A Longing Fulfilled

Today is one month post surgery, and so much has changed in four short weeks.  Patrick has seen an astounding weight loss of 46.6 pounds since surgery day, and 72.6 pounds total since making diet changes at the beginning of April.  Incredible!  I’m so proud of him. 

Now that we have reached four weeks, he has introduced more “normal” foods.  Everything still has to be really soft and super well chewed, but he’s found quite a few things he can eat and enjoy.  We went to lunch together this week while we were out running errands.  We got a single soup and half sandwich combo and shared it.  I had half a sandwich, and he had five bites of soup and was done.  He’s such a cheap date now! 

I was chatting with friends this week about some things I’ve noticed.  He called me while I was talking with them, and I noticed there is something different in his voice-a tenderness that I haven’t heard in awhile.  I mentioned it to them, wondering what the change might be.  It has been a consistent change since the surgery, so it seems to be hanging around-believe me-I love it!  My friend wondered if maybe, it might be hope, and I think she might have it.  Perhaps, in his own way, he had lost hope that anything would ever change, just as I had.  Maybe the change isn’t just in him…perhaps it’s in me too.  I know my hope has been renewed of late.  In my heart, I always trusted my good, good Father to take care of us, but as time wore on and nothing changed, I definitely got discouraged.  In the wondering, I’m brought to Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”  It’s not just that his voice has changed, it’s his heart as well.  I had never thought about it possibly not being just me that was constantly frustrated and disappointed, which caused me to withdraw and become defensive.  Maybe he wasn’t content with living the way we always had-experiencing life from a spectator’s seat, watching everything happen around him-I wonder if, perhaps, that deferred hope in his own heart pushed my love to make the change, and once he took the first step to be transformed for good, God honored His word-honored the obedient heart- and planted the seed in the fertile soil of change, that has taken root to produce a tree of life heart-work-a tree watered by the Living Water, which is all the water and food our soul will ever need. 

Oh, this makes me excited.  I see it now!  God, in His infinite grace, takes opportunity with our hearts, when we come to humbly trust, like children-blindly, completely-to plant the seed of hope in the soft ground of humility.  It takes root quickly, no longer choked out by our pride, and grows the Tree of Life within our hearts.  Stepping out in blind faith, for me, made me utterly helpless-broke up the stony ground that I’d allowed life to create in me.  Reacting instead of responding in love had slowly choked out the Life in me, had made me cynical, angry, intolerant, no longer bearing Good Fruit.  But the helplessness, the blind trust of true, childlike faith, had broken through years of bitter and angry to yield a soft heart to receive the Love that had always been there for me.  I didn’t have to earn it.  I didn’t have to be all things to all people.  I had to just trust the One who deposits the seed into the fertile soil of soft hearts, and let Him do the caring for a care-worn child.  This surgery may have saved Patrick’s life, but I’m sure, as I sit here this morning, that it saved mine too.  His radical decision brought us both to helpless dependence on God, eradicated our pride, and allowed Life to begin to grow afresh in our hearts.  There is a new tenderness, for both of us, brought about by the Great Tree springing up within each of our hearts.  Love endures all things.  It produces a good work when we get out of our own way and allow Love to bring to completion that which was begun in us.

I look forward to Love’s fruit in our lives-that we can share it with many, multiply the seeds, and see them planted in willing hearts.