Day 17-20: restoration

I will restore the years the locusts have eaten...

It took 40 years. From the time I was 2 and choosing the destructive path of jealousy until now, at 42. I'm struck at the number which I've only now just realized. 40 years. That is a holy number - for Noah, Moses, the Israelites, Jesus, the Apostles... but I digress!

Mom called this week. She asked me to come to her last concert. It has gotten too painful for her to play and endure hours long practices. I was struck a blow in the heart - I've only just begun to celebrate her gift! She even offered to pay for me to fly, which underscored the importance because my parents have never offered that and really can't afford it.

So I dropped everything. My parents play in several groups in the Loveland, Colorado, area which is rich with talent and culture. My parents have a music studio, my dad focuses on composing and arranging; mom focuses on teaching. This is new for her in "retirement." She put aside her own career for many years to support her husband and kids. Dad was the teacher. Mom did other jobs. But Dad told me this weekend that Mom loves teaching. She has 20 students.

Friday the kids and I made the long, beautiful drive to Colorado.

Mom and Dad also teach private lessons at an Academy and they are good friends with the music instructor. The school hosted it's spring concert Saturday morning, too. The music director chose one of my Dad's compositions to perform. When I was a little girl my Dad wrote music to the poem, The Lamb, by William Blake. It is so beautiful, one of my favorites. And I'd longed for years to hear it live but never have. I got to hear it for the first time being sung by a group of young women with beautiful voices, and the simple instrumental included my mother on violin. The piece sounded truly like a gift from heaven.

Afterward, my mother was greeted again and again by students who obviously had deep love for her and she for them. Over and over, they'd hug and then look eye to eye with sincere care. Valuing her drew them to her. Valuing each other drew them into relationship. There it was before me: the message from Day 3 God gave me - the cure for jealousy. I was so moved - not jealous, not bitter - but overwhelmed with pride and love for her and sadness that I had missed out on the joy of celebrating her for so many years. Missed out on drawing close to her. Their love for her helped me to see her with new eyes. God helped my heart get to a place to finally celebrate and value my Mom, so that I could grow close to her.

Sunday my brother's family joined us in Golden, Colorado to hear what turns out to be both parent's final concert with the Loveland Orchestra. They were accompanying the Golden Chorale performing Mozart's Requiem. My dad plays, well, everything, but in this one various trombones. The theme of the concert was, "Classic Farewells." Appropos for my parent's farewell, too.

Sitting on the front row right in front of my Mom, I could see her face, her fingers, every movement of her arms and expression on her face. I could even hear so well that I could distinguish her particular violin and almost feel it's vibration in my body. I drank in every moment of her playing like never before. I remembered being 2 like it was yesterday and I celebrated being 42 and sitting in the audience of my Mother's playing and thanked God. (See posts from Day 2 and 3)

Our relationship has been difficult for many years. Not just because of the jealousy that God revealed to me from early on, but because of my own selfish, destructive relational choices that are rooted entirely in my utter insecurity. My mother saw my vacuumous need and she could not meet it. I know it broke her heart that whatever she gave me of herself was never enough. That I so often rejected her because she wasn't what I wanted her to be. This trip, this weekend, this action on both our parts - her reaching out to ask me, my dropping everything to go - feels like God reaching down and turning us both toward each other.

Restoring.

He is healing me to be able to be in relationship with her, with others, and ultimately with Him.

Day 16: blossoms

...the flower before the fruit?

I'm not ready to say this journey is bearing fruit. But there may be some blossoms indicative of fruit to come. At the beginning of this month-long journey I wrote that I had realized how my feeling worthless was affecting all my relationships. It is in relationship that I am seeing these blooms:

Conversation. A fresh growth of confidence rooted in being God's, not my own creation, coupled with my increased belief of other's value, seemed to flourish a conversation I had with my husband where I was talking about difficult things but with great respect for him. The evidence of it was that he said he felt encouraged, not lectured.


Jealousy. That ugliness tried to break through the soil of my heart again (see Day 2 and 3) but I was awake, aware and chose the new path God lighted for me! It was a silly, silly thing and I'm going to share it so I continue to live in the light - but it will reveal the total, ugly desperation of my ailing-but-healing heart. The dog. Ok. My husband constantly praises her, tells her how pretty she is, how good she is. I feel jealous because I long to hear him say those things to me. Ah. But this time, I decided to share in his joy of how great she is and draw close to them, to him, instead of pull away in a pout. ! I felt so much better! Even more valuable - maybe because I didn't listen to the stupid lie.

Reaching Out. I am kind of shocked at myself these past few days. It's been sort of out-of-body experiential because I do things - really out of the trueness of who I am when I feel utterly free to be myself - and yet don't recognize this person. Oh have I really drifted so far from who God created me to be? This new solid place that has replaced the black hole in my soul ... it's a reservoir, but solid, it's a wellspring, it's set me free. I've connected with people instead of fearing them. Encouraged naturally instead of holding back in doubt. Embraced and included instead of turning or freezing. The beauty of it is ... alluring. I want to stay this way. In Him I live and move and have my being.

