Series: Transparency, History and Identity (Part 9)

For His returning we watch and we pray;

we will be ready the dawn of that day.

We'll join in singing with all the redeemed

cos Satan is vanquished and Jesus is King!

Hope was indeed breaking through.

        Analysis

In the next couple weeks, I started building my Reaching Out muscle and my Letting People Help Me muscle. I can't put into words how utterly unpleasant I find it. (Cough syrup, right?) I'm not sure I've found it getting easier so much as I've found myself cornered or desperate enough to have no choice but to go to the gym. Sigh. One day.

Also at this time I noticed the Good Shepherd repaying what the locusts have eaten through responses of other people, and that a wide cross-section of people. He gave me a handful of family members, some coworkers, some dear friends, and several ladies (and some strangers!) in our local church congregation. (As to the latter, there was a flood after I shared a transparent chunk of this story during a Women's Ministry event on the second Saturday in November. That experience could be a blog series on its own but I don't know if I'll ever be emotionally able to unpack it.)

Learning from other people, having them weep for me, be angry for me, be without words for me, and make that twisted-up "you didn't deserve that" face for me, it's difficult but occassionally borders on elation. (This is why I think it's the Lord doing it.) It's really worked on me. 

Hey! analogies work: it's like people are picking up pieces of my heavy load. I think it's like I could feel my spine unbend or my knees unbuckle. Hmm. It's something to have a caring someone hear you struggle, whip round to see the massive weight in your arms and exclaim, "Oh! I didn't know you were carrying that!" and then bolt over to take some of it or to shoulder up under it. It means something to be recognised where you are. 

It's hard to describe what it feels like when the same caring-type someone asks, "How long have you been holding that??" with that tragic I wish I had known tone that breaks my heart whenever I see it unfold with others. Broke my heart for me, too, but it's lined with hope and relief.

[Editor's note: Now I see why I've been putting off blogging. Rolling true things around in my head so I can synthesize some prose means I need to internalise the truth a little bit. I need to look at it in full light and take it all in so I can send it back out well. And me, I believe these words that I'm writing. These words are the opposite of the words I tried to use last night to coax myself into relapse. Ah, Sovereign Lord... You're too powerful and unrelenting.]

        Narrative

On the first  of November, I walked back to my own office from my boss', feeling weary and sad because I had confessed for the eight-millionth time to doing something I shouldn't do.

Our conversation had been cut short because someone had come to speak with him. I easily took the opportunity to slip out because I didn't really want to continue on the topic. I walked to my desk, sat, put my head down on my arms, and just breathed. My mind was swirling as it always is after such a confession.

A little while later my boss appears to try to console me, which I didn't deserve.

I didn't have much to say for myself but I did have something to say about a recent discovery I had made. Something was growing on my desk. My Easter lily died in April because (I assume) I didn't take good care of it. After it withered significantly, I pruned it as best I could and tried once or twice to revive the thing.

Then I let the pot of soil sit on my desk, not sure what I would do with it. One day I decided that one of the other thriving plants on my desk could do with a re-potting so I moved to clear out the lily's pot. I discovered that the bulb within was much greener than a dead bulb should be. So.. I left it, to see if the thing could be helped. I probably watered it another few times during the summer as I remembered.

Then at the beginning of November, at least six months since this plant should have died, I noticed a very green, very alive shoot protruding from the soil. I remember freezing in my tracks and my jaw dropping when I saw it.

I may have exclaimed something like, "Who does that?!" And I rambled to my boss, brandishing the pot, "Look at this! This should be dead! I've watered it twice since April and now it's growing! God makes dead things alive!" I think I sounded almost angry because I was overwhelmed by the hopefulness of the image or the metaphor.  Lord... You just do stuff.

On that day when I really needed to see a glimpse of His power, orchestration, timing, life-giving-ness, He let me see that this Resurrection plant was regrowing when I hadn't tended it. Amazing.

I've started tracking the growth because it seemed to be progressing at an abnormal rate. From the two-and-three-quarter inches that first Friday, it grew to three-and-three-quarters by Sunday. It was at five-and-three-quarters within a week and as of the time I'm typing, the plant stands a proud eleven-and-one-sixteenth inches. I don't know how fast lilies are supposed to grow but this one should be dead and instead it's quadrupled its height in four weeks and I'm impressed. 

I like gazing at this hope memento on my desk sometimes and I like knowing that I didn't make it grow. I didn't nurture it, I didn't help it. (Since I saw the shoot, however, I have been very attentive because I would like it to last.)

Next post? The grapefruit spoon.

Or, the wringer.

Or, why I long for the end.

Sing to the King who is coming to reign;

glory to Jesus, the Lamb that was slain.

Life and salvation His empire shall bring 

and joy to the nations when Jesus is King.