Juggling

Too many balls in the air. 

Monday morning, following a restless night filled with thoughts of a myriad of responsibilities of things needing done this week. Some of the things are absolutes. Tax forms. Financial planning for my mother. (AARGH to both of those!) Meetings, appointments, a writing assignment. Babysitting!

(Yippee!)

Entwined within those I choose to do some things that revive my spirit and give me life. Spending time with God. Top of the list – not because it’s a duty but because it keeps things in perspective and reminds me of who I am in Christ. Meeting a friend to swim – not my favourite sport, I have to admit, but good to keep moving and also to engage with friends. 

My life often looks like tangled trunks – today it feels like tangled trunks. Important to take time to prune so that the things I do receive the attention and nurture they need to grow straight and strong. I think I need to retreat and rest, prune and be revived.

I was never much good at juggling.

Blooming Beautiful

Blooming Beautiful

A broom bush gushes out at the end of our driveway. Its flowers, a neon yellow, proliferate in a glorious glow. 

It’s become a challenge to see up the road without creeping halfway into it, but the bush’s splendour makes us hesitate to prune it. It’s becoming a hazard.

We recently had trees pruned which were growing perilously close to overhead electric wires, threatening to break them in a windstorm. The pruners came late and had to remove many branches from the lilac which should be in full bloom now. Instead we are left with a few stragglers and a bunch of branches with blunt cuts. 

Had we pruned the lilac and the broom earlier, they would have had time to form new buds and might have been lush and beautiful ... and safe.

Someone dear to me needs to move into a sort of sheltered accommodation, and she desperately wants to remain at home instead. But it strikes me that we can go now while she is still able to participate in some activities and bloom in a new situation, or we can wait until the danger is such that we need to prune off the blossom of her spirit, which at her age may not easily return and if it does, it may take some time.

The prophet Isaiah wrote a promise that ‘God will keep in perfect peace the person whose mind is focused on him’. We don’t enjoy seasons of pruning. Most of us resist change. I know I do. We are more content to look back at the blossom of former times than to look forward anticipating the blossom to come. 

Jesus promised to be with us always, to the end of the world, and certainly into a new residential situation. I for one am hanging on to that promise and looking forward to what he is going to do in this new season. I am sure there will be blossom and with it, fruit.