The Thing About Fragrance
When I was a slip of a funny girl in high school, I proudly wore the drug store perfume called “Oleg Cassini”. I wore it when I kissed my first boy, and I wore it until the second boy I dated bought me “Lauren” by Ralph Lauren.
As a middle creative, lately I’ve been making up ways to add gentle, all natural fragrance…
…to my art!
That, and The Preacher just got back home from a series of crusades and pastor’s conferences in Guatemala. Those two ideas - his return home, and fragrance - are connected. I hope to explain that connection.
I picked him up from our local airport night before last. As I drove us home, the sunset all peach and blue and gentle, he began (as he always does) to tell me the stories he has collected in his time away from home.
But this time was different. Oh, the stories were the same, but something in the spiritual atmosphere in that Ford Lariat became heavy and sweet. Wave after wave of the Presence of God washed over me, as I navigated at 70mph down the freeway, other vehicles, including ours, beginning to switch on their headlights to drive back the advancing darkness.
He talked and fell silent for a moment. I could tell that he was trying to contain some very big feelings. The Tennessee river reflected the last of that day’s light as we went over the bridge. Suddenly, so help me, a precious fragrance began to pervade the cab of the truck.
Of the two of us, I was the only one aware of it.
I knew it had zero to do with the art I’d made in the days Tim was gone.
It had everything to do with the fact that he had been with Jesus. Very, very recently.
Now, strictly theologically speaking, I understand that Jesus had never left Tim, nor Tim Jesus. Of course, Immanuel is always “with us”. But there is a distinct difference…a distinct odor…to the spiritual atmosphere of a believer who has been consciously connecting to the Holy Spirit. There is an aroma that only is manufactured in the courts of heaven. There is a spice that remains on the spirit of one who has been walking on mission with the Lord.
I know when someone’s been in the same room with Jesus for longer than their cursory quiet time, and for more intimate reasons than routine. This has happened to me before. When it happens, it is, quite literally, mildly intoxicating.
I smelled it once, when turning the pages of the magazine Eden and Vine. And I promptly fell asleep and had a vision that came to me as a dream.
I’ve smelled it in worship at my church.
This does not happen all the time, or even often. But in the last two years, either my prophetic gift has grown a nose…
…or my secret dream of becoming a spiritual Shulamite Woman is coming to pass, as I roll right on past age 55. Apparently, youth is not a prerequisite for perfume or passion. I long for that secret place, and I also long to manifest that place out into my physical world.
See, the thing about fragrance is that you must re-apply.
Thankfully, I still do not smell of Oleg Cassini or Lauren.
These days, I waft a bit of “Earth and Wood” essential oil, or a spritz of Acqua Di Parma’s Blu Mediterraneo , because: Italy. And because: Blue.
I can’t apply Blu on a Monday, and still be blessing my husband with it on a Friday night. I have to reapply.
And if you ever shake his hand, and he smells like a girl…well, that is because he has been very close to me, very recently.
That’s the thing about fragrance. It reeks of whoever you’ve really, truly been with. Or it reeks of what you consciously and regularly choose to apply.
May we be as those who have been with Jesus - may we be those who have broken the alabaster box of our supposed dignity at the feet of Christ.
Midlife As "The Valley Between"
“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.”
Theologically, this Joel 3 passage speaks of the judgement of God. Here are the words of Barnes’ commentary on these verses:
“For the Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision - Their gathering against God shall be a token of His coming to judge them. They come to fulfill their own ends; but His shall be fulfilled on them. They are left to bring about their own doom…”
So I might be contemplating, here, the deep similarity between midlife and the Joel 3: 14 conundrum…
Today, I heard a lecture by social scientist and NYT bestselling author Arthur Brooks. It was pointed out that our satisfaction - or lack thereof - with our relationships at age 50 is a singularly clear and concise predetermining factor of our quality of life at age 80.
Let’s look again at the commentary on Joel 3:14 - “Their gathering against God is (actually) a token of His coming to judge them…” (parenthesis mine)
IOW, their perspective - which in this valley place could not be reverse engineered - portended their own actual destiny. These in the valley thought that their dissatisfaction, by the sheer numbers of them that were “in agreement”, meant that they must be right. But from God’s vantage point, those who gathered in that valley of decision for the wrong reasons were foretelling their own doom.
In the light of Joel 3 and the results of Dr. Brooks’ research on quality of life IN midlife and into old age…
…some of us better be availing ourselves of the Mighty Gift of Repentance. (To repent simply means to “choose to think completely differently.”)
We absolutely cannot reverse engineer the sense of satisfaction we have/had in our relationships at any age, but particularly not at age 50-55. It was what it was, or it is what it is. We cannot pretend it away…not with God. Here is where repentance is as big a refreshing to our spirit as adding a new deck to the back of our home was to our outdoor “long table family-and-friends dinners”. (That deck was game changing. A joy-maker. It increased our ability to practice hospitality in every way. Our outdoor life is FUN, now. But it was hard, hard work…because we did it all ourselves. By choice. From tear-down, to re-build. What a metaphor is there, on the process of repentance, and the joy it brings when we get through it!)
Repentance is a gift.
We can choose to repent of our own dissatisfaction with our friends, church, spouse, or job. We can choose another perspective, and decide to (dare I say it?) love what is ours.
an image of a (sold) original depicting feminine youth and midlife - and the mentoring relationship
In natural terms, your happiness when you are old depends on doing (or having done) the right thing in the midlife “valley of decision” .
MY message is this: If you didn’t get it right, you still have time to fix it. But it will be hard work, it will take time, a few letters or phone calls, or face-to-face over coffee. It may take the act of circling way back, and sincerely apologizing.
None of those actions earn God’s favor. Of course not. What they do earn, however, is some all-important emotional resiliency, flexibility, and joy.
By choosing to “return to first love”, by activating the SHEER MIRACULOUS GIFT of being able to go back in time (through repentance) and “fix it” where you failed to love, means you get to flex and strengthen the very emotional muscles that you must have to thrive in your elder years.
(an image from a sketch tutorial found in my online class “The Women of Advent”)
Wherever I am unhappy now, foretells my quality of life in twenty years. However I find myself in my “valley of decision” will be the position God lets me keep - unless I change my mind. Unless I tear down and rebuild.
Wherever I am not loving what is mine to love right now, in the middle, in the valley of decision, is predicting the very areas where, in my old age, I will have either “real relationships” or “deal relationships” (based on “you do this for me, I do that for you”).
Your original design is to “go from strength TO strength” (which is also the title of Harvard lecturer and author Dr. Arthur Brooks’ new book). But to have that kind of lifestyle all the way into old age depends on the mysterious paradox of sovereign grace meeting your own initiative to do the work. Do the work of change.
May the Holy Spirit bring this home to every heart. Mine, above all.