Love That Never Grows Old

The Present

Seconds click by a tick at a time, hours a bit faster, years leap. Texas' morning on the porch with me lies buried in the folds of memory now, his bones crushed and turned to dust by earth and rock dug from our place here in the Texas hill country. Just another cat among thousands, but when their lives and the lives of the humans who loved them rub together, who can say but what a bit of eternity sparks into flame.

The Past

Having already lived eight of his nine lives, my cat Texas has survived into his dotage.

This morning he is keeping me company. Only his eyes follow me, back and forth,  as I mop the front porch.


"Texas you’re Mommy’s precious baby boy, aren’t you."

He’s a chin-doddering old grandpa.

"Texas is the handsomest cat in the whole world, right?"

His coat is patchy and he walks with a limp.

"Texas loves his Mommy, so-o-o much, doesn’t him?"

I’m his meal ticket.

"Texas is my sweetie-comes."

He drools and he has bad breath.

For some, their love would long since have cooled for an object like Texas. But to me my pet seems less the old shoe to be cast aside- much more, my personal treasure.

"All I can say is Texas is one lucky cat to have you for a mom," my husband tells me when looks disparagingly at the raggedy old man. "He wouldn’t last a day on his own outside our fence: some coyote or fox would have him for dinner."

I lift my pet to eye level, careful of his dignity and fragility. "I double-dog dare them." Cuddling him a moment, I tug one ear and then the other. Gently, I put him down.

When he was kitten-size with out-sized paws and fluffy orange coat, Texas first lay hidden in a cave back of our property. My son found out his lair: we brought him in, sheltered and civilized him. He became part of our family.

From the beginning, the little scamp had power to call forth my most tender and protective feelings. When my son handed him over the kitten looked at me with large eyes that reflected a gamut of opposing creature responses: surprise, fear that almost instantaneously turned to trust, but mostly curiousity. 

This morning I sense God’s presence and He tells me I have that same power over Him that bit of fluff had over me..

"There was a time when you also ran wild in the world, at the mercy of any predator on the prowl." He causes me to understand: "Just as you pitied a small, helpless creature of the woods, so I pitied you. I too took you under my wings and I became your refuge and your shelter."

Now I wouldn't be so foolish as to compare the earthly affections we humans feel for our pets to the illimitable love God has for His adopted children. But I do believe He drops tiny earthly beads of light affording just a glimpse of Heaven's rich borealis.

Unless Jesus returns in the meantime, or I go to Him, I too will grow old and feeble, like Texas. My chin will dribble and my fingers tremble at their task: my flesh will gradually weaken. But God’s love for me will never diminish, never grow old. When I have creases and dents, snaggles and snarls, Jesus assures me I will not lose my place in His heart. When I'm huddled under my blanket of old age and long for a touch of human kindness, He will make things better for me somehow: ease my path in ways I cannot now foresee. For when I peer into the lens of my latter years, it seems murky and foggy- and fearsome. But He promises. Nothing can stand in the way of His plans for the apple of His eye.

But I'm too serious, I drip with sentiment. So I'll return to the task at hand and rinse away the soapy gray of the boards I'm bending over. I must now take the spray nozzle to the porch floor, an act which would cause most cats to sprint for their lives. But Texas has his reasons not to get in a hurry.

To begin with, because I've never subjected his pumpkin-colored fluff to the indignity of violent wetting, he has little to fear from the spit of water needles. His life with our family began with a startled trust, and it appears it will finish with a more mellow version of that same sweet faith in the humans who took him in.

But more importantly: at his age moving too fast can be awfully painful.


　

Grace: Why I Need So Much

Because I seem to scratch and scrape for grace, for Him, hands dirt-dry from digging in it, nails caked with desperate need, sometimes just to feel anything at all, this minute when called upon to express my thoughts about grace it comes hard. In fact I feel like a hard-scrabble farmer, owner of thin-soiled, surface rock land and not a lot of it.

It's not supposed to be this way and so I know its me, not Him. He is a God of abundance, the God of overflowing cup and bread that spreads out bountiful so every last one is filled. To the scriptures, O woman, and to the knees. Plead the cause of the needy. There is plenty to go around, but fill those first in line who are hungriest: we must ask, seek, knock. Charles Spurgeon on prayer wrote we need new revelation of Christ often. Today, this minute, I do.

