what a difference...

He picks us up.

Dollar plants, sitting parched in garden store bins.

Wilted and lifeless, He takes us home.

Easing us out of our plastic containers,

carefully tearing us from the things that hold us back.

He breaks up our roots; awakening, stirring...

pouring leftover soil into hand me down pots.

Chipped and tarnished: in broken vessels He places this:

hope.

Summer is rough.

Oppressive heat chokes the life out of us.

Torrential downpours leave us battered and bruised.

Deadly pestilence eating away...

But we are not destroyed.

All along- He is watering and feeding,

pruning and nurturing the life He sustains.

‘til one day you look and suddenly see:

growth.

What a difference a season makes.

the cure

It's a strange juxtaposition... The floors are still sandy but the house smells like apples, cinnamon, and cloves. Pumpkins sit perched on tabletops while beach towels tumble in the dryer. The sun hangs high, brave in the sky right now, but I already know she'll go to bed a little earlier today than yesterday. 

Isn't that the way it goes?

The calendar says summer for another week or so, but my heart? It's ready for harvest. This is our fallen existence. A heavenly creature landlocked on earth, a spiritual being trudging through the monotony that is this physical life. It's not all bad. The joy of fellowship, His revealed truth, the blessings of a truly beautiful existence. 

But all too often I catch myself clawing selfishly, longingly for what lies ahead just beyond my reach: certainty, an explanation, answers. The day I look back and say, "It all makes sense! The struggle, the pain, the joy, the victories, the defeats." Other times I find myself holding on white-knuckled to the things of the past: comfort and the familiar. The terrifying unknown terrorizes me. My dreams taunt me with what might have been, the things I let slip through my fingers like sand upon the shore, too numerous to count.

I'm a kid at summer camp. A girl in a foreign county with no luggage of her own.  

But He calls to me. Like a crying baby, He hushes me in the stillness of the night. He knows my wistful spirit, my homesick heart. He breathed life into these bones, for such a time as this. And it hits me, maybe my comfort isn't His top priority. Maybe I'll never be fully comfortable in a place that isn't my home. And maybe, probably I'm not supposed to be. 

Maybe the nagging, the longing isn't for anything seen, it's the unseen. Maybe the desires of my heart were for Him all along, I just didn't realize it. It only makes sense that the cure for our ailing hearts would be found in the One who formed them. 

Anchor of my soul- you sustain.