STING

Sometimes a single tear drops on the secatuer. And if you listen closely, you hear not just the cutting, but the sharp intake of breath.

Pruning stings. Especially at the beginning. When a vine first grows, its constantly pruned for the first 3 years. Its not allowed to bear fruit. Instead it is pruned within an inch of its life, not a flower, not a leaf, just cut back until all you can see is a thick trunk.

Now that is painful. OK, so I am stretching things, but imagine being that vine, that branch. Every day you set out to be simply what you are created to be, to do what you know what you are designed to do, and you are denied, repeatedly, by the one who put you there in the first place! Now that has got to suck. You can't even produce a leaf, you can't even show your potential. All you can do is just look like an ugly dead stump. Hardly vintage wine there folks.

There are definite times when I've started out on something new and there was an extended pruning process. When I moved to Sheffield from Cliff College I was ready to take the world by storm. I looked in the sky and thought my star was rising. I'd mistaken what that silvery looking glint in the sky actually was...
It was relentless, it was agonizing. It was 16 consecutive weeks at the front of church weeping. It was the last time I wore mascara. And I include waterproof in that because its no match for my tears. And it wasnt over after that either, not for at least a year or two. It was beweildering, confusing, annoying. It was like this Jo branch was cut up and left throbbing and aching, and stinging.
I didn't miss it when it was over....
And I didn't like it when it happened again!

I was confused. There were many prayers of complaint- but this is what you designed me to be! You called me to this and shut the door on my face! You gave me that friend and moved them to the other side of the world...You placed these dreams here, you gave me these abilities. This is potential you created.You promised me... you said you loved me...

I didn't understand, I didn't get the whole pruning thing. I didn't get that it was part of the journey. When I did understand I didn't like it.
This time around, its not the most comfortable place to be, but I value it...
Maybe when you are starting out on an adventure, a call, you need to be pruned back to see what is truly important. Sometimes that takes three years....

So cry those tears stamp those feet and say ouch if you need to. A lot if it helps. And then stop. Because the important bit is coming...

There's a Robert Frost poem that reminds me of this bit. I won't put it all here, cos it might bore you, but these words capture for me the essence of the sting that pruning leaves behind...

"Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God."

Sometimes a single tear drops on the secatuer. And if you listen closely, you hear not just the cutting, but the sharp intake of breath. Sometimes its your tear, your breath. Sometimes...

Stripped Away

“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more."
John 15:1,2.

So the secateurs (the pruning shears) are out then. Back in the day, pruning was the analogy used to describe those times when God seemed to step into your lives and do a little vine work...It wasn't even necessarily about the bad stuff. It involved good stuff too - the happy, successful, effective areas of your life. An abrupt end, a sharp change,letting go, moving on and leaving a nice cosy set up behind. My friend Paul used to say when you are pruned back there's just less of everything. Oh, and it hurt. And its lonely. Yet somehow in the pruning experience there's an opportunity to connect with God in a deeper, tangible way.

Eventually the process would stop (generally when you felt there was nothing left to hack) and you've move on. The pain eases, is a distant memory.Just when things are finally starting to look like they are getting somewhere, and the 'fruit" returns,you see the silvery glint of the secatuer out of the corner of your eye, and you know what happens next..

And here we are in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St.Paul as Chris completes his ordination stuff. We've left our home, friends, community, and church in Phoenix and find ourselves here. St.Paul (where we are) is lovely, and its Autumn which is invigorating.
Yet I see the glint of silver. A smaller home, simpler (maybe we all need a bit of pruning from our consumerist culture, but hey). I hear a cutting sound when I feel the distance from my close friends, family, even in Phoenix. I see the budding fruit, blossoms, whatever works in this analogy fall quietly to the ground under the silvery glint as I look back at our three years at CCOJ. I want to ask the Lord as nicely as possible if he didn't see just how hard we worked for some of that, how we longed, prayed for, fought for, wept for, sacrificed for that. But I know he'll remind me that its not my own and nor am I.I'm a branch attached to a far bigger purpose.So I don't ask, I just let go.

And keep letting go, until there is nothing left.