Last year I cut back our tulip tree.  As beautiful as it was in all of its fullness, it had grown to massive proportions and hidden underneath were all kinds of excess and wild growth that would eventually choke out that beauty if left alone.  And, it was starting to kill off other, independent growth at the ground level underneath and around it.  I had to cut it back for both its own sake and for the sake of the life struggling to continue near it.  My husband would have preferred I just ripped the whole thing out.  I wanted to give it a chance to be what I thought it could be.

One might say I was rather severe, using a hacksaw to cut back a good two thirds of it, yet in the process I discovered a natural shape and beauty flowing from a strong trunk and branch system.  Clearing away all the excess and undergrowth gave a chance for it to burst forth with life – last year it produced three rounds of beautiful blossoms; two this year (cooler weather).  And other new growth has had a chance to grow under and around it, no longer smothered by its insistent presence; in fact, now protected by that presence from the scorching sun, growing safely in its shade.

This summer, I have been the tulip tree at the mercy of the Gardener.  And he has been severe…but not unkind.  Back in February, I was reading Chris Heuertz’s book, Simple Spirituality and his section on “Brokenness” caught me like a deer in headlights.  He writes, “There’s a concept in chemistry called the “limiting capacity”.  An eight-ounce cup can only hold eight ounces of liquid.  That is its limiting capacity.  If the bottom of an eight-ounce cup is broken off, however, the limiting capacity is no longer a factor; that cup is capable of holding an entire ocean poured through it.”

Back then, I was already being courted by God to grow in my capacity to love.  I realized then I would need to be broken – I thought I knew all too well my limited capacity.  And even as I began this summer and was challenged from so many different directions, I again thought I had a good picture of my need and was ready to go.  Illusions die hard.

Almost 3 months into a “sabbatical” year and I can say, God has begun to unfold things in ways I never expected yet are clearly in line with his invitation to “take the fences off my playground” and learn to love in ways beyond what I have already known.  Once again, in the beginning, I had the vision of “adding on to what was already good”. You would think given the number of rounds I have gone with him, I would remember it really doesn’t work that way – but I seldom do.   God, in his usual kindness, corrected my vision and reminded me that new and abundant fruit never comes without first cutting back the foliage. 

Through pressing and pain-filled circumstances, I am now in a space of facing, with God, a lot of undergrowth hidden within me, at times blinding me, at times choking life before it can reach others, at times choking life out of others.  Wild branches twisting in and around, overtaking the natural shape and beauty of God’s design and expression of his loving presence through me.

It has not been easy.  But the consequences have been graciously countered with the consolation of learning what genuine love looks like.  This summer I read Thomas Reynold’s Vulnerable Communion.  I like his simple definition of love – “welcoming the presence of another”.

He continues, “Genuinely welcoming others calls for something different, a moral disposition – love…In love, people become sympathetically attuned and vulnerable to one another, considering each other not from a distance but up close, compassionately.  Furthermore, love keeps the joy of the other in mind, respecting his or her own way of being, working to nourish the capacity for joy that he or she embodies, and remaining faithful to it over time.”  

He also shares a bit of his own journey of how difficult it has been for him at times to truly welcome another: “…how my own needs, expectations, and ideals have closed me in on myself and limited my capacity to be open toward him, to be there with and for him in his struggles as well as joys.” 

Dan Allender talks about relationship patterns and how we all struggle with what is ultimately a quest for power in the face of our fear and unmet needs – either through oppressing others by trying to control or manage them (or worse, by abusing them) or by excluding others in a move of self-protection and excessive attentiveness to our own needs, expectations and ideals.  It is the common lot of a humanity that has lost full sight of its natural, God-given dignity.  He, like Heuertz and Reynolds, says the answer lies in brokenness and shared vulnerability.  Coming to a place of claiming our dignity as one made in the image of God and also agreeing that we are totally unable to reflect that dignity or respect the dignity of another without complete surrender to the grace of God.

So now, I sit in the sorrow of consequences and dying illusions… and in the hope of consequences and dying illusions.  God never exposes the power-plays in our lives to just “rip us out”.  He does it to give us a chance to be what he made us to be.  As we trust in his welcome of our presence, and in his provision for our relational needs, his love is free to flow through us to others in unlimited capacity, providing safe places for others to flourish along with us in the shade of his presence.

My journey is far from over; in fact, it has just begun and I am still deeply in the midst of even finding all the hidden, wild growth – never mind clearing it out.  I suspect it will be a life-long journey.  My prayer along the way is that somehow, in whispers of redemptive activity, Love will have His way and I will indeed learn to love in ever deepening ways beyond what I know at any given point in time.