Fallen Fences

I read some things today while I was waiting for Olivia to get her braces on...two hours worth of reading, actually, so in fact I read quite a few things...but a couple of things kept coming back to me in the course of the day...and I went back to my book and read and re-read them.

In Grace Eventually, the author points out that "it really is easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart. When things break up and fences fall over, desperation and powerlessness slink in, which turns out to be good: humility and sweetness often arrive in your garden not long after. ....there is meaning in pain, it teaches you how to survive with a modicum of grace when you do not get what you want."

How true this is for me. Over the course of my life, it has been during the times when I have been in the "process of coming apart" when I have totally and completely fallen into the arms of the One who created me and there I have experienced His grace....and tenderness, and also a bit of reproof....for my part in whatever the situation of the hour is. Oddly, today I realized that I have not always been particularly quick to find meaning in the pain....and most recently, I have not demonstrated even the slightest amount of grace in not getting what I want most. Recently, I have been far too petulant...not unlike a spoiled child stamping her foot....

Walking along these current "fallen fences" is new to me. And honestly, in the big picture of things...they were not really fences with footings or anything....really just temporary chicken wire stuff...but even when chicken wire folds up on itself, I realized that it is just as necessary to determine why they fell and then determine how to keep desperation at bay, and allow myself to be humble and rely on Him alone for my survival.....(not that any of this is going to kill me, but just healthy survival instead of mere existence)

My prayers recently have been along the lines of, "help me not to feel.....(fill in the blank), or show me how to.....(again, fill in the blank), but today I read this: "Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine." The "fallen fences" over the course of my life have always and without fail changed me in ways I couldn't imagine.

Today I started to view them a little differently....a little more like opportunities that I have to connect, find meaning, grace and humility....and maybe in the process become a little less me, and a whole lot more changed to be like HIM!