Messing With My Nest!

My sister said it perfectly --- “It’s all our brother’s fault!” He started picking at my nest --- my comfort zone --- and since then, it’s all been turmoil. It started around Labor Day when Tony was first diagnosed with late stage Lung Cancer. You would have thought that my own journey through breast cancer would have ruffled me more. Or why not when my sister went through the agony of cancer treatments???? There was something about Tony. . . .

He asked questions -- hard ones. And now, he has all the answers and I’m still digging for them. He’s there, with the Author and Finisher of his faith. I’m here, looking through the glass, darkly. The questions of “Why” blow like a steady, fierce wind, and no matter how I try, it keeps tearing up my neatly built nest.
It’s not a question of “why me.” Not a feeling sorry for myself. It’s more of a “why me --- NOW!” Why at this stage of my life does my comfort zone have to become so uncomfortable?

Questions demand answers. That’s what makes them so hard. It’s easy to dismiss someone’s statement, or a look, or gesture. But when someone looks you in the eye and asks a question, you open your mouth, take a deep breath, and search like crazy through the caverns of your brain for an answer. And it doesn’t make any difference if you audibly answer or not -- somewhere, somehow, you answer. And lately, the Lord has taken up where Tony left off, except He’s going deeper into my soul and messing with my nest.

It’s the little pecking that gets to me. Like the question a friend recently asked me, “Where’s your heart now?” I had showed him some things I had made a few years ago. What in the world did that have to do with my heart???? It wouldn’t go away. I had no idea where my heart was! A lost heart. Somewhere out there, my heart was homeless --- fallen out of the nest. And I need to leave my comfort zone to find it again.

Then comes the one who REALLY knows how and pulls everything apart.: A pastor who seems to preach directly at (for) me! Every single message, every single Sunday takes a chunk out of my carefully woven sticks, grass, mud, and whatever else it took to make me feel safe. There isn’t much left to hang on to except a weak branch or two, and I’m afraid he’s coming with the saw soon and I’ll just drop to who knows where! And still I ask, Why mess with my nest NOW?

Then comes along people who write these blogs. Blogs that leave you asking more questions than they answered. Stuff about forgiveness, the past, who I am in Christ, scars, ministering to the needy and hurting, etc. Stuff that turns me inside out and makes me ask MYSELF the questions and I can’t find my heart anywhere in my messed up, falling-apart nest.

It’s a strange thing about comfort zones: They are built with a master plan and fit us to a tee. The walls are just high enough to make us feel safe. LOTS of locks on minimum doors. Windows that only let US see out but lets no one see IN. We even have closets. And in those closets are memories and secrets, stuff that got dirty and stained, lots of bottles full of tears, shoes covered in mud, old bandages that had once covered bleeding wounds until thick, hard scars took their place. We don’t go in the closets much. But I have recently. In all this messing up of my nest, the Lord opened the doors again, and I’m seeing I didn’t do a very good job the last time around in getting those shelves cleaned out.

So what’s a master nest builder to do when God messes with her nest????

I think it’s time to use the wings He gave me and fly. . . .


Thanks, Ton!