Tricky Eucalyptus

I went on a few morning runs in San Diego. I don't want to forget this seedling of an idea: as I ran past some rather snarly looking bushes/trees, I was met with the WONDERFUL aroma of eucalyptus. It was probably the most pleasant thing I ever smelled, ever. Better than the best perfume in the world. The paradox of the plant's appearance (maybe pretty in an isolated camera shot, but when the leaves/petals are altogether, it looks disorderly and un-vibrant) and its extraordinary fragrance.

Can we apply this concept to other aspects of life, or to people? Where the pre-judgments based on appearance led us astray from ever knowing (or being able to guess at) the good things they contain and emit? This hints at the (sometimes obnoxious, sometimes delightful) paradoxes of beauty-- how the easy-on-the-eyes type fades, but lesser-seen forms of beauty remain intact through decades, lifetimes. The form that is at first unimpressive is the one that provides, that gives beauty to its environment in an unexpected way.

If you only knew your goodness

If you only knew
The way you made me new
Inside my heart
The repairs weren't few

If you only knew
My appreciation for you
Words of life spoken to me
My vision renewed

If you only knew
The hope I have again
The freedom, courage, health[ier] spirit
I have back in my reservoir again...

It's because of you. your goodness.

A Let-Me-Lavish-You Kind of Love

I've been thinking a lot lately about my parents, what complex people they are. How they are, in fact, people. Which means they have made errors and faced hardships just like I am encountering now in my twenties--each new year seems to bring with it a new discovery about life and its many opportunities to feel ill at ease. (As well as to feel good; I'm not trying to be a dour pessimist. But as Ann Brashares notes in My Name is Memory: like Southerners remembering the fallout of the Civil War, "You forget your victories, but you remember the losses.” I can't deny there is some weighty truth there.)

Anyway, I've been considering the painful fallout each of my parents has faced throughout their lives. I am immeasurably impressed and relieved at how they each have insulated their reasons for bitterness and absolute distrust of God's goodness or the goodness of those they've mostly dearly loved (that is, each other), from me, their daughter. they have each loved me in a let-me-lavish-you kind of way. The image to come immediately to mind is that of how my friend from undergrad, Steph Chan, describes God's love for us: "Imagine a dumptruck. Imagine you standing behind it. Imagine God releasing a dumptruck of love onto you, covering you completely in His love." Like that.

Of course, being the younger child, I have the benefit of greater naiveté. Things weren't as peachy as they appeared from a teenager's point of view, whose losses were greater than mine, as a 7-year-old. One of the most unpalatable facts of life is how horrible outcomes are never split evenly between parties. I've long felt that between my brother and me, I've gotten the easier half of everything. I think he would agree, and he is so right to.

My parents, though: after the divorce, my dad raised me full time. He doted upon me to a fault. He made me a literary, athletic, extroverted, school-oriented, curious-about-God girl. Yes, I did just write that: "he made me." I do credit him with much of how I developed into the "mix of colors" I am today (thank you, C.M., for that compliment...and thank you, C.C., C.Y., N.M., D.L., and C.M., for always defending his character). After his death, I've become close with my mom again. It's a pretty amazing story of redemption going on before our very eyes. How do we "redeem the time" lost in childhood (see Ephesians 5:15-17)? We've spent a lot of time together lately and it's pretty awesome what God can do to mend families, one day at a time. It's discovery for me to find out who my mother is, in terms of her personality and rooting out the source(s) of her perseverance. Our family's story is not a fairy tale, I assure you. We don't match with the more functional parts of our extended family. But it does feel right and good, the progress our little unit is making towards God's vision for how He created us to be.

What strikes me when I think about both my parents is that they have both succeeded in making me, their child, feel so loved. Maya Angelou's quote captures it so perfectly: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Now, I am a person who remembers the exact words that come out of the mouths of people most dear to me. I write them down, often, because I don't want to forget them. But sometimes, those words (if they're claims of love) don't prove true in the long run of how they do or don't love you. And people's actions? The difficulty of forgiveness proves that people's actions toward us (for us or against us) are mammothly important in how we relate to them. I've always thought, before today, that Angelou's quote was a little simplistic for this reason. But I cannot deny that how a person makes you feel is a unique indicator of their quality of love for you. I can compare significant others (with each other) and family members (with each other) along these axes, and I find startling differences. I feel much more loved by some than others, even though the fact of their spoken love is, on the surface, equal or the same.

