…..As Only Your Mama Can 

U is for Unfailing, Unseen and Ubiquitous

 

U is for Unfailing

 

You and I have a favorite movie, A Walk to Remember.  Toward the end, when Landon is aware that Jamie is dying, Jamie gives him a gift of poetry and quotes which her mother had collected.  This was one of Jamie’s greatest earthly treasures.  In it was I Corinthians 13…which she quoted to Landon as she lay dying.  And, it was at this moment that she promised Landon her unfailing love.  Then, at the end of the movie as the scene leaves their wedding and moves to the sky outside the beautiful little church, Landon uses this term to describe Jamie’s love…of God, of him, of her father…. 

Unfailing….

Love that is unfailing is the kind of love God wants us to have for one another.  Unfailing love is the kind of love of which you are “always able to supply more.” 

It the kind of love God calls upon a husband to have for his wife.  The kind of love a mother has for her child.

It’s the kind of love which does not have an end, but which grows and grows and grows… 

That is my Mama’s prayer for you….to find and to give unfailing love. 

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.  What a person desires is unfailing love.”  Proverbs 20: 21-22.

I love you, dear daughter, with an unfailing love which will always grow and which will always be….. 

Wait for that kind of love in a mate, for with unfailing love, your own love will be complete.  And, once you have found that kind of love, guard it, nurture it, invest in it…. 

Love it back….unfailingly. 

U Is for Unseen 

Something not observed or perceived is said to be unseen and in my fifty-one years, it has seemed to me that often is the occasion that those things which are unseen are those things which are of greatest significance to me and my life….and, yet, I know with great confidence that they exist. 

God….in faith I believe in Him, in my life there is evidence of Him 

Love…in living I experience it, in sharing I give it….

Joy…in suffering I find it, in truth I live with it 

God, Love, Joy…..I cannot see them, but like the wind, I can feel them…. 

And, I believe. 

It is in our faith in these unseen things which brings to us hope. 

“Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly, we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4: 16-18 

Take to heart in your life the power of those things unseen and give them over to God…. 

They are not unseen because you are blind to them.  They are unseen because God pulls you to Him through them…

U is for ubiquitous

I confess that as I prepared for this week’s blog, this word kept tumbling itself inside my head…I could not shake it off, I could not invite it to leave.  As I walked and prayed in the early morning, I kept thinking of ubiquitous…so, I looked it up… 

Ubiquitous means something which is seen everywhere at the same time…existing everywhere….omnipresent

So, I thought….am I supposed to talk about God and His omnipresence in your life?

Am I to discuss the use of cell phones which seem to be all over the place and for which we have a fetish?

But, the more I read of ubiquitous and studied its Latin roots, I realized, ubiquitous is not necessarily a good thing. 

When something is everywhere, all the time, in all places, surrounding all things, it is often taken for granted, overlooked and unappreciated… 

We often take things that are ubiquitous for granted, until they disappear. 

I have experienced that in my own life….having blessings so abundant that it was not until they were gone that I fully appreciated what I had.

I have lived on both sides of ubiquitous, and both were painful. 

As Kathleen Kelley and Joe Fox say in You Got Mail,

 

Joe Fox: It wasn't... personal.

Kathleen Kelly: What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me. It's *personal* to a lot of people. And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway?

Joe Fox: Uh, nothing.

Kathleen Kelly: Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal. 

LIFE is personal.  Kathleen Kelley got that right…she understood that to be ubiquitous was not necessarily a good thing…

Choose not to live a ubiquitous life….it’s not important that you be everywhere, all the time, in all places, being all things to all people.

What matters is that you are present where you are…with the people you are with….

That you are personal with yourself and with your life.

You and I are learning in our counseling studies that individuals who learn to “be present” in their lives are those who are the most healthy.  That makes sense to me in light of this term ubiquitous.  If you try to be everywhere, being everything to everyone, you spread yourself so thin that there is little left of you to fully be.

Would it make more sense to choose to “be” where God puts us?  To live in the moments of where we are until He moves us to a new place?

When I bring to mind those individuals who are strong in faith, strong in health, strong in life, it is those individuals who seem to have this figured out.  They are personal with others but they do not try to be everything to all people.

They live in the moment of where they are….allowing God to use them as He will.

Un-ubiquitous.

I love you unfailingly,
      as only your Mama can,

Mama