Kisses and Not Listening

God often works in my life by bringing "pieces" - something from the past, a picture, a comment,etc - altogether at certain moments to give clarity. I don't know how it happens or when it will happen, but when it comes, it is not an additive part of my life, but rather a moment that forces me to stop and reconfigure life as I know it. This is one of those moments...

Quite a few years ago I came across a line from a poet that read "he kissed me and now I am someone different". It has always struck me as a metaphor for my relationship with Jesus - the sense of love I feel for Him and how I am different because I know Him. I like the picture of a kiss and so it has waxed and waned in my thoughts for years.

Put that on the back burner for a moment and fast forward to my current reality. I've been really struggling internally with what I am supposed to be/do, how I am to establish a new life in a new place, listening to the voices around me -from the church or society - trying to figure it out. I feel like I've been propelled by "shoulds" ("I should do/be/have.....)

Then, on my trip to Europe, we went to Vienna and God began doing that "pieces" thing...

All over Vienna there was this evidently famous picture, The Kiss. I have NEVER seen it before but now I saw it on posters, in stores, on match boxes, everywhere. And to be honest with you, at first I didn't even really like the picture - too gold and not my style.

So then I arrive back home and find a letter from a friend in Singapore in which the last line reads, "may you know His many kisses". (OK, so at this point, I tell God that I'm ready to pay attention.) Then, I ended up at this lady's house (from the kids' school) and on her wall is hanging a picture of The Kiss. That same day we went to Ikea and there is, you guessed it...The Kiss...in a massive wall hanging.

A morning or two later, I got up early to talk to God about all this because I really didn't feel like I needed a lesson in kissing, but rather clarity on my life and direction, and He led me to the story of the Prodigal Son. I love the part where the boy comes to his senses and decides to go back to his father and it reads "when he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him." Yeah, kissing again...but then I read on.

He begins to confess to his father - true things - that he's sinned and isn't worthy to be called a son. And the next line almost threw me out of my chair.

"But the father wasn't listening..." The father wasn't listening?! And in that space, God said, "Tara, all those things you say about yourself or labels you put on yourself...well, I'm not listening. All the things society or the church or whoever says they expect out of you...we'll I'm not listening. All the "shoulds" that berate you...I'm not listening to them. Here with Me, all that matters is My embrace and My kisses...I'm not listening to anything else!"

And that is the place I find myself going back to, day after day - to the place of the Father not listening! And if He isn't listening, then I don't have to either. Rather, I can find rest and delight in His embrace and, as my friend hoped, enjoy His many, many kisses!!