I pass it ten times a day and think “oh, I need to water that.” Poor, neglected houseplant that has traveled with me from Virginia to Missouri, through my footloose and fancy-free days to being a mother of two. And then four. This plant has seen it all.
And for some reason that endearing houseplant, my scindapsus aureus, has served as a nagging reminder of all that this season is not. I’m not returning phone calls or emails — at least in a timely manner, I’m not serving creative meals or even offering appetizers for dinner guests, I’m not spending the long hours reading or in the prayer room that I once did. I’m not pruning my garden or preparing the soil for winter, I’m not sending birthday cards, I’m not moving old kid clothes which don’t fit out of the closet. And I’m certainly not watering my house-plants.
This list goes on and on. This season — while more beautiful than I can craft words to describe — has stretched my flesh and my spirit in ways that are new to me. I have four little lives (and one best friend) under my roof calling out for my greatest attention, yet everything else seems to be falling to the wayside at the moment. I am being made new, but at times I feel trapped in the birth canal, unable to see the life I’m entering and burdened under the remorse of neglecting what I once knew.
And the house-plant, it serves to haunt me. Maybe because its common name is Devil’s Ivy, I grumble.
A little bit of perspective from above reminds me that life and beauty and strength — all the things that feel like distant memories in my tired mommy moments — are available to me right now. Jesus adorns the mundane. I only need to ask. To lean. To press forward and look upward into the Man that turns those scathing whispers from within that tell me I’m down and out is my lifeline.
It starts with one minute.
My Bible, piled on top of freshly folded towels or resting beside today’s same-old recipe, speaks LIFE. When I take those words and adore the Man who wrote them using man’s vernacular, I am changed.**
Friends, this is not a pious suggestion or a lofty ideal; my life is being transformed by adoration. I am ever-so-slowly watching my minutes get turned around in one of my most trying times. All because of this Man.
Slowly but surely my eyes are trained away from what I have not and what I am not, to who He is … in my life and in the lives of those around me. Beauty erupts. It starts with my thoughts and moves to my mouth, then back from my mouth and into my thoughts.
Adoration is filling my insides with Him, at life’s least likely time.
And, because I love words and word phrases, its only natural for me to write the adoration He is writing within me. I suspect from comments and emails that I am not alone. So starting in two weeks — on October 17th – I will be reclaiming what could be a very hard day of the week for His glory. If you love to write, I encourage you to write your own adoration and link up here. On that day (and all the following Mondays) I will take my adoration post — my “Morning Chai” — that normally runs in the column on your right and move it over here, front and center and ask others of you to include your adoration posts below. Whether there is one of you or one hundred, we will adore Him. Under our own roofs, reclaiming our own hearts, but together getting wowed by this Man.
I’ll have more detailed thoughts, here, on the 17th. In the meantime, take a walk upstairs or go back to slicing onions for tonight’s chili … and adore. I promise you won’t regret it.
**”What is this adoration you are referring to?” you ask. I have posts here and here that explain it in more detail.
