Living Large

Being o.k. with broken bones

Poatina Morning tea devotion given yesterday

We have had a wonderful holiday.  With unexpected changes to my job description I had some space and it was  12 months since we had a break, so it was very special.

I’m still questioning my parenting decision – the boys were restless – practicing rugby they said…practicing tackling. Daniel is very courageous.  He is smaller but feels he has to compete with the big boys. He had put 4 T Shirts on thinking that would help pad him up.  So when I said we don’t do rugby tackles inside, they  wanted to go outside to do it.  I said, “You realise someone’s going to get hurt?” “ Yea, yea, we’ll be fine”, the boys said.

Ken Ferdinands tell me you can’t eliminate risk – you can only manage it.  About 15 minutes later I heard Leeanne saying  “What are you guys doing?” They were running full pelt at each other…loving it. “Dad said it’s ok,” the boys said.  Leeanne said, “Your dad’s mad”.   Then there was a wail and Josh belted inside,  “Daniel said he’s broken his neck”.

It was an interesting moment, toward the end of the holiday and I was reflecting a bit on choices. One of the things I love about the East Coast is that Optus doesn’t work. Your phone doesn’t work, you’re out of range. You have more choices. You can choose, depending on the kids, when you get out of bed and what you read.  As Daniel was lying there, (he has a pretty high pain tolerance and I was trying to work out it was real or not)  I could see the bone crooked…So our day then was travelling to Hobart to get an XRAY and coming back.

But it was still a really refreshing day, an adventure. I began to think about that thing of feeling that holidays are where you can make choices.  I realised that the bit in me that feels I can’t make choices isn’t really a healthy bit.  It isn’t where life comes from. When I’m a bit more relaxed and open to God and my family, then the unexpected thing isn’t an imposition, it’s just another part of the adventure. My reading that day was from Corinthians, (6:11)  Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

As I was reading that it dawned on me that that thing I value most about a holiday is what God is inviting us to bring to every day – to be present, make choices. I don’t have to be a victim of circumstances. The smallness and drivenness doesn’t come from him.  I’m not in Fusion because I have to be.  I love what we are about. The verse that challenges me “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care … not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be.”  (I Peter).

If I can come back and say, “you know why I’m here?  Because it’s right for me to be here.  The reason I’m in Poatina is because it’s a good place – it’s right,  and it’s the way life was meant to be”.  But when the messiness that is always there becomes the agenda, when we are treading water and ‘managing’;  when I don’t see that I’m moving forward, then hope goes missing pretty quickly.  But Paul says, “we didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you.  Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way”

Part of what it means to live in the Kingdom is to live in a big way and not be hemmed in. To live life, not to live an agenda. So the challenge as I re-enter the world today is what it means to carry the best of holidays into daily life. In some ways I think that’s part of the way life was meant to be.