Walking into my Third Birthday

“Then in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit”. Isaiah 37:30

After a season of hardship, King Hezekiah was told to return to normal farming practices. Even when the famine was gone, it took time for the ground to allow normal cultivation and rhythms to produce fruit again. The soil needed to adjust to normalcy, to anticipate regular waterings and harvest. It had learned to survive in hardship and lack, and it was unnatural at first to return to the rhythms of sowing and reaping.

I have found this to be true of my home as well.

We just celebrated three years post bone marrow transplant.

The gratitude and joy that filled our relationships during the initial return home were replaced with anger, entitlement strife and complacency. Laughter and appreciation became resentment and irritability. The sin that lay dormant beneath the surface during deep suffering was once again brought back to the surface. And instead of being met with grace and patience, we matched one another’s sin with anger, dismay and fear.

In my own solitude, I have been reflecting on the garden God created at the beginning of humanity. I love how God threaded this imagery into the first chapters of His word to us and carries it through the entirety of Scripture.

I see my heavenly father doing this cultivation even within my own home over the past three years. He is removing the harmful things and stirring up the ground for deeper roots. I know he allowed the storm of cancer to pass through our story because in these storms, He is aiming to strengthen the bonds beneath the earth that tie us closer to Him. As the winds pass and scare us, he is at work, loosening the dead branches who were robbing the true branches of the necessary nutrients. In the storms, God is at work. In the famine, He is guiding our roots to go deeper down. In all of it, God is the one who does the strengthening, the pruning, the establishing.

You know, we have a great enemy who aims to convince us that the removal of harmful things looks like this:

• Cut off toxic people for your own self-care.
• Set boundaries for your mental health.
• Honoring yourself means distancing yourself
• Healing often requires letting go of what hurt you.
• You can love someone and still walk away.
• Normalize prioritizing yourself

These are the words of a very clever deceiver.

His aim is to divide us and so he guises factions and rejection with the language of harmony, healing, health, and honor of oneself. But you see, he knows that he gets a foothold if we do not pursue peace with one another. If he can convince us that we are “right” and they are “wrong”… that we are the victim and they are the villain, then he has space to work. He dances when we are in isolation, finding a playground for twisting our storylines, whispering the other brother or sister is malicious and intending evil. He uses soundbites and past wounds to keep us in a circle of resentment and anger to keep us from forgiveness. He is always at work within our minds to convince us to place ourselves at the center of the universe. Protect yourself. Listen to yourself. Prioritize yourself. But what does Scripture say?

• Lay down your life.
• Go to your brother.
• Open rebuke is better than hidden love.
• Unresolved conflict invites division and gives a foothold to the devil.
• Forgive. Pursue peace.

But if the enemy wants a foothold, he will tell us to retreat, to withhold, to isolate, to divide. Is this not the sum of every divorce, every friendship divided, every broken family? One or both parties was convinced in their own mind that the other person is beyond repair, unfixable, stuck, unredeemable, and they, the victim have simply had a few small lapses in judgement, but should be forgiven and those minor offenses should be overlooked.

Gary Thomas poses this question that applies here to all Christian relationships:

“What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?… Marriage is the laboratory where spiritual transformation happens most powerfully-because no one exposes our selfishness, sharpens our character, or stretches our capacity to love like our spouse.”

When we see all relationships as opportunities for further sanctification, we are blessed with the presence of the One who will do that work. When we listen to the guidance of the enemy, we enthrone ourselves, believing we are protecting ourselves, only to be found withered and wanting, because in doing so, we have lost the connection to the true vine. Jesus calls us to die to ourselves, to lay down our lives, and acknowledge Him as who He is, the center of the universe, the first and the last. He models the way of life by “making himself nothing” and in emptying himself, not only are we filled, but he will be as well.

Lord, restore us again and expand our home into one of even greater beauty and harmony. Let us desire the way you have shown us, one of deeper roots, stronger ties of dependence on you.

Thank you for the trial, for the storm, and let us never resist the work you are doing within us-

-Rachel