my being. They described my life choices exactly. They seemed like unbreakable walls.

The wall breaker comes to cradle and nourish. He touches my life  through people, through counsel, through hands-on prayer, letting me cry without embarrassment, without ridicule, without shame, and the embrace goes deeper than deep. It is silver. It moves the internal landscape. The restless architecture is given outside strength and joy emerges, laughter spills out, the brittle meaness softens.

     Jesus led me across the LBI campus to Guy's apartment. To exercise the next step in the New Hope program, I would share "all the things I know I had done wrong to people," I would disclose them to another human being. Guy was just another student who sat in the same classes as me, someone I did not know well. He knew Jesus and he did listen to my long list of mistakes. What I remember the MOST was the hug at the end. When I did, I began to cry and all the tears came out. He did not pull away from me. I was so embarrassed to soak his shirt with tears. Guy said it was ok. And so I just stood there crying on his shoulder. It was like Jesus was holding me and it was a safe place to cry.
    Jesus became very real to me in THOSE MOMENTS!!! He was not ashamed of me or my behavior. He let me pour out my heart. And after all that crying there came a peace. (Anaheim, California 1988 entry)

    In Isaiah this morning (chapter 40 verse 11) God comes to every person as a shepherd to cradle his young lambs. He comes to settle the anxiety and the restlessness that bears no name, that is glued to my being.

    Joy expressed in my life these past twenty years came out of his nurture and cradling. Enjoying life, enjoying my job, enjoying painting, enjoying assemblages, enjoying singing and humming and playing guitar, making melody, enjoying cooking, enjoying bike rides, enjoying people, being open, being myself, enjoying times in his presence, caught off guard when he taps my shoulder, enjoying the fingerprints of his knowledge that scientists have recently published,
laughing, and cracking up; going easier on myself, and telling him he is remarkable.

He paints this value of himself ON TOP OF ME. the architecture laughs, the brittleness sings, the rusty kettle blogs yes.

You Paint Joy On Top Of Me by Karl Marxhausen, 40 by 40 inches, sand and acrylic paint on panel 
Elsewhere art exhibit, All Souls Gallery, 4501 Walnut, Kansas City, MO. November 6th to December 2nd, 2011