Tag Archives: memories

The Thorn and the Baby

life, , , , ,

Well, it seems about now, those of us who enjoy writing and like to share what we consider to be words of wisdom, have lots to say.

It’s that time of year.

You know, when amongst the hustle and bustle, we wonder about it.

Christmas.

spending, eating, giving, Pondering the negative twist of Consumerism.

Feeling guilt about too much shopping, too much chocolate, lack of sleep, too much talk and not enough

Stillness.

We reflect upon our memories of Christmases past. Happy Memories.

Or Not

Today, a few of us were sitting around a table preparing an event in honour of a new mom. Before we got to doing what we were there for, the greeting of the season passed between us.

Merry Christmas

A comment was made that most of us have heard before, A Not uncommon reply to the M.C. greeting.

Unfortunately it is not Merry for some and we all agreed wholeheartedly, knowing the truth of it.

Every beautiful, happy, celebratory event has the potential to be anything but.

It just happens.  For one reason or for another reason.

Christmas though, the celebration of the birth of the Saviour, brings strong feelings of happy or sad or even depression. Broken hearts, difficult families, financial strains, emptiness, loneliness, are the sad reality of Christmas, for more people than we think.

Joy is part of the bouquet of fruit that God says we are to BE. We are to BE joyful, along with loving, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled.  When we feel like it and when we don’t.

 If only it wasn’t so hard, To Be what we are intended to Be.

Thorns.

Prickly, painful, aggravating, troublesome, tormenting and

sent for a purpose.

Paul was a hard worker.  Gave his life following Jesus, showing the fruit he preached about. He had a thorn and nobody knows the particulars about it. I know enough about thorns though, to have an idea of the pain he endured, living with the one God saw fit to bless him with. Paul said he had asked God to take it away and God said No.

Where in the World do we ever get the idea that God will make our lives easy and free from hardship? Certainly not from his guidebook, His instruction manual, His Love letter to us.

God told Isaiah that even before the people cried out He heard them. While they were still speaking He would answer.

We are His creation, made in His image. From the beginning, His chosen ones have suffered and lived and died and cried out to Him for help.

He has always listened, at the ready to wrap His arms around and walk alongside.

Thorns make us dependent upon

HIM.

 I have a thorn.

Oh it isn’t anything near as bad as some people live with. It isn’t sickness, or abuse, or chronic pain, or an empty stomach when I go to bed.

My thorn is

 Darkness. Gloom. Melancholy and some refer to it as

Depression

Stormy weather for no reason.

The sun shines and that prickly, thorny, dark cloud rolls in, from pretty much nowhere. Sounds insignificant but believe me, I can get fixated on that pesky thorn to the point where I forget Completely

About Joy and the other fruit.

I start to concentrate on the grey and gloom and before you can say storm cloud, that joy joy joy down in my heart has vanished.

Joy is a choice

Bloom where you are planted

Be anxious for nothing

Just the time I don’t feel like praying is the very time I need to throw myself down at the foot of the cross. My thorn is different from yours, nothing like the ones in the crown eventually worn by the man who started out as the baby in the manger, but I can tell you it hurts like crazy. It’s part of my life. Likely will be forever, as long as I’m here.

I have been blessed, abundantly. Far above and beyond and that thorn of mine, when it rolls in, blinds me and binds me and robs me of the joy that is actually  Mine. It’s mine because of the gift.

The greatest gift.

The baby, perfect and sinless, came.

He came so that even though there are thorns here in this World, His Joy could be mine.  it could be yours.

Maybe you do a good job of hiding your thorn.  Maybe you live fully, wholly, despite it.

If I can admonish you, encourage you today, this advent season, let it be with this.

Don’t let your thorn rob your joy.  Carry on.  Talk to God about it.  Pour your heart out to Him.  I can tell you chances are big that He won’t get rid of it for you.  He won’t give you a life free from thorns.  They bring you to that place where you kneel before Him and tell him what He already knows.  You are sad, sick, weary, angry…needy.

He won’t take it away but He will do something better.  he will remind you that He will never leave you.  He will never turn His back and tell you to manage on your own.  He will give you peace along the way.  You can do it.  We can do it.  I can do it.

He will Do it.

He has done it.

Your joy is your choice.

I have so many favourite Christmas songs but this is one that brings me to my knees.

The babe in a manger

His life for ours

Love all encompassing

His Love is

More

 

 

Sunday night Traditions

life, , , ,

Memories make for fascinating conversation.  You likely have some great ones.

Maybe you have some sad, unspoken, even regrettable

ones.

It’s ok

I do too

Have good ones and sad, unspoken, even regrettable

ones.  They all get mixed up together.  Good and not so good.  God can take all of the mixed up good and bad and do remarkable, even miraculous things with it.

