The Gift

I want you to picture someone who loves you more than anyone else in the whole wide world.  Close your eyes and think about that person. Get a good feel for their face.  They are smiling at you with tenderness and affection.  Their eyes are fixed on you.  They are walking towards you slowly and deliberately with a gift.  With outstretched hands, they are holding this gift out to you.  It is beautifully and carefully wrapped with a large ribbon surrounding the package, fastened in place with a large bow on top of the box.  They are standing now with their gift extended out to you.  All that is required of you is to take it.  I want you to sit with that thought in your mind for just a minute.  Does it make you feel good to think about? 

It's not your birthday, it's not Christmas.  The present is simply because they love you and they want you to know how much.  You did nothing to deserve it at all, they just want to give it to you. They want to experience the joy in seeing you unwrap your special gift.  

You have to reach out for the box in order to unwrap it, don't you?  You need to take it from their hands.  The gift is not the wrapping of course, although it is pretty to look at.  You could stand there with your loved one and just take in the moment but sooner or later you have to take your present from their hands.  It really isn't yours until you receive it.  What is it like to unwrap a special present?  Do you get excited?  Do you thank the giver?  Do you tear open the package with urgent anticipation?

I want you to picture again that loving smile with the gift out in front of you, waiting for you to take it.  Now I want you to focus on their face while you look into their eyes and slap the gift out of their hands, sending it to the floor.  I want you to conjure up that feeling you get just before you send something flying.  Next I want you to envision pushing them to the floor.  What do you think the look on their face would be now? 
What would their reaction be?  Do you think they would be hurt?  What did they do to deserve such treatment? 

Quite a colorful exercise.  The only reason for their wanting to give was simply out of love for you and to see the joy that comes when you receive.  Why would you send their present hurling and them to the floor in rejection?  Do people actually do things like that?  You'd probably think that someone was crazy for doing something so cruel. 

People do it every day.  On any given hour, thousands and thousands of people will stand in front of the One who loves them more than anyone ever will.  They will see Him standing there with outstretched hands, the most precious gift they could ever receive and they it away like it was garbage.  They will tell Him that His present is foolish, stupid and not worth opening.  He will say, "I love you" and they will laugh in His face. 

The next time He comes to you with His gift, I'd like you to ask yourself what the risk is in just simply receiving it. 

The Pretty Girl

"Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain...." Proverbs 31:30

All I ever wanted, every summer of my high school years, was to return to school in the fall thin, pretty and cooler than I was last year.  I would watch MTV videos and flip through Seventeen magazine or the occasional Cosmo and pour over the fashions that were overwhelmingly adorable on girls built like surfboards.  I was a little more, as the current term is, curvy.  I would be less politically correct to say that I was pudgy.  As if that weren't enough, I had a wonderful case of acne that sent me crying into my room on many occasions.  It probably would have served me better to be a wallflower in those times but my exuberant personality didn't allow for that.  Instead, I became an eccentric metal chick.  I was proud of my leopard skin jeans, cowboy boots with spurs and lion mane of jet black hair.  If I couldn't be the homecoming queen, I'd still stand out.  I was voted Class Individualist in my senior year.  A title I was proud of. 

My rotund physique disappeared some time later along with the acne but the self-esteem didn't improve.  I always wanted attention from boys but when I did finally win some I felt awkward and under confident.  I wished I could be more like some of my friends. They seemed to have a new guy every other week.  Me?  I was the funny girl that all the boys seemed to think of more like a kid sister. Don't get me wrong, it had it's perks.  For one, I was heavy into the music scene in Boston.  I was on guest lists without any strings attached and I wasn't referred to as a groupie.  I was one of the cool girls but not one of the pretty ones you ask out on dates.  I tried to learn to accept my lot. 

I have been looking back at all of this over the last few days because now I am what I always wanted to be and to be honest, it isn't what I thought it would be. I am an attractive woman, especially for a person near 40.  My looks have come into their own and I dress for my age with a unique flair. I am comfortable with me.  What rubs me the wrong way is that seems to be what people notice about me first.  I am also a very intelligent person.  My mind overflows with ideas and creativity, literally every day.  It pours out of me.  If there is any one word that people use to describe their experience with me, it's inspiring.  I am humbled by that title.  I don't do anything to achieve it other than share the life the God has given me with other people.  I am more than just a pretty face.  When I was younger, that is all that I wanted to be.  It's funny how I've been given what I always longed for in my naive years and God has shown me that it isn't the be all, end all of everything.  Certainly my beauty is a gift but I love the other gifts so much more.  The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence and to be sure, it still has weeds and needs to be mowed.