Column Post by Lakin Easterling
“Which one?”
“Right or left?”
“Red or blue?”
“Are you for or against?”
These are a few of the rather usual and regular questions that spin around in our respective worlds every day.
Choices.
One thing over the other.
The favor usually lies with whatever you personally prefer.
This carries over into relationships, into politics, into religions. You’d rather pick out a new pair of shoes, while your husband would rather grab some wings at a sports bar. You’d rather walk, he’d rather run. Your mom prefers your room one way {clean}, you prefer it another {piles of clothes and books and power cords}. You prefer Obama, your favorite uncle prefers Romney. You prefer Jesus, and your new friend prefers Buddha.
Regardless of particulars, all these choices, these decisions, are influenced by self, by the personal preference of your own individuality. Just try to make a decision without letting your own wants or desires or opinions shout to be heard.
Even when you’re doing something for someone else, aren’t you also doing it because after it’s finished, you will be viewed by said friend {and maybe others} in a better, more glorified way?
It’s hard to take the self out of everything, or anything, even down to the amount of coffee grounds you put in the family coffee pot in the mornings. Someone will like it stronger or weaker than you do, but you’re the one brewing, so guess whose flavor will be represented?
Think about the things you love most. Hobbies, a favorite blanket, your job, your kids, anything. Hold it tenderly at the forefront of thought. Turn it over in your mind; see it enveloped by the warm waters of affection, shaping into a pearl-sized joy in your heart. Do you see it, that belovedly tinted picture of what or who you hold so dear? Take it out and marvel at the jewel it is. Will you wear it, like a necklace, a ring, a stunning drop on your ear? Don’t you want to display it proudly?
Here is a good kind of self: the kind that unabashedly, magnetically, irrevocably loves. Loves your daughter, loves your red chair, loves your favorite book resting, always ready, on your bedside table. This is probably one of the truest things anyone can do in a lifetime: simply love what cannot be anything other than loved.
When you find yourself in a situation, making a decision, influenced and leaning closer to one thing and farther from another, what if you remembered that pearl? What if, before you answer or decide, you remember the goodness and wholeness of the things you’ve grown to love, and you answer in a way that reflects those things?
What if we are moon-sized pearls, reflecting the Person and Joy of a Maker Who thinks we are worthy of receiving His love, just because He cannot help but give it?
What if we were that way, too? Created just like Him, to simply love.
What if?
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Lakin Easterling is a wife, mother, writer, and avid reader. She spends her days chasing her toddler, Belle, and conversing with the elderly who are afflicted by Alzheimer’s disease or Dementia. She loves surprise coffee dates with her husband Luke, texting novels to her best friend, Laura Hyers, and being a college student. She dreams about being brave enough to get a tattoo, and believes in the healing power of a good cup of coffee. Her favorite nail polish is Sail Away by Milani. She blogs at http://threadingsymphonies.wordpress.com.
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