Before and After Blessings

Like a cloud that has held it's rain so long it can no longer keep the moisture and drenches the earth and the people and the animals in a deluge of drops, so has this last ten days been raining blessings. Showers of blessings have been falling to my delight and awe. One after the other, issues which I had long considered impossible have burst into thoroughly quenched and nourishing possibilities.

How appropriate this should happen in a month when the tag 'April Showers...' is so often used.

I have been so thirsty that my heart towards heavenward the way my mouth would if this were physical parchment. I keep my heart open and chant to myself, "I like to receive, I like to receive!"

That is my chocolate epiphany this year. Each year, but one, in the last decade I have chosen to give up all forms of chocolate for my act of Lenten contemplative practice. It may seem silly, but chocolate really is my drug of choice. Every day I eat some healthy from of it; dark, 76% or more, but nonetheless, chocolate. And each year God has honored my deprivation with an astounding , desert Mother like epiphany. This year, I heard in my heart that I needed to learn to like receiving.

Realizing to me that receiving has always contained a bit of shame and/or guilt that I should have some need or require some act of charity was astounding. For the last two decades I have been so dependent on others and could not figure out why the Lord would make me carry such a burden. But the minute I felt one small twinkle of 'like' in my spirit when someone blessed me, blessings poured forth and he Graced me with so many opportunities for self sufficiency I find myself working at double time to keep up with taking advantage and making the most of all of them. I wake up at 2AM excited for the days work ahead and will myself back into the sleep my body needs. There is an intense look on my face, I'm sure, but my heart has a big ol' smile on it.

Now, when someone blesses me I say thank you with nothing but gratitude. There is no inner dialogue of 'please God don't let me need so much'.

It reminds me of when Catherine Marshall, the wife of Peter Marshall who was the chaplain of the US senate, and was such a spiritual powerhouse herself, was fighting, trying to heal from Tuberculosis. It lingered and lingered and lingered until at last one day she said, "Lord, if I have this forever it's OK" and bingo. Healed almost instantly.

And after we have such a more dimensional understanding of surrender and humility and more so God's enormous benevolence and love for us.
Amen...more, more, more. May it be so for you as well.....
Love,
Deborah