I’m just home from seeing my boy graduate college.  It took him seven years but not for not being full of living.  He spent a year in Africa in film school, He joined the navy reserves so he could help finance his own college studies.  He rode a helicopter and took news footage.  The boy was busy.  But today, he has that behind him and Africa in front of him.

I sat across from my boys’ father at dinner and whispered gratitude heavenward that we’d come to the place where we could join forces and love our kids with no animosity and send then skyrocketing to their lives happy.  It has been a bumpy journey but we’ve learned how to navigate the turbulence of the early years of divorce and come to a place of peace and positive regard.

I fought hard this week with assumptions and selfish ambition.  With insecurities I thought were in the distance.  It loomed large and I lashed out harsh at a boy I love and broke trust that feels like I’ll never be able to mend.  I learned that what I wanted was more important to me in that moment; to feel okay with everything, to speak truth reckless without wrapping it in gentle.  I taste regret and a knot forms in my stomach as it churns acid.  I’m not enough to want to forgive, I “hear” in my head and I struggle to lay it to rest.  I don’t know what the future holds, and I’ve no choice but to abide and accept what will be.  It niggles like worms in my brain.  I’ll never be enough to love, plays singsong mocking in my head.  Go to the back of the line.  Game over.  You lose.  Send in the replacements.  I can never quite shake the feeling that when I mess up, I’m gone.

And it’s then that I realize, it’s still about me.  And I bring what I can’t shake to Him.  Again and again.  He has me in His hands.  I believe that.  When will I ever be all the way together?  I saw the assault of social media on my spirit and my mind start to lie to me and busy me up with too many words and not enough “likes” and it was pathetic.  I learned I need to work to hear truth and sometimes I need to use the off button to stop the advertisements.

“Our whole class loves you!”  “I see Jesus in you”  “Do you realize how people are drawn to you?”  “NO,”  I say flatly.  I cut, I wound, I attack. I’m replaceable.  But  I put these affirmations in my heart box and receive them from my Papa God.  He’s putting His hand on me; not to point to me.  To reassure my fumbling self this week…..”Rest easy, my girl.  I am showing Myself strong in your weak.  That’s as it should be.  I have you right where I want you.  In the palm of My hand, pliable, teachable, fallible, tender. You are not a failure.  I’m using your heart as My home.”

I’ve pressed on hard to hear from God.  I’ve told Him I meant business.  That I wanted to know what He wanted me to learn.  And I wasn’t kidding.  And He answered me and I swallowed hard like a sore throat.  I got taught because I asked Him to.  I learned He really is listening.  And He teaches until we “get it”.

So.  Yeah.  It’s been a week.  And I am a little sore of heart and mind.  I’m tired from thinking.  I feel like a pest with God and my friends, this wrestling and working out I’ve done.  But I know that my heart belongs to Him.  That much I learned for sure.  Because when I do wrong the first place I run is Him.  I wish I could smile prettier.  I wish my resume was exciting.  I wish my Facebook page, my writing, my presentation made me seem like I am sewn up confident all the time and I don’t need.  I wish I had a more shapely derriere and comely shape instead of my skinny self.  I wish.

I’ve learned?   I’m none of that and to strive to be any of it wears me thin and I forget to be what I am.  I stop trying so hard.  And find that I’m loved after all.  Still.  That shapely butt would be nice.

….said the young soul, looking up at me through black rimmed glasses, thoroughly convinced of the lie.  His eyes were wide and his mouth was set firm with the harsh words he’d just heard.  He believed them.  And he was astonished.

“No.  He doesn’t.”

“YES.  He DOES.  He TOLD me.  I wasn’t supposed to tell you.  But….I ….”  He faltered at what to say next.  He was wrestling with the guilt of exposing a secret he was incapable of helping to fix.  But he loves his friend.

I knew it was a heartbeat moment.  A time to speak words back that wouldn’t make sense until the some day…….a time to guide a young man who is sitting in the bleachers wanting to make right what he doesn’t understand.  Knowing that to help hide was only making it worse.

“No.  He hates what he’s reminded of.  He hates what’s happened.  He hates what he fears.  He hates what he feels.  He hates what he thinks he’ll lose; what he’s lost already that cost him so much.  But that’s a lot to hate with no name on it, no face on it, nowhere to carry it.  And God seems a little too scary to hate.  It’s fear.  He’s afraid.  I got too close.  And it scared him.”

“Oh.”

“Pray.”

“I will.  I love you.”

He left for the weekend and I locked up the store.

Love does what it can.

“So. We’re not giving up.  How could we!  Even though, on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without His unfolding grace.  These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us.  There’s far more here than meets the eye.  The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow.  But (there’s that “But God” thing again)…..But the things we can’t see now?  Will last forever.”  2 Corinthians 4, The Message

I grabbed my Comfort this morning and started reading and stopped right here.  He’d put Himself right in the middle of my potato field.  His finger lay on the pulse of my life.  This…. this was what was breathing in and out of me the past several days.  This was the “loss” I’d been feeling.  This was the perspective that I’d gotten stuck in….the “giving up” part, the “things we see now” stuff.  I was gathering up the pieces I’d planted these past several months as the owner of the field slipped reckless on the peelings to run away,  the explosion of little potato bits sticking to my heart and the ground in front of me, and leaving the grace on the floor.  His grace.

I thrive in the eternal, the business of breathing new Life into people’s hearts and lungs.  I can cut and paste with a three year old happy, I can wrestle silly with a teenage boy, I can drink three cups of coffee with a friend of long years and laugh over nothing content when I know that the gardening is eternal.  When it matters.  And, these past several months?  I’m in a choppy field that I walked head first into without flinching.  Because it mattered.  It matters still.

But this morning.  The Maker of potatoes (as an aside, I always think of Dan Quayle when I type that word) and the Harvester of seeds planted, reminds me not to give up.  That He has purpose that I don’t see coming.  That He is making new life where, from where I stand in the field, now pushed back to the side, seems like an empty wind blowing.

There’s far more here than meets the eye.  I’m trusting the Eternal unseen is still working.  And not giving up in my heart.