My dear friend,
Early in my young adulthood I was quite obsessive about finishing everything that I started. This stemmed from rejecting the behaviors of my father. But God began to show me that some things I might start are not for me to finish. This scripture from John 4:34-38 helped me to see that some plant and some reap, but the harvest belongs to the Lord.
“My food,” said Jesus, “Is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
I began to realize that I may be given a task from the Lord that I will start and never see the end product. But I must trust God to bring to fruition. My motto before becoming a Daughter of the King was more like:
I am but one, I cannot FINNISH everything. Lord what would you have me do today?
As I grew older and in more pain I realized that I could actually do more over the long haul if I had a number of projects going at one time. I could work on tasks that changed my position and energy output as often as I needed thus harming my body less. It was more frustrating to not finish a project before moving on to something else, but also less stressful to my body.
Yes, you sound as if you struggle with some of the same problems as I have. Or maybe the same blessings. A bright creative mind is a blessing. I love learning to do new things. But I must focus each day on doing what God wants and not necessarily whatever creative idea seems to be driving me at the time.
I have shingles, again! They are such an annoyance. I seem to get them whenever my body’s defenses are under attack from some other source. I think the surgery gave them just the chance they needed to attack me. I don’t have them too bad. Just bad enough to be annoying. I called my doctor and he called in a anti-virial medicine. I need to go pick it up.
As to how I learned to do so many things?
Years ago someone gave me a cookbook for teens called, IF YOU CAN READ YOU CAN COOK. As I read it and began cooking, I realized that if you can read you can do anything. My maternal grandmother started me embroidering at age 4, to keep me busy. My paternal grandmother started me crocheting at age 7. I was the oldest of five children and grew up on a farm. My father expected me to work like a man beside him and my mother expected me to help her in the house. I never considered there was anything that anyone else did that I could not do, only that I did not yet know how. I think that the thing that keeps most people from doing things is the fear that they might mess up. I know I probably will mess up at first, but I don’t fear it. I read a lot about what I want to do, ask a lot of questions from experts, and just start doing it. Electrical wiring is the exception. My dad was an electrician so I learned a lot from him before I studied it in physics. When my nephew Leon was 19, he asked me how I can do so many things and why his dad can’t. I told him the same thing. I told him, “Never think that you know it all or must know it all. Always read up on something before you start a project, like it is the first time that you are going to do it. Imagine what is the worse thing that can happen and ask yourself how will I handle that if it happens? And if you screw it up and have to pay someone to fix your mistake watch what they do, next time you will get it right. Fear stops people from trying to do things. I have failed at more things than most people ever try to do. But I have succeeded at more things than I failed at.” Then I sent him some books on household repairs. My sister Monica said that from that day on he started repairing things in the house. He eventually went to school to be a heating and air conditioning man and now works for a university in maintainance and runs his own business on the side. He didn’t believe he could learn to do things that his father didn’t do until he saw that I did. I didn’t teach him anything except to believe in himself and to not fear failure.
Poverty can be a great motivatior to learn to do something yourself.
And you are right, someone else, doing a job for you, may not put the same amount of care into doing it just the way you want it done.
And if you have the money to hire someone else to finish something that is too big a task for you there is no shame in that either. Or in admitting our needs and allowing our brothers and sisters to help us. For some sow and some reap. Our value is not in what we finish, but in being available to God. He supplies the seed, the strength, everything! The work for God must never get in the way of the relationship with God. And the “I” must never get in the way of the “we.” The body of Christ is more important than my body. My weakness allows someone else to be strong. Does this make sense to you. Sometimes ministring to others is allowing them to meet your needs. It is almost like teaching your children responsibility and the skills they need for adulthood. If mother always does the cooking and cleaning they never learn those skills. I believe God wants us all to learn HIS skills. Creation is one of them, but only one of them. And like my children, I don’t always want to learn the skill that God wants me to learn.
For me the trick is learning to be available to what ever God wants me to do or not do daily and then rest in obedience. I get frustrated because I still think I should be able to FINISH everything. But even if I live to be 105, I won’t. For it is the process that matters. Like teaching Sean to cook, it is not the result of tonights supper that matters, but that he learned to cook. And learned to see and meet the needs of others. And learned to follow directions. It is what happened in him, not the supper that he cooked, that ultimately is the result.
I believe that God works things in me this same way. In my gardening I learn many lessons about fighting sin (weeds) and taking care of baby plants and grooming older large ones. I see so much of the church in my garden. And I begin to understand what God is doing or has done in my own life as he uses the garden to illustrate it to me.
Well, I do love to ramble on.
I do so love your letters. And I like putting my thoughts on paper to you.
I need to move from this chair before my back hurts. So I will call the pharmacy and see if they have my prescription yet.
I will be praying for you and yours (as always.)
Love,
Rebecca
