Grace-giver

The orchard stretches for acres, so far that I cannot see the end of it."Pick four," He says with a straight face but a shiver of laughter, because He understands the temptation I feel the moment He limits me. After all, He was the one who created me. 

"Just four?" I plead, beg with Him. Four is so small, so tiny, so less than five or six or seven.  

"Just four." He stands by His decision. Four is enough. Four is more than enough for me to express the state of my heart to Him. I stare out across the gold and glory from the branch in the tree, and I choose. Slowly, carefully, picking plums that you aren't quite sure are the ripest and sweetest. Listening for the sticky, summer juices to speak to you, to pulse with the same thrumming that your blood is rushing through your veins with, and if you're quiet enough, you can hear it. Choosing swollen summer fruits. Choosing blessings. Just four.  

"Those are good," He tells me when I finish reaching my quivering hands up into my tree and harvesting those that I am unsure of, but still feel perfect to my touch and gaze. And I know, I know I've made loveliness for Him. I know I've given Him just a little bit of glory, a touch more of fatherly pride. I know that He is knowing me, bettering me, making me.  

"Thank you," I whisper to Him. "Thank you." 

Some mornings I count my blessings. It's actually becoming quite the habit. I do it in my bed, with the sheets pulled up to my nose and in a breathy whisper with bleary eyes. Or in the kitchen, sitting with my legs crossed and on the edge of the countertop, my hands wrapped around a hot mug of black tea. Or in my car, on the short drive to the university. Or in the shower, my fingers rubbing the sleep off my face and suds in my dripping curls. Everywhere it seems. I wake up, and I tell Him what I'm most thankful for, most blessed by.

This morning He asked for only four.

And so I laid there for a while, in the quiet sanctuary of my bedroom, light just spilling in through my window and the cold pressing on the pink tips of my toes when I snuck them out from underneath my comforter to aid myself in waking up. The Lord only wanted four, but I wanted them to be my best four, the four I was most sure of.
I was hardly sure of anything this morning.

"My childhood," I say after a brief hesitation.  

The wink is in His eye, but He never seems to wink. Maybe I just always miss it.  

"I like remembering all of it now. And I'm so grateful for it. Who it made me out to be, what I want now because of it. I never thought it would mean so much to me, but years build up with a weight that is fierce." 

He nods. He is the one who made that weight possible. 

"I appreciate it more now than ever before." 

One plum, plucked.

I've been learning how to be less. I'm at the end of C. S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce," and there's this part when it says, "Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountain." I think I understand that now. Here on earth, we make a decision to submit and nail our ear to His door, or to follow our own folly and reap that demise. If we choose the latter, we may become much in this place. But the first — if we decide upon the first, in the end we will be near nothing. We can only truly worship the Carpenter to the utmost of our souls if we give up all that we are and ever could be. And it is only then that we'll die enough to ourselves to enter His kingdom.
A lifetime of servitude for eternity with a white ribbon tied around it.
It's not so bad a trade-off when you recognize the worth on each end of the comparison. What is ninety years instead of forever? Nothing I want.

"People who offer more than is necessary." I get a little sad and choked up about this one. "I see how selfish I am now. How inadequate. How I don't give enough."  

He wraps His arm around my shoulder as I wipe a tear from my cheek with the palm of my hand. I feel His hip against mine as He envelopes me in His presence. "You will learn," He encourages me softly, gently. 

"I know," I tell Him. "It's made me love them more though, the ones who do give. Like they make up for my lack and fill my holes, replenish my gaps." 

He takes the second plum from my hands. "That's why I put them in your life," He tells me.

Jim Eliot once wrote the words in his journal, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." And in Luke 9 it says,
24For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. 25For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?
More and more the fact that I have to be less and less is becoming real and relevant to me.
I can't reconcile some things anymore because if it. This is a season of my life when I'm supposed to try and be attractive. I'm supposed to have my eyes open for that man to sweep me off my feet. I'm supposed to be beautiful and better and lovely. I'm supposed to capture the essence of what it means to be a wife so that someone will want to make me their wife.
I don't really want that though. Not in the same way I used to at least.
I want my whole life to be steeped in Jesus. Him and only Him. First and evermost. I want to preach Him daily, to present Him and His glory. I want people to notice me less, and see Him more.
I admit that it is hard. This is incredibly difficult for me. Because there is nothing I want more than to be a mother and wife.
Nothing, but Jesus.