The quality of love... Lord, let me be wise in response to the high-quality love I get to receive in this life. Thank you for directing that quality of human love that way, towards me. May I make your creations feel especially loved too-- remove the me from interfering and let it be all You streaming through to them.

Bordering Fuchsia

After I finished my preliminary exams, my boyfriend sent me purple flowers. It was one of the most loving gestures he could have done, not because I'm a flower fanatic or a die hard romantic, but mostly because he recognized and agreed with the enormity of the occasion, from my point of view. It marked a significant point of triumph, relief, accomplishment, and even giddiness -- that I had learned all this new material that is so darn interesting to me, and written gobs about it in a short period of time. The feeling of productivity was enough for a high.

But then, this delivery (which came mid-nap) ushered in a new kind of celebration: the realization that I'd reached that magical hour in which I had permission, at long last, to finally finally REST, and sense enough to take full advantage of it. (In the note accompanying the flowers, he actually did spell out instructions to go sleep.) I could (and did) sleep with no regard to time; do leisurely activities, watch TV, read non-sociological material. This past week I've found myself prioritizing time with girlfriends, packing in three-a-days thrice. I've started hacking away at to-dos long overdue. I've started, in other words, caring for the upkeep of my own life, beyond my career path.

And that time has flown. A week has already passed since the end of the exam.

This past week I've also found myself reveling time and again in those flowers. They are a profound marker for me: they are a symbol of one's love for me, in spite of my pretest self absorption, and posttest -- ok, self absorption. I really am a time manager (I'm fondly reminded of --- in the WB show "Felicity," who's always drilling herself on organic chemistry compounds with flashcards in one hand, and a stopwatch in the other...here's hoping I can be her!), sometimes to a fault. I've not always done a great job showing my love for family and dear friends when studying hangs in the balance. I love to give my time to reading, studying, writing, researching, as if that were my lover. Maybe because I am comfortable there. And feel competent there. And darn it, I just enjoy it and the process and the product it brings. BUT, when placed above people-- that's disorder. Not to mention painful.

But I digress. The flowers: they are really beautiful to me. The main color in the bouquet is an unusual delight: a luminescent purple, bordering fuchsia. I usually never have flowers to brighten my apartment. So they represent not only a symbol and reminder of someone's love, but they also bring beauty where only functionality reigned supreme before (that is, the dining room table).

I also love them because they make me think. Yesterday, day 6, I noticed something peculiar with the flowers as I stared them down whilst writing in my journal. Some miniature tulips nestled in the middle were beginning to droop down. Not dead yet, they were getting there. Rising above the bouquet, some yet-to-be buds were almost bursting. These were not yet in their adult glory. And other flowers were presently in their prime: glowing, healthy, their petals stretched like a young yoga instructor's arms and back, reaching for some great height.

Isn't life like that too? Aren't we always watching some things pass away, some things almost-bloom, some things shout their present glory? Maybe each flower is a blessing, or maybe they each represent facets of our own personally well-known facts of life. Maybe what's decreasing are my former obsessions, hopes, dreams. Watching them fade is sad. But God, who created these flowers, and me and my whole lifespan and each day in it, won't let the bouquet be only that. No! Look: there are gorgeous things going on right this second, and indeed, they occupy the bulk of this bouquet. I'm alive right now, I'm bearing fruit, and it's even pretty. And, I can only imagine what those buds within them hold. What glory will they bring?

Splintering

I can be deep in one part of me,
and quite shallow in the other.

Bright-minded in one reflection,
Dark in my assessment of another.

Joyful as I recognize new pathways,
Mournful as I remember those grown over.

Giving as I accurately estimate my blessed resources,
Stingey as I allow fears of being cheated to overshadow them.

Free and weightless and prepared to run the race some hours,
Burdened, weighted, and constrained at others.

