Stripping? Or Pruning?

John 15:1-2 "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 it so that it may bear more fruit." (emphasis mine)

I know this verse well...but do I really? I can practically recite it from memory, but I hadn't carefully pondered the entire message until the middle of the night when it popped into my head.

And just why was I mulling this over at 2 a.m.? In a word, steroids. The legal kind you get when you are suffering with bronchitis due to a string of flu and cold symptoms that have wreaked havoc on a body for two weeks. My husband is also taking them for his own bout with bronchitis. At the same time one of my sons has his typical lingering cough from his own bout with the flu from last week, for which he takes over the counter meds, and my other son has developed pink eye and has to put eye drops in twice a day. Even my dog is on an antibiotic and steroids to deal with an inflamed elbow callous. Yup, we're one big happy, runny-nosed family with a serious case of drug-induced insomnia, cranky dispositions, and the "munchies." In fact, I've been feeling a little sorry for myself these last couple of days because, frankly, I'm miserable. Every time I cough my neck feels like it's going to snap. My nose is a faucet. My head throbs. On top of this, the weather is keeping us all house-bound, school has been cancelled two days in a row due to extremely low temps. I'm experiencing fever of the cabin kind.

I tend to experience "SAD" each winter. Some call it Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is a result of not getting enough sunlight. I prefer to call it "Sick and Depressed," which is what happens to me after I've been cooped up for several dark winter months with the three petri dishes I call my kids. Oh, to sit outside on my patio again! I need sun! I need summer! I need decent health! And frankly, I also need school to reopen!

There are other weighty issues going on I won't bother to address, but which are laying heavy on my heart and have robbed me of peace on a daily basis for quite some time now. As I lay in bed not sleeping, the only words I could think of to describe my emotions was "stripped." I feel like God has peeled the bark off the tree that is me, and I am raw, exposed. Of course, some of what I'm experiencing is temporary (I'm not likely to die of the common cold), but some of my circumstances are not, and I let my mind wander to imagining the bleakest of possible outcomes.

I listen to K-LOVE radio every day. I hear songs about enduring trials and the promise of hope for the future, and wonder if that will indeed be true for me. I read Psalms, where a godly man, destined to be king, despaired his own life, yet in God's perfect timing was delivered and given a position of honor. But sometimes knowing all this does not seem enough to give me hope. In bed earlier this evening my husband and I had talked over some of the issues we are facing right now. He said it has increased his prayer life. I told him it was having the opposite effect on me. I can't seem to even formulate the words I want to say to the Lord. I am "stuck" mentally and emotionally.

At 2 a.m., tossing and turning, tears in my eyes (as much from coughing and sneezing as from mental anguish), what I really needed was a mental-visual. A word picture, if you will. Something tangible that I could see and help me understand what God is doing. And that's just what He gave me.

There's a 93-year-old neighbor who lives next door. You might say he came with the house, because he's practically an institution on our end of the street, where all the yards back up to one another. He doesn't walk well. If he wants to venture farther than his front door, he does it via a little, ancient, sputtering tractor, held together by years of caked-on grease, and probably sporting only one working spark plug by the sound of things. But it gets him where he needs to go. At least once a week last summer on his way to visit a neighbor on the other side of me, my green-thumbed friend would circle my vegetable garden, inspecting my labors. Frankly, I was somewhat embarrassed at the state of things. My outdoor produce market was full of the promise of a delicious assortment of food. Unfortunately, I had planted more vegetables and fruit than I had time to tend, or money to spend it on, so it suffered from neglect...and there was my neighbor, carefully sizing it all up from the other side of the used deer fencing he had donated to me.

Later that day I'd get the inevitable phone call where he'd provide me with unsolicited advice. "Don't forget to compost," he'd remind me more than once. Coffee grinds, grass clippings, leftover produce. "You take from the earth, don't forget to give back," I'd look out at my rather large compost pile next to the garden, where I was already doing those things, and mentally rolled my eyes. "You need to prune back all those suckers on your tomato plants," he'd also tell me. "You want a vine, not a bush. Tie them to a trellis, and they'll grow tall and produce well." I looked at my bushy tomato plants that somewhat resembled my just-out-of-bed hair, yet covered with hundreds of yellow blooms (the bushes, not my hair), and thought, "Seriously? I don't have TIME to prune these things the way you're telling me to. They'll turn out just fine. I've been growing tomatoes for years. This ain't my first rodeo!

