Pruning

I haven't always been a cat person. But when I was in my early 20s, in terms of owning pets, I fell in love with cats. This is a snapshot of Choochie, who was the first cat that I've ever truly owned myself. She is extremely precious to me. If you've followed my blog at all, you know how much I dote on her (and on Macho). But we didn't always live happily ever after. I didn't choose Choochie.

In my early 20s, I was friends with a chick who wanted to get rid of a kitten, whom I'll call Flighty. I liked Flighty and was very much looking forward to owning her. However, my friend changed her mind; she decided to keep Flighty herself. This ticked me off (at the time, I was clinically depressed, so I was extra ticked off). Some time later, my friend told me that she had a friend who wanted to get rid of a sweet mixed-Siamese kitten (who is now my Choochie). So, I showed up to my friend's friend's house and picked up Choochie.

At first, I was unimpressed and very meh about the little white kitten. I placed her in the carrier in the backseat of my car and drove home. During the drive home, I heard Choochie meow, so while I was driving, I reached back, poked my fingers through the carrier cage, and pet her. After a while, I looked behind me and noticed Choochie enraptured with her eyes closed and her head cocked back at a 90-degree angle while I pet her little throat and she purred loudly. That was when I fell in love with my Choochie. (Now that I'm more experienced at transporting cats, I put the carrier up front in the passenger's seat so that I can have quicker carrier-petting access.)

Choochie is a major, extremely special part of my life. She isn't your stereotypical cat who is mean and aloof. She's friendly, she's tiny, she enjoys yogurt, she thoroughly enjoys a good catnip trip, she has legs that look like striped punk socks, she's softer than a cotton ball, she's quicker than a jackrabbit, her tail puffs out like a raccoon's anytime she's agitated, she aggressively attacks Macho by biting his ear or foot even though he's twice her size… I could go on and on about her uniquely adorable traits. I mean, look at her photo. She wasn't posing for the camera or trying to look adorable. She was just trying to take a nap, and that's her usual extremely adorable napping pose. (And then she suddenly noticed the camera strap, and she flew from nap-posing to strap-swatting in no-time flat.) So, if I had ended up with Flighty, perhaps I would never have met Choochie. I don't even think I can fathom the thought.

"You have brought a vine out of Egypt; You have cast out the nations, and planted it. You prepared room for it, and caused it to take deep root, and it filled the land." (Psalm 80:8-9)

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." (This is Jesus talking in John 15:1-2.)

I think I'm going to mix some metaphors in this post, so hang on to your hedge trimmers. From what I understand, when Jesus talks about pruning, He's talking metaphorically. Because I'm a branch in Jesus, I think some examples of my Father pruning me would be taking away a ministry or a dream or skills or people from my life. Snip, snip, owie, owie! He wants me to grow and bear even more fruit than I've born before. Recently, I shopped at a farmer's market for the first time in my life. My taste buds had been used to eating apples purchased from Target. But the first time I tasted an apple from a farmer's market, I think I almost slipped into a trance. Oh, my goodness. The farmer's-market apple tasted so much sweeter than the Target-produce apple. I've noticed that farmer's-market fruit spoils and bruises more quickly than Target fruit, even in my fridge (perhaps because the farmer's-market fruit hasn't been infused with as many preservatives or whatever it is that grocery-store apples get infused with) but the taste is worth honoring with a moment of silence during cubicle-lunch.

I don't know very much about gardening at all, so I've researched online a couple of times about what pruning actually is. In general, pruning plants such as trees and hedges (and probably vines/branches) is a highly meticulous, skilled, complex process. It seems to be a science and an art. It is certainly not a haphazard process. I found it to be overwhelming to read about. People who prune plants have to be extremely careful about how they prune. I think the way a plant gets pruned affects what it will look like while it's growing, kind of like the bonsai trees in The Karate Kid. Sometimes little trees can get wounded. If a plant gets pruned in the wrong places, it won't grow properly, it won't blossom properly, and it could possibly die.

Switching metaphors: My employer recently implemented a new snack/lunch system at work. (Yes, like my friend Debbie once observed, the way to Tirzah's heart is through her stomach.) It's phenomenal. It makes me want to sing showtunes in the middle of the breakroom. It makes me want to fall to my knees and hug the chips display. Let me give you a tiny bit of backstory to explain why breakroom food makes me so excited. When I first began working at my current job, free snacks were provided in the breakroom, and they were very good snacks that I'm guessing were purchased at a wholesale warehouse or an office-supply catalogue. Then a few months ago, the company began to save money and stopped giving away snacks unless it was a special occasion. Then the coffeemachines went on the fritz. I wasn't in despair, just slightly annoyed (and drowsy), so I adjusted by bringing my own snacks and caffeine to work, no problem. (It's just that if you're used to always having free snacks and caffeine around, and suddenly it isn't there, it would be nice to have a heads-up so you could plan ahead instead of dashing to the convenience store nextdoor. You know what I mean?) Then we got new, awesomer coffeemachines. And then suddenly, we got our new snack/lunch system. This new spread is NOT the dinky little wholesale-catalogue stuff. This is like an entire non-alcoholic convenience store magically transported to our breakroom with a kiosk that accepts debit cards. Just typing about it makes me almost cry tears of joy.

My employer gradually taking my snacks and caffeine away was a slightly big deal for me. (There was also a temporary soda vending machine that will always have a special place in my heart, but that is another story.) But if the dinky little snack setup hadn't been taken away, perhaps we would never have gotten our new showtune-worthy snack setup.

"And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life." (This is Jesus talking in Matthew 19:29.)