Day 15: immersion

Just trying to immerse myself in the message that God reverently, with awe made me. And because he is reverent, awe-filled, and wonderful, then I am. I can not express the resistance in my soul to this. A lifetime of lies must be shed ... so I just have to be quiet for awhile and let God do his thing in me. I am longing for his presence to overcome me and squeeze out all the lies.

A few months ago when I was driving, I heard a song on the radio that I'd never heard before. It was one of those that leapt at me and the words that caught me were, "Don't you know that you're beautiful?" No. No. No. I don't.

I hadn't heard it again until today. I caught more of the words, came home and found it on YouTube. Funny. This is the picture of the band. Immersed. Singing the message I need to hear. It's about a girl whose parents are getting divorced, which mine are not, that isn't my struggle. But the words really all speak to me. It sort of seemed like God singing to me, immersing me in the message:

Don't you know don't you know that you're beautiful?
Don't you know don't you know that you're beautiful?
Can't you see what you mean to me?
Can't you see what you mean to me?

Day 14: wrestle, cont'd

"... I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

My father-in-law is an accomplished cabinetmaker. A craftsman of utmost excellence. I have had the privilege of working by his side on some projects he's done for our home. His concentration, attention to detail, commitment to quality, high standards are all woven into each step of his pieces. I've watched his worn, beaten hands create smooth finishes on rich walnut. Watched them measure and remeasure, saw and re-saw until he gets a fit just right. And I've gotten to hold those warm, strong hands in moments of tenderness between us.

When people think of him making something and describe it as "skillfully made," they are really describing him, the maker, not the thing he made. The object is not "skillful" but because the one who made it was, that quality becomes inherent in the created thing.

So in this verse where "fearfully" and "wonderfully" are adverbs that describe the verb "made," is it also possible that these words are not describing the author of the psalm, they are describing how the Creator made him?

Fearful, in this context, means "reverent," "having awe."

If so, then God made us reverently! With reverence. With awe! As he thought through every detail of our DNA, and planned out each day of our lives, as his hands smoothed out the design for our being, he had reverence and awe. God has reverence and awe for us?

And so I think because those qualities were present in how he made us, they become inherent in us. We are reverently and wonderfully made by a reverent, awe-filled, wonderful Creator.

Mmmmmm.

Day 14: wrestle

I have been reluctant, avoiding, not really wanting to focus on these next several verses, 13-16.

Possibly because they are the most common, often associated with the prolife v. prochoice debate.

I think more because it is easy to focus on God and how great he is. This hits to the core of me. What I do not believe about myself.

Today I find a prodding, doubtful voice saying, "How can what David wrote apply to you?" Of course David is wonderfully made. But am I really?

I have more questions than answers. What does it mean to be "fearfully made?" What does it mean to be woven together in the depth of the earth? What does it mean you wrote all my days before I've lived them? Mostly, how can David's words apply to me?

This morning we printed out many translations and read them several times. I tried to research more about David, and about when we need historical context and when we can read God's Word personally. No answers yet.

Uncomfortableness. Resistance. Difficulty. Tangled. Confused. Wrestling.

Day 12 and 13: Ripples

Saturday I sat with about 8 women and shared my life-long struggle with feeling worthless, and what God is doing in me with this Psalm. It broke my heart to hear nearly all of them open up about feeling worthless, too. How I long for them to know and feel and live valued by God; how much more He must have that longing for all of us. How many more people feel this way?

Sunday we read the Psalm together as a family, each one sharing what stood out to them. The glimpse of a person's heart that is given in this kind of sharing touches my own so much. I watched my 13-year-old daughter read what I'd written on a day and I felt so thankful that she is learning this early in her life. And my 9-year-old son wrote a card for me that expressed how much I am loved, showing me that he understands. I asked him how he knew what to write and he replied, "I think God gave me a message for you, Mom."

I woke up Sunday morning with a new feeling. All I can ever remember is a sense of a dark hole in my soul that nothing could fill. The image of standing next to a stream but never drinking from it. Being aware of God but never turning him to quench the thirst for affirmation and worth that is so deep in me. But this morning I woke with a completely different picture, sense. I could almost literally hear the stream running. I am standing in it. I am bending over with my mouth wide open, drinking in. Every pocket and crevice I have is open to be filled with His living water. I don't see the dark hole in me anymore; only the sound of water filling me up; only the color of blue, clear and fresh water.

Jesus replied, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”


I just realized ... it is pouring down rain as I write this...

Day 11

I have spent the past week and a half immersed in Psalm 139. I had no plan, am just walking through this as open as I can be. The first week I concentrated on the first stanza (verse 1-6), this second week have concentrated on the second (verse 7-12)

As I look back over the time I've spent so far, I do see one overarching pattern -- and it is a surprise:

I have begun to have a real sense of being valued, being valuable, by focusing on God, not on myself.

These first 12 verses are all about God. How important that he began by turning my eyes toward him before he ever makes mention of me. These opening verses tell me what he does, who he is, where he is. That I would be on his radar at all is amazing to me. That makes me feel especially valued. Not by having him tell me how great I am, but having him show me who he is.