It's going to take me a minute to actually eat the Everything bagel with both lemon curd and butter. I made it for myself, along with cheesy eggs and a load of bacon. The thing is, it's well after 1:00 p.m. and this is the third day in a row that I haven't eaten anything for breakfast, nor have I felt even the least bit hungry enough to make myself consume a lunch. I've been rather preoccupied with thoughts the past few days and it's been difficult to focus on my personal health. I think I'm OK. Adrenaline is kicking in, and when it wanes I do fill up with carbs for fuel. Not a good diet plan really, but it's working for now. It will stabilize, I will be OK.
One of the great things about the friends I have is that I can call one or two of them up and make a suggestion such as "Hey, wanna go to Vegas?" and at least one will agree to take off work on an instant notice to oblige me. It's really been wonderful being able to surround myself with spontaneous people who think like I do. We need a break. Take a break! We need beaches! Go to Hawaii. We need handsome men without the obligation - - Vegas. You pay to watch, you walk away.
I'm in the middle of purposely loosening the strings of a woven time, and it's not easy to do. I was there one minute saying a simple prayer, then the next I was being led by God to pray more, and to pray deeper. Over time that prayer life led to knowledge and information about the person I as praying for, and naturally because I did care, I wanted to help. They say it all the time, "No good deed goes unpunished" and that is exactly how I feel today. It's just going to take a minute to pull out the golden threads that hold the tapestry together -- it will take a minute to disengage my soul and my spirit from what I was accustomed to doing on a daily basis; prayer for a would-be, could-be friend. Time heals and I know I'll be OK. I actually wondered if he would be OK then I remembered to pull that string too, and let it fall. I can't concern myself with it. It hurts.
Maybe we won't go to Vegas or Hawaii. Maybe we girls need to think outside the box. One friend is German, the next is Greekian (our word) I'm of Scottish blood, maybe something neutral like the cliffs of Eastern Spain! Maybe that would settle our souls -- I hear it's lovely this time of year. Probably not. We'll probably settle for North Carolina if we want mountains and beaches. We can go to one in particular that has wild Mustangs roaming the beaches. Humans are forbidden to approach, but if the animals approach, that's another story. I think there's a lesson in that actually. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to approach this particular wild animal -- maybe just observing and praying would have been a better way to reach his trust. I learned. I got kicked. I will survive.
Knowing what I know about taming and training Mustangs, I can actually put a few of the more reasonable thoughts together now, and I can see where I overstepped. I understand that my voice and my commanding nature would have been taken as a threat rather than a means of trying to rescue from the inevitable harm that I could see was encroaching on this man. Whatever the vision I saw and knew, he was still wild and untamed, unwilling to participate in his own recovery where I was concerned. I wasn't the flower he needed in his garden, and he was not mine to rescue. Observation and prayer would have been a better method in deed. He's tangled himself in the thicket again, and he's become caught in the rattle of life -- I can't do more now than hope.
I once watched a video of how the 12th and 13th Century tapestries were made. When I was in my young 20's I had a friend whose family was incredibly rich, and come to think of it, she too was from another country. She was Italian. Her grandfather had purchased a 13th Century tapestry at an estate sale in the 1930s and he had had it cleaned and then shipped to America. It hung in my friend's house for decades. When a fire broke out in the kitchen of the house and spread to the hall, the family was asleep and barely escaped being killed by smoke. The end result was the tapestry was caught on fire, but only a corner of it really - - it took over two years and $225,000.00 to restore it. In order to do that, the master craftsman that was literally flown in by the family, had to unravel the weave and reweave. He needed to restore it to the original status or try even to leave it in a better condition.
Naturally, the original status of the dosser was compromised; it would never be the same. I learned so much one afternoon as the craftsman allowed me to watch as he unraveled it. I never saw him restore it. I just remember the care and the delicate means by which he removed each thread. As he removed the threads he considered their damage. He considered which ones he could use again, and he made decisions about the way it was affected by the fire. Isn't Christ a little like that? He doesn't destroy the person we were before we accepted Him, but he unravels the bad and restores our lives with His good, and His grace, and His mercy. We are new. We are not the same. We are changed forever, but we still have enough of what makes us "us" to be who we are.
Bottom line? I can let go. I've been asked to step back. I've been bitten by the pony I wanted to save. It's OK, I will be fine, and the pony will eventually find his way either to a better place or to a place he can call his own. Some flowers are meant to be seen and some are meant to be appreciated at a distance.
Photo Credit: Quality Tapestries. (This is not the one hanging in my friend's hallway)
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