"And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." (Job 42:10)

I'm not completely sure if Job's story is an example of pruning, but it's definitely an example of a guy who lost pretty much everything, even though he didn't really do anything wrong, and then God pretty much restored everything back to him double. Hmm. I think I'd like to meet Job in heaven someday and ask him how he went through it all without flipping God off.

In my opinion, the waiting-for-new-fruit-to-grow period can be even more painful than the pruning itself. (Snip, snip, owie, owie!) As a silly example (and I truly consider it silly when compared to other losses in my life), I have gone approximately 19 years without a boyfriend, an involuntary singlehood that my regular readers are probably too familiar with. During this waiting period, I have received so many words from the Lord that I'm very "meh, whatever" about it now. The first one was on a mission trip when a guy prophesied over me, in Spanish, that I had good qualities inside me and that I was going to marry a very good-looking guy who wouldn't fall in love with me until he would see those qualities, and that God was telling me so that I could be prepared. I ate this up at first, but then I got cynical, and I kinda still am. This prophetic-word guy wrote to me from Mexico a time or two and sent me his picture. Was he for real, or was he trying to manipulate me into falling for him? ("Oh, the muy-guapo hombre you spoke of was really you! Swoon!") And other people have had similar words for me, too. But they haven't happened yet. Will my sick, infected heart ever recuperate from this disappointment? I've had multiple upon multiple conversations with God about this. Is my cynicism blocking this word from coming to pass? Should I relearn how to manipulate situations, relearn how to force people into expressing love for me, become an abuser all over again, and make this thing happen myself? Uh, no. Anytime these prophetic words are given, God doesn't drop a bottle of love potion from the sky to sprinkle onto the muy-guapo hombre of my choice. And that's not to say that other people haven't had awesome marriages result from similar, awesome words from the Lord. That's not to say that God isn't the perfect matchmaker. That just says that this waiting process is painful. Hmm. Maybe before I get to heaven, I should take a closer look at the kind of advice Job's friends gave him while He was waiting for God to give him his life back.

Right now, I've pretty much been stripped of everything. And I don't say that to elicit pity; I say that to just be honest and say that pruning is goshdarn painful. Sometimes it downright sucks. But here in this wilderness-esque promised land, I'm bonding with God in ways that make me want to cry just typing about it. He and I won't ever forget each other. I know for sure that He won't ever forget me; that's what it says in Isaiah 49. I don't want to poop on anybody's religious beliefs, but I recently came across a brief soapbox that an atheist had posted online. I can definitely understand not wanting to believe that God exists or that there's no possible way that He could possibly exist because the world is so crappy. I've had similar crises in my own faith. But in my opinion, there's a difference between faith and relationship. I have faith that God exists, yes. But how do I know? Is it because the Bible tells me so? Is it because I was taught that He exists? Is it because it's difficult to NOT believe that glorious little miracles like my cat were hand-created? Maybe. But I know that God exists -- beyond any shadow of a doubt whatsoever -- because I have a relationship with Him.

Maybe you've never met Him, but I have. And He's met me. He meets me at my coffeetable. He meets me at my cubicle. He meets me in the breakroom. He meets me in my car. He meets me in my kitchen. He meets me in my bathroom. He meets me at my bed when He tucks me in at night, shushes me to sleep, and serenades me with original music videos in my mind's eye. Maybe you think I'm crazy, but I honestly don't care what you think about me anymore. In my early 20s, I fell in love with cats. Sometime before that, or after that, or in between all that, or all of the above, I've fallen in love with God. I know that He won't ever forget me, but I won't ever forget Him, either. It would be nearly impossible or just plain foolish of me to forget Somebody who helps me through the most difficult, awkward, deeply painful season of my life. Maybe other people have forgotten me, but He will never forget me. And I won't forget the way that He's comforted me, held me, and carried me through this, either. I know He exists because I have a relationship with Him.

Maybe that's part of what pruning does -- it solidifies the branch's relationship with the Gardener. The branch is absolutely and helplessly dependent upon the Gardener to help it grow and fuse to the vine. Otherwise, the branch would shrivel up and die.

So, while I'm waiting (not for the stupid husband thing but for deeper things that my blog would probably explode if I were to write about them), I am looking forward to growing farmer's-market fruit, even though it spoils and rots if neglected but is so sweetly delicious to taste. The dinky old snacks are gone, and I'm looking forward to getting the new kiosk-worthy convenience-storelike snacks, possibly when I least expect them. Flighty is gone, but I look forward to getting the Choochie that I always wanted -- nay, the Choochie that will be so much better than any feline I could have ever dreamed for myself.

Speaking of Choochie, one interesting thing about her is that she is very familiar with me and my ways. I don't think she takes me for granted. I think she just knows that she's a major part of my life, and she makes herself at home with me. I know that when it's time for bed, after I turn off the lights and pop in my earplugs, she'll be perching on my reclining shoulder in a matter of minutes. Anytime I sit in my living-room chair, she'll appear out of nowhere and insist on snuggling, as she did about three times while I was typing this post. Tomorrow morning when I eat my breakfast, she'll more than likely perch on my coffeetable next to my breakfast cereal. My relationship with Macho is a bit different, because he is a lot like the stereotypical cat: a demanding meow-er who's afraid of new people and usually only shows up to beg for food. Even though he is pretty clingy and has a myriad of ulterior motives, I still love him very dearly. It's just that my bond with Choochie is a bit deeper. I think she's just confident to get in my face because she's mine, and she knows it. I don't usually have to fight for her affection, and she's usually faithful to come find me and hang out with me. I want God to feel the same way about me. I didn't choose Him, but He chose me.

Snip, snip, owie, owie!