April 4, 2021
Happy Resurrection Sunday. So many experiences in life seem to be “ the cross” experiences but in our moments of despair we forget that paradise is only enabled by the process, experiences of grace…only enabled by belief in hope established in love.
When we have gone as far as we can go, God does the unthinkable and bows to reach us where we are. He takes the role of being human, carries out mistakes and humanness so that no longer sin could separate us from His merciful grace.
This Resurrection Sunday I am reminded that last year at this time everything we knew to be stabilizing, everything we knew to be “safe” went away as in 3 weeks we had Les’s job loss, a career’s investment disregarded and an epic virus hit destroying 95% of what would usually be a season’s events, the work I and my clients do suddenly meant learning to do everything differently .
We had just moved for Les’s job that dissolved before our eyes. He couldn’t return to DoD for hiring outside the agency was frozen due to COVID. We had moved to be closer to family… a new home, two homes under contract failed to close, COVID left us both sick and coughing fit weeks before anyone knew it was a thing….we prepared for the worst of times. The time with grown children was not as imagined, a beloved Grandmother died on her 100th birthday, life was just sequentially hard…despite everyone wanting it to be different.
But God had another plan.
We are so in gratitude for His promises…
His goodness
His provision
His urging to explore new ways
His bounty for each surrender
His steadfastness through what seemed impossible challenges
Not just presence
Not just promises fulfilled
Not just ebbing through
But surrender brought peace, prosperity and new ways of being… of doing… of living without the oppression of worry or stress…
He walked it out with us, growing our faith and beliefs. Despite depression, overwhelm, and absolutely nothing making sense in our businesses…we began to see His plan…just as I put out seed for my friends to feast with the joy of giving back to these little ones who bring me such joy…God laid a harvest for us that we did not plant, and fields we did not labor to receive….
I was thinking early this morning. Perhaps the rock rolled away was the true example of our release in Christ’s death on the cross.
Disaster came, hopelessness came. Fear came. Hardship came. Pain came. The desire to not go through hardship came. Suffering came to Christ …
Yet the stone meant to entomb him, to prevent any humanly escape or epic story…. set us free from human constraints.
This year we learned to look and see, experience as Mary did, that what we witnessed in our limited minds at the cross as a human perspective ….we learned when we think it’s all done. Over. Finished…. it is not…
If it’s a God plan…and everything, the good, the bad, the wrong, the right… is part of a Creator’s plan … if He is the God of all things..,,one thing I know is God is God and I am not, but I believe the Holy Spirit, the three in one, did create this life of mine.
If the death on the cross is the finish…the stone removed becomes the beginning …
as the stone rolled away is akin to our ability to believe past reason…to do what we could not do…what we often struggle to do…
To lay down our linament-soaked human bindings that wrap our minds and bodies in death …the very preparations for immobility…
And receive that Christ simply cannot be bound by human bindings, actions, mistakes nor governances.
Christ didn’t struggle, or strive, or work or hustle harder…to achieve overcoming the cross…
He surrendered…
He simply let the Father provide over and over again …
Eden
Manna
The fishes and loaves
The Way
The restoration of every heart that desires Him to holiness…
Happy Resurrection Sunday from Redbird Cottage Farms…we began a dream this year…in very humble beginnings…and yet…the blessings have flowed like water on a parched land of our souls…
What we perceived as difficult, harrowing and hard allowed us to tear down what we had built with rotten foundations…to release the bindings….to release the surface and perceived success and embrace a better success…a deeper success…one that is solid, built in love and integrity of that love for each other and the love of the Father.
In a dilapidated little cottage with no walls that matched and more joists broken than not. Leaving our brand new home that somehow didn’t fit us, and fits the family that came to it. A little cottage in a state I once promised I’d never live in…has captured my heart…provided shelter that was more than from the storms of weather, but sheltered our family and marriage through the storms of life…
What we thought would perhaps be our undoing….as closes failed, roles went away, jobs ended….God had another plan.
He gave us our lives back in the Redbird Cottage Farm…and so we begin anew on this Easter Day.
Thanks be to God.
Sweetie, this post lays bare for all to see that behind your beautiful smile this year there was a life in turmoil and yet one would never know. I cannot imagine how you managed to get out of bed somedays with all of the sadness and hardship. And yet you did get out of bed and shower all winter in a house with no hot water if I remember and no heat? You have emerged from a long year stronger and renewed to take on a new house in a new town. Thank you for sharing.
Life is sometimes hard, but I believe that misery is optional. The best thing for Les and I to do was to get creatively busy. Thankfully Covid brought that opportunity to learn to work together and to tighten our “someday” timeline to working together to now.
hugs!
S