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Edition #39

Welcome to "Write Your Life Forward"!

Are you here for the first time? Come on in, my Friend! We are a community of friends who aspire to see change, get unstuck, and write our lives forward. We do that by helping you study your life's story in the light of God's love story! Welcome to our cyber corner! Here's a note just for you --- wherever you are, whatever you're facing today...

The art of giving — is simply the pouring.

Pouring your worn heart out like water, like a pitcher emptied of its content, tipped to drip its very last flow...

But yet, still held firmly by the hand that holds you still.

Isn't this what life comes down to?

Living is loving, and loving is messy.

How many times have we been afraid to love because loving is risking, and what may come back to you when you give yourself out just like that?

I looked at my watch. Between work and home, the time always ticks too fast.

And I'm learning to just breathe slowly, to still keep to pace with the dog on her walk, to maintain peace amid deadlines, to hang onto some words as lifelines --- but would I believe that I have all that is required of me today, not fearing that I may burn out?

Standing at a Subway counter one evening, we were behind two teenage boys taking their time ordering their meals.

These kids must have been about thirteen. Slender and thin, they were about to pay for their chicken and meatball subs.

They each took their cards and started swiping.

One swipe. Two swipes. Three swipes.

What's the chance of both cards not working?

“Sorry, no,” the cashier shook her head and handed their cards back to them.

They looked at each other, faces going pale and hands rummaging through their pockets for any loose change they might have missed.

The lines grew longer, and the time ticked slower.

I stepped in from behind them.

“May I? May I take care of this?” I took and swiped my card.

The transaction went so fast that the boys forgot to look at me in the eyes and I forgot to look for their parents, who might be just behind me.

But this moment of forgetting is good.

This moment of not over-worrying, over-calculating, over-rationalizing is good.

It’s holy when I self-forget.

It’s wholesome to be spurred toward some random act of kindness that does something more for my soul than anything else.

It may not mean much, but who knows how long a string of love may go?

“For God truly loved that He gave…”

And how much do I need to learn to have a heart just like that?

To seize more moments just like that, and live as if I’m always the one with a wallet full, the one with a big Mama heart who loves blessing my boy --- or any boys --- and all who come and cross my path.

And yeah --- this act of self-forgetting is liberty, freeing us from our own never-ending needs so we can be a channel of compassion for others’ needs.

Maybe I can learn to lean over like a pitcher and pour my life out just like that because I have been made full of the life that has been poured in for me.

And then there was something I will never forget.

I will never forget how the kids and I shared our blessings on Easter pandemic day.

When the lockdown first hit?, all we wanted to do was to leave little love gifts at our neighbours’ doorsteps with a note to say: “We’re here, we care, together we can”.

During those lockdown days, we were desperate to bridge physical isolation with heart connections and to create a community of care.

So that Easter week, we got busy shopping for treats and printing printables over pretty ribbons that read: “He’s not here. He’s risen.”

We zipped around our postcode in the dark, dropping those gifts at different homes in our street. They weren’t expensive gifts; they just took some time, some thought — they just took a bit of us.

Imagine how over the moon we were when the neighbours returned our little seeds of love with flowers, fruits, cards, and letters.

While it took a little virus to make us aware of others then, what I needed now was a heart transplant to replace my selfish living with selfless giving.

“Thank you so much,” the two boys grinned a mile wide.

I blushed, my own girl next to me making fun of their weird mama.

But it made me think: maybe this is the way I want to live?

Maybe in my own messy living, I can still leave a trail of kindness here and there?

Maybe giving begets loving, and living given is what will fill us up when we fear we have nothing enough in us to go around?

There is so much about God we cannot fully understand, but when we give of ourselves ---

He becomes known, and we get to know His heart for the world.

Our truest response to knowing God is also giving God.

Giving away little bits of God’s love we have tasted so others can taste Him.

Our life — isn’t it a vapour that disappears over time? We’re all in this race — not in a race to preserve time, but in this race to out-give our time in a meaningful and life-giving way.

Time waits for no man --- thinking you have ample of it causes you to squander it, but seeing it as a precious commodity to invest in, time becomes your redeemed grace.

I grinned back at those boys.

Nothing beats giving. Nothing.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life". (John 3:16)

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