The other day I received a Word. Some of us like to talk about important, poignant messages as being a Word from God, and just call it a Word. This was one of those.
I've signed up for messages from a wonderful messenger of God named Kathy Butryn. Her "Heart Change Place" exudes peace and beauty and restfulness and shalom. I love to visit that "porch" and receive a Word. When I receive a Message sent out from The Heart Change Place, it is often as if those four gifts had been mailed through cyberspace and arrived right in my inbox in a nutshell. This was one of those. A Word.
"Mailer 21" had a devotional link, called "But Lord, I want what THEY have", and I immediately agreed. Eagerly I pressed the link and began reading. But soon my mind began to rebel, and I quickly found my way to this place, my own writing space, alone, where I am free to write anything I want in whatever way I like about everything I see or hear anywhere. I brought my rebellion to my Facebook Notes space, and I was eager to post it.
Buried in the middle of the devotion from "Mailer 21" was this quote:
Nothing so hinders us in what we are doing as to be longing after something else;
in so doing, we leave off tilling our own field, to drive the plough through our neighbour's land,
where we must not look to reap a harvest; and this is a mere waste of time.
If our thoughts and hopes are elsewhere,
it is impossible for us to set our faces steadily towards the work required of us.
-St. Francis de Sales
I whipped out a diatribe, a long complaint, full of reasons I should have a right to be whining, a right to be "ploughing through our neighbour's land" instead of tending my own responsibilities. And in this Note I wrote so immediately, the blame for every one of my complaints landed squarely on my husband's shoulders. If he weren't off ploughing in another field somewhere all the time I wouldn't be left to slave away alone through life, and would have no reason to have placed my "thoughts and hopes elsewhere". I railed at the world, at de Sales, at anybody who might be brave enough to read my Note. And I was sure gonna "tag" a lot of Facebook people on this one, so they'd come by and read it and leeeearn from me. (Picture eyes glaring here.)
I began to go down through my list of "Friends", looking for my victims. They were going to see just how deserving I was of another plough mate, they were. So that when my announcement came that I was leaving this field, they would understand why. Oh yes, I was going to lay the groundwork well for my escape. I chose some close "Friends" and some whom I was sure would understand. Then I closed the window.
But I closed the WRONG window! Without saving my Note!
I posted a complaint in the comment section in Facebook, under Kathy's "Mailer 21" post on her "Wall". How dare this happen to me! I had words of WISDOM to share with everyone!
Then I went on with my day, getting my daughter ready for college, went to bed and woke up extra early the next day (who knows why, just what we do at this age I guess). I came to visit my Facebook "Friends" again as usual, and saw my little post under Kathy's message. I re-read "Mailer 21", and it struck me that I had COMPLETELY missed the message the day before. I had been focusing on the fact that I look longingly at other people's lives and wish mine were like theirs, when really the message is about something else entirely. Envy of others is in there, but what I was finally hit squarely in the brain with was this: I have been focusing totally on my husband's dire shortcomings, and very largely ignoring my own. I have been working so hard to change him, or change this situation somehow, that I have given up tending this field altogether.
My home is in disarray, dirt and dust everywhere, items strewn on the floor, counters, in the garage, up in the bedrooms. No order in any room. I do not keep a schedule of cleaning or cooking or mending. I go about on every whim of my own, making sure always to be there for my children, but completely ignoring my husband's wishes, which I have seen as demands. Yes, he does have his faults, and yes they are a little dire. But it is evident to me now that in focusing solely on his I have neglected my own, and also neglected the gifts I've been given: "...and this is a mere waste of time."
I took a good look at MY field for a change: I do not sing (I am a professional classical soloist), except when I am in church or at choir, which meets only rarely in summer. I have not finished a needlework project since Christmas (I often give needlework gifts to bless), except the frantically stitched bookmarks I recently whipped out for my daughter and her friends as a send-off. I make no plans for activities for myself or my family. I have not touched the flowers I planted outdoors as an afterthought last spring. Basically, I have not been tilling MY field at all for at least six months, probably 1 to 2 years. And for several years there has sat above our bedroom window a bare, bay window-shaped curtain rod, hung there firmly by my husband at my bidding, his fervent wish to have window coverings in our bedroom ignored by me in my frenzy of self-centered activities years earlier, then altogether forgotten.
