It was just days before my mama left this earth. I was alone in the art studio. I was frantically moving out debris and old things saved for years in an effort to be busy with my anxious thoughts…
What am I doing? How can I be doing this when my mother is dying? How am I going to handle this God!? I was sad and mad and helpless and I was fighting to keep my mom with me, to hang on to her memories, to maintain her home and her studio like she was going to return to it. And finally I crumpled in a heap and yelled at God…
“God!!! My heart was shredded when my dad died. I was torn to bits and still haven’t quite recovered! What is going to happen to me when my mom dies!?”
I heard very softly and steadily through my tears, “I am going to enlarge you.”
“Enlarge me!? What do You mean, God. What does that even mean?”
No answer.
That shut me up. It seemed a positive thing. Well, a positive thing that could require some more work…the tears and ranting stopped and I just sat there thinking on that. I looked around that studio and allowed myself to be enlarged…whatever that was.
I have had this word brewing, percolating, simmering, stewing in me for several months. Every possible scenario has paraded through my thoughts.
Enlarge. Enlargement. Enlarging.
I know…obsess much?
“For I will cast out the nations before you, and ENLARGE your borders…”
-Exodus 34:24
My mother passed within days after I had that encounter. I did not FEEL enlarged. I felt bereft. I felt shrunken. I felt wilted.
Over the course of these last weeks I have been looking to see what it means to grow (to be enlarged) as a result of the last several years of struggle in caring for my mother in the midst of dementia; some days funny some not so funny. It was a stretching.
I have experienced the largeness of friends and family who have come alongside as I am growing. The sweet throbbing growth of LOVE.
Enlarged is so BIG!
There has to be so much more.
“You enlarge my steps under me, and my feet have not slipped.”
-2 Samuel 22:37
I am gonna keep on the watchtower; listening, waiting, watching…
What does it mean to you? To be Enlarged?
“I shall run the way of Your commandments. For You will enlarge my heart.”
-Psalms 119:32
