Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:30,31
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In my 40's, I've become more comfortable with Life, people and the ways things work (or do not work) and even with God (in some ways).
And as the above verse says it's correct to do, I've grown to love myself--not in a me, me, me kind of way--no. But rather, to accept and forgive myself, to pamper myself for a couple days if I feel ill or have experienced a huge disappointment. To research ways to care for my body, this temple, to keep it healthy, purring--not crumbling on the path so early that God must drag me Home way before He meant to.
I've discovered we cannot truly love,accept and forgive others until, first, we can do that for ourselves. Some people preach we should detest and be critical of ourselves, but I so disagree.
The scariest Christians I know are those who hate themselves and in turn, hate the rest of us imperfect slobs, also.
So in all this learning and relaxing of my nerves and releasing lots of self-imposed pressure, I've often found myself, well, stuck. Without motivation. Wondering where I should go and what I should do next. And because I've grown comfortable within my own skin, I find that skin gaining some extra weight and my overall appearance, around home anyway, can get pretty sloppy at times.
I mean, for decades, my motivation came from desires to keep-up with people who intimidated me. I tried to dress myself (and my daughter) as nicely as they did and I was driven by not wanting to appear as less than. I'd redecorate because that's what all the ladies at church were doing. Sitting at the kitchen table, I'd read job classifieds and consider getting work--not because we needed money--but because I wished to appear like Mrs. Busy Career Woman.
Back in my 20's and 30's the majority of my actions and decisions were made according to what people did and how I'd appear if I didn't do as they did.
But while in my 40's, that is changing. Whew. And what I'm finding? My motivation must change as well because I'm no longer that same, insecure woman. Again, I'm much more comfortable in my skin, sometimes to the point of being too self-accepting and uncaring of what others think of me--the 'me' they see on the outside.
It's as though the carrot of selfish ambition no longer dangles in front of my nose, or if it does, it's fading to invisibility.
But always there must be balance.
So here's what I am learning now: as I have changed and grown-up, so must my motivation. Instead of being driven by desires to keep up with everyone or getting away with bad habits, I need to be led by God.
To do what I do simply because that's what God asks.
To be led --not by fear--but by love, the unconditional kind.
Why? Because God never meant Life to be complicated. And may I do my part by calming myself and walking simply. In obedience and love, allowing both to become my new motivation for the remainder of my days.
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We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.
La Rochefoucauld, Francois De
Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Yesterday evening as I closed an upstairs window, I startled a big, hairy, weird-looking creature in our backyard. He loped over my fading forget-me-nots into the assorted sprout-where-they-may trees behind our shed.
So I ran downstairs to tell Tom we'd been invaded by something rather like what a mad scientist might create using a rat, a cat and a beaver. By that time, the creature, Mr. What-The-Heck-Is-That?, stood boldly on my little brick patio chewing strawberry leaves from a planter like salad from a bowl. We watched him from the window and thought at first he was a muskrat, but no, his long, furry and kinda-flat tail was all wrong. And he was huge--the size of a Cocker Spaniel (well, nearly). I thought maybe he was a weird-looking teenage beaver, but Tom said no.
But finally today, after spying him still in the backyard munching leaves like he'd found rodent heaven, Tom and I did a search online and discovered that the big, scary creature in our yard is a woodchuck.
And now I hesitate to even go back there. I told Tom if he hears a scream it will probably be me. Or the woodchuck. Or both of us.
I've learned to live with wild rabbits (who have a hutch beneath our shed) and squirrels and once, for two days, we even had a possum (you should have seen me race--trying to look casual-- inside the house the first time I saw him!). And the cute little brown mice who I don't mind as long as they stay outside and birds, of course.
And now we have a huge, kinda ugly, kinda fascinating woodchuck. Here in our yard. Here in the suburbs.
Oh well. I keep telling God and Tom and anyone else who will listen that I want to move to the country. Perhaps God is bringing the country to me, first, to make certain that's what I really want. After all, there've been a few times I only thought I wanted something, but afterward, I was glad (whew!) God chose something I loved better.
Hmm... Maybe if I just get a yard big enough for a clothesline I'll be perfectly happy. Oh how I long for and dream about a clothesline!
But I can do without the woodchuck.
I am positively adoring the book I found yesterday, Thoughts of Home.
The book is filled with reminisces about the homes these various essay writers knew when they were young, as well as the ones they dwell within now.
Here are just two of hundreds of wonderful paragraphs which stick to me, told in a story of what happened to one family when they lost the farm they'd worked 19 years:
"Mother became depressed and the house became chaotic. We children scattered to the yard and beyond like baby quail and only returned at night to our baths in a tin tub. Then, one day, a neighbor brought a huge bouquet of Talisman roses and gave them to Mother. They sat in their vase and glowed in cream and coral splendor amid the debris and clutter of the little house that Mother was too sad to make into a home.
"It was later, when I was older, that she told me what the roses did for her. She said she looked at the glorious flowers that made the bungalow seem so pitiful and she got up and scrubbed the place until it shone. She vowed always to have a house that could stand up to roses, no matter how small or how poor it was. My mother lived on many different farms after that, and she kept her vow."
Many lessons in that, but especially about how a perfect, inspired gift can change a heart and do more than we realize. Our words and loving actions can jump-start a heart near death.
May we speak and act wisely, with love. Always.
The perfect dreamy summer day book, this one. Highly recommended.
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