Fuzzy Felt and chainsaws

Evening, Lord God. 

You know how you tell me things, and I don't get it? Well, I want to understand. I don't want to miss the point. It seems important. 

The other day, I was in a prayer meeting praying for the ministry among women at our church. There is already a women's ministry at our church; lots of things are already going on, but it has felt for a while now that a time was coming to bring all the strands together somehow. To become a team, maybe.

I'm not really sure why, or how - I'm just sure that it's what we're supposed to do. 

So anyway, a group of us, praying. Over the months there have been a surprising number of words and pictures given to us that seem to be relevant to women in church, and women in general.

• We have had pictures of climbing a mountain enveloped in fog, clinging to each other, and getting to a high place where the view is clear and beautiful. 
• An oasis in a desert, ladies laughing and having fun together, uninhibited and unselfconscious. 
• A lion confined in a cage, pacing back and forth as we eat a picnic from a red and white checked cloth, perfectly safe. 
• A tree, firmly rooted in you, stretching tall and strong, bearing fruit of every type. People coming from far and wide to choose and pick fruit from the beautiful tree. 

So, there I was. Trying to make my mind blank like a black Fuzzy Felt board so that you could draw me a picture.

Sometimes I think I try too hard, and I know that you're not dependent on me creating the perfect environment for communication; you are just as capable of grabbing my attention in the supermarket frozen foods aisle with a six year old in my trolley as when I am trying to empty my mind of everything.

So, suddenly on my Fuzzy Felt mind was an aerial picture of a church. Not from straight above, but the sort of view you'd get from a hot air balloon looking sideways over a town. Neither was it our church, for this one had a tall steeple. Indeed, all I could see of this church was the roof and the steeple, because all around it were trees. Big, mature trees. So close that the walls of the church were obscured. It must have been very dark inside. I couldn't see a door in the church, or any ground around it. It was a church totally crowded with trees.

I knew that there were people in the church. I don't know what they were doing, but they were in a huddle in the middle of the building. There weren't many.And then, I suddenly became aware that the trees need to go.

They need to be chopped down.

There was to be a row of tree-stumps around the church, allowing light to stream in through the windows. 

So people could find it. Anyone passing by on the nearby road might have missed the church, unless they glanced up high and saw the spire pointing heavenwards out from the canopy of trees. Surely this church was hidden. 

Choked. 

The church needed to breathe again. The people inside needed light and air. They were going to come out of the church doors and rejoice at the sense of space. They could see the sun. They could look into the distance where before they could only see the trees.They would be able to see the area around the church too. They could see the passers-by, the people who hurried by without even knowing that the church was there. 

What does it mean, Father?  Is this some sort of sign? What can I learn from this? 

There's a bit more. 

Another day I was sitting quietly in the garden and a neighbour began to cut down a tree in his garden. This tree is on his side of the fence, completely his to cut down, but I wish he hadn't. I liked it there. And because he's cut that one down, we'll probably have to cut down one of ours, as the missing tree had enveloped it so completely that it's unsightly and stunted.

I began by having an internal moan about the noise of his chainsaw, which shattered my peace and destroyed concentration. I don't like that he's cut down the tree because now we have less privacy in our garden - it feels much more open now.

I also went on to develop my grumpy feelings by reflecting that the tree in question has been there all my life; and so no wonder I liked it where it was. I am very used to it.

I scowled for quite some time. 

It got me thinking back to the church choked with trees. I love trees, and I've never really thought of them as being restrictive, or unwanted, but in this picture the trees were suffocating. Pressing in. Swamping. 

They need cutting down to enable the people inside to breathe, and the people outside to take notice. They might even come in and say hello, if they could see the way in.

Quite separately, someone who isn't involved with the women's ministry at church passed on a picture she had to my friend, because she thought it was relevant. She said that it was an axe, at the base of a tree.

Hmm.

I'm forever asking you for clarity, Lord, and I think the message loud and clear has to do with trees and the cutting down of trees. Correct me if I'm wrong...

I've started noticing trees being cut down all over the neighbourhood. I came across a clearing in a wood not far from my house the other day and in it was a huge pile of logs and tree trunks. A patch of dense woodland had been cleared and the sunlight streamed in  - it was a beautiful, peaceful place. 

 It's not the first time that I've had a picture from you about trees being cut down.