I'm in gospel of John, 16th chapter. Hearts are breaking heavy because He has spoken plain His going away plans. Later the scriptures show these disciples sleeping, for sorrow. The long aching, agonizing night is just around the bend in the garden but Jesus keeps His focus on the outcome, joy that outcomes come morning. He compares this sorrow to Woman in pangs of childbirth, her bringing forth in sorrow (pain: it hurts and it shocks the body to squeeze out a baby: bringing forth pries apart bones, and sometime tears flesh) but joy follows when a man child (or girl child) is born into the world. The agony Jesus faces, submits to, endures, the weight of sin that crushes out life, will itself give way to the weight of the cross and victory. The dagger of the cross strikes sin right in its vitals, where it lives so deep inside a person would think nothing could reach it, much less strike it a deadly blow. But for those who believe, whatever is placed under the power of that cross and His blood becomes grace.

For one who lived long barren of graces I find it better than sliced bread-with butter. In fact grace to me is a big slice of heaven. I was in the C word. Cult. No grace. Well. Smidgeons doled out doubtfully. While Jesus stood knocking plainly, rap soundings were muffled by the veil: faint and faraway to my ears. 

I can sit and read while I wait, or I can do something that maybe will impact another life for the good of it.



This morning I am participating in a health insurance program for United Health Care. They are doing a projection study regarding patient needs for coming year: 2013.



Well-Med receives money according to the number of patients who show a proclivity or possibility for certain types of medical problems. Because of our age (I guess) our doctor ordered sonograms for me and my husband for screening the carotid artery. Although we pray neither of our tests will show blockage, we know this is more money matters than preventive medicine.



Neverthelss, the clinic waiting room is nicely appointed, not too crowded, comfortable chairs all around, good light from lots of glass, and time afforded for posting in my journal.



To start I page back to a list. Thanks to a book by author, poet, and responder to broken hearts, Ann Voskamp, "1,000 Gifts," I am now up to number 142: "this new journaling book, a gift from a friend named Aileen, an answer to prayer. Previously my gifts have been slightly scattered, like me.



Ann's life now brimming and over with thanksgiving for God gifts, she writes of a past dark with losses, and blank of grace, and how listing gifts as a response to a dare from a friend to write down on paper 1,000 gifts, a rare kind of glory has settled over and around her.



She took the challenge and for the first time, became her name: Ann which means grace. Ann's life transformation is affirmation that when we focus on the good and beauty of life all around us, rather than what we see as missing or lacking, or just plain grinding, simple as it sounds God opens doors to the infinity of Himself and that is truly the greatest gift of all.



Since Ann's published her book many have followed her example and taken the dare also. The long list of comments on her blog posts show multitudinous women whose hearts have been touched (and a few men) have been wooed by the prospect of their own lives being transformed as hers has been.



We are writing lists, going on treasure hunts: daily, searching the ground for its gifts. Ground can be scripture, or His creation, or prayer coupled with a life lived out, banked on Jesus' words. From His lips to our hearts.



Ann shares transparently. Her dark I would guess are not easy to think on, yet she has put them out there, up for grabs because she believes God was and is up to something.



As I began to look for gifts, I must admit my quest has been more intermittant, not near as faithful nor intense as Ann's, but I'm trying.



If a person is willing to listen to the Holy Spirit, I believe it will be revealed just how much or how often we allow a tape of negative thoughts to run: critical, judgmental, downer dialogues to play in our minds throughout the day. But when we intentionally change that, by oh so simply writing our gifts, our entire being goes on a trip, but not with drugs. The only drug required is a prescription for thanksgiving.



This gift-listing life-style is no Pollyanna project: bad things still happen. But trusting that God is up to good in our lives, the lives of those who are willing to put their trust in Him, is a challenge worth taking.



For example, in her writing, Ann describes the world as glass. It took me a bit of meditating on this before I was able to grasp her meaning. The natural around becomes not just a window of glass that we get to peek through at the Creator behind the scenes, but a whole world of tranparent revelation, an apocolypse of Him. I say its glass and His thumbprints swirl and whirl upon the surface. Not the pagan idea of God in everything, but the Christian where everything comes from hand of God. We see His doing in all of nature: even our fallen world cannot help but be full of His glory if only we have eyes to see.



As for me, I desire to write again, but much more based not on what I can do for Him but on what Christ can do in me, "Without Me, you can do nothing." The air I breathe, the Person is all and all is truly grace. May I be of the Word, that I might have fruit to my work.