Nippers, Clippers and Chainsaws

I know. I haven't really posted in a month or so. And this post won't have photos in it, so it doesn't count. I've looked at all the photos of this past month, relished the sweetness of my blessings, but couldn't find the spirit in me to draft the conversation that goes with those photos.

This post is my effort to dump the muck and mire that has clogged my writer's flow. I am a Christian and so it deals with God. If that's not interesting to you, please skip it.

It's been an interesting year. Never have I been more intimate with God. Spent more time with Him. Heard Him more clearly. Fallen more and more deeply in love with His word. And never have I been so privileged to see Him working in so many lives.

And never has He pruned me so severely.

Bruce Wilkinson, in Secrets of the Vine, talks about how drastically vinedressers have to prune back the branches in their vineyards in order to create vines dripping with the exquisite, abundant grapes.

Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, and Self Control. That's the fruit God promises us, and I crave every part of it. Somehow, I thought that I could get there just by living in the fullness of His Holy Spirit. I am learning that, to bear that fruit, I am also going to have to be pruned. Which hurts. And I am having a hard time keeping my eyes focused on the promise of an abundant crop as branch after branch comes off. I really was quite attached to some of the branches He seems to think are unnecessary.

Poetic, eh? Sweet words. Lovely metaphor. So Christian - such a positive spin on the hard things of life...

Will you walk with me here for a moment?
Think of your very favorite thing to do. Is it reading? Exercise? TV? Crafts? Decorating? He has taken my top three favorite things to do and turned them so that pursuing them leaves me with the sense of ashes in my mouth and mud in my hair.

Think of your favorite ways to serve others. Phone calls? Food? Notes? Gifts? Entertaining? Those ways that I most love to serve Him have been removed for an undetermined amount of time -- perhaps forever. I know Him well enough to know that He will turn my heart towards whatever He would have me do next, but for the moment, that branch was a biggie and it's been chain-sawed off.

Who are your favorite people to hang out with, those who restore your spirit and who just know you? I have lost two of those this year, and God has just told me to close the door to a great group of women that I was hoping to get to know a lot better. My darling husband, fortunately for me, is cleaved to me and cannot be removed unless God takes him to his eternal home. Sometimes however, a girl just needs a girlfriend. I have no idea what God is working out here, and oh, does it hurt. But I trust Him to know that whatever it is, it will be indescribable.

There are deeper cuts than this (!!), and many, many more clipper nips all over my vine. It is far easier for me to count the days in the last year that I have not felt the clippers than the days I have. I have stopped thinking that the day will come when this pruning ceases - it is my new way of life.

I would love to end here on some great upbeat note about the harvest to come and that He has plans for me, plans to prosper me, plans for a hope and a future. About how those that sow in tears shall reap in joy. About how the ashes will be turned to beauty and praise exchanged for this spirit of heaviness.

All true. In fact, some days, these are the truths that make it possible for me to smile and sing as I hear the clippers coming near again. But the pruning hurts. And to deny the pain is to rob God of the glory on the other side.

As I stop and consider, I realize that I have deep peace as this pruning continues. There is grief with the removal of each branch, and yet such deep contentment simply being in the presence of the Vinedresser. He is my Father, my Lord, my Counselor, my Knight, and my Best Friend. And at the end of the day (no matter how many branches came off), I trust Him. He has proved Himself worthy of such trust -- in my life and in the life of His Son.