But something about respecting an elderly man, combined with the knowledge that he's had years of successful tomato-growing experience, convinced me I should at least gratefully acknowledge his insight and try to put it into practice. Besides that, I knew he'd keep calling after each weekly inspection if I didn't act on his advice. That was motivation enough! So after numerous phone calls, I eagerly bounced up the hill to my garden early one summer morning, armed with gloves, pruners, string, and wood stakes, I was ready for battle with the mighty nightshade! Stepping into my garden, however, I realized just what a sad state all my plants were in. My pumpkin and butternut were not sprouting on schedule from lack of sufficient water. My cukes and zukes were infested with the vine-borer worm and had to be destroyed. A bunny had discovered my strawberries. My lettuce looked a lot like the weeds that sprouted all around it. Disgusted with myself, I munched on a single green bean that grew from a shriveling vine and set to work, all the while mumbling disdainful comments about Adam and Eve. By far, the tomatoes were my greatest challenge. Truly, I did more wrestling with those confounded overgrown monstrosities than I had anticipated. Weeks of neglect due to a hectic schedule, and the fact that this was a much bigger garden than the one in my previous, tiny, urban backyard, meant I had bitten off more than I could chew, and now had a big mess on my hands.

After only ten minutes in the garden, I was melting in the heat. The gloves, metaphorically and literally, came off. I forcefully tugged at mangled, twisted vines in order to tie them to stakes. After hours of pruning, tying, watering, weeding, and spreading compost, I walked out of my garden, fingers crusted green from snapping dozens of suckers off twenty tomato plants. I had black dirt under my nails. I had splinters, and at least one throbbing thumb from sinking stakes into the ground using a mallet that had bad aim. I was dehydrated, and mosquitos had sucked half the blood from my body. But the job was done. My satisfaction was somewhat mixed, however. While the garden was now certainly tidier, I had despised pinching back the what-I-considered-to-be-viable tomato branches, and tossing them into my compost pile. There were fruit-bearing flowers on all of them. What a waste! Imagine all the potential tomatoes I'm just throwing away!

A few months later, after I had filled my tenth gallon-sized bag of cut-up tomatoes to be frozen, because all my friends were starting to avoid me for fear I'd push more of my bumper crop off on them, I realized just what value there was in the advice I had taken. I had pruned back branches that had seemed good, yet weren't BEST for the growth of the plant. Would my plants have produced without such intervention? They would have, but not as much, or as beautifully as they did. As a result of scaling back my plants, each individual fruit enjoyed more water and sunlight, unencumbered by overcrowding. I swear one of my tomatoes thanked me by growing in the shape of a heart. (My brother thought it looked more like an old woman's fanny, but what does HE know???)

So at 2 a.m. this morning, when the word "stripped" came to mind. The voice of the Lord spoke to my heart. "Not stripped," he told me. "Pruned. A tree stripped of its bark dies. That is not My intention for you. I only want to cut away at all the things that keep you from producing the best...from being the best you can be for My glory and your good."

Oh! How I needed this mental picture!

I want my life to produce fruits of the spiritual kind, what Galatians 5:22-23 talks about. The fruit of Love, even for the unlovable. Joy, no matter the circumstances. Peace, rather than arguing. Patience, because my children are still learning. Kindness, unselfishly sweet to all around me, even if they don't deserve it, and even when I don't feel well. Goodness, living a holy life, pleasing to God. Faithfulness, loyalty to my family, friends, and the Lord. Gentleness, with a soft answer that diffuses another person's anger. Self-control, over my thoughts, words, and actions. These don't come naturally, and I don't always realize I'm lacking them. In my Thursday night class at church, called "How People Change," the author explains that when the heat of trials is applied to our lives, what's in the heart comes out and reveals what needs to be purged. What do I struggle with? Selfishness? Lack of faith? Self-pity? Anger? Impatience? Where do these things come from? They are not of God. They have to go. It's the only way I'll be able to produce fruit pleasing to God that ultimately advances His kingdom and brings Him glory. I won't have true joy until I have freedom from the things that keep me from flourishing for Christ.

Snip away, God.