the parable of the Lindor Truffle

 You know those Lindor Truffles?  The ones that come in the pretty celophane wrappers?  They are round and sweet and soft and if you are a grown up you can fit the whole thing in your mouth and then bite down and the flavor simply spreads like yummy goodness in your mouth.  Even after the candy is gone, the taste lingers ..and there are many flavors to choose from like peppermint, caramel, white chocolate to name just a few.    I was gifted a bag of these from a sweet family I know and love.  Initially they were left on the doorstep and later, they confessed they were gonna ding dong dash me for them but decided to just drop them off instead.  

This week my devotional guided me through a spritual discipline called The Examen.  The challenge was to look at 2021 and consider the highlights and the low points and to remember.  I was challenged to go month by month, starting in January and look at each month of 2021.  My initial examen was broad strokes and I thought about the big events:  Claire and Jonah's wedding, getting sick with Covid, Jeremiah's team making it to state Soccer, baseball highs and lows,  summer vacation with our kids, the challenges with our fist long term foster placement, losing my dad to cancer.....and I was guided to think about how each of those memories made me feel.  The memories that were good, were reason to be grateful to the Lord, and the memories that were hard and sad or caused bitterness in me were reason to lift them up to the Lord so that He could remove the burden from me.  Remembering matters.  A deeper examen looked more closely month by month and I went through my photos and remembered things that I had't thought about for awhile.....sillier moments in the mundane things of the everyday, and sadder memories of the lonlier places of the quieter stillness that I maybe didn't share....and that examen went deeper.  My gratitude went deeper and my longing to surrender my hurts and my angers and my bitterness and my frustration with the world rose up and was ready to offer to the Lord and what I felt as I did my deeper Examen was a sense of that round, sweet, soft fullness in my mouth that sits a bit before you bite down and really taste the flavor of it all.....and savor the richness of the moment of knowing that the living of this life is yummy goodness even so.  

Today was the third and final day of The Examen.  Josiah and I layed in bed together in the dawn of the day because he had had a nightmare around 4 am and came to bed in tears.  I told him to crawl in bed, that he was safe.  He was not to fuss and cry and wake me up because I was not finished sleeping.  He was to remember he was safe and discipline his brain to think good thoughts so that he could go to sleep and to let me sleep....and he worked hard on it.  When we were both awake we did the devo audible together and it finished the remembering of the examen and looked forward with eager anticipation to 2022.  

It challenged us to ask the Lord for a word, a scripture or a story to focus on for 2022 and learn from as we move into a new year of learning and growing and walking with God.  He and I are doing that together.  He thinks his word might be Kindness.  He is 9 years old and already the kindest kid I know so maybe it means he will show others how to be as kind as he is.....I'm trusting God to do the work.  I'm not sure what mine will be.....the idea of a mountain is forming in me today after talking with a couple from my church this morning.  They are facing a trial ahead and my comment to them was that it is time to climb the mountain so I wonder if mountain will be what I focus on for 2022....which could be scripture, word and stories.....that might be really round, sweet, soft and full of yummy goodness, too.