Day before yesterday Keith and I went outside in the evening, just to be outside. The clouds had cleared up and the evening was fine and mild.
I played in the front garden bed, using the hose to wash old, crumbling mulch from the stones. I did this happily for over an hour, completely soaking my jeans and carting away buckets fulls of crap. Afterward, the stones gleamed.
Keith tinkered with his old lawn mower, thinking he might fix it and sell it on e-bay. He fixed the starter with a zip strip, and then decided that he couldn't sell it, he had too much work invested in it. It's tucked away under the car trailer, since there is no more room in the garage.
These days, I'm having a hard time just being in the moment. My restlessness keeps projecting me out, into the future. I'm tired of having all this time on my hands.
But if I can't learn to live in this moment, how can I live in any future moment?
Besides, I'm almost near the beginning of the real waiting. In three weeks or so, Keith's classes will be finished, and we will hand in the application for the home study.
And then I will be waiting in earnest. I tell you what, if I think waiting now is uncomfortable, it's nothing compared to the waiting I have yet to do- waiting for papers, waiting for approval, waiting for the home visit, waiting to be chosen by the birth mother, waiting for the birth, waiting to see if the adoption goes through.
I'm just on the edges of waiting.
I read this today in Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation:
"Real holiness doesn’t feel like holiness; it just feels like you’re dying. It feels like you’re losing it. And you are! You are losing the false self, which you foolishly thought was permanent, important, and you!
You know God is doing this in you and with you when you can somehow smile, and trust that what you lost is something you did not need anyway. In fact, it got in the way of what was real."
That really resonated with me this morning.
I read in Mark again about the woman who broke the alabaster flask and poured the oil over Jesus' head. Everyone got so upset with her because she had, in a sense, wasted her best and most valuable resources.
Which sometimes, I feel like I am doing. I feel like I'm not achieving anything that appears to be of practical use or value with my life right now.
My husband would disagree; he would say that I am at the heart of his life and the reason why he goes to work.
When I bring this up to my God (which I do, frequently) I am reminded (again) to wait, and to live deeply in the present moment and to give myself over to those things I have been given to do.
And the deeper secret, the thing Jesus tells my wondering heart, is that He is not interested in using us as if we were His tools, He is interested in our company.
That's what He created us for- for fellowship. Jesus wants us to keep company with Him.
I'm sure that when we do that, when we stay with Him just because He loves us and we love Him, then He ends up using us in ways we don't imagine.
But the love comes first.
And I forget sometimes how much I've grown, because it's not in my own strength or on my own timeline, and I'm always only noticing the things that I want perfected or cleared away right now.
Instead, it really is like noticing fruit growing. Have you ever noticed how slowly that goes? It takes forever, it seems like.
Not to mention, I realized that in order for the fruit to grow at all, the blossom must wither and fall to the ground.
And the growing season is only one season. I realized that recently. The rest of the time the tree is closing down for winter, and then appears to be dead- when they are dormant.
And that's exactly when they get pruned.
So, in the winter they are dormant and pruned. In the spring, they bud and blossom, which is lovely, but then blossoms die.
In the summer, they are slowly producing fruit. This takes all summer. In the autumn, they are harvested and then they begin to close down and turn inward for another winter season.
No wonder I'm getting frustrated with myself! There are no instant results.
So I might as well curl up with Jesus and rest quietly and enjoy Him- and the sunshine and the rain and the quietness.
