Marigolds

Luke 12:28  And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't He more surely care for you? 

God has surely cared for me. Through flood and drought and day and night, He continues to water me and prune me and gently unfold each blossom of beauty He has put inside of me. 

My marigolds grow big and full when they are pinched. When the dead blooms are removed it causes them to blossom all the more. I have to remove the dead stuff to get to the beauty. God does the same for me, for you. But there is one difference, we have to allow it. My marigolds don't really have a choice if I pinch them, but I can ignore God's work in my life if I so choose. Removal of the dead stuff can be painful and scary because it is what I am used to. But when I trust my Father and allow His work to be done, I am never let down by the results. In fact, I become more free and begin to bloom the way He had in mind for me to bloom all along.

I have often thought that I need to be doing something all the time for this blossoming to happen and to make my life purposeful. It never works out that way. Sure, some good things happen and I may feel productive or as though I have earned another day, but I have not often rested in the Lord and trusted in Him to do the work. I have not often just sat and worshiped Him, and watched in awe, forgetting myself. 
I am learning though. Learning as I let go of my own ideas of what my purpose may be. Learning as I trust Him more and more to do the work. He is the master gardener after all. Not me. 

As I was pinching my marigolds this morning, I thought, "Perhaps this is my purpose today..." To do nothing more than pinch marigolds and talk to my Father and pray for my family and friends. It is most likely that much more got accomplished than if I had run around all day wearing myself out. 
This is not an entirely new concept for me, but it is one I have not really understood until just recently due to stress related physical problems.

As I begin to learn to rest and allow God to do the work, I am seeing much better results than when I was laboring, trying to make things happen. Amazing right? Well not really, of course! I am finding the real me in the process. The one created by God, not the one reacting to the world around me. Perhaps if  I let Him take off all the dead stuff I will bloom for Him the way He intended and He will be glorified.
Perhaps I have nothing to do at all except to let Him work and water and pinch. And love Him!

VOMIT

My chiropractor, Dr. Barrington, keeps a white board up in the lobby with general health info, news and encouraging things on it.

This is the sign I saw as I walked into his office the other day. 

So, of course I said it out loud and looked at him questionably.

With a secretive, knowing grin, he took me back for my adjustment and told me his intention with the sign was to remind him to ask his patients this question:

"If you go out to a nice dinner and then come home and two hours later you are sick and vomiting, would you say you are healthy or sick?" I knew it must be a trick question but I went with the obvious anyways and answered, "I would have to say sick- but probably from food poisoning." Well of course that was the wrong answer, but partially correct. He went on to explain that because it WAS food poisoning and my body was getting rid of the offensive intruder, that means I am healthy because my body was doing what it was supposed to do.

Ahhh, of course. Makes sense, right? He went on to apply that to how chiropractic care 

( which has been close to miraculous for me, I should add ) works and how the body is wonderfully made to heal itself when things are opened up and flowing correctly. 

 

Now, I HATE vomiting. It is something I will avoid if at all possible. Besides the awful sick feeling, it also makes me feel out of control. So for me, this was an important new perspective. I should not try to stand in the way of my body's natural way of healing itself.

As I went on with my day, another application occurred to me. My pastors wife had encouraged me through my grief process to write all my feelings out- she called it vomiting on paper. I did a couple of times, but I wanted to avoid the out of control sick feeling that thinking about all the hard stuff gives me.  Thinking about this, I realized I have the same aversion to expressing strong emotions as I do to vomiting. Dr. Barrington's analogy certainly applies here as well. Letting go of all the ugly emotions inside may make me feel like I am sick, but would actually mean I was healthy and functioning correctly by expelling them. This is also why God gave us tears, we are more healthy when they flow. I struggle with this because I am not healthy emotionally, I do not function as intended for various reasons. This insight has been extremely helpful to me however, and I am praying that God will heal me and help me stop fighting against vomiting all that hard stuff, even if it means feeling out of control occasionally.

In order to get my body adjusted and working properly again, I went to Dr. Barrington three times a week for quite awhile, now I only go twice, and soon I will probably just have to maintain once a week. If the analogy follows through I could start by going to God ( the spiritual chiropractor) a few times a week in prayer just for the purpose of expressing all that hard stuff inside, letting it all out to Him who knows it is all there anyways, reading the Bible and allowing Him to adjust my spirit as my earthly emotions are released. Perhaps in time then I will have less and less need for adjustment ( not less need for God!) and my spirit will function the way it was intended to. 

It all makes perfect sense, doesn't it? 

I love how God works through people and whiteboards!