Thankful Thursday: Fading like a flower....

So i can't remember if i did the sequel to the post about love, but this could be one in a series.

After we get all fired up and go ahead and love, or learn to love, or pay attention to the lessons and strengthen our resolutions (believe me, sometimes you ask yourself why you're doing this again?) and love...

This is all well and good. But a good thing that does you bad is no longer a good thing and the trouble with love is that at some point our vision blurs and we accept pain and suffering as parts of love. Now, there are trials, and sometimes they will drive you mad and you will question your sanity, what with loving this person and all...but that is different from when love has truly gone sour and needs to be left alone.

Lesson 3.

Learning to let go and move on is just as important as learning to love with abandon. It is the yin to the yang of love. This is the act that completes love and makes it whole. I don't know if i'm making sense to you, but just the other day, that blissful thing happened when body, mind and soul, you understand something someone wrote or said with clearly more understanding than you had at the time.

My love is true and complete because should the need arise, i can leave it and move on. No regrets, and minimal anger and hurt, i hope, but i should be able to put it down and walk away. If love becomes a shackle around your ankle or an anchor you don't want, then you live in fear of it and resent it, much like something sinister but unknown in a King novel.

But when you know that you love because you CHOOSE to do so, because you chose to give in to it and to share it and to give someone this gift, this part of you, and that it doesn't oblige you in any way..then there is no fear because it's not a game or a gamble or anything of the sort.

I'm not entirely sure, but i think it was a Coelho book. Eleven Minutes or Brida, but there was an illustration with a flower and how all we can do is enjoy its beauty when it gives it to us. If we grow selfish and pluck it to keep with us, to be there at OUR whim, it dies and is no more. While we observe it when it is willing to share, it is beautiful, it is splendid. We can appreciate it. However the time comes when that flower moves on....but it's okay, because we allowed it give us what it will, and hold no grudges when it can do that no longer. It doesn't make the time when it bloomed wasted or untrue or not intense or anything of the sort.

Such is the matter with this love thing. Eleven Minutes described this near perfectly. I only understood it weeks after reading the book. Maria could love so truly because she knew she could, and would leave it all and move across the world...the story did have a happy ending, but my point here is that she was able to bring down her walls and love because she was giving in to it for the present. For what it is. While it was in its own er..natural bloom, if you would. Now i've started spouting silly phrases that are embarrasing me...but you get the point.

As with many things, it ends up being a circle, huh? The two seem to be necessary and beneficial for each other. Loving and letting go. I don't know about you, but knowing i'm not a prisoner allows me to enjoy the sunset without thinking it a traitor when it gives way to night...The moon and the stars are beautiful too, you know :)

I am thankful for life

I am thankful for love

I am thankful for God

I am thankful for family

I am thankful for inspiration

I am thankful for blessings

I am thankful for confession

I am thankful for truth

I am thankful for understanding

I am thankful for wisdom

I am thankful for lessons

I am thankful for His presence

I am thankful for food

I am thankful for the little things..that really are the big things

I am thankful for growth

I am thankful for studying...like! Finals draw near yo!

I am thankful for work

I am thankful for me

I am thankful!

Thankful Thursday: For Testimonies.

Today is one of those days. One of those Thursdays that i am torn between unconditional Thankfulness, and confusion over the way things in life turn out.

I am thankful for so many things, and at the same time, there are things that happen that make me want to bury my head ostrich style and not face them. I grow numb and am unable to confront or make sense of the situation. I am not boasting of this, i am just stating how they are.

I am thankful for God, and i am thankful for life, and i am thankful for prayer and i am thankful for all the testimonies, personal and recorded that prove that He is there, and He is able to move mountains.

It's this very truth that makes it all the more painful when situations test and seemingly contradict that which your faith is built on. When faith and prayer and God moving seem to be the very things that remain impassive in the face of your calling on them.

P has tremendous faith. Faith that i even begin to hope to match. In the face of adversity, of questions, she does not waver in her declaration that God is able. I get hurt and throw tantrums and refuse to deal. Her faith has refused to allow me do this, even when i am on the verge of losing it and hurling questions and accusations skyward.

Surely our testimonies are not in vain? The prayers we believe in and the proof we have that they are heard and answered are also not in vain? Can faith and preseverance and prayer and love actually go ahead and amount to exactly nothing but pain?

I am one to turn cynical and bitter. I get over it eventually, but i am slow to trust and it burns deep when i place all of my trust, shamelessly in what i belive in...and it falls through. It cuts right through everything i am and healing is slow coming.

God is not a liar. God is not wicked to encourage us only to let us down. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He confirms His word. We believe this word and we turn to it for guidance and encouragement. All that we are in Him is based on His testimony. If then, this all comes to naught...shaken and overturned will not come close to describing my spirit and my faith.

If not for any reason other than honesty, our prayers should be heard on this, they should make a difference...if not...what is the point of it all, really?

She deserves a miracle. We don't earn this or that from God, but she DESERVES this miracle.

And in due time, we too will add our own testimony to the flabbergasting works that God has done.

Habakkyk 3:2

Lord, I have heard of your fame;
    I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day,
    in our time make them known;
    in wrath remember mercy.


He could not have shown me this only to mock me. He is not an evil God. He cannot possibly find pleasure in picking at our wounds, at the spots He knows are our weakest. Encouragement makes no sense if its only purpose is to slam us harder against the ground when we land.

My faith will not waver, and the end is only when He says. He is the Alpha and Omega and creator of everything. Nothing is beyond Him or impossible. There are no "that was then" and "this is now" about it. He doesn't change His nature because our concept of time has progressed from the moments we have as the testimony of His works.

