The Colors of Love

Visits, bouquets, hugs, and prayers...

a steady stream of encouragement and love...

delightful treats and lots of beautiful fruit....

the daily painting to enjoy from our balcony...

mom and dad after surgery(s)...

the two hour kale salad from my love...

books for my soul, dinner, calls, thoughtful gifts...

spoiled rotten at Disneyland with friends., a weekend cabin...

flowers, flowers, flowers...

weekend with Ben at the Blue Lantern in where we started this journey...

more food than the mind can fathom...

all quilted together in the colors of love.

This quilt made with love by my friend Jan made me think about the many colors of love that have come my way. I feel like I've graduated now that the last chemo is over and I am really getting my strength back starting yesterday and especially today! Is it possible that I am "out of the woods" as they say? I know I have radiation and then years of hormone therapy to think about, but I'm pretty sure they won't put me on my back like chemo did. and I feel like celebrating. I know my last few posts have been heavy. Consider them the last round of antibiotics, you know how the doctor has explained that if you take antibiotics for 10 days, the first 8 days kill the easy stuff and then the last two days are the most important because they get the generals, the command center, the Goliaths? I see that pattern with me too.

All along I knew this experience was allowed for a reason, and the reason was the most presenting need I felt in my heart, the need to be able to abide in God as He tells us to in John 15, something I have found myself  struggling to do without success for many years.  So what fast pitches have I been batting here at the end? Lord, do you love me? The answer was yes, look at all the colors of it! Do I love You? He made me say it out loud, with my mouth so that my ears could bear witness that I had done it.  Can You make ashes beautiful? The ashes are the many things in my heart which I have held on to, in retrospect, more stubbornly than I have held on to God Himself. That might be ok if we are talking about favorite sweaters, but when it comes to who we dedicate ourselves to, trust in and treasure, He becomes completely unreasonable. Take a look at how jealous He was over His chosen people in the old testament, a group I have been lovingly added to by no merit of my own.

So now I feel compelled to celebrate, to let my mourning be turned into dancing. I'm on my own in this celebration because just as no one can truly know your sorrows, they also cannot fully understand the full extent of your joy. Of course He does, so we celebrate together, God and I.  The banquet will be when I turn off the world around me and focus my heart on Him. The decorations have already been so generously donated as you can see in the pictures above, but they will also be the times when I choose faith instead of fear,  mercy over anger, or love over indifference, all for Him.  The abiding is an ongoing project...I have to come, I can't stay away, and when I'm there I can't cut and run when the going gets tough, or confusing, or downright displeasing to me. Paul said "keep yourself in the love of God" (Jude 21).  See that campfire going on over there through the trees?   I've committed again to join it, learn the songs, eat the food that is offered, love who is there, abide.

I guess in a nutshell, (which you can tell I rarely use as a container), cancer has eased me into the final leg of this journey of learning, the one where I've had to face acceptance square on. Maybe you would call that surrender.  It's kind of like giving up, but giving up in the good sense that its me that is going into that nutshell and letting Him alone outside just to be who He is without my constant input. Time walking in a life of faith meets plenty of challenges along the way, and if you're not careful, ashes from the fires can accumulate and weigh you down if they aren't taken care of properly, which happened to me. I'm excited to see what He can finally do without me and an accumulation of ashes.  Oh I'll be there, but now I know better than to sit in the driver's seat, or take that big chair at the front of the banquet hall, or grip the wheel that turns the ship. Today I've moved my tent closer to His campfire where it needs to be, celebrating the end of something old and the beginning of something new, and all the colors around me are love.