I've been ploughing through my husband's land, which has made it impossible for me to set my face steadily towards the work required of me. This thought struck all in a twinkling. I do not know why. Perhaps God just suddenly got tired of the carrot, and didn't want to use a stick like on a donkey, but decided to blind me with the truth for a change. I do tend to be a "hit me in the head with a 2X4" sort of person. But it was just a twinkling of a 2X4, so I had lots of chances to forget it if I chose.
But I didn't choose. And God chose not to let me either. This blinding with the light of truth occurred on Tuesday. On Wednesday we took our firstborn, incredibly amazing, somewhat nervous yet more excited that ever daughter to college. It's just up the road nine miles (so our neighbor who works there tells us), but it really is a separating that occurs when one puts one's first fledgling out of the nest and hopes and prays she really will fly, as you think you have taught her, but aren't quite certain until you see it happen, which you won't for several months yet.
This was a new experience for me and my husband. We were in process, metamorphosis, ourselves. So much thinking goes into the changes the little baby bird is going to go through, but the parent birds have a part in these changes as well. I learned the first day of our daughter's college life that if we remain the same as ever we will be guilty of "helicopter parenting". So we must change along with her.
Two days was all it took. No, not even that, for at the end of the first I knew it had happened. I did not know what, but I knew something had happened. For as we left the dorm room where our girl was busy settling in and getting to know her room mate better, and we walked away with only our son, there was a feeling of something parting, something not of our doing, something not just of leaving or taking, but also creating, giving, but something irrevocable occurring.
We took our son home where he didn't have to listen to any old, boring-to-any-15-year-old-boy-and-many-adults speeches, and suddenly we were a couple again, wandering the hills of southwest Portland in summer. What a beautiful day it was! Gradually, without saying a word, the two of us, ever so slightly, began to pull back toward each other. Something was gone, and something remembered. Neither said a word about it, I guess not to break the spell. We found our spirits meeting in this new, sort of scary, somewhat painful experience we were sharing. I stopped thinking about his faults. I stopped thinking at all. I just wanted to stay in this place where we were actually working together, alongside each other, for the common goal of launching our baby girl into the world.
That night when we came home, we shared a movie together with our son in peace and harmony for the first time in years. I sat and simply relaxed. Oh my feet were sore and there were some other very good reasons we sat quietly and relaxed!
But in my mind the clanging of alarm bells was silenced.
There was peace, impossible peace, shalom peace, whole peace.
And I remembered Kathy's "Mailer 21" and the words of Francis de Sales.
The second day was even better than the first. As we attended classes together without our son, while our daughter attended her own orientation activities, we drew together again, silently friendly once more. We were a couple again. Amazingly. Unbelievably. And I began to plan how I would plough this field that is mine by gift. The first thing I'd do was exchange my old, rusty, beat-up, out-dated plough for a new one: trade in my broken heart for a new heart. I'd got a new lease on life, really, a new outlook, and I was not going to be afraid to use it! At the end of that second day I marveled at the mere idea that I had seriously thought of ploughing in another field.
I looked around my home yesterday, and I decided it is time to get out of it. I don't mean move out, I mean get out where there are people during the day. I realized I have been stewing in my own juices for far, far too long; I've been wallowing in the mire of my own discontent instead of bringing my wounds into the open and letting them heal. I've been ploughing over the same plot of rocky ground for years and years, really, not wanting to get entangled in other endeavors, yet neither doing a good job of ploughing THIS field. I've been like a mule on the threshing floor, threshing the same wheat for so long it has turned into muck, especially as I've never quite cleaned out my own muck.
I look out now with a new purpose on the world. Anything I can find to do, that I am able to do, will do, and I will do it. My purpose is not only to keep us solvent, my purpose is filled with my heart's desire, which has always been to make this house a home. These two bright days in the middle of such a dark week of my life, darkened by my ingrown decisions, have become the hinge on which all my life turns. These two days were full of growth, leave-taking, reconnoitering, sloughing off the old, putting on the new, and promises. These two days in the middle of this week are bright and shining, so bright I can taste the joy and the life and the vitality to come.
But they were only possible because a tiny seed was planted by the words of a "Friend", whom I hope to someday truly call a Friend, who sent a Word through cyberspace in a thing called "Mailer 21".
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
Charles Wesley, 1738
My heart is changed. My eyes are opened. My chains fall off.
And I am thankful.
