From this episode:
"… a couple of the daughters were in high school and they were really, really upset at the prospect of this move. After they moved, they thought it was the end of the world. In conversation with them, I would hear them talk about what they left behind. Leaving the friends, leaving what they thought the future would hold. They worried that their future could not possibly be as good as their past, and that whatever future there was would be nothing like what they had imagined or hoped it would be. And what about all the memories that they would leave behind?
"My own daughter, in a conversation with me a few months ago, and expecting her second child, expressed some anxiety about how she would feel about the new baby. How would she feel when he was born? What if she didn't love him as much as the first one? What if there wasn't enough love to go around? What if her future just held more labor and less love? Now, most parents have similar questions with their second child, but of course this was her first second child."
Change is always easier, and the future always brighter, when we understand how to love.
Podcast 58 - Love Only Expands: Dealing With Change
Hello, my friends.
Several years ago, my sister and her husband decided that they needed to move to the state where I then lived. That meant pulling their children out of school, moving their entire family to another state, and leaving behind their dream home.
Now, a couple of the daughters were in high school and they were really, really upset at the prospect of this move. After they moved they thought it was the end of the world. In conversation with them, I would hear them talk about what they left behind. Leaving the friends; leaving what they thought the future would hold. They worried that their future could not possibly be as good as their past, and that whatever future there was would be nothing like what they had imagined or hoped it would be. And what about all the memories that they would leave behind?
My own daughter, in a conversation with me a few months ago, and expecting her second child, expressed some anxiety about how she would feel about the new baby. How would she feel when he was born? What if she didn't love him as much as the first one? What if there wasn't enough love to go around? What if her future just held more labor and less love? Now, most parents have similar questions with their second child, but of course this was her first second child.
Part of the Biblical parable of the talents is really a story of abundance, of being willing to invest our talents in a way that they produce more, even tenfold or a hundred fold. The Lord said the earth is full and there is enough and to spare. That's true, but I believe it extends far beyond that. He may well have said the universe is full. That too would be accurate. There's much more love, much more memory, much more sweetness to go around than we can possibly imagine. We just may not have experienced it yet. But love is a decision and an action. It requires effort, and it pays back a hundred fold.
In CS Lewis's masterwork, The Screwtape Letters, the old devil, Screwtape, is trying to tutor his nephew, Wormwood, on how to be a good devil. In the book, God is referred to as "the enemy."
In one particular situation, Wormwood is really upset by being unable to get his "patient," he called him---the man that he was responsible for tempting---to commit great sin or to feel discouraged or to feel distanced from God somehow. After he complained about it to his old uncle, Screwtape, Screwtape wrote back, "Now, it may surprise you to learn that in God's efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks. Some of his special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this: to us... (remember, this is a devil talking)... to us, a human is primarily food. Our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience, which the enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about his love for men and his service being perfect freedom is not, as one would gladly believe, mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of himself; creatures whose life on its miniature scale will be qualitatively like his own, not because he has absorbed them, but because their wills freely conform to his. We want cattle who can finally become food. He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in. He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled. He is full and flows over."
In a letter to a friend who had been called to Japan as a missionary, and was suffering some culture shock, I wrote while reminiscing about my own experience: "A miracle happened to me when I started... wait for it... turning Japanese. I decided to embrace the beautiful parts of the culture. I embraced and explored the food, the clothing, the history, the traditions, the music, the festivals, and most of all, the people. I decided to love everything about Japan that I could love. All homesickness vanished. Unlike what I feared, I didn't lose my identity. My fond memories and love for rodeos and haystacks and tractors and foothills did not become any less food for my soul, but Japan filled my heart.
Love only expands, never contracts. What you open to will fill you, but won't displace what is already there. Your heart just gets bigger.
My daughter has since delivered her second child; a bright, beautiful, not so little boy. She loves him. She adores him. She feels no less love for her first child or for her husband, but more love for them both, as they excitedly and tenderly welcome and sooth and love the newest family member.
Oh, and that story about my nieces: I took them for a long drive. We talked about their fears and their perceived loss. About their future hopes and the potential derailment of their dreams. We talked about how sweet memories remain sweet regardless of one's location, about how the future could be brighter than even what they had imagined, about how love only grows and never contracts. It opens us to new vistas, new experiences, and new opportunities. Those girls now have families of their own. They have fond memories and lasting friendships from the place they left and for the places they've been since. Their futures are bigger and more beautiful than what they thought they were leaving behind. They've had opportunities they could never have even imagined before, and they love people.
People who really know how to love spread it like a spring rain. From it flow, rivulets and streams and rivers of life giving water. People who accept and pass it along form great reservoirs that nourish the dry places of the world.
God is full and flows over. He teaches us to experience, and become, the same thing, full of love and flowing over.
Let me know how I can help you experience this. To contact me, go to natewalkercoaching.com and click the contact link.
We'll talk again soon.