They say it gets easier with time. What they don't tell you is that everyday you will find something new that reminds you of what you lost. If anything, I'd almost wager at this point that it gets harder with time. But, perhaps easier, to trust God. What else do you do? Cry and admit defeat? No, in all things we are more than conquerors through Him that loves us.
Currently, I'm sitting in a coffee shop after having read a whole list of God's promises for the umpteenth time. They are soothing. I like thinking of God wanting good things for my life, especially when I can't see them at all. Last night, as I was falling asleep I asked God to show me himself..to give me a glimpse of what He was doing. I saw briefly a river and a tree. Then a gardener growing a tree. As it grew, he caused the branches to go this way and that. The tree liked to grow its own way and the branches became tangled amongst themselves but He made it beautiful anyways.
"He leads me beside still waters." That's what I heard as I saw the river. I didn't understand any of it as I fell asleep. I tried to imagine myself resting under the tree or perhaps cooling off in the stream. But then I could only think about how I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. How could a glimpse of a river give me any sort of hope for my broken heart?
This morning as I clicked open various emails to get them out of my "unread" folder I came across my "Encouragement for Today" email from Biblegateway. I have found much hope in many of the articles I've read and I was more than encouraged when I read the title of today's post.. "Planted by Streams."
The verse at the top of the page was Psalm 1:3 "He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers." That is when things started to make sense. Yes, He leads me beside still waters... but He plants me by streams of waters as well. The fruit yields in season. Right now I can say without a doubt that my season is wintertime. Many things have been pruned away from my life.. good things..cut off. Things look dead to me, life seems dead. But amongst all the nothing there is to see in my life, there is a blanket of white. Christ, in the purest form, has blanketed the dead things around me to make them beautiful. And when my Spring comes, the snow will melt away to water my soil and the dead things will bud to life again ( I hope) and joy will surround me. Not that I don't have joy.. I do! A deep, unmoving joy that cannot be shaken. But it is not an overwhelming joy. But I will wait for it. I wait for the snowmelt to flood my rivers of joy and bring life back into my resting trunk and broken branches.
During finals, my roommate who is a elementary education major, was working on a lesson plan about trees. She asked me, "Do you know the 4 things a tree needs to grow?" I began to think, "Uhm..Roots, sunlight, water.. uhhm.. I don't know.. dirt?" She replied quite enthusiastically, "Oxygen!"
"Oh right! Okay so if we think of ourselves as trees, the roots are our faith, the sunlight is Jesus, the water is the Word, and the oxygen is our Christian community.. right?" "Sure! That sounds good! I never thought of it like that." "Ha well.. now you'll never forget what a tree needs.."
True as can be.. I have all those things, Faith, Jesus, the Word, and Christian community. Take any one of those things away and you have a dead tree...or dying tree. God puts us where we need to be for maximal growth. He doesn't plant us somewhere and leave us to die. I know for SURE if I had not had such a great community of believers around me in the last couple months, I would have given up all hope and fallen into a deeper valley than the one in which I already walk. Praise the Lord for the blessings He gives us. Praise the Lord for the seasons we go through. Winter, to me, is the worst one. I hate being pruned, I hate having things cut off from my life, I hate cold and deadness. But the end result is always overwhelmingly fruitful.
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