"When we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The impeded stream is the one that sings."- Wendell Berry
I just wonder how many of you find yourselves in a season of WAITING; a time of indecision, a tossing to and fro, a conflicted mind and heart. I have a great desire on my heart that seems to erupt into a fountain of joyful possibility one minute - and then gets crushed and relinquished the next. I cannot really move forward with this little dream until God decides it's time. So for now the stream is impeded. But can I find a way to sing? Perhaps. Finding a way to sing in the impeded stream, I think, must mean finding the way to contentment right where I am. How am I to do that when it means I cannot move forward, but I dare not move backward? Allow me to quote again from Ann Voskamp's wonderful book Waymaker: "Do I have to figure this out? Or is God figuring it out and I just have to wait and be receptive?" I set the book down and let that question swirl around my brain for a while. So...that would mean turning it all over to Abba and then leaving it there. That would mean not re-visiting it several times a day, or looking it up on the internet, or chatting about it constantly with a friend. Right? Right. That would mean surrender. A total surrender to the One who already has it figured out, but dares not reveal it yet to me, lest I eagerly sail off into the sunset, only to steer into a wrong direction and cascade head-long into an unanticipated storm. Oh yes. The Waymaker. Yes, that means turning my sail toward HIM and then waiting for HIS WIND to blow. His Wind - His Holy Spirit - has all the charts. He knows the way. He peers far, far into my future and knows whether this little plan of mine would bring blessing or disaster. Above all, He knows whether it is in the will of God - or only in the wilI of Kelly! I have only to let God figure it out and wait and be receptive. "The sacrament of waiting can feel the hardest of all," writes Voskamp. "And yet - in all this waiting, this is what comes: waiting is a letting go to let something grow. Waiting is generating a greater grace." So this is really the good part of where I am right now. I guess this is what makes the impeded stream sing! Refusing to act before God acts. Finding contentment right where I am. "When we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey." It is an obedience to wait on the One who knows the way. And obedience brings the blessing.
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As the calendar turned over to a new year, I needed to find a new journal. Down in my study I uncovered a beautiful leather-bound journal that someone gave to me a long time ago. I had forgotten it was there, but that must surely mean that THIS is the year I was to find it and begin journaling in it. There is a title etched into the front and it says, "THE WAY TO LOVE JOURNAL."
It has always amazed me that the Lord finds a way to place a book in my hands just at the very time that I need it, almost as if the author had called me on the phone and imparted all this wisdom to me just at the very time I desperately needed his or her words. So, in this first couple of weeks of 2024 I find a journal called THE WAY TO LOVE and a book titled WAYMAKER (by Ann Voskamp). Nothing is a coincidence with our God! I am finding the way to love. The first pages of this book speak to the deepest part of my soul. "You can't control the way of the waves - but you can control the way of the sail." The way of the sail. Wow. This means I can concentrate on keeping my sail turned toward my Captain - Yeshua - who IS love. As I've been pondering this, and as I've abandoned the cry of "How long, O Lord," my heart has found a new love for my husband. It's not a romantic love, not even a grown-up love. It's a love that accepts him right where he is: a five-year-old playing with our five-year-old grandson, JJ. They are down on the floor together, making toy trains glide along wooden toy tracks, crashing the box cars and falling all over each other with shrieks and giggling. My husband now thinks that very silly things are funny and delights in laughing at kids' TV shows and playing with balloons. I needed to let this be okay. I needed to let my husband be a five-year-old and not sink into sadness. Voskamp writes, "Death of self is always what keeps love alive." In pondering the words, I realize that Waymaker was not written about a man with Dementia and his care-giving wife. It was written about every marriage. Every friendship. Every relationship. If each one of us kept our sails turned toward King Jesus, the Captain of our ships, we would not crash into rocky shores and end up in bitter arguments, broken relationships, and wrecked marriages. If we can truly say to another, "I CHOOSE YOU OVER ME," we will keep love alive and even find joy in the process. Voskamp continues with the theme of the sailboat: "Every turn says 'I choose you. I choose you over whatever is in front of me. I choose you OVER me.'" There it is! The sacrificial love that Yeshua taught: Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one’s friends. (John 15:13). Love is always laying down. Love is letting go of self - to hold on to the other. I am learning the true way to love! Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves. Philippians 2:3 |
AuthorKelly Ferrari Mills SubscribeArchives
April 2024
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