I am thankful for life

I am thankful for family

I am thankful for faith

I am thankful for love

I am thankful for miracles

I am thankful for encouragement

I am thankful for peace

I am thankful for grace

I am thankful for prayer

I am thankful for persistence

I am thankful that "impossible" is not a concept of any relevance where God is concerned

I am thankful that He is faithful

I am thankful that He loves us

I am thankful that He is just

I am thankful for family

I am thankful for blessings

I am thankful for guidance

I am thankful.

Thankful Thursday: Lesson 2

Working through pain, distrust and rejection. Humility, apology, understanding, patience selflessness.

Continuing the series on how love teaches us what Jesus called us to. It's the way God is with us even when we are being difficult and unappreciative and misunderstanding His love.

Moving on. You have to be willing to take risks to make progress. Among those risks is losing what you love as a result. But that is also progress. Not necessarily subject to qualification as good or bad.

I am thankful for life

I am thankful for love

I am thankful for God

I am thankful for family

I am thankful for understanding

I am thankful for honesty

I am thankful for progress

I am thankful for wisdom

I am thankful for music

I am thankful for prayer

I am thankful for blessings

I am thankful for favour

I am thankful for learning and lessons learned

I am thankful for sleep

I am thankful for working out

I am thankful for laughter

I am thankful for tears

I am thankful for peace

I am thankful for care

I am thankful for emotions

I am thankful for indifference

I am thankful for Resolve

I am thankful for moving on

I am thankful for letting go

I am thankful for walks

I am thankful for rain

I am thankful for cold

I am thankful.

Musing Monday :P

There is no shame in loving.

1 John 3:14
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.

1 John 4:7
Dear friend, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

In today's workd, love has been made the enemy. Misinterpreted, misplaced, it has been made out to be the source of pain and confusion. Cynicism is encouraged, bravado is hailed as the best defence. If you slip and love, you've lost. We teach ourselves to protect ourselves from the one thing we should abandon ourselves to, risks and all. We, if blessed to have this feeling should not be building walls to keep it out at all costs, relying on our wills and strength to resist it. We should obey God, even in this, a field that we subconsciously keep separate...when it is one thing that God CONTINUOUSLY instructs us to embrace...but we break it down in agape and eros and whatever other sort of love there is and decree and declare and act like God won't do anything as trivial as ask us to fall in love,to be in love, to abandon ourselves to love. We righteously carry on like the only Love God is on about is the feed the poor and clothe the naked love. (That is not the topic of this post. There is nothing the matter with that context of love). We act like pre teens and are embarassed to say yes, if i love, am in love, it is a blessed thing. It is not silly, it is not "unserious" spiritually...

We should give in to it, praying for God's guidance through it, not asking Him, who IS Himself Love to protect us from it, or to take it away from us because we fear potential pain.

Culture took a deceitful turn at some point, pulling the wool over our eyes, teaching us that love is pain and is to be avoided at all costs. And we blindly, stupidly follow this, not even noticing the lie we've been slipped, because it is a "small" "not so serious on a grand scale" thing.

We look to God's word for other things, but this one, we've let it slip. LOVE. Give in to it, embrace it, take the risk and plunge in. It IS the substance of God. God loves us passionately, we are His bride, He woos us, He gave His only son that we may be saved, He forgives us and loves us unconditionally. Crazily, like, He is NOT thinking that He looks silly or that we are using Him. He just goes on giving us His all. He went to the greatest length that can be gone to to save us, to have us with Him...and then someone tries to separate romantic love as a small, insignificant offshoot of Love? gimme a break.

His word instructs us to love. It doesn't say, in some situations, love, and in these here other ones, please hold back. There is no footnote with that sort of message. It says, listen to you heart. If your heart is particularly asking you to love, then why resist it? In the context that God instructs us to love.

1 John 4:11
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made Complete in us.

:18

There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears it is not made perfect in love.

:19

We love because He first loved us.

This relationship God blesses us with. This oppotunity, this intimacy, patience, relentlessly pursing us, loving us, forgiving us...this is the Great Romance. God is into head over heels. He IS head over heels in love with us. He puts Tom cruise on Oprah's couch to shame. That's how God feels about you...There is no selfishness in His love. He does.not.care. How He looks, going ape over you...this is love.

Fear has to do with punishment. This is the association of Love that the world has given us. That we are to fear love, because love is punishment and pain. When in truth, it is the opposite. It only becomes so when we expect something in return for the love we feel we have done someone the "favour" of giving. That is a misguided approach. This brings us to the very core of what love is, and what it is supposed to be. Selfless and unconditional, wanting NOTHING in return. Corinthians type love.

If and when you find it in you, if you allow God teach you, open you heart and at least glimpse the concept of just loving, because it is the desire in your heart, not setting down getting love in return as a prerequisite for giving it, not counting it an "investment" that should yield returns, THEN, love gives us joy from giving it, and not from receiving it. Receiving it is the cherry on top. In the way things are connected in this world, you will have no shortage of love, if you open your soul to it. But loving because you feel it in your soul, and giving in to it because it's what your heart wants, not looking for anything in return...that is ecstasy.

If for no other reason, then give in to love at least once, abandon youself to it, if for no other reason than a lesson in selflessness. Surely it will give you some insight as to what the Bible is on about on that topic.

I pray you are able to be vulnerable, to open your hearts, to unfold yourself to take down the walls at least a bit...and allow yourselves to love, without pride, without shame. It's not about winning. It is not a game. You have nothing to lose...and if you have nothing to lose, and you are not fighting, and no one is keeping score...then you are free, and there will be no hurt. Understand it like this. It's only when we keep score and turn love into trade that we are hurt. And even if, and when we do get hurt...it's all right, because you can say..i Loved. Totally and completely. For whatever period of time, my heart was filled with joy, i soared, i was alive, i am alive...and the growth it brings with it will never leave you..And that's all right.

And that's Monday's thought....hmm.