Year - Myself

There are times that I forget myself. I don't remember that I am a person that other people might be invested in. And it is not that I think people dislike me, but I am often self-aware of my flaws and shortcomings, and how much I admire and love other people that it does not occur to me that I am as loved.

I am more comfortable with giving than I am receiving, and it is something that God has been working on with me. I am always grateful to receive love and affection, but it does not strike me as something I am entitled to have. I like earning things. I like doing work for others and the gratitude I get back from a job well done. But God doesn't work that way. He loves without expectation of a reciprocal return of being worthy or deserving of that love. And it always surprises and inspires me. I want to live into that love and mirror it in my life. But I am forgetful that others might love me too. And I am ever surprised and delighted to discover that.

God's mercies are new every morning, and I am forgetful of that as well sometimes. I wake up some mornings and don't feel especially hopeful or gracious. But God is both those things and so much more, and I want to be like my heavenly Father and learn to have that hope and grace. He is patient with His children, and gives good gifts beyond what it would be fathomable to know, and as needful that I don't even realize I cannot live without those supports.

Recently, I remembered the female fronted rock group Flyleaf, and wondered what they did beyond their debut album. So I looked them up on Spotify and learned that they had a cover of "How He Loves" recorded at a live concert. And I was able to hear the message of the song anew, in an unfamiliar context, having to reevaluate the lyrics. It was such an unusual choice that I had to really consider the song beyond how I took it for granted at Sunday worship services. I am as guilty of consumerist tendencies as anyone - what becomes familiar and known by rote sometimes does not have the same impact on the heart and mind. But the song's lyrics are beautiful and touching. "How He Loves" is such a sweet reminder of God's overwhelming care for His children. And I am so appreciative of that reminder in the strange package of a Southern heavy distortion rock group.

My family threw me a surprise birthday party after a long day. I was tired by the day's events, and had limited capacity to react properly. I was extremely surprised and flattered, but also mainly baffled. I am such an advocate for my family and their vast array of talents, skills, and loves, that I forget that they love me too. Not for what I can give them, but for me being me. I live with me all the time. I can be self-aware & occasionally self-obsessed when lost in my own thoughts and logic for how the world works and makes sense to me, but I am rarely self-impressed. The things that come natural to me I take for granted that anyone else could do because it comes easily to me. I admire traits I lack because I know that some of them are difficult for me to perform myself and I am glad to know that they are humanly possible by seeing them modelled in another. I am better at copying something when I see an example of how something can be done. And I am still learning, and am ever in the process of becoming and striving to improve and progress.

But I forget that others love me for who I am, not for any value or worth of the things I can give them. There is love that is beyond earning, and past understanding. I am so grateful for that love, but ever surprised at its depths. I think of Psalm 139, but especially verse 6. And in lacking that understanding, I can fight the flood or accept it as beyond me and accept as much of it as I can contain, hoping to lead others to do the same by pouring into their lives from the excessive love I have received. God bless my family for this reminder. And may I always remember this love with the same wonder as the first time and cherish those around me as well.

X - Nihilo

 How to create something beautiful?:

It is a mixed message. A question and a process for me. Only God can create from nothing to something. And looking around, I see beautiful things. Broken things too as time has had its way and people have worked their wills to try to shape resources for their own or society's benefit. But looking to what God can do, I sometimes feel powerless in comparison. What is my best efforts compared to that? A child's scribble, always looking to nature and seeing my own imperfections in capturing the wild beauty and brutality of the originals.

There are some times where it is tempting to look to the heavens and ask why God has allowed this disconnect to occur between what I feel to be right, righteous, and true with how I am unable to recreate or fix the brokenness. Somebody should create bumpers or safeguards so we do not mar the beauty of creation. Why shouldn't God police nature to be unbreakable?

But with love comes risk, and God loves us enough to allow mistakes to be made without helicopter parenting us to not break things. He sees us as more precious than many things in creation, "very good" in Genesis 1:31 terms. But with that love comes responsibility to be caretakers and stewards of creation, then because of sin, that job was made harder by the world's brokenness in the Fall from grace.

Everything suffers from that choice and it would be convenient to point back to that moment as to when things went wrong. Through the lens of history to blame that forebearer for everything that followed. But I don't want to dwell on that. What happened happened, and it does not do to wonder what might have been had we not fallen as a race. Perhaps a convenient myth or fantasy to frame the world, but I don't know. I only know what I can do after I came to life in this world.

So what to do? How to make something beautiful? I crochet quite a bit. It calms me to bring order to the chaos of raw yarn to shape it to my will. But I don't always succeed. I try to love my creations because I made them and spent time with them under my fingers. No one else can quite love a creation like a Creator, having pride in the unwitnessed private moments of inspiration, and seeing the flaws of what could have gone better. But ever trying to improve in the successive attempts. I feel relief if someone else finds joy in my finished product, even if it is a different joy than my own. I love passing objects to others that they might have a new home - a puzzle piece that fits. Like the Realness of the Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, or the beginning of Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in which it was dreamed that a book can find an reader who needs and loves it. That the love of a right object at the right moment can connect people.

But how to create something beautiful is a process of patience, hope, and love. To forgive yourself and others for their faults and see the potential of how sharp and broken edges can catch on other things and drift together, connecting lives. Some times it hurts when something or someone connected to your life presses into your core self, where you are vulnerable in your own identity. But such trust and long-suffering, though risky, is a deep connection shared. If an object or person is withdrawn, from that deep core connection, it is painful and it hurts to lose something or someone who you have given pieces of yourself.

So how to create something beautiful? It is hard to put into words because what is deep inside me is hard to communicate to others. It does not fit into a universal description that I can explain clearly to others. I can talk around it to try to give the shape of what I am trying to say, but Christ spoke in parables, in seeds that grow in the hearts of his listeners to gain their own unique shape of understanding when mature. I have hope that my life and my work can be beautiful things too. But when you see something beautiful that is too overwhelming to your senses, you want to share it by spilling it to others to witness. C.S. Lewis wrote about this longing for beauty to be witnessed by others and recognized. And I see God in that spark in His creation, and in the moments I myself am able to take pride in something I have made. A sense of peace and rightness that I have made something "very good."