Watch for the Stars

Van Gogh so often speaks to my heart.  I sense the majesty and wonder of God and all of creation in this masterpiece.  It is deeply encouraging to me.  Sometimes life feels full of chaos and energy beyond our control.  Watch for those constant stars in the sky watching down on us!

I am resting in this piece and taking a family break from blogging for some days.

Rest in quiet peace and love under those stars!

Victim No More

It is so easy for all of us to slip into being the victims of our circumstances.  Those attacking circumstances take varied shapes in our different lives.  Often for adoptive parents it is the children by adoption that take us to places of feeling like we are victims.  We try to justify that birth children also victimize us, but actually it is true that children from difficult places who have known trauma and abuse more naturally seem to bring chaos and pain and division oozing from their shattered souls.  It often does feel that the whole weight of generational pain and abuse bears down hard on any goodness that we try to give.  It can be an ongoing battle where often it feels like evil and pain triumph.  We repeatedly get blindsided by forces way beyond our control to change single-handedly.

Ultimately, regardless of the forces causing destruction in our children, that blackness does not need to triumph in our souls.  Although it is so easy to slip into the beleaguered position of the underdog, we are able to reach deep in ourselves to take hold and chose not to be victims.  Though others tell us that we have chosen this path, we have not.  We chose to try to help and to bring light.  We do not deserve the secondary trauma inflicted by the pain of our children.  We are worthy and have tried to take a risk for good.

Step out of the defeated skin of victimization.  Acknowledge your own gifts and love and use them in varied places.  Some of those places may bring forth more obvious fruit.  Take time away to get perspective.  Ask others for supportive hugs.  Share the pain.  Surround yourself with a warm and luminous shield of light that cannot let the darkness invade your own heart.  I start at my feet or head and feel the warm brightness fill me.  No one and no circumstance can stop that light in us.  We are not ultimately responsible for anyone else.  Our care for others is severely limited if we feel victimized by them or if they are too tightly wrapped around our hearts.  Let go.  Be full and free.  Even though it is not all perfect and sometimes tragedy abounds, still love, accept and forgive yourself.  Rest in God's support and trust His care and love  for all those others.

Let go victim self!  Be filled with the goodness of God.  Be still and content in the limits of being human and let God be God.  Pray constantly and let go.

Washing Feet

Mary Cassatt was an American artist who worked alongside the Impressionists and focused primarily on the intimate relationships between mothers and their children.  She was profoundly influenced and supported by her own mother.

This painting reminds me of the intimate and loving connection of Jesus washing his disciples' feet in John 13.  God is both mother and father to us.  We are encouraged to run to Him with all our concerns and needs.  Like a most loving mother He tenderly cares for us and washes our feet, encouraging us to do the same for others.  There is something very intimate and healing about having our feet held, massaged, and washed.  Run to God who will care for the whole of us, including our bodies, minds and spirits.  Care for our children and one another in the same way.

 All those who are weary and heavy laden,  come to the warm embrace of our mother God.

Hope

This famous Picasso painting of the bull skull, pitcher and fruit may at first glance seem somewhat gruesome, but to me it has always been a great encouragement of life emerging from dry bones!  Life is so multifaceted, full of death and new life with fruit and water sustaining.  Vibrant colours blend and give richness.

Sometimes we feel like "our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off" (Ezekiel 37:11)  God does give us hope, replying that,  "I will open your graves and bring you up from them.  I will put my Spirit in you and you will live and I will settle you in your own land!" (Ezekiel 37:13)

I am reminded that there is always hope as I lean on God!

Even Though

While treasuring the phrase that all will be well, I also hold the emotional freedom "even though..." in my heart these days.  "Even though I make mistakes,  even though things do not always work out like I would hope, even though I  fail...  I still love, accept and forgive myself."  In the actual emotional freedom technique, tapping various parts of the head, face and body accompanies this mantra.  I do find tapping especially over my heart helpful, while often looking deep into my eyes in the mirror.