I settle the third plum into his palm with little thought. It is an easy one, that called with a plumpness I could have recognized a mile away. "My ability to listen to sermons."  

His smile is unmistakable as He listens, and he presses a kiss onto my forehead.  

"I can remember when I didn't care. When I thought there was no one. When I actually believed I would be in my bedroom for the rest of my life only reading the words of C. S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers and Spurgeon and Hannah Hurnard, and I would never hear someone's voice say something so wonderful." I shake my head. "I remember believing that in all my naivety, C. S. Lewis' would be the only voice I ever loved so much. And I remember all the apathy that was born from that. But now," now I smile, "now there's Judah Smith and Mark Driscoll and my pastors and Tim Chaddick. All of them and more."  

"There will be even more," He tells me with delight.  

And I know, He will always give me more. I will discover them daily. And that sadness that I felt when I thought there would never be a voice along with the words of wisdom I loved so much will be gone. Because I can click a button, I can go to a service, I can call someone, and I can hear it. Out loud. Audibly. I can do that.

Because great men and women for the Lord live today as well. 

I was under the impression that I understood grace. But the Carpenter is continually placing me in churches and with people who want to talk about grace.
Grace and grace and grace.
This morning my pastor was preaching about Noah. You know what the point of the sermon was?
Grace.
And I sat there while he spoke, and I thought, I guess I'm not done with this. I guess there's more you want to show me Lord. And I think that's true. I wrote my older sister a while back, and I told her about remembering something my pastor in my church back home had said to our family. I remembered it with such detail that it made me cry. It was one of my defining moments, one of those ones that changed my expectations and my entire existence.
I had forgotten about it till this year.
It's things like that, they're pressing into my bones and whispering that this isn't over yet.
I haven't discovered everything there is to discover about grace yet.

"Promises." It is the last one I tell Him, after much thought and contemplation. "I am blessed by promises," I say. "Especially the ones that tell me who I will get to be someday. Those I cherish most."  

"Which are best for you right now?" He asks. Not expectant, just curious. He wants to know me better. That always surprises me, for He is the one who knows me most. 

"Redeemed. Repairer of the breach. More valued than the sparrow. Intentional forgiver. Kind. Daughter of Christ. Bride to the King, an Esther. Loved."  

"Quite the list," He says, and puts my fourth plum into his pocket. "But here's one more to add. I've been working on it just for you." He brushes my hair back from my ear and leans in close, His face soft against mine, His manner warm, His presence full.  

"Grace-giver," He tells me. 

I am growing so much in this season. Learning so much. Seeing so much. I'm listening to Judah Smith right now actually, and the one thing that he has said thus far that struck me hardest is this,
"God is good."
And we've heard it a million times. I've heard it a million times. But you know what? It's true. And I am recognizing it again and again and again, all for what it's worth. I am growing in it. I am learning it over. I am seeing it in a new way.
And I am becoming less.

At one time, I thought I understood how being worked. I believed I simply was and am and that you simply are and can be. But then I stared at the moon for far too long. I touched the white crests of the ocean waves. I pressed my hands deep into the cool earth. I watched the clouds fling themselves across the horizon with a promise of we'll be back tomorrow. I saw one too many sunrises. I spilled salty tears onto the palms of my hands. I closed my eyes and opened them and closed them again, winking, blinking. I heard the river pressing up toward the mountain. I breathed in wheat and gold and sunshine. I became small. I recognized Him.
I picked plums and filled His pockets with them.
And it was then I understood that I understood nothing.
Human existence is quite the delicate, fragile venture. Every morning when I wake up, I learn that I have discovered more, but I know less. We all sell our souls to something. And you don't quite realize it, but the moment you give in to all that surrounds you and nail your ear to His door, He begins to overtake you. Piece by piece, breath by breath, He changes me. He strips of myself, and develops me into a lesser being more capable of hosting His glory and grace.
The Maker makes me daily.
I cannot be but His, and so I don't really understand how being works. My entire life is about un-being for Him.
I would not have it any other way.

Count your blessings friends. It will change your life.