The Greener Grasses of Vulnerability

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” 

-C.S. Lewis The Four Loves

Vulnerability - capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt

Vulnerability is not the kind of word that gives me the warm fuzzies. I think of something raw and exposed to elements. I think of an innocent baby born unwanted into a hostile home. I think of Isaac strapped on an altar. I think of Jesus nailed to a cross. I think of how frequently the Father calls me out of my warm, safe cocoon of comfort and asks me to lay my heart bare, exposed, vulnerable.  

I do not tend to be an emotional person. I unhealthily compartmentalize my feelings so I can deal with them at a later time when it is convenient for me. In other words, I try to keep my emotions in the safe little cocoon I have constructed for myself. The problem with this delusional safety cocoon is that it chokes out desire.  

Here is where the unlikely greener grass comes in to save the day. God is not content to allow me to swaddle my maturing self forever in my deluded sense of security. He calls me to vulnerability. He forces to the surface my desires, the buried deep desires that I try to ignore. I always fight it but with Him I always lose. 

At some point in the last year, a new desire sprang up in my life. At the beginning as usual I told God I didn’t want to go there again, to the place of vulnerability and knowing it could end in pain. He gently pointed out to me that the past few desires that had gone unfulfilled had in reality caused me almost no pain in the end. The desires had instead served to fuel my desire for and dependence on Him and to reinforce that I can entrust my vulnerable heart to Him.

Today, I discovered that this more recent desire will end up in the Unfulfilled Desire Hall of Fame and yet I find myself tonight at peace, content, dwelling in the green pastures of trusting a Father who guards my vulnerable heart. I leave you with some simple words from a song I heard tonight and has contributed to my source of peace:

‘It is well, it is well;

through the storm I am held

it is well, it is well with my soul” -Todd Fields

Finding the Greener Grass in Interrupted Plans

It was a dark and stormy night so to speak. I was at home ready to check my email and do any number of other Internet related things. I opened my computer and clicked on the browser only to receive the dreaded message: 'This page cannot be displayed'. I tried a few more times and received the same result and decided the storm must have caused an outage. I pulled out my ongoing to do list and scanned through the things I needed to do only to realize that 6 out of 8 involved the use of the Internet. Usually I would have been upset and frustrated. I would have scoffed and sighed and muttered hateful things about my Internet company, but this night I decided to make the most of it. I washed all the dishes in my kitchen. I made a trip to the bookstore to buy a surprise gift for a friend. I spent some time reading the Bible. I made some phone calls. Yes, you heard correctly, I actually dialed numbers and talked to actual people. I also wrote a card to a friend. 


Had the Internet been working properly I would have probably ended up wasting a bulk of my evening surfing for meaningless things, checking Facebook, and on and on. Hopefully my lesson is learned and the next time I get the dreaded screen indicating 'no Internet' or the power goes out or some other thing interrupts my plans, I will move forward with eagerness of slowing down and enjoying the interruption. May I not moan with envy about the parts of the city that have the technology benefits I currenly am lacking but rather enjoy my own green grasses of a temporary distraction being removed. 

Finding the Greener Grass in Abundance

The weather forecast for today said 'Abundant Sunshine.' You know it’s going to be a good day when you see those words describing the day ahead of you, especially with temperatures in the low 60s in early January.  

I think about how the word abundance is rarely used in a negative connotation and in fact how rarely the word is used in my every day conversations.  

I am currently reading Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone With the Wind’. In the beginning, you see Southerners living it up with feasts, balls, and ultimately being carefree. In other words the characters are living in abundance. Eventually the Civil War begins, Atlanta is lost, and Scarlett makes her way back to her home. She finds that the Yankees had taken all of their livestock, burned all their cotton, and raided all of the gardens. She has quickly become impoverished:

“There were apples, yams, peanuts and milk on the table at Tara but never enough of even this primitive fare. At the sight of them, three times a day, her memory would rush back to the old days, the meals of the old days, the candle-lit table and the food perfuming the air.

How careless they had been of food then, what prodigal waste! Rolls, corn muffins, biscuit and waffles, dripping butter, all at one meal. Ham at one end of the table and fried chicken at the other, collards swimming richly in pot liquor iridescent with grease, snap beans in mountains on brightly flowered porcelain, fried squash, stewed okra, carrots in cream sauce thick enough to cut. And three desserts, so everyone might have his choice, chocolate layer cake, vanilla blanc mange and pound cake topped with sweet whipped cream.” (p. 358)

As I examine my own life, I realize that I often have meals similar to those of the ‘old days’ as Scarlett describes them. How wasteful and often ungrateful I am for things that many people in this world would covet. As I have been reading about Miss Scarlett O’Hara, I have been sobered by the knowledge that in our country’s past, lack has been a reality. I was looking at my sweet 5 month old nephew a few weeks back after he had just been fed and saw contentment and happiness. My thoughts then went to small children and 5 month old babies all over the world and probably even in our own country who are starving. The truly sobering reality is that it could happen again in our country and we would look back on these days and say with Scarlett, ‘what prodigal waste!’  

How much I take for granted. How frequently my lips speak words of complaint and lack instead of gratefulness and abundance. Why do I focus so often on the few things that I lack when I have so much abundance, so much to be grateful for, so much that should it all be taken away I would then see it’s true value.  

Here is my recognition of some of the green grassy patches of my abundance:

I have an education. 

I can read.

I have abundant access to the gospel.

I have hot showers daily.

I have a heating and cooling system I can control down to the degree.

I eat three hot meals a day with plenty of snacks in between.

I have so much rich food at my disposal I have to limit my caloric intake.

I have a disposable income.

I am one of the richest 10% of the world based on my income.

I only have to work 40 hours a week.

I am not a trafficked slave.

I have access to unemployment benefits and food stamps should I fall on hard times.

I own a car.

I am debt free.

I do not live in a war zone.

I have access to hospitals and doctors.

I live in free country.

I have religious freedom.

I have the freedom of speech

I own at least 5 Bibles and each copy is in my heart language.

I have the ability to gather in public for corporate worship.

I am respected as a female. 

I have access through prayer to our amazing God.

I have no end to this list.