November 8, 2011
Created That Way
Keith's mom
is in the hospital. It seems her problems are coming to a head and some
decision must be made regarding her future. This is very difficult for Keith to
move through, naturally.
Last night, I
asked Jesus to surround Keith with His love and then I paused and thought maybe that
was a silly thing to ask for, because it's already true. So I said,
please show him your love, let him feel Your love.
And Jesus
said, I do that through you- through you,
I demonstrate My love and care of Keith.
I thought,
goodness, how perfectly true that is! We are the body of Christ and we
demonstrate His love to the people around us, and who is nearer than a spouse? We can come alongside Jesus, as it were, in His loving work. That's
part of the plan.
So I have
been conscious in loving on Keith a lot more than usual lately.
But, after that
sunk in, I thought about it a little more and a thought kept popping up and I kept squashing the thought, because I felt it was wrong. Then I gave up trying to squash it because Jesus knows what I'm thinking anyway and it's silly to pretend otherwise.
I asked Him tentatively,
"I don't want to sound arrogant or... wrong or going against Your plan. But if it's
possible, I prefer to receive Your love... directly from You. I'd like to
have it straight from You, straight from the Source..."
And He said, I created you that way.
Oh, the thrill that filled my soul! The worship and wonder that filled me! I was not expecting that answer. I
don't think I've ever felt such a validating thing from Christ in all my life,
and I have felt many, especially lately. (The wonderful thing to realize is that we are all created with the ability to receive His love, care and attention directly from Jesus, as well as from our brothers and sisters in Christ.)
He creates us, as we are, with intent. And even when we suffer damage by being in this broken world, all that does is provide scope for even more depth of beauty and soul. That's what I believe, anyway. That's my experience.
He creates us, as we are, with intent. And even when we suffer damage by being in this broken world, all that does is provide scope for even more depth of beauty and soul. That's what I believe, anyway. That's my experience.
Oh, how I
love Jesus! I refuse to be without Him. I know He never leaves me nor forsakes
me, so when I don't feel Him present, I reach out or inward- I can't explain it, I just reach for Him- with faith
expressed in love, and Jesus is there.
Sometimes I
just call His name, and Jesus is present. I get up in the morning, and call on
Him. I remind myself of Jesus when I do the dishes and when I cook supper and
when I vacuum and when I go grocery shopping.
I delight in
Jesus, because He is delightful, because it is mind-blowing and astounding that
He is the Son of God, and yet He loves me. The very Son of God loves me! He
walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own, as the song
goes.
It is the
best story ever told, His story. I think Jesus' story, His person, must be the
source of every kind of inspiration and human longing. And I can completely and
utterly abandon myself to Him, in love and trust and worship.
It just
thrills me to no end. I was made for a purpose, I was created with intent. And
that purpose, that intent, was to delight the very heart of God. He made me for
Him. Not because I was worthy or for any reason or action of mine, but because
it pleased Him and was His kind intent, and for the praise of His glory.
November 9, 2011
There is this
park that is very near our house. It's full of trimmed lawns and stately trees
and little winding paths.
A stream runs
through it and there is a vintage disc golf course laid out under the trees. No
one ever plays that I can see, but the iron baskets, painted a pale green, are in good shape
and stand invitingly along the gentle slopes.
There are
lovely, long views of hillsides and autumn color, with glimpses of still water
through the trees.
Here and
there, built into the hillsides, are stone steps. Sometimes they lead to a
shady spot with a picnic table and a stone grill.
Sometimes
the steps don't go anywhere at all, they just are. They just rest there in the
grassy slope, scattered over with leaves and moss grown, and above them is
nothing but a copse of trees.
There's one
place in particular, with a round, flat lawn, bordered by a very low stone
wall. The curve of this wall divides the thick grass from the shallow waters of
a marshy pond. The lawn rises up into a wooden hill and against the hill is a
stone grill, under the thick shade of an oak tree.
I go walking
in the park every day I can now. I like to go in the morning, when the light is still
horizontal, making bright bands of sunlight and shade across the grass. The
grass here is still green, almost as green as summer.
I don't walk
alone. As soon as I shut the front door behind me, I feel Jesus
come alongside and take my hand, and we walk along together.
Sometimes we
say nothing. Sometimes I just lean my spirit right into Jesus, in love and
worship. I guess that's like another way of saying, I lift my heart up to Him.
