Remember When...

I sure do love my husband.  I’m convinced he’s the best man ever!  This morning he demonstrated his love by allowing me the indulgent pleasure of sleeping in.  It was blissful!  Sometimes he demonstrates his love by waking me early in the morning so we can enjoy coffee and conversation before the kids awaken and before he leaves for work.  Those are really special moments, too.  Every once in awhile, perhaps for a birthday gift or when he recognizes I could really benefit from it, he surprises me with a “Mom Retreat”- a night away by myself in the luxury of a hotel to spend time with Jesus and rest and relax.  He’s a wonderful husband, and how I’ve loved sharing my life with him these past fourteen years.

It was fourteen years ago next month that we went on our first date.  Ours was a whirlwind romance, and he most definitely swept me off my feet.  When I think back to those early days we shared together, I’m reminded of what a romantic my husband can be.  Early on in our relationship, he had the opportunity to travel to Israel.  He was to be gone for ten days, and prior to his departure, he purchased ten cards, wrote something special in each of them, dated them, and left them with the church secretary with instruction to deliver one to me each day he was gone.  There were also flowers and candy and picnics and long walks and thoughtful gifts, as well as many other love notes and special cards and fun dates.  I was romanced well, and Cory always made me feel like a queen.

Time has passed.  Days have passed into years.  The circumstances of our lives are obviously different now than when we first began dating.  Late night walks through the park don’t sound nearly as appealing as perhaps turning in early because it’s been a day of working and raising children and cleaning house, and our bodies need the recuperation that occurs from a good night’s sleep.  Romance has taken on a different look.  At times it’s tempting to look back on those yesterdays with the glitter and accoutrement of young love, and by comparison, today can begin to appear a little lackluster.  When that comparison starts to take place, it’s easy to think things such as, “Remember when….”, and rather than simply relishing the memory of a cherished moment, it becomes a pining for a time and place when things might have seemed “more.”  In actuality, the pining isn’t for a time or a place, but for a feeling; and feelings are such fickle things.  Immaturity manifests itself in a life dominated by how one feels or doesn’t feel…

My relationship with my husband doesn’t look the same as it did fourteen years ago; and it shouldn’t.  If we were still in the early stages of our love relationship, something would be seriously wrong.  We’ve grown together; we’ve changed; we’ve weathered storms and celebrated triumphs.  Different is not necessarily equivalent to bad; worse; wrong.  I still enjoy getting flowers and candy and love notes, and a night out on the town with the man I love is certainly exciting and wonderful, but it’s important for me to recognize the overtures of love manifesting themselves in these teen years of my marriage, as well as in each of the phases to follow.

So it is with my relationship with God.  I prayed a prayer asking Jesus to be Lord of my life almost thirty-three years ago.  I can recall how simplistically I viewed my friendship with Jesus when I was a child, and I’m struck by the measure of child-like faith I had back then.  I also recall various experiences and encounters I’ve had with God over the span of our relationship that were incredible and powerful and left an indelible mark upon my heart.  There’s most definitely merit to having memorial stones- those things we can look at and remember how God manifested his glory and changed us in the process; those times when we recognized with greater clarity his extravagant love.  Then we, as David did, can recall who God’s been for us and what he’s done and encourage ourselves in the Lord.  However, I believe one of the diversionary tactics of the enemy is to entice us to avert our gaze onto what was, not as a means of encouragement or restoring hope or eliciting anticipation of what God’s got in store next, but to make what is appear lackluster.  “Remember when I had this experience with God… If only I could go back to that time or that place… If only I could feel like that again.”

I’ve often heard ministers speak of God doing a “new” thing; wanting to do a “new” thing; praying that he would do a “new” thing.  So often, however, what we really desire is that he do that old thing he did that one time that made us feel so good.  But our relationship with God shouldn’t look like it did last year or five years ago or thirty years ago.  As we walk with him and learn with him and grow in him, we change; our relationship with him takes on the nuances of exquisite familiarity, and it’s his desire to teach us to recognize the overtures of maturing love.  I believe the new things God wants to do in me- in all of us- are in the context of the not at all new thing he purposed from the start:  to have intimate relationship with his beloved.  I’m convinced that there are experiences and encounters and adventures God has planned for me of which I can’t even begin to conceive, and that breeds such a holy anticipation and excitement!