As a Christian, I often add that "Even though I am not the person I would like to be, God still loves, accepts and forgives me."  Certainly that is the deepest truth in all of life, but somehow it has always been easier for me to grasp the fact that God loves me than to love, accept and forgive myself.  For others it may be harder to accept God's unconditional love.  Both are important and central to our well-being.  Both are part of our reality.  Objectively, God does love and forgive us.  Subjectively, we also need to really believe that for ourselves.  We certainly cannot externally enforce that on our hearts, but I have found that as I call out to God and repeat that phrase in my heart it has helped me.  Similarly, as I jump out of bed in the morning, I greet both God and myself with love and care.  "From the bottom of my heart I love you God!  I love you Anne, just as you are!"

I know that some may argue that I am placing myself in the place of God.  Certainly not.  I just am deeply aware that true acceptance of our real selves created tenderly and specially by God is important.  So is knowing that God created and loves us just as we are.  From these deep places of love we can go forward to love and care for God and others.  Without that, our foundation is shaky and we get caught in creating false selves that deny the reality of our essential humanness.  We cannot fool God, but certainly we can live lives that are not true to our essential being created by Him.  We then become emotionally tangled up, exhausted, and in fact more self-centred than if we can look forward with pure and uncomplicated love and appreciation of our unique selves.

God does love us even though we fail.  He created us specially to be the unique people we are.  Cultivate love for God, ourselves, and those around us.  That three pronged stool of love will be strong and enduring and will reflect most deeply of  God in this world.  Surrounding it all, the miracle of God's Spirit will fill us, enabling us to grow on this journey of love.

All shall be well.

Most of our children who have been adopted later in life have had experiences of feeling very vulnerable and out of control.  Over and over there have been circumstances in their lives where they have been blindsided and taken completely by surprise.  These surprises are usually not happy and pleasurable delights like those surprises that other children come to expect under Christmas trees and on birthdays.  Even the prospect of being adopted  can be yet one more experience of turmoil and loss of control lasting for decades.

Unconsciously, our children from these difficult places often attempt to replay those periods of vulnerability and being blindsided.  They often manufacture circumstances where the end result is yet more loss of control.  Without actually meaning it, they also bring turmoil to their families.  When life gets too pleasant and predictable it is almost like they feel they do not deserve such happiness and they find some way to bring back the familiar chaos.  This often plunges whole families into chaos.  It takes significant energy and skill for beleaguered parents to keep the capsizing family boat level and functioning while other members of the family are sneakily drilling holes in the hull.

In times of chaos I turn to some of the seasoned passages in the Bible and the saints of old who themselves lived in tumultuous times.  Julian of Norwich is a woman of much encouragement for me.  She lived in the calamitous 14th century at a time when the Black Death plague swept through Europe, killing over a third of the people.  Life was not secure or predictable.   Julian was an anchorite, living in a cell where she prayed and gave counsel to others.  Her focus was always on God's love and gentle care at a time when usually God was portrayed as terrifying and angry.  Her common refrain was,

                      All shall be well,
                      and all shall be
                      well, and all manner
                      of thing shall be well.

Who knows what it really means that all shall be well?  It may not ever be the external circumstances this side of heaven, but I often find myself dwelling on this refrain in the chaos that is sometimes life for me.  Truly, no matter what the circumstances, in God who so tenderly loves us, all shall be well.  We can rest in that truth through any valley or danger that comes our way.  I only hope that my children  will somehow be able to rest in God's security one day.  Regardless, God who knows all will care for them through it all.  Even though it may not seem to be well from our earthly perspective, all shall be well.  Stay rooted in God, my fellow adventurers on this journey.  Stay rooted.  All shall be well.

Creation

Sometimes we get pretty focused ironing down the details in one corner of our lives!  That is all part of the process.  I am holding my daughter and her whole creation in my heart tonight with great hope and joy in the patterns and colours of life created.  Thanks for so faithfully and diligently labouring to bring forth such beauty my darling!