The Garden That Was

Last week my husband helped to transplant this clematis before it succumbs to the shovel of the Landscapers tearing out its old home. And so,

the clematis has moved again. 

Yes, this is the same clematis, from  this post. 

 

I had told the story about the unhealthy rose roots that had to be removed, so that the healthy clematis could then take hold and bloom profusely in My Butterfly Garden.  That Garden Bed was installed by the previous owners, and was one of my favorite (read prideful) parts of this home that we purchased back in 2004.  I labored over that Bed, added many more plants through the years, and enjoyed the hummingbirds, and butterflies, and even the hummingbird moths that sipped the nectar of the blooms.

But there came a day when my limitations and the garden's limitations collided.  

My husband is the one who pointed out the inevitable to me this spring:  That Garden Bed cannot continue.  The landscaping blocks cannot be shored up any longer. Certainly not by this limited gardener. It must be removed.  THE WHOLE BED HAS BECOME UNHEALTHY.

But I don't understand! How could I have learned such a beautiful lesson about "Unhealthy Roots," only now to learn that the WHOLE BED IS UNHEALTHY?

 

It reminds me of the words with my Counselor this week.  

There are ways of learning that serve us well for a Season. But when that Season is past, if we cling to those old ways of learning, then God has to dig up the whole foundation. I have had many such uprootings throughout my life.  Each uprooting brought with it a time of surrender and letting go.  I loosened my grasp and grieved at the partings, knowing that what is given to God is never truly lost.  Trusting that was the case, but never seeing the results of those surrenders, I pushed on to persevere in my walk with Jesus.

But here in this place of Finding Spiritual Whitespace, where I am learning a new way of being still with Jesus, some days it feels like my entire foundation is being torn out.  Spending time with Jesus, just to be with HIM; finding new ways to create, just to bring HIM pleasure; and resting my painful body just to preserve HIS Dwelling Place in me??  ...  Finishing the work, and working to be the giver served me well in the past.  But clinging to them now has become another form of Pridefulness.  AND THAT FOUNDATION IS CRUMBLING.

The NEW Garden Bed that will come after the old is torn out, will be much smaller and on level ground.  No more hillside tottering, and no more JungleBook plantings of excess.  And the NEW Garden in my Soul?  I will be content to wait and see what God brings, up from the QUIET.

I praise Thee while my days go on;

I love Thee while my days go on;

Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost,

With emptied arms and treasure lost,

I thank Thee while my days go on.

                  --E.B.Browning

"The Lord knoweth the soul of His servants; and none of them that trust in Him shall be desolate."

Psalm 34:22 KJV 

Mercy

 As I continue my study of Bonnie Gray's Book, Finding Spiritual Whitespace, I appreciated this week's chapter and the thought of listening for God in the everyday times of our lives, to hear just one word from Him.

Inhale ...

"Jesus, Son of David"

Exhale ...

"Have mercy on me."

 

It's the latest lesson I have been learning in this Season of Restoration.  Mercy.  Sometimes I feel like I should be swimming in Mercy, I've asked for it so often recently.  But this Season has wrung a NEW cry out of my heart that hadn't been expressed before.

My Doctor, and just about every website I've checked into, says that Fibromyalgia doesn't respond to many treatments except for one:  Exercise.  So I have been searching through You-tube Yoga Videos, trying to find a new and improved program to jumpstart my pain relief.

Over the years, I have "Sweated With The Oldies," "Walked Away the Pounds," and even bought my own copy of Stormie Omartian's '80's workout (remember neon-legwarmers?)  Just ask my Homeschooling Friends, we've run the gamut of pre-recorded Health & Fitness programs.  But my favorite workout was always an old-fashion Hike in the Woods.  My own goal is to get back to that ability.  I've dreamed about the day that I can do that again, and it's not coming fast enough to satisfy my own agenda.

Hence the push to "push myself."

I found a gentle yoga workout, designed specifically for those with RA and joint pain, several months ago.  And I've been faithfully using it most every day.  But last week I grew impatient when the results seemed so slow in showing themselves.  So I moved up to a more difficult workout. And there was not much sleep for 3 nights in a row.  The classic sign that my body was not happy with something.

In that night time silence, where I'm learning to quiet my thoughts, I heard Jesus whisper to me,

The pace belongs to me. I hold the number of your days.

So, I returned to the gentle yoga workout, and found myself inhaling and exhaling along with the routine, but new words were breathing their way into my soul:
  

Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.

If Jesus had mercy on the blind man who voiced that cry in Matthew 18, then surely there is MERCY waiting for us today also.  MERCY:  asking that the penalty Justice demands be held back.  Fibromyalgia demands a painful journey.  Rheumatoid Arthritis demands an immune system that is ruined.  And our chaotic world demands every moment of our time.
  

Jesus came to bring us a different path: MERCY.

Holding back the pain,

Holding back the ruin, 

& Holding back the chaos.

I want to trust His Timing, His Pacing.  But I know that all too soon, I'll become impatient again. So daily I stretch and breathe, and find, 

it is HIS breath in me now, stretching my SOUL, even as the pull on my muscles and joints moves to HIS rhythm.

I am linking up today over at The Faith Barista for her #OneWordCoffee series, where my word for this week is #Mercy.

 

I am linking up with Bonnie Gray and her book, Finding Spiritual Whitespace, again. As she explored the thought of Rest as it relates to being alone with Jesus, she re-told the story of the Mount of Transfiguration, and the Disciples seeing the Glory of Jesus shining before them (Can you imagine being witness to such an incredible moment?) But the fear that overtook them as the Mountain Trembled,  was QUIETED as Jesus spoke to them,  ALONE with only them.  

