Whose passions? His, or ours?

As I’ve mentioned before, some of my deepest thinking comes while gardening. (Deep thinking being a relative term for me, of course.)

I realized something today while watering my tomatoes.

I never really did enjoy gardening.

And yet, I was stunned to realize, gardening has become a small passion of mine. How did that happen?  What compels me?

It is a skill I’ve needed to learn for the benefit of my family. It involves a knowledge bank that is free and readily accessible to me. It is something that I can do which will greatly improve the lives of my children, and so I do it. In spite of the fact that I would never list gardening as my favorite hobby, God has been kind enough to pass along the passion and the enjoyment after the fact. He’s expanded that to natural medicine and the use of herbs for pleasure, taste, and healing. He’s such a great bonus giver, that along with fresh air and sunshine, and healthy foods to eat, He’s blessed us with only one trip to the doctor in the past year. That’s some cream to skim off the top for a family of ten.

If I worked only within my passions, I’d never have these blessings.

There is another area of my life that almost elicits stunned disbelief when I consider it.

Children were never my passion. And now, I have eight of them. I’m passionate about their father (wink); and there is nothing physical that I am invested in more than them.  Let me TELL you I’m passionate about them.  My heart is divided 9 ways!

What is your greatest earthly passion?  Try and imagine your life without that *thing* (or person, or place, or activity.) If you break out in a cold sweat at the thought of losing *that,* it is most definitely your passion.

Nothing makes me sweat colder nor my muscles grow weaker than the thought of spiritually losing one of my kids.

Would you believe that once upon a time I did not like kids? Not at any age really. I did not like holding a small, damp, cheerio attracting person. I did not like their smell, nor the stains they left on my clothes in the nursery. I did not like them at any age…not at least until they could carry on conversations without an accompanying attitude.

Oh, how God has changed my passions. I’d go so far as to say that He replaced some and planted new ones. “Give me a houseful of children, God. Give me some that really need your touch through me.”

Many say that as Christians we should only work within our passions.

I think we should ask God what He wants us to be passionate about; then allow Him to build those passions within us regardless of our presumptions.

I can think of so many things that I had no interest in which He has now made me passionate for: Teaching: He gave me these children, then showed me that I need to capture their hearts, to train them. I’m no teacher…but He has equipped. Scrapbooking: (I resisted for years, but saw a need to record love and faithfulness from the last generation to the next, and even further on down the line.) Knitting, sewing, creating: (I was the least crafty child you ever knew. My mother thought I was hopeless. Truly. Now, I see how it blesses my children. I stay away from trendy or transient crafts – whatever I do, whatever I spend my time on – it needs to benefit my family in some way. If I knit a sweater – it needs to say “I love you” with every warm stitch.)

Many of these are small things, small passions, but they have great benefit and great potential for blessing.

As God has redefined my passions, He has also refined them. There are still residual vestiges of the things I once thought important: I read so that I may learn more about Him. I write in order to  pass what I have learned along to others.

I praise Him for not allowing my concepts of my passions affect the “me” He is in the process of creating. I thank Him for loving me enough to work in me, to see me as worthy of development.

“The Christian way is different:  harder, and easier.  Christ says ‘Give me All.  I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work:  I want You.  I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. …Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit.  I will give you a new self instead.  In fact, I will give you Myself:  my own will shall become yours.’”

“The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it.  It comes the very moment you wake up each morning.  All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals.  And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.  And so on, all day.  Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”

Mere Christianity ~ C.S. Lewis

P.S. Here’s one of my little passions.  Mariam Annaliese at 8 months.

Look at these CUTE baby legs and gratuitous size 1 sandals!