Have You Ever Been Carried Away for Him?

"If love is always discreet, always wise, always sensible and calculating, never carried beyond itself, it is not love at all" -- Oswald.

Sometimes Oswald surprises me. Like today. And sometimes God does. Like yesterday.

I mentioned book group in Friday's post and the discussion about blessing our children. What I didn't mention was that my negativity included a tirade about how difficult it was to give what I had not been given myself. I struggle with feeling loved and valued by God. Part of that may result from a lifelong effort to internalize my earthly father's love. My dad was raised by two of the most non-demonstrative people I have ever met. Compared to them, he has certainly made progress. He hugs me when I see him. He tells me he loves me before he hangs up the phone on our bi-weekly conversations, but those same conversations tend to stick fairly close to the surface and rarely deal with anything resembling emotion. My dad was born in 1929; it goes without saying that being raised during the Depression had an impact on him. He is not always sure how to relate to me, his youngest daughter. I have often wished that he would ask more questions, be more talkative, more openly expressive of his love and interest in my life and the lives of my children. This probably isn't going to happen. It is not who he is. Sometimes I do a better job of accepting this than others. At book group, I wasn't even trying to accept it. I was like a child -- wanting what I wanted -- a father who reads my blog (and, in fact, everything I write), gets excited about my ideas and wants to discuss them, affirms me, values me, adores me and my children.

Yesterday, one of my friends from book group excitedly told me about a piece of art she had just seen at a show that reminded her of me. It was a batik entitled, "A Gift from My Father." I had a day full of meetings, but at the end of the afternoon, I snuck out early to go see this painting and meet the artist, a member of the Masai tribe who has been studying in the US. As I stood looking at the painting of a Masai warrior placing a necklace around the neck of his young daughter, the artist spoke to me about a father's tender love for his daughter. He assured me, though he was meeting me for the first time and does not know my story, that my father did indeed love me and suggested that, in my stubborn insistence on specific demonstrations of love, I might be missing the obvious. I wept. And I did an extravagant thing -- out of character for me -- I bought that batik. I bought it because I knew it was a message from God to me through a Masai artist. It was a message to me about a Father's love for his daughter.

This might seem like a different kind of extravagance than Oswald was writing about. I bought something for myself, yes, but in a mysterious way I'm not sure I can explain, my purchasing that piece of art was also a gift to God -- a gift of trust, a gift of acceptance, a gift of relinquishing anger. It wasn't sensible. With two boys in college, I have no business buying original art. I was indeed carried away.

That purchase was for me an act of abandonment to God. Every time I look at it, I will remember that I am His and He loves me. Dearly.