So, is there a quietness that my fearful heart needs to embrace in my own time of being ALONE with Jesus?

HUMILIATION and SHAME

Those two little words were never part of my picture of disease or illness. 

In the past, I thought I viewed people who were suffering through the eyes of compassion.  I hurt for them, and I wanted to find a way to help them. I wanted to lift them to Jesus most of all.

But something changed when I was the one suffering.  

I never thought about the humiliation that might come when I could not hold the coins in my hand at the check-out counter. I never thought about the shame of being seen as the Shuffling-One as I tried to move out of the way for the Hurried-Ones.  No, I had felt the shame of messing up from my own mistakes, or being hurt by another's wrong choices.

But how was it that I came to this place of being humiliated by my own physical condition?  And where did I pick up this feeling of being ashamed by my illness?  I was as shocked by what I was carrying around in my heart, even more than what I was carrying around in my body.

As I cried out to Jesus, I realized that God never HUMILIATES.   God brings HUMBLENESS, a lesson that I have asked to be taught many times throughout my lifetime.  I was ready to learn again, here in this place of Chronic Illness.  But I realized that before I could learn more about humbleness, I would need to learn how to quiet my heart from this weight of SHAME that I carry with me.

Quiet my own heart?  There is so much fear attached to shame and humiliation: Fear of being exposed, feeling naked in the shame.  I am not alone in this Shame Game.  I have borne the burdens of many others who also walk hunched over by shame. Could it be that Jesus is letting me physically bear this shuffling time, hunched over in protectiveness from the pain, so that I can let that compassion run deeper in my veins?

Jesus invites me in, where He dwells, into my most vulnerable heart.  And He whispers

HUSH, BE STILL, HEAR WHAT I HAVE TO SAY

I cannot be near to His Heart without feeling His heartbeat.  He covers the Shame of the naked ones, and He lifts up the shuffling of the humiliated ones.

"So I wrapped my cloak around you to cover your nakedness and declared my marriage vows. I made a covenant with you, says the Sovereign LORD, and you became mine." Ezekiel 16:8

The Lord of all, calls us HIS OWN and invites us to share in HIS GLORY.  When HE covers our shame, with HIS OWN cloak, then we truly are transformed, lifting our shuffling to gaze on HIM.

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

--Albert Camus 

 

Standing outside, feeling the sun warm my winter-weary soul today, I almost cried as I tasted the air of spring on my tongue.  

What does winter taste like?  I never realized that I would settle in to the place of dreary and grey and count it as normal.  In the past, Spring seemed always to wait around the bend for me.  A Gardener with Hope-for-the-Sun, that was me.  But when fatigue rules the mind, then spring flutters itself away to a corner where it cannot be found, or even dreamed.

I placed the walls around my heart, even as the stiffness walled in my muscles.  And yet, somehow, Spring does come.  And my heart is caught unaware, in this place of walls and dim lighting and cold.  Have you been in that place?  Pain can do that to a person: make them hunch and cower and run for cover.  Jesus says that He causes the weary one to rejoice, but where is the music when the room is silent?

  Psalm 18:16-19
16 He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
    he drew me out of deep waters.
¹⁷ He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
    from my foes, who were too strong for me.
¹⁸ They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
    but the Lord was my support.
¹⁹ He brought me out into a spacious place;
    he rescued me because he delighted in me.

That Spacious Place?  That Room filled with music?  That Taste of Spring? It has become my heart filled up with HIM; because He, the Lord, delights in me.   Pain or Fatigue or Weakness or Shame cannot stop His Delighting, because HE DELIGHTS TO RESCUE.

Oh, What a Thought!  Jesus delights in me, and He delights in you, too, my friend.







Once again, I am linking up over at The Faith Barista, with her book, Finding Spiritual Whitespace, where I am learning to find REST for my soul.

She speaks about a heart walled-off from the pain of the past. But what if the pain in the present is where the Heart-Walls are?  

Jesus delights to rescue me in that place of pain, and He will rescue you.  However grey or dim your days, Spring will come.

 

I am a rag doll washed up on the shore of a distant island

"Could it be that you have been brought here, to this place, as a kind of retreat?" It's the latest question my Counselor asked of me.

But this retreat has a shameful feeling to me somehow.

In the past, I have been the giving one.  I have been the listening one, and I have been the caring one. Only now, as my joints repair themselves from the trauma of this past year and a half of the Rheumatoid Arthritis Storm, my emotions are still being tossed in the pain and fatigue of this FibroState.  There is no stamina for the old ways of coping with that pain, let alone stamina to listen and to give and to show my caring.   The old me is covered in shame at that thought.

And yet the waves wash over me as I slump and flump, rag-dolling my way onto the island. 
Washed clean of the old
Quieted by the stillness of the slowing waters.

So I hear my soul responding: 

If it's Jesus bringing me to this Retreat

Then there is nowhere else I would rather be.

I have been reading the book by the author whose website I've linked-up with this past month, Bonnie Gray,  TheFaithBarista. Her book "Finding Spiritual Whitespace",  is steeped in a Soul-Resting-Journey for those who feel faint-of-heart.  But ironically, the traveling she offers is anything BUT faint-of-heart, requiring a new kind of strength:  being carried in the arms of Jesus to the island of HIS retreating, where He brings  HIS REST.

 

 

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me..... and you will find rest for your soul.....for my burden is light"

OH I DO want to learn of Him: 

how to find HIS emotional strength; how to know that it is OK to be the emotionally-fragile one for now; how to be that Rag-doll, resting in HIS strong Hands, while He keeps me on this Island-Retreat for the time that is planned by Him.  And in this learning, there is NEW and there is RECEIVING and there will be GIVING again, from a heart made light with Soul-Rest.