Learning Along The Way

Love, Loved, & Lovable

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Quia amasti me, fecisti me amabilem Augustine

Augustine wrote these words about the One who loved him best. God.
The same God who spoke to Abraham, who talked with Moses, who inspired Rahab to hide the spies, who led Ruth to follow Naomi home, who called David A Man after His own Heart, who gave Solomon wisdom, the prophets something to talk about, and Who Came in the Flesh so that we could comprehend Him.

Jesus. He came first as a babe and will come again as a conqueror. The in between is where we live. It’s where Augustine lived. And Thomas a Kempis. And Brother Lawrence. And Galileo. And the millions who have gone before and who are walking here today. God was. God is. And God will forever be.

How do we relate to this very other being? We learn to love.

“Because you loved me, you made me able to be loved.” These are Augustine’s words translated to english.

Because God has loved me I am able to be loved. God has not gotten a great deal in me being part of His family. I am wayward, unfocused and generally a problem child. But He chose me. He calls me Friend. I am His beloved. If you claim His saving grace, these things are true of you too.

Because God has loved me I am able to be loved. He offers us gifts throughout the day. Love gifts. A stranger’s smile. The sight of a beautiful bird. The laughter of children at play. To simply say Thank You for each gift is a beginning. An acknowledgement of His Presence, His care, His love. He offers out of love. It’s His very nature.

The acknowledging of God’s gifts can be part of our day, part of our rhythm. Pausing the music or talk radio in the car and saying Thank You for your ability to hear, to understand, to appreciate the sounds coming out of the radio. Saying Thank You for the good scent of food cooking, or the warmth of a sweater on a cold day. All these are simple ways to be in the process of learning to love, learning to love the One who gives you life.

How will you adjust your rhythm to acknowledge God and His good gifts today?

Quia amasti me, fecisti me amabilem

Sunflower Life Lesson #2–Develop Strong Roots

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When I first talked about the amazing gardening experience, I briefly mentioned that, although the sunflower was lying down among its neighbors the cantaloupe and watermelon plants, it was not uprooted.  The sunflower was already 5 feet tall when it fell.  That means there was a deep, strong root system already in place so that the plant didn’t die when this trauma hit.

 

What life lesson is here for us?  Develop Strong Roots.

 

The question is: How does one do that exactly?

 

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you already know that I have weathered some really difficult seasons. I would guess you have too since life is not easy!  It’s funny that we think it should be; if we do all the right things then the result will be a good healthy life, great kids, a spouse who treasures us, a house with a white picket fence and a garden without weeds or gophers.  Ideal perhaps, but not reality.

 

How do we develop strength to withstand trauma that comes out of nowhere?

 

Develop Strong Roots.

 

Strong Roots take time, nourishing soil and water.

 

Time—a regular habit of spending time reading, hearing, and thinking about God’s Word.  Investing in your soul takes your time.

 

Nourishing soil—Jesus taught about soil. The soil of our heart can be nourished by praying for God’s work in our lives; memorizing Scripture; humbly surrendering to growth and change that He leads us to make that results in a changed heart more like His.

 

Water—Jesus told the Samaritan Woman “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”  Jesus is the Gift of God Himself to each of us.  He lived the life we should live, died the death we deserve, and was raised from the dead so that we may have hope knowing that our physical death has no lasting victory. His Spirit will live in you, to strengthen, guide and empower you when you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;  for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

 

Life Lesson #2: Develop Strong Roots to be able to be lifted up by the Master Gardener when the difficulties of life knock you down.

“ Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. “For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.”

Know that I am praying for you, dear reader: that you call on the name of the Lord; that you nourish the soil of your heart in Him.

 

Sunflower Life Lesson #1 –Desperate

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I showed you this picture yesterday.  I was struck by how desperate this sunflower was to point toward the sun.

 

This plant absolutely twisted its stem into a crook shape to face its head upward.  That took a lot of the plant’s energy.  But because it’s in a growing season, the plant didn’t even stop growing!

 

Are my daily time investments keeping my head upward?

 

I wonder…how desperate am I to point myself, to reorient my life, no matter what, toward the Son?

 

Do I hunger and thirst for a right relationship with God or am I just saying ‘I’ll get to that later when my to do list is complete’?

 

Some questions are rhetorical; asked for the sake of discussion without having or needing an answer.  Some questions are direct and in need of answering.

 

These questions need my attention.  They need your attention for your life, too.

 

How desperate are you?  Enough to change your whole life focus?

 

 

After the Fact

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Mother’s Day has been hard for me.  My mother passed away five years ago this June 26.  But Mother’s Day was hard before she was gone.

