I have been watching it pelt the just beginning to bud cherry blossoms. Their light pink color is a contrast to the deep impossible grey of the sky behind it. So fragile and delicate, their color, fragrance and existence are a raised fist to the angry clouds shouting down a them. Defiance in their strength and weakness combined. I can't help but feel the martyrdom when one succumbs to the heavy weight of the water as it falls.
The interchange between them takes me to a place in my mind I haven't wanted to go lately. I guess I feel more like the rain than the petals that struggle to exist against the broken sky.
I spent a lot of time alone lately, that is until I went back to California. Then I spent a lot of time with a lot of people. My reaction is not what I would call typical for me. I have always been an extrovert. People are my strength, my forte if you will. I am usually good at people, and usually, they give me a lot of energy... this time, not so much.
I found myself annoyed more than I did refreshed. Bad drivers, rude sales people, family that isn't always family oriented schedules that collide. By midweek I was moody, irritable and frowning so much I think I garnered myself two new wrinkles. I am ashamed to say I was almost as anxious to leave as I was to get there. I longed for the solitude and predictability of my home made schedule and life. I wanted back in my ca coon of comfort and quiet.
How did this happen? How did the one who scored 100% on a introvert verses extrovert test actually come to hate people, and how... sad. It doesn't help that I am dating Mr. Sunshine. I mean it's why I love him, but have you ever stood next to a really happy person on a bad day? If you are anything like me, it just makes you want to stomp on their foot and say "Smile about that why don't you?"
When I was 17 and I started my round about journey of jumping head first into confrontation with God, one of the main reasons I started was so that I could love people more. That when I gave it was out of a genuine love that I had been showed. That I would have grace because I have been shown grace. Something like Jesus plus love plus Sara would equal a "loving Sara." Sounded easy and perfect. I wanted to defy the religious leaders that said you love other people because the Bible said so. That really made me want to stomp on their foot and say "Hey, why don't you give me the other one so we can really test that theory of yours." Yeah, I was a great kid.
Now 7 years, a million tears and 77 blogs down, and well, the circle is complete. I can say that in this last year the lessons of grace and love that have been poured on me through gentle touch, Holy Spirit encounters, truth of Him, His character, learning how individual I am and how much grace He has for me have been burned deep into my being. I see Him differently. He has shown me the greatest of love and I have never been more grateful.
In that, I have to say, my own love, well, I think it has actually decreased. Ironically enough I have less patience, less grace, less appreciation of others. If I see an injustice, I don't hesitate, I point it out, and not only that, but now, I get really pissed, really easy.
What is that about? Where is all this coming from?
Well as I have been pondering it, three thoughts have been coming to mind: 1. You spend too much time alone, 2. You live a selfish life, 3. You are starting to live out of the real you.
Okay so the first two I get. The last one sticks with me a little more. When I was younger, there was a phrase that stuck with me "truth speaker." Somehow I inherently knew that is what I wanted to be. Unfortunately I have been given some of that a little too early. There are times that the truth of what I see in myself and others can be a hinderance, mostly to myself and no one else.
I guess all of this makes sense as I see what God has been rolling around in me for a while now. The times that people have inadvertently really gotten under my skin and my need to point out their need to love better, combining with my own sense of how selfish and isolated I live my life have run into a collision course of understanding, and I REALLY don't like the outcome.
I swallow hard as I type this: the Bible thumpers may have been on to something. Now hold on! I don't mean that you love just because you are told. That is shallow and will leave me more exhausted than anything, but somewhere in between loving because we are told, and the magical formula I was hoping for is reality.
What He is to me has to teach me how to love the right way. Right? At least that is what I am hoping. Now I know there are a lot of fancy terms for this such as "sanctification" and "killing the flesh." I just call it life and journey. I get so tired of the Christian jargon. Can't we call it what it is? Hard. It's hard. It's not easy, it's not always fun, but we do it because we know it's right. Because at the end of the day, this spirit in us that Jesus brought back to life and then combined with His own will not rest unless we keep trying. Unless we strive for more. There is no rest for the weary on this journey. Oh there are moments of peace and comfort when we are in Him, but we can't spend 8 hours a day in prayer and alone. That isn't what he came to bring us.
The challenge is to take what we gain in the those moments of love and give them away. To choose to love knowing full well that it will be given to us again when we go back to that holy of holy places.
Good heavens, for not liking Christian jargon, I just through down more than I really want to think about. Let's put it this way, I guess I am learning what love really is.
His love for me does a few things in particular I didn't realize before that are very proactive. He looks out for my best interest. He really does want the best for me, and He fights for it daily. Granted He mostly fights me for it, but still, it is a proactive fight. He wants to bless me, and usually the only times He can really do it, are when I let Him (in Christian ease this would be called obedience, but I prefer to not call it this as there is more emotional baggage with that term than I really want to talk about). He will move mountains for me to to be near Him and happy and taken care of. Usually those mountains are within my own soul, or things that I have built on my own, but none the less, they are mountains the same. He wants me to have a fulfilled life doing the things I love. Now that one I know is true, I am just currently waiting to see what He has planned that is just that.
So how does this translate to others? Well, as my Sunshine boyfriend would say "When the people you love hurt you, sometimes you just have to swallow it to show them you love them." The wisdom of Solomon in the eloquence of a man that reads the sports page more than Hemingway. I spend my life writing thousands of words trying to garner the sort of truth that it takes him ten seconds to communicate. I think he was also eating at the time. I can't even drink water and think at the same time.
Choosing to love is so much harder than it should be. You know what the funny thing is though? When someone does something that really gets under my skin, or hurts, and I turn around, ignore it, and just love them as if nothing happened, those are the moments I feel more like myself than any other moment.
All of this looking for myself only to realize, I find most of me in loving others. Not screaming when they are two hours delivering my food and I miss my workout class. Not yelling when the won't let me into the library because I forgot my ID. Not telling my family every time they ticked me off (which would take all day anyways). When I choose to look out for their best interest, knowing that is how I have been loved by Jesus, that feels more like the part of me that is supposed to be me... Him.
That being said, I am staring an experiment. I have signed up for volunteering on Wednesdays and Sundays with the homeless. I am wary, but feel like it is a good time for me to try on a new skin, hopefully one with a different translucence if you know what I mean.
Simple is as simple does, yet simple is always harder. Go figure. Maybe this is how I become the cherry blossom instead of the rain taking it away.
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