the long way around

I love books.

I love the time I actually have TO read them.

Well, ...maybe it's more like... I should be doing other things with my time,

but... I feel this is necessary.

And it will only improve my time when I have it.

I hope.

I finally picked up "Sacred Romance" by Eldredge. I let out a quiet "yay" in the library at school when I found it. I finished reading "Waking the Dead" last week. I think I've read all of his books. Oh, I also read "Epic" in one sitting by him, haha. I love it.

So, I have yet to start that one, but I randomly, or as I like to say... not-so-randomly found this book called "When the Heart Waits," by Sue Kidd. Classic. Now ya wonder why THAT one stuck out to me? ha ha.

I love it already.

She writes about her mid-life crisis, but it's no different than the period I'm in now.

She realized God was showing her that she needed to be still in her waiting.

That by building her 'cocoon,' something beautiful and wonderful will form underneath.

From the outside perspective, you can't see what's happening inside.

But you're conscious of it. You are aware.

But you have to be patient.

You have to wait.

You have to be still.

Because when the right time comes, a beautiful butterfly will transform.

It will spread its wings.

It will fly.

p20. "God is offering an invitation. A call to waiting. A call to the mysteries of the cocoon. I discovered that in the spiritual life, the long way around is the saving way. It isn't the quick and easy religion we're accustomed to. It's deep and difficult-- a way that leads into the vortex of the soul where we touch God's transformative powers. But we have to be patient. We have to let go and tap our creative stillness. Most of all, we have to trust that our scarred hearts really do have wings."

p43. "To create newness you have to cover the soul and let grace rise. You must come to the place where there's nothing to do but brood, as God brooded over the deep, and pray and be still and trust that the holiness that ferments the galaxies is working in you too. Only wait...

And somehow the transformation you knew would never come, that impossible plumping of fresh life and revelation, does come. It manifests itself in unseen slowness. So it would happen to me and so it will happen to all who set out to knead their pain and wounds, their hopes and hungers, into bread. Waiting is the yeasting of the human soul."

I guess this will be more a journal for me. Well, it is anyway. And it's so much faster to type than write it all out. ;)

I can relate to what she means by the butterfly. I have had dreams about colorful butterflies before... and I knew at the time it meant my heart was transforming... it wasn't all for nothing. The waiting... I was only just beginning...

And now, I have felt that wintery season is still upon me. I'm still waiting to see the blossoms from the covered seeds that are deep within the ground. Spring will come... and in my wait, something beautiful will come from it. But I can't rush it. I can't fast-forward the waiting period. I will miss something. There is always beauty in the wait.

I just have to remember that.

While my heart waits.

For something unseen...

[[writing about the bulbs of daffodils]]

p46. "I was struck by how extraordinary their feat really was --those delicate shoots breaking through the soil, through all the darkness I'd heaped on them. I wondered if that was the same mystery going on in the soil of my own life. Was there a truer, more whole self buried in me under layers of heaped darkness? Was I being asked to break through the layers of my false selves and let the True Self emerge?"

p47. "God calls us to tend what lies seeded in the soul, this kernel of our truest nature--the God-image or True Self."

"There is something in the soul which is only God. I can't think of anything that creates such a feeling of awe in me." -Eckhart

"We are to grow up in every way into...Christ." -Eph 4:15

"Throughout our lives we create patterns of living that obscure this identity [of being like Christ]. We heap on the darkness, constructing a variety of false selves. We become adept at playing games, wearing masks as if life were a masquerade party. This can go on for a long while. But eventually the music of the True Self seeks us out. Sooner or later [often in mid-life], we're summoned back to the garden. We're called to soul-work."

p48. "...the soul was like a precious field from which we must 'root out the useless grasses, thorns, and briars' in order to reveal the beauty of God's image glistening in the soil. To Hildegard, sin was failing to care for the soul, failing to water it and give it what she called 'greening power.' The saddest thing, to Hildegard, was a 'drooping soul.'"

Why worry?
I know...
I know what you need,
and when you need it.


...Sometimes the very thing you're looking for is the one thing you can't see.