There's a special place in my mind that we go, sometimes, Jesus and me, and one day a long while ago you showed me a formal garden there, and a row of what had been large trees, now just a row of stumps. I knew that these trees had been hard to cut down.

It had taken a lot of work, a lot of emotional effort and had taken a long time. I knew that the clear view from that garden had been hard won. 

But what a view. Now, from that lawn, I could see across an expanse of cliff-top to the glittering sea. The sunlight sparkled on the waves and the sea birds soared above. Endless sky, vast ocean.

Openness, light, air. I could breathe.

This is my spacious place.

You cut down the trees - or you are in process of cutting them down, so that I could see further and not have my view limited by the leaves and branches.  By anything standing in my way.

The tree that the neighbour cut down today definitely enables me to see further, but I feel more vulnerable too. The trees in the church picture clearly need to come down - they're oppressive. The trees in my cliff top place are gone and that's a source of joy. 

Are trees things that block a clear view of you? 

Things that maybe have been there a long time, like the one in my neighbour's garden, or the ones on the cliff top, which had left stumps wide enough to sit on?

Do the trees represent stuff that is deeply rooted and obscuring the truth? Things that get in the way?

Things that choke and suffocate, and need to be removed so that light can flood in and illuminate the shadows?

So that people can breathe again and find a way out, and people can see the beauty of the building and the people inside and find their way to the door?

Will you cut them down? Do we? 

Oh, God, I'm trying to make sense of all this, but I can't seem to see the wood for the trees. Ha ha. 

I need a bit of help. A wise person, someone skilled in interpreting Fuzzy Felt creations from the Creator. Or a bit of insight.

A nudge. 

Thank you so much for talking to me. So often I wonder that other people seem to know what you want but I am still in the dark; and then you talk to me and I look puzzled and ask you if you'd mind repeating that, more slowly this time? 

The funny thing, Lord (not funny to you, I'm sure, and I mean funny remarkable rather than funny haha) is that ladies from every different corner of our church are coming together and contributing words of scripture, things that they've prayed about or pictures that have come from you. The number of times someone has said, 'I'm not the type of person who gets things like pictures, but...' 

It has to be from you. 

So, Lord, I have no agenda. I want to hear clearly. Give me ears to hear and eyes to see and a mind that doesn't add two and two and come up with eleven. This is about you, not me.

What's with the trees?





Image credit:  axe pic (plumb axe.jpg) by taliesin.  Courtesy of Morguefile.com.  Used with permission.
Other images mine. 

Linking with Tania Vaughan's Monday Ministry (better late than never?)
Also with Jennifer Dukes Lee on Tell His Story

Rain clouds and apple trees

It still feels dark to me. This morning the sun was streaming through the window as I opened the curtains with eyes half open but it's been a while since it's felt sunny to me.

Right now it looks like rain, and that's more like it. At the moment I'm waking up every day and going to bed every night feeling heavy, weighed down. The looks like rain feeling. I know you're there but I can't find you. I know you haven't left me but I can't feel you. I'm holding on to what I know of you, and I know that you love me, and you are faithful.

I don't know why all of a sudden I feel so defeated; so much has happened this year that hasn't knocked my duck off (as they say in this neck of the woods) that it's sort of taken me by surprise that all of a sudden I feel so low when in some ways the mists are starting to clear. Today is another appointment with Katy's consultant and I'm hoping that she'll discharge her, or at least leave the next appointment a few months. I'm hoping that the biopsy results will be nothing to worry about as it's been three weeks since Katy's surgery so I assume that if it had been urgent we'd have been told by now. Her wound is finally healing well and dressings might not be necessary any more. Indeed, I'm sure that there's been a tiny bit of divine intervention (thankyou) as her current dressing almost came off in the night so the removal won't have to be such a performance. Here's hoping.

I'm tired. I am in need of A Good Night's Sleep. I could do without the living room radiator dramatically exploding at the valve last night and belching out torrents of filthy water onto my carpet. I could do without waiting this afternoon for the plumber to come and put it right. I could have done without having lost my contact lens this morning and I could have done without Katy headbutting me in the cheekbone about half an hour ago.

I'm definitely in danger of only seeing the bad things. At home group last night one of my good friends prayed that we would not only start to notice the things that go wrong but to see the blessings too. I know that I'm in a frame of mind where I've been wondering why things keep going wrong for so long that I just associate the next thing with the preceding disasters and assume that it's all in the same pattern. I need to watch out for the little glimmers of light in the dreariness as well.

