There’s Enough

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As a small child I had a candy drawer in my room where I would put all of my candy. The only problem is that I would never eat it. I just wanted to hoard it away in my room for a time when I would want/need candy. Just in case. Pretty soon my siblings caught on and started sneaking into my room when I wasn’t there and helping themselves to whatever they wanted/needed. I didn’t find this out until years later, of course. Tons and tons of delicious confectionaries simply wasting away in an old dresser drawer.

Here are some things I consider myself gifted at:

Roadtrip playlists.

Taking random ingredients leftover in the fridge and making something edible

Writing. Editing papers.

Taking one look at the people I love and immediately knowing something is wrong.

Great skills, right? I’m sure your list is even more impressive.

Now imagine I took my ability to find the perfect song for our upcoming road trip and kept it “private” on my Spotify account. Of if I noticed that you were upset, and didn’t say anything or even give you a nice note. I put it in the proverbial “candy drawer,” to waste away. You’d be upset, I think. Or at least confused.

They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

Jeremiah 17:8

We start to believe that our trees are planted in the drought. We think that if we give away our talents, gifts, and expertise we will find no more left. We start limiting our root supply. There are different seasons, and yes, sometimes your leaves are a bit wilt-y. But if you have a tree full of delicious and beautiful fruit, God never intended for it to rot.

My Grandma’s house always seemed like a place of abundance to me. It still feels that way. In the summer we’d pick her berry bushes for hours and hours in the hot August sun and there would still be more left. Our buckets would spill over with more than enough berries for pies, crumbles, jams, and plain-old snacking. If you still had any energy left you could climb the ladder and pick pears from the top of the fruit tree. As if that wasn’t enough the rose garden covered the entire white fence in front of the barn. And inside the house? Not one, but two fridges! One fridge with an endless supply of ice cream and Pepsi, and another stocked with leftovers and ingredients for dinner. and you almost never leave her house empty handed.

God’s stores are even better stocked. He never runs out.

and he wants you to share. Not to compete, or edge out, or put down. To give and give abundantly. God loves us cheerful giver, not a frazzled, worn out, tree without a root supply. So give what you have to offer, which may not be what is expected, but it is needed.

It’s Finished.

Usually by the time I write a blog post about a certain topic, the feeling and energy behind it is no longer raw. Writing completes and smooths over weeks of thoughts, feelings, and unsolved riddles. Writing is in and of itself a solution. Have a problem? Write about it for a while and you’ll find that the act of writing is in and of itself a form of action. By the time you put pen to paper or keyboard clicks to screen you’ve come to place where you can put words to your ideas, and that’s a powerful statement. I  know that if I skirt around a certain topic, that I’m not ready to write about it. I’m still wrestling with it. and that’s ok. It’s alright to be a little raw.

I blame cancer for messing up my social life.

Yep, that’s completely rational. I hate that I had to move up my wedding. I hate that I had to move out of my house with my roommates with no time to say goodbye. I hate that I didn’t have the energy to hang out with with anybody for months and months. I planned a girl’s night at the place I was currently staying as an attempt to bring normalcy to a season of turbulence. Then we got the news that she had to stop chemotherapy and it was almost over. The flight was still in the air, and I just wanted to be grounded. I just wanted to land in a place that looked like home.

I still sometimes operate under the false reality that no friend will truly want to let me in, because they’re afraid of my pain. I know I’m not the only one who feels like this sometimes.

I don’t want to pray out loud in small groups. I used to prophesy in front of a hundred people.

I now avoid the medical aisle of the supermarket. I also used to avoid the medical aisle of the supermarket, because I didn’t need anything from that section. So I guess that’s the same, right?

I blame cancer. But the cancer is gone now. And I’m still here. And I have the agency to change. We all do. We can carry our scars like baggage or let them sink into our skin and accept they are woven into our story.

Just when you have collected the pieces and decided you like what you’ve created. It’s time to move again. It’s time to leave. Just when you’ve become comfortable and accepted the ways things are it’s time to move on again. Kicking and screaming. Or like a kid who sticks their head out the window of the U-Haul on a cross country moving trip. You just need some air to breathe. It’s time to get going again. It’s time to start planting seeds and harvest. It’s time to cry and it’s time to laugh.

It’s time to move on.

It’s time to take your broken heart and keep walking.

It’s time to start again.

The past is finished. Jesus died on the cross, and he said it’s finished.

Every once in a while, if I have a really busy shift at work where the line goes out the door for hours on end, I’ll continue to dream that I still need to slice cake the following night. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and be convinced that I have a whole Belgian chocolate torte in my hands and that there’s a customer waiting for me to deliver it. The only way I can fall back asleep is if I tell myself “We’re closed! The shop is closed!” The shift is finished. The work is done. Now it’s time to rest. It’s finished.

The suffering has, for now, stopped. But life continues on.

Save Your World.

 

You are not responsible for saving the world. There is a God who is much more qualified for that role. Regardless of how you feel about this last year’s election, you probably feel like you are responsible for changing someone’s mind regarding an issue close to your heart.  You want to save people from their ignorance. You want to save people from hate. You want to save refugees from harm. You want to save babies. You are responsible for what’s happening. You’re responsible to a God who is saving the world. Especially if you call yourself a Christian.

 

Politics bore me to no end. I’d rather do my taxes than research issues. But my disinterest in political happenings does not excuse me from trying to solves the problems we face. But I’m a writer and I care about writing. I have a responsibility to use my gifts and my talents wisely. I can sow discord or I can sow hope. I can be a spectator or a speaker. I can pretend to be impartial, I can pretend you are impartial. We all know we are not. Disagreeing has never been a bad thing.

Can we agree on one thing? You are responsible. You hold influence within the spheres you are. Do you turn away from those who are “other?” Do you box in and trap those who disagree with you? Do you beg for “peace,” when you really just want silence? Do you scream and expect others to listen? The middle child within me just wants us all to “Get along.” The middle child within me wants to say outrageous things to stir up some controversy and see what happens. Neither option is good.

You don’t have to change the world, but what can you change for the better?

Psalm 84:10 Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”

Better to be a humble doorkeeper for Jesus, than a comfortable man in living in luxury of evil people. Better to be a toe, or a foot, and stop pretending you’re the head of the body. Better to be a part of the body than a lonesome (and slightly creepy) body part struggling by themselves. Be who God wants you to be, and not who the doubters tell you is your only option. Better to be a toe on a healthy body than an eye of a body that’s diseased. Better to ask God who you should be than to wait for the culture to tell you.

So go, save your world. One person at a time.