Only it's not up, because He's right beside me. I feel His presence beside me
as though He has His arm around my shoulders and I am leaning against Him.
And I just
soak Jesus in, His presence and His love, and I think about Him. I think with joy
and wonder, He is the Holy One of God! The Anointed! The King of glory!
And my soul
is flooded with wonder that He is right beside me, and I belong to Him.
I'm under His authority, and called by His name. Jesus claims me completely. This
is the most delightful sensation and I abandon myself to the joy of it.
I keep
thinking of this- I think it's a verse- He satisfies the longing soul. I
suppose I'm thinking of it because I'm finding it to be so very true.
Ah ha! It is a
verse. It's from a psalm, to be exact:
Oh, give
thanks to the LORD, for He is good!
For His mercy
endures forever.
Let the
redeemed of the LORD say so,
Whom He has
redeemed from the hand of the enemy,
And gathered
out of the lands,
From the east
and from the west,
From the
north and from the south.
They wandered
in the wilderness in a desolate way;
They found no
city to dwell in.
Hungry and
thirsty,
Their soul
fainted in them.
Then they
cried out to the LORD in their trouble,
And He
delivered them out of their distresses.
And He led
them forth by the right way,
That they
might go to a city for a dwelling place.
Oh, that men
would give thanks to the LORD for His goodness,
And for His
wonderful works to the children of men!
For He
satisfies the longing soul,
And fills the
hungry soul with goodness.
-Psalm 107:1-9
November 11, 2011
I'm glad my
veteran is home with me this morning, researching ways to improve our computer
and scribbling unintelligible things down on a note pad while listening to
helpful instructional videos.
In the
interests of research, I spent all yesterday afternoon reading through a lot of
my very, very old diaries. In particular, I read the one that spanned my
graduation trip to England, when I was eighteen, all the way to my divorce from
Bill. My last entry is dated October 1998, so that was... thirteen years ago?
All those
thirteen years and I never once re-read that thing. I couldn't, because the
diary describes some of the worst years of my life. That diary was like a
little time bomb, just quietly ticking away in my plastic storage bin.
But I guess
by re-reading it at last, I defused it. I'm still processing everything that
came up for me as I read it. The thing that stood out to me the most were the
entries I wrote about Jesus. In fact, my jaw dropped on more than one occasion
as I read through the diary.
I had no
idea. I had forgotten it all- I blacked it right out. I made myself forget,
because the transition from who I had been to who I was when I married my
ex-husband was steep and horrific, a plummeting drop that shattered everything I thought I was. I couldn't explain it. It took me
years to heal from it.
I was
eighteen years old when I wrote this:
"Dear
Jesus," I wrote, back in mid-September of 1996, "I read about You
today and how the people followed You only because You gave them free meals. At
least the crowd that followed You after You fed the 5,000. Then when You spoke
of the important stuff- You being the Bread of Heaven, they grumbled and left
You..."
Oh, that just
makes me laugh out loud. Oh my goodness. What's hilarious is that, a month ago,
when I was re-reading the Gospels for the first time in a long time, I had the
exact same reaction to that scene.
Here's
another one:
"Dear
Jesus, I love You.
You are close to me- You will never leave me. You will see to all my needs. You
guide me along paths of righteousness for Your name's sake. You are faithful to
keep me bound close to You. You have placed me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal over Your arm. You are the author and finisher of my faith."
Whoa Nellie.
That explains a lot, don't you think? That beautifully illuminates everything
I've been experiencing lately.
When I
finished that diary, I read a much older one. By the time I was sixteen, I was
starting to develop a relationship with God that was based on longing and love.
How I did
this is a complete mystery to me. Parts of the diary show up, alive and
beautiful, in the tangle of religious thought and self-condemnation. Where on
earth did they come from? How did I know that?
In April of
1994, when I was sixteen, I wrote this:
"So, at
the same time as I discover this, I'm rejoicing in another kind of newness. It
adds up to create a sense of wonder or a feeling like I'm a baby, just learning
to walk, or like the disciple who walked on water. If he looked away from
Jesus, he sank. I sink, but I look to Jesus every time the water reaches my
ankles. Then I come to my senses and I'm borne back up, forgiven, loved and
helped to keep going. All I have to do is look to Jesus and He takes care of
it.
