Refining and how it has changed me........

 

Good Morning.

This is my most favorite place to be come springtime.

It is as uncomplicated as it gets.

Yes, it can have its highs and lows through the normal rhythm of life & seasons,

but for the most part, I find peace here.

I suppose I was always meant to be a *tender* of sorts.

In nursing, as a wife and as a mother & business owner.

I tend, I care for and love.

I never expected anything back but the satisfaction that I 

helped others gain their dreams or had a good day or with animals,

lived loved & happy  lives

In hindsight I am realising that I have done this with friendships as well.

I was the friend.

They were people who needed tending for a time.

Which is fine.

That is just how it happened.

At this point, I am happier knowing that than having

the disappointments wreck my heart.

The real reason why I have done anything for anyone has nothing to do with me.

It has everything to do with how I was raised.

My mother embraced this way of living and I saw her care for so many people

over the course of my growing up years.

She was known as a helper and a caring woman who would do anything for

anyone. What a blessed example I was given.

It is clear that I am not in anyway my mother.

With her refined style and her business sense...she was a banker

and was a very good one. I was always her wild child though I tried to

quell it. I did. She knew. She loved me for who I was.

Looking back, I can say that being wild in this day and age

has meant that I had the will to say no.

To stand my ground, to silently do what I feel is right without anyones'

permission. And though I have not had her in my life since 1988,

she is in my heart always guiding me.

Friends and relationships change and morph.

Especially in these past few years where everything about you

was judged and evaluated and deemed unworthy 

by weaker people, some I thought friends.

Nothing about me changed, yet their minds were warped by 

whatever the past 6 years have been.

This blog this Spring was all about refining.

As I see it, God refined my life for me.

Where there was a one way relationship , He removed

those who were no longer able to feed off of my love.

They had to do that for themselves, bless them.

Now...

I have  a tight circle of human beings around me that

I can love and tend. 

Listen, I will always be the one who at first always trusts,

until I do not and then it is a forever thing.

So the idea that any of the past relationships will return

in their original form in highly unlikely.

Once my trust has been broken it is near impossible for me to EVER

trust again.

My time on this earth is precious.

It is shared with like *kinded* people.

Some just have sticky fingers, feathers or fur....

OR are Vikings!

Just know that as you refine your life ( or life refines you)

it is a tending in itself.

It is God saying....*okay, I am going to use this season

to prune your world. It may be hard but in the end it will have been

worth it*

What He has left behind is a honing of what I could not have done myself.

Putting me here, in a place of quiet and a return to nature.

What was not meant for me faded away.

I never could have done that.

My heart is just too soft.

It is simple.

It is calm.

I am growing.

I am learning so much.

Closer to nature & God.

Grateful for this season of refining.

XOXO

Raven

🐦‍⬛