DISCERNING PATTERNS

Life really does unfold in a kaleidoscope kind of way. Looking at it in the grip of the moment can bring heartbreak and unendurable sorrow, but just one shift in perspective and light can bring stunning beauty and hope. It is really all about hidden, yet repeating, patterns.
It feels like I have NEVER, in my entire life, learned harder things than I have in the last handful of years. I must have thought somehow that the older I got, the more the lessons would stick. As in; “Ta-Daa, done with that one!” This does not always hold true, at least for me anyway. But Somehow in the midst of chaos, and what I thought to be the fairly tattered fabric of my life, continuous patterns have emerged, both good and bad.
Yes, it is true that I often have to keep circling the field before I actually ‘get it’. Sometimes it seems to be layers of “lesson over-lay” those kinds of transparencies that gets laid over pictures to correct, or show what could be. In my life there must be hundreds and hundreds of those over-lay days. But, because they are bathed in the golden light of God’s abundant love and patience, eventually I do ‘get it’. I think that "epiphanies" are just patterns that we finally ‘get’. Maybe the form is different, even abstract, but underneath it is the same life lesson that God has been gently working to show us.
The other night, through frustration and tears, it happened! I finally ‘got’ a point that Christ has obviously been trying to teach me, possibly for years. Does that mean I’m ‘all done’? Well, if you believed that then you would be even more obtuse than I. And that is going some! As the patterns swirl and merge and come in and out of focus I believe that, with well over half of my days lived, I am finally understanding the deep need for sitting and studying those seemingly redundant lessons in my life. In my twenties I could barely discern them, in my thirties they were clearer, but I was, more often than not, too busy to give them more than a cursory examination. My forties were spent with God waking me up out of the daily stupor which is called ‘living’. Since I was too imperceptive to really see, He began doing big and sometimes painful things to get my attention. An immense Spiritual Geometry Class was unfolding around me and school was in.
And now, now that my fifties have commenced He is demanding that I sit still. Sit with the patterns and pay attention. Even in grammar school the notes would come home: “Tonya would be an excellent student if she would stop talking and pay attention.” My public school teachers pretty much gave up, God does not.
I must remember that there is a godly beauty in the way He works in these life patterns, even when they are painful. As a ---passable--- artist, I do so love to study beautiful patterns in nature and design. How much have I missed by not slowing down to examine all the ways he tries to teach me? It is way past time to really pay attention to all the things that I need to see to stop the negative patterns and bring about the beauteous designs in my life. It feels like all of my existence I have moved through it in a kind of ‘attention deficit’ of the spirit, while He has been calling, “Peace be still!” It would feel divine to actually ‘get’ the geometry of each lesson the first time. Of course spending lots of time with the teacher helps.
Tonya Willman©2011