I love to blog.  I love to write.  I think it’s time to take a break for a little while.  Maybe a day, a week, weeks or months.  Just feeling the need to pause.  We all have those times I think.  Many of my times of reflections are on the good that is happening.  And there is SO MUCH GOOD.  But the truth that not many know is that for as many good moments and encouragement and life joys there is also the reality of brokenness that is happening in myself that never make it to share which for one can’t be shared but should not.

Family, adoption, mothering, passions, ministry, me…. has left me joyful but also on the other hand has left me completely broken as a person.  I’m in a major pruning time of my life.  Just when I think there can’t be another branch that needs to go, it does and it’s pruned and it’s painful and ugly and leaves me paralyzed.  Some days I wonder if any more is taken there will be absolutely nothing left for any growth to come of. The hard thing is that in the midst of these times I know that I’m not the one only being affected but that in my process it in turn affects other people and other things.  My children, family, friends and the people that I truly  love.  It’s hard to know I can’t go and try to work on things or redeem things, to ask for forgiveness, to offer grace, to give of myself with all that I am when I’m still at a point where if I even tried nothing good could come from it because I’m still in a state of bareness.  It’s a pretty selfish place to be and I know that but so much more has to happen within me to where I can even attempt to think that something good can happen outside myself.  And then time plays it’s notes.  With each sound of the second on the clock I know time is passing and I sit and am stung by the reality that I can’t stop time from passing in the process of pruning.  I feel stuck and out of control because in the end I am not the one in control.  God is.

If you could see my heart you would see that it longs for a place of growth and fruit and abundant giving.  It’s hard to grow and be fruitful and give when you stand there still naked and bare.  And so I wait. I wait for the gardener to stop and decide the ugly things have been taken away and it’s time that energy and food and sun can start to take it’s place and bring beauty back to the life I’ve been given.  A wise woman told me last week that it does not matter how much you prune away from a plant. Even if you take almost the whole plant back, IT WILL grow back.  Why? because it will at least grow to as big as the root ball that remains underground.  She says you can’t prune too much.   I know she was talking about her plants.  As she was talking little did she know I was thinking about my own life. I’m hoping that what she said is true.  And thus I’m placing my confidence in the roots of my life that they are there and hopefully well grounded and rooted in with age and care.  And once I start to bloom from this place I’m in I’m praying and begging that the fruit there will  be enough to move forward in restoring so many things that I know are barren right now.

At the end of the day I just want to be a person of honor and integrity.  Of passion and pursuit.  I want to be a good friend to people and the mother my children need.  I want to be the support to my husband and the things God is calling his life to while also being open and available to be able to have God take me and do things in my own life out of my personal passions that play a role in the Kingdom work of life. I want to be brave and go and follow the whispers that I know will come.  You can’t really do those things well when you are being pruned.  So if you ever look at me and think I’ve got my life so together just be reminded that I’m so far from it.  I know I’m not alone in this process.  I know so many people are in their pruning season as well.  In fact I think we will all always have seasons of pruning.  It’s the circle of this wonderful life.  I just pray for us all that in our moments we become aware of what is happening.  That we realize in the end the process is doing good for us even when we can’t dare to even imagine it that way and that if we will ABIDE in HIM, the promise is that after every pruning season GROWTH will come.  It’s promised that way.  I’m desiring growth.  Abundant growth. 

Blessings my dear blog friends.  I’ve been touched by so many of your own stories of Hope, Tragedy, Despair, Mission, Blessings, Life.  Please pray for me that God would have his way in the process of my life as I shut down for a bit and continue to offer it all.  Praying in your own journey that you can do the same.

I’ll be back.  Hopefully sooner than later.  I”ve just got to lay it all down right now.  Until then, God’s Peace.