So today I seek to
plunge deep,
absorb sun,
joyfully walk,
happily give,
energetically run:

Remembering every moment that I am loved,
Despite splinters I get when I run my hand over
The wood of old structures needing repair
Or perhaps my hand needing a new surface.

Equations and a Presentable Home

Most things in life can't be understood in formulaic terms. Except maybe this one thing. I can't help but think that the parallelism in this verse hints at some degree of "this equals that:"

He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. (Ps 103:3)

The context surrounding this one verse pertains to recognizing the good things God has given to me, and the good thing He is in the process of making my life about. And that uniting theme which He is increasingly making my life be about is the reflection of Him in all my life's circumstances and all my heart's aches and desires-- to make every element of my life cohere into agreement with one central theme, that is, to exhibit His character of goodness, restoration, and redeeming love for me and for all people.

So I think it's a safe inference, based on sentence structure and context, to say that forgiveness is one of those devices by which God gives the good to me. It is a highway by which he extracts the bad I have done before it poisons my identity. But He removes it in such a way that I still remember, still experience a sting from what I've done. That way, I have a new, vital awareness of my own part in and responsibility for harming His creation or tarnishing the state He intended it to be in. So, forgiveness teaches me without jading me, or letting me unjustly off the hook and equally prone to commit the same damaging act again.

Forgiveness -- God's forgiveness extended to us, to be exact -- is a complete, comprehensive thing (note: "all"). God is not a selective Forgiver. He's about restoring the whole house, not just a room. In that way, God's brand of forgiveness is a creative act aimed at refurbishing what was lost and bringing it back to its former condition.

I study God's forgiveness in order to understand His design for how I forgive others for the ways they have damaged, harmed, or tarnished me, as well. It's true that once transgressed against, I am and can no longer be the way I was before. But I am not worse off than I was before I was hurt, and here is why.

God is interested not only in forgiving, but in healing. That is, He cares not only about restoring me to a spiritual state in which He and I can get along, but also in restoring me to a mental-emotional state in which I can function and even blossom and bloom. That is, He doesn't just come over to my house to repair its toilets, clear its defunct drainage, paint its walls, brighten its windows, and spruce up its hallways, so that I don't have to be ashamed of the condition it's in. He also comes to remove the things within it that could make me sick: He cleans its carpets, clears its airducts, and removes its pests. He gets into the seen parts that are making me unhappy, uncomfortable, and downtrodden in spirit, sure enough -- but He also gets into the unseen parts and removes the latent illness that lies there. He cares that much. He gets into my heart and tends to the bitterness rooting and growing there with some very special kind of Round-Up. He sees the pain that is killing some precious hope and faith in His goodness that was once there or was once more intact, and as he administers forgiveness, he is submerging me in a bath of healing. He is removing the stains and dirt, and he is applying balm.

Talk about being able to live again! Friend, come over to my house! I am proud of what He's done in here...

My Bank Account

I remember I used to joke with a friend on every payday, "My bank account is full." He would wonder at the idea of 'full,' pointing out that that may be an impossibility. But by my comment, I was mostly expressing my positive point of view towards my own wage. (I was a schoolteacher, but only 24 years old, so I was easily satisfied. I think I still am--never thought I would say it, but "thanks, Dad, for making me be content with a modest sum of money!")

I discovered yesterday morning that my spiritual bank account is full, also. (I wonder if there's such a thing as a spiritual payday? What a marvelous thought--especially if it's periodic and refilled whenever I get desperately low. But God doesn't operate on such economies. Back to the loose metaphor at hand.) When by best friend, C., and I discussed the Bible story of the miserly servant whose debt was forgiven by his master, but who in turn refused to forgive an underling of a smaller debt, it was as if I'd never heard it before. (I had.) As best friends do, C. made it crystal clear to me in that moment, that I have the ability to forgive anything, anyone, of any debt, because it is small in comparison to the oceanous reservoir of built-up love-investments that God has put in me.

I believe it: my spiritual bank account is full. This fact has caused a paradigm shift in hope, that I am indeed empowered by God to maintain a soft heart in hard times. Thank you, best friend, for repairing my hope in the truth.