Gently Stirred or Passion Spent?

Love, gently stirred cannot last.

Hearts raging toward the Truth collide,

Shattering all hard, brittle exteriors and leave them

Rough, brown, dirty

Shattered into brokenness.

Love, gently stirred is not real.

Life, gently stirred does not last.

The soul, as in a tracking beam

Is pulled towards the Great Immutable Maker of all.

Passion longs to speed the drawing towards its Home.

Love, with Passion spent!

Live, with life poured out unto the death!

- 9/27/2001Anna Marie Sheffield

Got any holes?

I had a dream yesterday.

In the dream, my house had a hole in the floor and critters were getting in and eating all my eggs. These were animals I should have been cautious of like foxes etc. but I was really comfortable with them.

I asked the Lord about it. He showed me that the hole was a wound of grief in my life that I had not dealt with. My brother was killed in 1968 in a car accident. That was where the first tear began. Our son died in 1986. That is a pain like no other. Dad departed this life in 1994. But in 2001, my mom passed on. That was my straw. The Lord was telling me all along to let Him be my all in all; to let Him be my mother and father, my brother and sister....but I wouldn't let Him. I couldn't let go of the grief. It kept me connected to my loved ones. I didn't see the way it was tearing my heart. I let the hole stay there, an entrance for my enemy, and over the years the critters that came in and out became my friends. They were consuming the new beginnings and the "birthings" the Lord wanted to bring through me.

I don't think I am alone. We all have wounds in our lives that we have a hard time letting go of.

We all have critters. Whether the are in the form of drugs, alcohol, food, pleasure-seeking, selfishness, grudge holding, self-pity, materialism...whatever, they are keeping us from being all that we were created to be.

I have decided it is time to close my hole. I am asking the Lord to fill it with the Holy Spirit and with His love. I am rounding up the critters and sending them out where they belong. The Lord reminded my of a couple scriptures: Song of Solomon 2:15, "Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes." And Psalm 80:12-13, "Why have you broken down her hedges, so that all who pass by the way pluck her fruit? The boar out in the woods uproots it, and the wild beast of the field devours it." Allowing our holes to remain is like having a broken hedge or allowing the fruit in our lives to be stolen.

I am asking the Lord Jesus to make be so aware of any rips and tears in my "house," so that I never again let them become a hole, an entrance for critters!

Thanks for listening. I would be grateful for your prayers!

Blessings and love, A Fellow Traveler.