Pathway Blooms

Sometimes I stop to admire little blooms along my way and other times I pick them and take them home with me! There are times when that tiny bloom isn't yet fully open.

This morning during a phone conversation I picked a tiny bloom in its infancy, yet even as I type, it’s beginning to open. As we chat with someone about a complex issue, we often gain clarity. So too, as I type, clarity often comes. I guess that’s because I need to examine and sift my thoughts, often exploring unsolved or uncomfortable questions. It feels a little like teasing out a knot in my thinking.

During this morning’s phone conversation we talked about the messy parts of a relationship with God. Even as I type that, it sounds a bit wrong, however I think it’s truth. Any relationship has its messy times, or at least I hope it’s that way for others because it’s certainly my reality. The messy times challenge us; things are often confusing, complicated or uncomfortable, sometimes they are downright painful. These times confront what we currently think and believe. If we let them, they nudge or push us to a new place in our thinking. Change is good, it indicates growth.

Just as we grow and change (although in my stage of my life not all the growing and changing is desirable!), healthy relationships are ever-changing. Getting to know the person we’re in relationship with, and understanding them a little better, can lead to a shift in our thinking and this often helps us see the person in a new light and even relate to them differently. I can’t see why it is any different in a relationship with God.

Other relationships that surround us are a varied mix of great, good, not-so-good, challenging and even difficult. It’s the process of travelling through these that helps us learn more about, and better understand each other. 

Tough, trying times test a relationship and can cause it to send its roots deep. I guess that’s what people mean when they say, “We've been friends through thick and thin.” If we can work through the tough times, it often cultivates a new dimension in our relating.

So, getting back to my phone conversation and messy times in our relationship with God - circumstances that challenge our perception, understanding or belief about God, about what He is like and how He connects with us.

An interesting thing happened while I was engrossed in the conversation – an unexpected, uninvited image popped into my head - perhaps one of the ways God ‘speaks’ to us? While I was listening to my friend talk about an event which feels messy for her right now, I ‘saw’ a vivid image of a painter taking daubs of paint and working them on a canvas. I could actually see the colours sitting, pushed up against each other. I didn't see a picture, just colours on a canvas – some dark, some bright. It was only as I teased out the thought, that I realised it literally was a perfect picture of what happens in our life.

Up close a canvas can seem merely a composite of colours and shades but from a more distant perspective a picture emerges. Sometimes further down the road, we get an inkling of the purpose of past life events, we sense they have been instrumental in directing or equipping us for later roles and tasks. However, there are times when we never get to see the reason for the messy aspects of our journey. It’s those times I've been thinking about today.

A very strange contradiction emerged in my thinking; that there are times when messy circumstances actually give us clarity in our relationship with God. They shift our perceptions of Him.

I remembered a time last year when life seemed very messy. The joyful anticipation of our first grandchild’s arrival, with all the associated excitement, was thrown into confusion when tests supported the very real possibility that the little one would be born with severe chromosomal abnormalities.

The five week journey I travelled in my relationship with God, before we received news to the contrary, taught me a lot about who He is and the way He cares and communicates with us, especially in difficult times.

The journey shifted my perception of God, it gave clarity and helped me understand more about Him, and that changed me. I relate differently to Him now because I know Him better. We travelled a difficult road together. During that messy time, I sensed in an almost tangible way, His love and care for me and for our family.

This leads me to believe the messy times have a purpose. Even if we never find out what that purpose is, we need not waste them. If we let them challenge us and move us, we can discover something new and perhaps even exciting in our relationship with God. I bet He loves it when we make that discovery!