Last night good friends came round for home group and we had a good time. Enjoyed each other's company and had a good talk. People spoke of answered prayers, finding blessings in unexpected places. I'm not sure that I was particularly positive and at prayer time I couldn't find any words. All I can do at the moment is hold it all out to you.

I had a picture last night of sitting at a table and laying out my worries and anxieties and fears and problems and unease in front of me as if I was dealing cards for a game of patience. I was holding them tightly in one hand and laying them one by one at the table. Someone prayed the words, 'Lord, draw our prayers together, those said and unsaid,' and suddenly my angle on the scene swivelled round to the other side of the table and I saw myself, hunched over the 'cards' on the table. I still held the pack in my right hand and I was looking down at the array of things on the table. If I was at that side of the table I must have been looking at the scene from your perspective.

I am laying my rubbish in front of you as if they are cards in a hand I've been dealt. I know that I need to give them to you. I am holding them tight and slowly, painfully, arranging them on the table for you. I don't take my eyes off them. I look at them with my head bent low. I hunch. I clench my fist around the rest of the pack of cards in my hand.

Why on earth aren't I throwing them down with abandon and pushing the whole pile of jumbled rubbish over to you? How blessed am I to have someone who says, 'Don't worry about it. Give it to me. I'll take care of it.'?  It makes no sense to me that I fuss so much over my troubles and seem reluctant to give them up.

If someone said to me, 'I have this injury. It hurts, and it makes life difficult in so many ways. I wish I didn't have it. The doctor has told me that it's easy to sort out, and he can cure it completely so that it won't bother me a bit if I'll only go and see him and let him treat me but I haven't managed to get to the surgery yet.'

I'd think 'Whyever not?' Why would you not take up an offer like that and stop walking bent over in pain?!

So why can't I find the way to the surgery? What's stopping me?

Sigh.

Life has it's ups and downs, doesn't it?

'If the clouds are full of water, they pour rain down on the earth.'

Ecclesiastes 11:3

They certainly do. There seem to have been some pretty big rainclouds evacuating their contents on me recently.

'Our troubles have always brought us blessings, and they always will. They are the black chariots of bright grace. These clouds will empty themselves before long, and every tender herb will be the gladder for the shower.'

Unless it rains, the plants won't grow. So says Charles Spurgeon, who seems to have something to say on most subjects.  A man after my own heart... I've read many times recently that unless we go through tough times, we won't grow either. 'God wants you to grow up' said Rick Warren, in my chapter of 'The Purpose Driven Life' last night. I'm quite sure you do. So what am I learning in this season of rain (and hail and high winds)?

I know that you are with me no matter what.
I know that I can, with the help of friends and neighbours, sort out a torrent of dirty water issuing forth from my living room radiator and arrange to get it fixed.
I know that I have good friends who care for me.
I know that nothing is forever, except for you.
I know that after it's rained, the sun might come out.
I know that my contact lens may well turn up later, dried out and stuck to my foot at bedtime.

I know that I am loved. And the fact that I am loved by the Creator of the universe, the Lord of everything, the Saviour of the world is a wonderful thing.

Will my troubles bring me blessings? Will something special come out of these months that I can't yet see?  I know you, a bit, and I think this is probably something you might do. I just can't see the full picture from my side of the card table. I'm too busy looking down.

I know that you have a plan for me and that I am not finished yet. I know that you are moulding me into something better so that your plan might come to fruition. I know that I want you to make me more like you; but how naive I am when I say that and expect that it won't hurt. Why should I think it would be easy?

My little apple trees

I need to cheer up. Buck up. Get my pecker up again. Start looking on the bright side. Find joy in my blackbird, in the seedlings in the greenhouse.

Did you know that a week or two ago Elizabeth ate an apple while watching me plant seeds in the greenhouse and then gave me four seeds from her apple and said, 'Can we grow an apple tree?'  Well, three of those four seeds are little brave seedlings now with their second and third pair of leaves sprouting. I just wish I could remember if I bought Braeburn that week or Royal Gala. But a little tree or three have sprouted in my greenhouse.  We found seeds in the middle of an apple, we put them in compost, watered them (generously!) and left them in the warmth and the light. And lo and behold, we have three little trees.

I'll start with that. Got to go to the hospital in ten minutes to see the consultant. I think I might just go and say hello to my baby trees first.

I'll tell them you said hi.