 

On her deathbed she blessed my sons, she thanked my husband for his parenting and love.  She spent time alone with my dad and with my brother. And for me?  Not a word. An angry glare in silence.  A glare I had seen many times in my life.  I met that look with the same little girl hopefulness: “ I love you Mom.”  On her deathbed, she turned her face away from me and muttered, “I love you too”.

 

What would possess a mother to reject her child time and again all the way to the end?

 

A lifetime of hurts.  A lifetime of longing for affection and acceptance.  A heart that yearned for simple gentleness that was not given.  That was her legacy to me.

 

In these years of healing since her passing, I have learned I have much for which to thank my mother.

 

She taught me to be introspective.

 

She taught me to be resilient.

 

She modeled a strong exterior and how to be a hard-working woman.

 

She showed me how to suck it up when life was tough.

 

She also taught me what kind of mother I wanted to be.

 

Since her passing I have leaned hard upon the Lord as I learned to trust Him rather than seek my mother’s approval.  In place of performance I receive grace.  I am accepted, as is, no performance necessary.   These are Truths that I have Known in my head but now Know and Experience in my heart as well.

 

I didn’t realize how desperately I was seeking after the wrong acceptance, conditional acceptance.  All the while God was patiently waiting to remind me that He already accepted me and took care of the needed performance on the Cross of Christ.  I’m forgiven and accepted because Jesus was rejected and condemned.  What an exchange!

 

Now that Mother’s Day is past these reflections may seem a little after the fact, but even today I recognized again how deep these wounds go and how God’s love is deeper still.  My prayer is all will come to know how deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure.

Learning to Listen

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This lovely sunflower is a volunteer in my garden.  That means I didn’t plant it.  Sometimes volunteers come from the naturalizing of plants.  Sometimes they come from birds.  And sometimes a volunteer shows up from long dormant seeds that have finally received enough water to sprout the life hidden within.

How seeds come to life in unlikely places is such a mystery!  All the conditions for growth have to be there for the seed to be successful.   Sometimes the conditions look lush and it makes perfect sense a plant would sprout. Sometimes the conditions look harsh and it’s amazing a seed would even sprout not to mention take root and flourish!  I do some preparation for my garden but really I am a neglectful gardener.  When I see a volunteer thriving in my yard I’m thrilled!  That new life in an unlikely place makes me think of a picture from my  life.

My adult life looked pretty straightforward: finish college, earn a teaching credential, start teaching, get married, start a family.  Pretty standard stuff.  But the path wasn’t  straight and easy.  I came around a bend and a Big Boulder blocked my path.  There was no where to go!  I sat down, overwhelmed by this roadblock in my otherwise perfect life.  I sank into despair.  As an untrained listener, I thought whatever happened next was on me to figure out.

I spent a lot of time trying to see how to get over this Boulder right in front of me.  I tried the climbing technique of “bouldering”: finding hand holds and foot holds to scale the side of it; I tried working my way around it; I even tried chipping away at it, all in hopes of breaking it down to continue on the path I thought my life should be on.  I made some headway and climbed up almost to the top ready to jump over onto the other side when my foot slipped and I slid down a different side, crashing to the bottom, ending not on the path, but off in the weeds!  I was a mess!  Trying to make something happen on my own without seeking help landed me in a heap and back into despair!

It was after this second detour that I finally caught a clue; I can’t navigate the path of my life without guidance.  I needed to seek  wisdom, learn to listen and apply wisdom to my life.  I submitted myself to the One who transplanted the seed of my life and began in me the process of sprouting, growing and bringing forth new life.

Learning to listen to the Voice is a process.  I thought there was a to do list to work through that would equal great growth;  “I’ve done my chores now bless me Father” kind of relationship.  It was a starting place for sure.  But God calls us forth to so much more from so much less.  He wants each of us to simply be with Him.  Learning to listen to His voice whisper in the wind, speak in the hush of snowfall, or call over the ocean waves crashing on the shore has taken lots of practice.  Other than the Word, the most powerful little book that has been a tool of listening for me is Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.  Learning to listen to and be with God was Brother Lawrence’s greatest aim.  Whether peeling potatoes in the kitchen or doing daily chores or in times of prayer with the brethren, Brother Lawrence developed the habit of listening to the One Who is always present.

We can too.  There are so many challenges to listening in our information saturated culture with the “entertain me now” mindset; the challenge to push back against the noise to find even a moment of silence and solitude can be more of a battle than a challenge!  If you are in this process of learning to listen, I’d love to share in this challenge with you. We need to be in community with others who, like Brother Lawrence, desire to be “present to the Presence”.

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