Pruning and other fun stuff
2 MAy 2013
It always amazes that in these times of such great techniclogical and educated advances that life seems to continually use the simple and mundane things in life to challenge us. I have athousand related thoughts rambling through my mind so don't expect a quick 5 or 7 step explanation to the title. And away we go...teehee.Back in the period after my wife's passing I went through a season of Daddy takjng me back to basics as He put my shattered life back togethter and that season is the basis for my first journal http://lifelessonsfromhoneysgarden.weebly.com/index.html . On a trip I took to the Dallas area for our oldest son's second marriage . I stayed in their home and one morning found my self lost in deadheading some hanging baskets of petunias on their front porch. If you care to read the entire entry it is titled " The lessons from Petunias"( 31 May 2008) and was a reminder lesson in the natural that often after the first blush of blooms come in the spring it is necessary to cut off the dead blooms so they don't drain life from the plant trying to set new buds for the next flurry of flowers.
Well after Genevieve's passing I neglected all the gardens we had planted over the last 15 years until this spring. In the beginning I was not prepared to deal with all the memories and when my strokes came in 2010 I was physically unable to work in them. These past two weeks I have given myself to the task of returning them to their former glory as in weeding them and etc. On Monday I started on the Hydrangeas on the front and side of our home plus along the back fence row. I was concentrating on both cutting off the dead branches from seasons past while also trying to avoid damaging the new tender shoots at the base. As I got into my task I found myself not just "deadheading" the plants but also cutting back the stems that were lanky but had new growth at the very ends. A story that Jesus told in the New Testament came to mind about pruning and I began to see pruning in a new light. I always thought pruning meant cutting of the deadwood on a plant but the actual meaning is the cutting off certain branches that were alive and even had new growth. The idea is that as all the excess growth is cut away the energy in the plant can be redirected to the remaining plant to provide an even better and bigger yield of flowers or fruit. I started to see where this train of thought was leading me and I started re-examining my life in light of this new understanding. In the last five years my life was being pruned, not of my own choosing, but by the choice I made to be true to myself. It wasn't always easy but as I gaze around me now I see that because of the pruning of fair weather friends, judgemental and overly pious christian friends and family I was able to enjoy the blooming of new friendship and a genuine church family. I now have an abundance of peace and contentment in my life but it had to be preceeded by a time of pruning my life of lesser things that bore very little life. Another part of the process is knowing when to prune. Some plants need it in the beginnings of spring while others, like roses, get cut back in the dead of winter. Our lives are much the same, there are relationships that come and go within our lives and we never understand the timing. Now comes that part that may be hard to swallow. As a daughter of the God who created me I also am convinced that He or She has an active interest in my well being and as such is a master gardener in my life, sometimes by direction within me and often without my even being aware and totally clueless. I am learning that pruning takes many forms in our lives. Sometimes it is in relationships, other times in our beliefs and our mindsets. Through my 3 strokes I was weaned from a dependency on my former workplace along witlh both the false prestige as well as the very real pressures to perform. Upon proclaiming my true identity I was summarily removed from both ministry, friends and a false religious pride inside me that went along with them. I spent months trying to reconcile a halfr century of religious conditioning and subsequently was relieved, or pruned, of religious rhetoric and blind trusting faith in human leaders and their dogmas. I was finally being pruned so that in my own life I could bear better fruit and more of it. Recently I was challenged internally with the great myth of prosperity both religiously and in the natural. I am understanding the proverb that says "may you prosper even as your soul prospers". In these modern times it means how much you have in possesions, what titles you wear and prestige in the eyes of men. We can look around us everywhere and see living testaments to this lifestyle. People all around us, and maybe us at times, have traded their integrity, their souls and even their families chasing the elusive dreams of material wealth while on the inside they are dead or dying without ever understanding what is happening. There is a prosperity that lasts, it is called peace of mind, integrity, love of life for life's own sake. It is having such an abundance of life within you that it is like a stream flowing from your life. This is true prosperity and things will never replace it. Personally I am being drawn back into ministry and yet this time I am both reluctant and even hesitant to respond to the inner call. I remember being invited to leave my last church and as I have re-considered it I see very clearly that as much as anything I missed being recognized, accepted and even revered at times for my giftings. The truth is I am just like anyone else and the fact that I used my gifts and talents was jsut a small return of thanks to the One who blessed me with them. I was like a spoiled little kid driving daddy's new car for the world to see and nothing more. That false pride and that air of importance are just two aspects of the lie that prosperity was a tangible or physical thing. To be so prosperous in our spirit that we can freely give away from the abundance within us is the true mark of prosperity. Finally , like a trump card, Christianity screams for "things", national and international recognitionas and volumous amount of faithful followers as a sign of God's favor and yet the One whose name they bear never owned a home, never accumilated wealth, lived with the outcast of the day and after death was laid in another man's gravesite. He was the epitome of true prosperity and yet chose the life of a homeless and itinerant rabbi to teach us values of true worth. Either He was deceived or we have really twisted the message He brought. May you be blessed with both peace and true prosperity in your lives.
Charlena Marie Andrew-Hayes