It’s Sunday evening.  Not late really, but

dark.

I made us, him and me, just two of us

muffins and fruit salad.  Not just any muffins.  This is a recipe from the past.

Thirty two years ago just about right now, we, the two of us, were new together.  Far from home.  That was before my heart adjusted to this place.  Before I could think of calling this new land HOME.  It was just beginning to turn cold and we lived in a dark place, in our hearts and in a little basement that was dark most of the time and he was learning how to do what he does so well and I was

well, I was learning to be grown and joy filled and God was showing me what it meant to Bloom Where I was Planted.  I wanted Him to plant me back, where He had transPlanted me From.  He said

No.

He took years to patiently show me, where He chose was better.  Oh I have stomped my feet and that is certain.   Back then, at the beginning of the learning to be a wife and then a mother, I decided to attempt some traditions,

Some “we always” for us.

I look back now and wonder at the miracle of trying and succeeding and failing and trying again and some ideas didn’t work and others stuck.

One of those ideas was for a Sunday evening refreshment, informal lunch.

You see, where I came from,

not geographically but historically,  my upbringing, my original family, we did things in a different way.

Well, maybe not different from how you did it but different from how it’s done now.  Our family, the preacher’s family, went to Sunday School and then worship service and then we came home to our Sunday meal.  For a few years we lived in that little community surrounded by farmer’s fields.  We walked to church and walked home and my brother was sort of shy.  He was a middle schooler then and he would walk home first.  When we finally got back to that little house because some of us have not changed much and even then we liked to stay until there was nobody else to talk to, until everybody else had gone home to their own Sunday meal,

he, that brother, had the potatoes boiling on the stove.   The roast beef or roast chicken that our mother had put into the oven before we walked to church that morning, would be ready to pull out of the oven.  We ate, we cleaned up, we rested, one of us wrote letters to her loved ones living a whole country away.  We had a light snack and then went back to church for evening service.  Sometimes there was a Fellowship time after but if not, we would come home and eat toast and drink tea and go to bed.

That was Sunday.  It was good.  It was simple.  It was quiet.  It was love.

We don’t do it that way anymore but back 32 years ago,  at our beginning, we still had our meal at lunch time.  Sometimes we went to Swiss Chalet, when we could afford it and sometimes we would come home to the roast I had managed to get into the oven early.  In the evening we had a snack.  Something light.  It was sometimes muffins, sometimes biscuits(scones but in the 80’s they were more often called biscuits)sometimes grilled cheese and most often with fruit salad.  As we welcomed little ones and they joined in our tradition of a big lunch and small dinner, we continued.  One of my husband’s very favorites and one he asked for regularly over the years, was this one I am sharing with you tonight.  They didn’t really have a name.  They were just The Good muffins.

I am calling them Muffin Scones and I made them tonight along with a fruit salad.  They are still a hit and I was told that if I made them again, they would be well received.  I wonder if my little ones would still like them.  I think I will check one of these days when they come back,

come home.

The senses were created for us, by Him,

God,

for our pleasure.

So kind of Him.  Really.

Memories are brought back from the archives of the past, to here and now

when I smell, or taste, or see, or hear.

When it happens I am thankful.  Even the ones that cause one more crack in my heart, I know they have been

pebbles, boulders maybe, on the journey God chose for me.

As I often do, I am listening now to

music.

Right this minute I am hearing Steven Curtis Chapman sing about loss and heartbreak and he is wondering as he sings, about God and His choices.

He says We don’t understand God’s higher ways

And I agree but wonder if the hardships from my past and within my memory are God’s higher ways or my foolish ones.

Whichever

He is so good to redeem my foolishness and make it into something  beautiful.

Steven is also saying that Without this hope in Jesus there’s no way we could survive.

I know people who say those words through tears gliding down their faces.  Those who have

lost

children or jobs or husbands or friends.

Just this week I said to someone that the thing about sad and hard is that mine might look not so bad to you and yours might look not so bad to me.  We all know though,

that it is.

Whatever causes hurt or sad or weary or broken or desperate

hearts

knocks us over.  Can appear disastrous.

As much as we wish,

we cannot heal each other’s hearts.  I told this friend that it’s okay though.

God made and holds and heals and embraces

hearts

Traditions are good as long as we hold them in open hands.  It’s okay to do it differently.  Things change and even so, to try something from

Back then

can bring back good memories and good memories are a gift.  Dig deep.  Are you sad?  Are you full of Joy?  God has done great things.

God says that we don’t understand Him.  That’s because He is God.  We don’t need to know everything.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.

For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”