In Moments Like This

   Today, I am in a caregiving world to an aging mom-parent.  A world that calls for patient repetition, a chauffeur’s role, and meal planning.  A world that has turned my life in a whole different direction with me spending time letting God know the reasons why I am not a logical choice for this caregiving life and role.  I’m just not the right choice!     

For most of my sixty years, I’ve had the desire to do something great for God.  Big things!   But what I haven’t realized, is the scale I’ve used to  measure ‘great’ on is not the scale God uses to measure what He calls great or His purposes and plans for me to do.  Even with this realization, God and I have still struggled and wrestled. We’ve wrestled over control and loss of dreams. I’ve struggled over thinking I was created for more.

      I glance out the window in front of me at the gray of the sunless day, thinking how the day matched my emotional mood. I began watching a bird who was perched on a leafless tree, flitting from tree branch to tree branch, steadily moving towards the higher branches. The bird finally stopped, making the branch at the highest point of the tree its choice to perch. I began to wonder why it hadn’t chosen a branch lower to the ground, where it would have meant more security and safety. I soon had my answer, as without warning, the bird takes flight off the branch.  I watched it take flight and soar, seemingly not because it had a plan for where it was going, but because it understood this as God’s choice and trusted its Creator. The bird was created and chosen to do and be, exactly what it was being, just a bird. 

The bird was soon out of my line of sight, but I couldn’t seem to get the image of that bird out of my mind. I soon began to realize and understand in order for my caregiving role to succeed, I needed to have the same mindset as that little bird; that climbing to the highest branch of my ‘caregiving tree’ was the intention and purpose God had for me. It was the piece I was missing all along.  By allowing God’s choice to be His choice for me as my Creator, it also became my choice as well. You see, God knew He had chosen well. He knew He had given me exactly what His purpose and intention was for me. He knew and trusted I would eventually climb to that highest branch of the tree, and learn it was a place where I could learn to take flight and soar.

In the Bible, John 15:16 says: “You didn’t choose Me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name.”

I was chosen for this moment, not because of anything in me that warrants His choosing me for it, but because He longs and desires for us to produce lasting fruit. 

There may still be days when I feel stuck. Days when I will question God’s choice. Days when I feel ill-equipped, and believe I’m not producing or ‘bearing’ any fruit that will last. It will on these days I choose to remind myself God chose well, and it will be on these days I will choose to climb to the highest branch and soar because I was chosen to do so.