pruned

In a sermon in March, MVV mentioned that "When you're the one being pruned, you can't tell the difference between being pruned and being cut off,"in the context of the John 15 vine/branches metaphor.

This is the best description of what I've been experiencing during the past few months. Somehow, as I've begun to observe Lent the past few years, each Lent season has touched off a unique and intense period of growth in my life.
This year, it's been a process of re-learning how to trust Jesus for every aspect of my life. That sounds like a trite saying, but I kid you not, it has been a serious, gut-wrenching, excruciating, heartbreaking experience.

It has also been freeing, stretching, and life-giving.

I believe it started with my parents' illnesses in February. My mom called me with news of my dad once again being taken to the hospital with heart problems, and as I drove my sister and I to the hospital, I was truly afraid that this third heart attack would be the time my dad wouldn't make it. I'd had a disturbing dream a few months earlier of my father suddenly dying, which had been in the back of my mind ever since. As my sister dozed in the passenger seat, I cried out to God for my father's life, and I realized that I had to decide whether or not I was going to trust God with him, with my family, with the outcome no matter what happened. And I had to think about that, and weigh what that really meant, because at that point, it's not just a flippant, Christian-ese Sunday School answer, it's being willing to take my hands off, and it's realizing that I am not guaranteed my dad's life, and the implications of that, and having to be OK with that, because it's not just about what I want or my own well-being, or even my dad's well-being, it is much more than all of us. Not in a resigned way, not that I wouldn't still pray for healing and protection for Dad, but in a way that I live out the truth, the full truth, of what I say I believe, because for too long I had not been trusting God with my family, whom I had taken my own shoulders, as though I could somehow take care of everything.

And of course, it didn't end there. Not only was my dad in the hospital, my mom the same week had started to have her own heart problems, meaning I was taking care of my mom and wondering about her health, at the same time we're going to the hospital every day while my dad had surgery and recovered. I went back again and again to the car ride home, and the decision I had made to trust, believing in the ultimate goodness and faithfulness of God, and I had to hold on to that, I had to struggle to live in and accept the peace in that, to believe Jesus is who He says He is.
I had a lot of time to reflect during the two weeks I was taking care of them, and I began to realize that, just maybe, this wasn't the only area I was failing to entrust to God.


(to be continued)