"I am
created just to please God. In one way it's humbling, in another it's more
exciting than I have yet imagined.
"Well,
this spiritual high will go, but God will still love and care for me as He does
right now, and my roots in Christ will be deeper."
Reading this
stuff fills me with awe. It gave me the shivers. Isn't life mysterious?
Isn't it beautiful? Our entire life, Jesus is drawing us to Him with cords of
love, cords that can never be broken.
November 15, 2011
Perspective
This delving
into my past certainly causes me some emotional and mental turbulence. I went
looking back through my blog, because I really, really wanted to remember a
certain point in time, and I found it. I wrote this, two springs ago:
"God and
I have a long established relationship with boundaries that I have put up.
Recently I started questioning those, as they are very old and maybe not
functional or necessary anymore. Every time I thought about dropping the
boundaries I felt compelled to find something to replace them, something that
would make me acceptable for closer contact with God.
"I felt
deeply conflicted and confused about such a step and now I understand why. My
prior boundaries had to do with keeping God at a safe distance so that I could
be myself. I felt that myself was not acceptable to God, though I've also long
held a belief that God longs for authenticity from us. These beliefs
are inherently conflicting: God wants me, as I am vs. I won't give up myself to God until
I've become acceptable.
"But
recently my increasing longing to be in constant, living relationship to Him
kept pushing me against the question again and again, each time coming up
against my conflicting beliefs.
"I've
long held on to some old, crumbling beliefs, beliefs that condemn, that
constrict and cripple. But I've held onto them because I was raised with them. They were
like battle flags for an army that no longer existed, hadn't for a long time. I
kept them, moth eaten and dusty, year after year after year. They were my
security blankets, in case everything I had believed back then proved true.
"But
lately I'm teaching myself to let go. It is frightening to let go and fall back into the arms of the eternal, the personal, the
redemptive and victorious God. But Jesus has been following after me all this
time. He really has, year after year, mistake after mistake, He's made His love
and longing for me known.
"And
each time I would open the door a crack and say, "I love you too,
passionately, as the deer pants for the water, so my heart longs for You. I'm
your girl, your broken, bruised and confused girl. But now I have to go back to
living. I'll see You in the hereafter."
"And
each time I would feel His mercy and understanding, His deep tenderness and
patience with me. We had a wordless understanding. I've always known that Jesus
can read the wordless, white hot pain buried deep in my soul, I've never had
to explain with Him."
That is
exactly how I went through all of my twenties and early thirties in regards to
God. I wrote that two years and a summer ago, and it took me all that time
before I could actually begin to live in the knowledge, and the only reason I
can now is because Jesus came and took away the huge burden of shame and fear
that I had carried around with me, like a massive, empty edifice, a crumbling
iron monument. The Son of the Living God deconstructed it,
piece by piece, in the acceptable year.
Yesterday I
went to bed and read in the Bible that has the foot notes and corresponding
verses in it. I like going through and looking them up. It's kind of like a
treasure hunt; sometimes what I find makes sense to me and sometimes it does
not.
I start in
John. When I read in John now, I don't feel like Jesus is a stranger, or just a
character in the story, or even the unobtainable Son of God who once was here
and now sits at the right hand of God the Father, far, far above me, way out of my reach.
I feel like
He is my Jesus now. It is like reading a story about someone that I know in
person, someone that I dearly love and that means a great deal to me. I love
reading about Him, but I love being near Him even more.
I remember
reading it for the first time in a long time back in October and wanting to be
near Jesus. Now I read it, and I know I am. Also, I can read almost all the way
through the Bible without condemnation stopping me completely in my tracks.
This is a
huge deal. I used to not be able to read the Bible at all. I can handle the Bible
pretty freely now, and that is all due to Him. Jesus is my teacher.
If I don't understand something, I hand it
over to Him. If something terrifies me, I hand it over to Him. Everything I
have is in Jesus and the only reason I live is because of Him.
When I was reading in Ezekiel and being terrified and confused about the prophecies, Jesus told
me that I don't have to understand it in order for it to be true, or to know
what it is about in order for it to happen as it should. That's on Jesus; I'm
just with Him, all bound up in Him. I'm with Him in faith, but He is the one
that knows and brings it about. He and Our Father, anyway. Some things only the
Father knows.