Take me and break me, and make me strong like you...

So pretty late last semester, I was sitting in the Port, just praying. It was during Household adoration time, which went longer than usual that week. So I was sitting there, just looking around. Adoration was already canceled for the year, so the tabernacle was closed. I was looking around at the flowers decorating the altar/sanctuary when, kind of suddenly, God just asked one of those questions. "Why do you put flowers around my tabernacles?", He asked.

It was one of those things that just sort of struck me. I mean, how can placing plants before the dwelling of Almighty God /add/ anything to the majesty already found within? So I thought about it a second:
Well:
1) We put flowers there to be a visual reminder to us of the beauty of the Lord that we've come there to worship. That answer didn't really satisfy me. It makes it too much about us.
2) We put them before the altar as an offering to God. This one intrigued me. How can we offer God something like a flower, something that He made? But, recognizing that He made everything and that everything that we could give Him (including our free will and our very soul) is kept in existence by His mercy and love... it begins to make sense to me. We cannot offer Him /anything/ that He did not create, and does not sustain, and so we give back to Him those beautiful things that He created because it is all that we can do.

As soon as I had concluded with this answer (I'm not sure if I have adequately explained it here because I'm tired, but I assure you that it's quite clear in my head), God asked me "Would those flowers look just as beautiful in a home?" and I said, "Yes." He simply asked, "Why would you not take them and put them in your home then? You could enjoy them more, and their beauty might still remind you of Me?" I thought about that for a while then answered, "Well... because it is wrong to take back what you have given to the Lord."And God said, "Exactly."

There are beautiful, wonderful creations that God has placed in my life for a time. And then the time has come when He has said, "You must choose between My creation and Me." And no matter how hard it is to do, I have no doubts at all by this point that I must follow where He leads. And God does not stand still. So why, when I have, in faith, placed these beautiful flowers before Him, do I keep wanting to take them back again? I guess there's always the hope when God asks you to give something to Him that it will be an Abraham and Issac, but that is certainly not always the case. And we must not get into a bartering mentality with our Lord. We cannot say, "Alright God, I will exchange this blessing for one of equal or greater value."
That's not the way that it works.

So why do I keep desiring to take back the flowers that I have already placed before the Lord? Part of it is still simply mistrust. I have come a long way from my darker periods, but it is still easy to doubt. Doubt in what? Doubt in the love of God, of course. Thinking either that I somehow need to fix things that are broken, instead of entrusting them to God's love. Before I left for Steubenville my freshman year, I said: "Look, God. As long as I know that she is going to be alright, I can leave with peace." And He gave me that assurance, and He has come through. What I need now is that same assurance: the assurance that she and I are both in God's hands. I need that assurance so that I can stop wanting to take that flower back and make things right by myself somehow. So that I can just leave her before God in prayer, I need it so that I can stop turning from the plow to look over my shoulder. Our God is a living God, He does not stand still.
And that is my prayer for the summer.

"I'm here for you to use, broken and bruised..."
-L