When the Dust Settles and the Wind Changes

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”  -C.S. Lewis

"Jesus came to show us that the gospel explains success in terms of giving; self-sacrifice, not self-protection; going to the back, not getting to the front.  The gospel shows that we win by losing, we triumph through defeat, we achieve power through service, and we come rich by giving ourselves away." -Tullian Tchividjian, Surprised by Grace

 

I marvel at the beauty of gardens.  Flowers and vegetables and beautifully broken seeds of life rising from dust of old…dark muddy heavy clay…supply the perfect environment to nourish…where newness and splendor spring up out of darkness into light.

I wish I knew more about cultivating a garden.  I know how to kill a plant…that’s for sure.  But to keep even a single one alive…well…that requires a lot of work.  And tender loving touch…and then getting your hands dirty.

I don’t really like to get my hands dirty.  I cringe when I see my kids playing in the dirt.  My oldest son told me the other day he sampled the rain water in a muddy puddle on the ground…and he liked it.  Can’t really make a Clorox commercial for a bleach milkshake.

And then the weeds.   They come out of nowhere it seems.  Uninvited and unwanted.  With strong cavernous roots penetrating earth on a mission to take out life thriving all around.   And if not completely exhumed they’ll just keep coming back.

Rick is home.  He came home on the 6^th.  I am so thankful to have him home…with us.  There have been many sweet beautiful moments of warm hugs and laughter and popcorn and long talks and bedtime snuggles with all kids in bed and family dinners and swimming in the heated pool when it is 20 degrees outside until ears and noses drip ice.  And lots of sword fights and wrestling and tea parties and pillow warfare and making the most of these moments.

He’s done all those man things I’m worthless in carrying out and even unloaded the dishwasher for me every time he has the opportunity, which is my very least favorite thing to do.  I’ve loved feeding him good food and laundering his clothes and holding his hand and just looking at his face.

I’d like to say that all is wonderful and blissful and we no longer have a care in the world.  I’d like to say that everything is back to normal and the burdens are lifted and we feel like a bird that has been let out of his cage.  But I want to be real…because a glossy picture of happily ever after only exists on the big screen and Facebook and I prefer living in the raw.

We get woken up by calls in the middle of the night with the halfway house making sure he is where he is suppose to be and random home visits when we’re in bed about to fall asleep and being called down for random drug tests right before we are leaving for church.  25% of his income goes out the door to pay for his restitution…really just goes right into the governments pocket so I think they should change the name.   

The kids wake up and immediately want to run in our bedroom and make sure their daddy is still here and want to know where he is and when he’s coming back and when he’s gonna be home and if he’s ever gonna leave them again.  There have been tears of loss from just the coming home of dad and realizing how much they were missing when he was gone.  And maybe even taking awhile to open up and let down their guard because they don’t want to have him ripped from his family one more time.

Rick says he feels out of sorts…like he’s in a bubble and we’re in another bubble and he doesn’t know how to come into our bubble.  He has been thru so much…

I would say all the changes have brought somewhat of a new jarring.  Like a post traumatic stress type feeling.  Like we’ve been living in survival mode and each dealing with our own difficult daily circumstances and just trying to get thru to the day he’d be home.  And the dust is settling and the wind is changing and there is an aftermath of what has been and an angst of what’s ahead and we just have to keep living in the moments…the Grace filled sweet beautiful moments.  Where gratitude for all that has been…and all that is…and all that will be is just part of His perfect and good plan in sanctifying our souls.

It has taken me a long time to even collect my thoughts and emotions to where I could write down what has been going on in my own heart.  

That cage that was so vivid and real is gone…but for me…I discovered that a fortress had resurrected around my own heart.  

There has been a lot of hurt this year.  You can only imagine when sinners rub up against each other in such close quarters that sparks are going to fly and hearts are going to be wounded.  

And for me…it took an empty house to realize that I had barricaded myself behind these thick walls.  But I wasn’t alone.  Wild weeds springing up.  Infecting the soil of my hearts sacred ground.  Bitter roots taking up residence where I had neglected to guard the intake of flaming thoughts and had rather entertained them with a royal feast.

And the feast feasted upon me.   

Those walls of self-protection are really walls of self-preservation.   Wreaking havoc on any peace or joy and fostering blinding pride.   And that bloody mess will just keep oozing all over.

“When my heart was embittered

And I was pierced within,

Then I was senseless and ignorant;

I was like a beast before You.” –Psalm 73:22-23

I did not like this state of my heart.  It grieved me deeply.  I kept standing guard rather than bending low and there was no victory.  So I started calling my people.  Those hands and feet of Christ that are there to love me, fight with me,  and help me see where I cannot see.  The ones who know me when I’m hurting and the ones who know me when I’m burning and the ones who have led me to the Living Water of healing to drink in Grace.  Love these women (and my man) deeply… 

I began praying.  PLEADING…for a heart change.  For healing.  For the Lord to give me clarity where my own efforts were blinding me to His will.  Because when you’re trying to protect yourself from hurt…you end up sealing your own coffin shut.  And the life of the heart will rot right there behind impenetrable hardened stone.  

“My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” –Psalm 73:26 …He answered in Grace…peeling back scales from my eyes…and meeting me right where I was.

There is a way out.  Of your own imprisonment.    LOVE.  The only medicine.  The only way to live wholly and Holy free.   Hiding is not the answer…sacrifice is.

Jesus took the pain…the hurt…the flesh ripping nail piercing insult hurling pain to the grave after he bled it brave on that Cross altar.   “For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: "The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me." –Romans 15:3

All because of His great love for us.  

And when new life walked out of that garden tomb after three days of death…He had conquered all that was meant to destroy.

I’d been working so hard on my own line of defense that I hadn’t even noticed my internal garden suffocating.  I was walling up the anger…the hurt…the resentment right in there with me.  Those walls were built in a spirit of unwillingness…to get dirty…to sacrifice…to lay down what was pleasing to me.

And not only get dirty…but let the dirty spill out.  Because “no matter the jarring, a jar of fresh water can’t spill filthy water.  When you’re upset, you upset what’s really in you.” –Ann Voskamp.  Or as Elsa says it from Frozen…”the wind is howling like this swirling storm inside, couldn’t keep it in heaven knows I’ve tried.”  There was ugly already in there…it had just been stirred up…so He could heal it.

The Lord has begun tearing down those cold ramparts.  Because He won’t let His loved ones rot…hide…cage themselves away from the Greater Love that has already taken the pain. To hurt is to be near to Him…to lay down that pain is to walk closer to Him…in His sacrifice…in His grief…and in His victory.  

He offers the only line of defense that not only protects from prowling lions and raging storms and slithering snakes…but also from our own rebel hearts.  “The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” –Psalm 18:2.  And His Love is the healing balm that bloodied wounds and broken hearts can rest in.

I let my feelings dictate my decisions WAY too often.  Sacrifice isn’t about a feeling.  It’s about humility.  It’s about Truth.  It’s about pointing to something greater than ourselves.  It’s about laying down all that our flesh screams for and walking in Love and taking refuge in The Fortress as we stand on The Rock and trust that God will deliver us from our pain and restore joy…and in that sacrifice…there is always blessing…always grace…and new Life rising from the dust of old.