Work

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I was asked today why I work.  The questioner wanted an answer for why I waste my time on other people's problems when I have such a problem in front of me.  He is young.  He doesn't know himself yet.  He is a sea shell being tossed to and fro by the strong waves and getting scratched a bit in the sand.  I sit higher on the beach away from the waterline.  I have come to rest.  I know myself.  I have found my place in life.  Work is not work for me.  It is an art that I practice and I can imagine myself doing anything else.

What I do feels so much a part of me that to not do it would be to deny myself the privilege of a portion of my identity.  I am blessed.  I am blessed beyond imagining.  I have found myself.  I have found my art.  I have found great love in my life.  I have birthed an incredible child.  I have a tremendous family.  I am a blood sucking weasel because I am asking for more than all of this.  I want the greatest gift of all.  I want time to enjoy it all for many years to come.

They say in life you either love your work or you work to do the things you love.  To have both is a nice situation to be in.  I know that I am lucky.  I am able to help others and get paid.  I am able to do something I am talented at.  I have found someone who taught me to live beneath my means so that we can both spend time with our son.  I love him for that.  He rescued me from the rat race I was existing in.  I worked too much. I spent too much. I have nothing to show for it except a collection of stories.

God made me a promise once.  Well, He has made me many promises but I want to tell you about one in particular. I had spent so much time off doing my own thing.  When I went looking for Him, He was waiting for me.  I went forward on an altar call.  The church employed teams of intercessor's who stood at the front in groups of two.  When I went forward they prayed with me and one of them shared these words with me.  "God wants you to know that every thing that has happened to you will become valuable and precious and useful.  You will use your experiences and be glad for them."

I did not know how this could be possible.  There are several experiences I have had, many choices that I have made, and things that I have walked through that I didn't care to remember then and certainly could not regard as precious.  I had not found my art then.  I have since realized how true this promise was and in the limitations of my human and flawed mind did not even grasp that God was not referring only to my past.  He planned to deliver on this promise past, present and future. The cancer has enhanced and brought out deeper hues in the palette I paint from.  The colors are more vivid and I understand more than I did before.

As a therapist I meet people walking through hell on earth.  Some have become lost and need to be led out of the dark place that they are in.  It would be hard to lead someone out of a place that I had not been.  God sends me clients that are in need of the help that I am uniquely equipped to assist them with.  I do not profess to have the expertise to handle everything out there and resolve all needs.  I stay in my area.  It is God who develops and expands this area from time to time.

Purple Passion

Yes, I am still working.  I do not plan to stop.  Jeff is leaving his work to find his more proper place on this big beach of life.  Maybe that is not accurate.  Maybe it would be more correct to say that he has finished this stage of development and is transitioning to the next.  I wish that when it was time for me to say goodbye to the different stages in my life and move on to the next stage I had been more willing to go.  I liked where I was.  I didn't realize that God was calling me on to bigger and better and molding me into the person that I am today.  I often forget that He is still doing that.  I am not yet what I will be.


What is your work?  Is it your art?  Do you conduct it with passion?  Do you look forward to it?  Can you see yourself doing something else?  Has God been beckoning you away?  Is He offering you another opportunity?  Take it.  It will be infinitely better than where you are.  It requires trust and perhaps a leap of faith.  My mother gave me great advice once when I was fretting over a decision to leave a job that I loved or stay.  I knew it was the right work but was it the right place?  She said, "It is your work so you will take it with you when you go.  It is what you do but you are miserable in that particular place."  I knew that she was right.  She brought me so much clarity in that moment.  It wasn't that job that I loved it was MY work.  I took her advice and it has brought me rich experiences, valuable learning lessons and peace.