Nurture

God has been speaking this word into my life lately.  Alot.  From looking at the role of mothers and their children to how a mother is born to nurture to the absolute need of our children to receive nurturing.  Everywhere we look we see the results of a world where  the nurture relationship has been disrupted.

I grew up in an  alcoholic home full of violence and not a lot of nurture.  I was loved.  My parents both loved me to the best of their ability.  I grew up believing that if I could perform perfectly I would receive the loving/nurturing relationships I longed for.  Yet I always fell short.  Instead my Dad left and my mother's drinking took off leaving us kids to fend for ourselves. That is what we did -we learned to survive but not to thrive.

I was the perfect candidate to fall into my own addictions to escape the reality of my life.  & escape I did.  But still always seeking someone or something to make me feel nurtured.  Noone could love me enough to fill those empty places.  No one could be enough.  Could do enough.  Could say enough.

And yet everytime I have come face to face with one of my empty places I have run into Jesus.  It is only through HIM that I begin to find healing.

I have worked hard to make sure that my children have felt nurtured.  That they know they are loved no matter what.  I hope I am succeeding.  I hope they know that my heart's desire is for them to go so much further than I will ever go and to see and do so much more than I have.  I hope I have planted them in fertile soil from which to grow and spread out and enlarge their territories.

So why at this time in my life is God speaking NURTURE over me?  Perhaps because it is my season.  My season to just rest in God and let him nurture me.  To stop doing and to receive.  To let my roots go down deep and rest in the fertile soil I will find in this next level of my relationship with Christ.  Or maybe it is time for me to help other women who were not nurtured as a child claim their right to be nurtured and loved by the one who loves them best.

 Maybe it's time to let some of the people around me know that some times I am tired and empty and sometimes its lonely on the road I have been given to travel.  I go like the energizer bunny not because I have to but because I can.  There's always one more person out there I can reach.  One more thing God has for me to do.  But there are days where the pressures and needs of the people around me feel like teeth tearing at my flesh & it is those days that my steps get heavy and my spirit falters and only because of the love of Jesus I can put my next foot forward and take that next faltering step.

 Because no matter what this season of nurture looks like I only want to be where my Jesus is.  Doing what he has for me to do.  Going where he has for me to go.  I don't need to know the destination.  Just the next step he has for me.  So nurture away.........into this next thing that the lover of my soul has for me ....whereve that might lead.