Romans 8:15-17: “This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!”

Thanks, God, for ALL that you’ve done, and help me to be always mindful of your goodness.  Yet how wonderful that what I’ve experienced with you thus far is only just the beginning!  Remind me, though, that it’s all about dancing joyfully in the arms of my Father whose heartbeat is for mine!

Sibling Rivalry

This past Christmas, I received an incredibly special gift.  Not to say that each gift I received wasn’t, in its own right, special; for nothing given out of a heart of love lacks significance.  However this particular gift was given to me by a very dear friend.  In fact, to call her “friend” somehow seems inappropriate because she’s so much more than that.  God has entwined our souls with bonds of love that have afforded a God friendship to blossom and thrive into a spiritual sisterhood.  But that’s fodder for another blog entry. J  My point:  The gift given to me by my “sister” is quite special to me because she created it for me as a demonstration of her love for me as well as a means of communicating what I meant to her.  It’s a bracelet- beautiful, I might add- and it’s cleverly constructed of Scrabble tiles.  On one side, the tiles are overlaid with beautiful ornamentation, but on the reverse side, they spell out a word:  Treasure.  She chose that word for me because, she said, that’s what I am to her.  I knew she loved me; yet the tangible reminder of the sentiments of her heart touched a place deep in my heart.

Now, I’m not the only person my friend loves.  In fact, love just seems to ooze out of her; that’s just part of her makeup.  So there were others for whom she created works of art and heart as well.  The gifts were the “same” in that they were all bracelets and all held a message from the giver to the recipient, yet they were all quite different.  Each was created with a particular person in mind, each tailored toward the specific relationships they represented.

All of this came to mind recently as I was contemplating sibling rivalry.  This is a condition that probably everyone has some familiarity with.  Perhaps you’re a parent with children who constantly vie for the title of “Mom’s Favorite”.  Or maybe you grew up with a sibling with whom you always felt the need to compete.  It’s a part of our human nature, and it’s an area in which the enemy likes to meddle.  Feelings of inferiority and insecurity and being not quite up to par can plague us and torment us to the point where we can’t at all see who we are because our vision is obscured by what we’re not.

Sibling rivalry isn’t confined to biological families.  There’s an infestation of it within the Church- brothers and sisters in Christ viewing one another as rivals.  We’re tempted to look at those receiving accolades; those who seem to be accomplishing mighty feats for God; those who seem to have God-favor dripping off of them… and compare ourselves based upon who we don’t believe we are or could be.

The fact of the matter is, God isn’t impressed by us nor our attempts at what we’ve deemed holy or righteous.  Not that he’s against holiness and righteousness!  But I think his heart must cry out, “You’re not getting it!  I don’t want what you do; I want a relationship with you!  I love you!!”

As my friend created the “same” gift for several people, so Jesus gave us the “same” gift when he purchased our freedom through his death.  Likewise, we’re offered the “same” gift in that he desires relationship with each of us.  But this is where “sameness” ends and wild uniqueness takes over!  It’s very easy to watch how God seems to relate to others and, if we don’t see the same thing in our relationship, determine that something’s wrong with us or that he just doesn’t favor us as highly.  Paul admonishes us in Galatians to “not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse.  We have far more interesting things to do with our lives.  Each of us is an original.”  How my friend’s heart would have broken had I looked at the bracelet she lovingly created just for me and said, “Well, why didn’t you use the word ‘hope’ or ‘joy’ for me?  Why am I 'only' a ‘treasure’?  Why did you use these colors for me and those colors for her?  Do you like her better?”  The gift she gave to me was symbolic of her relationship with me and had no bearing on her relationship with anyone else.  The gifts given to me by the Holy Spirit are because of his love relationship with me and with no one else.

I think one of the ploys of the enemy is to cause us to begin looking at who we are in light of who others seem to be because he knows that “it’s in Christ we find out who we are and what we’re living for.”

Shine your spotlight, Holy Spirit!  Reveal to hurting hearts the source of their pain.  Let every lie of the enemy be revealed for what it is.  Raise up a generation of people who emanate your light and live loudly and in all the fullness of who they are in Christ.