A Wardrobe for Now: Out with the Old

Out with the Old

Over the years, the Lord has been leading me to understand His ultimate purpose for us:  to love Him and love each other. In my life, pain has been the primary vehicle for aligning me more closely with His purpose. 

I don't know about your experience with pain, but in mine it is a place of undressing. All the fluff and filth, messy priorities and masked pride are stripped away. In this bare-bones space, if I'm willfully present, allowing the heat to refine, I become acutely aware of my need for Him. 

When I hit roadblocks, feel jolted by The Unexpected, register a stabbing discomfort, I slow down and sober up. My staple cloak of Control and baubles of Self-Sufficiency are lost. The hardened soil of my heart is turned over, and I recognize my need for others. In a dressed-down state, real and dependent upon God, I become available to others as well.  

Love God and love each other. 

Not that this reaction to pain is always my first. I think our generation has developed such a paralyzing fear of pain that we've lost respect for its transformative potential in both the Wounded and the Caregiver. From a foreword to a book about natural childbirth comes, in my opinion, a perfect assessment of our culture's way with pain:
  

"One of the downfalls of our excessively comfortable society is the idea that pain is a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. We have built great pharmaceutical empires bent on masking, subduing, and eradicating pain, even emotional pain, from our lives. We are taught to view pain as an enemy, not a teacher. But pain is the right hand of growth and transformation. Pain is in the history of all human wisdom."1

I wonder if the truth about our aversion to pain is only fully realized when we, in times of distress, find ourselves (a source of pain) socially isolated (exiled?) due to society's incompetence with and intolerance to pain. (?) Avoidance at all costs; certainly a "loving others" FAIL and a missed opportunity to witness the miracle of deliverance.

Love God and love each other.

Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it's the Lord's purpose that prevails. 2 

We have so many plans for our lives, don't we? If we're honest, none of them involve pain-- yours, mine, or theirs--and if we live virtually pain-free, we must be doing okay for ourselves, right? 

Beyond ourselves though, I can't help but notice an increase in suffering; the groans growing so loud we can hardly claim ignorance. Death, cancer, unemployment, infertility, exploitation, chronic illness, autism, divorce...to name very few. Heart-wrenching stories are close to us, if not upon us. I wonder about the undeniable prevalence of pain and marvel at our resistance to engage in its Purpose.

Love God and love each other. 

It's intimidating and inconvenient, I know. What if you say the wrong thing? What if you make it worse? How can you offer compassion, given your relative inexperience? What if you simply don't want this moment of pain to steal from your joy? Friend, love is courageous. In its self-sacrificing form you cannot love incorrectly. 

Similarly, in my raw state, I, too, am called to love courageously: rejoicing with others, considering the validity of their pain, demonstrating by outstretched hand joyful hope and patient endurance. In its self-sacrificing form, loving others will not add to my affliction. 

So be strong and courageous, all you who hope in the Lord!

Psalm 31:24

Love God and love each other.   

I am not defined by the pain in my life. But by each hardship I have been changed, transformed by the discomfort of letting His purpose prevail over my plans. In throwing out the Old {selfish threads that they were}, He provides me with a wardrobe for now; garments reflecting New life and real love.

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,

And as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up,

So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise

To spring up before all the nations.3

To be continued: "In with the New"...

1- Ani DiFranco in her Foreword for Birth Matters: a midwife's manifesta by Ina May Gaskin
2- Proverbs 16:9, NIV 

3- Isaiah 61:11, NASB