ALL IN – Episode 95
In Genesis chapter 1, after the Lord created light and separated the light from the darkness, after He created the sky and the earth, after He created the water and the land, after He created the grass and herb and fruit and tree, after He created the sun and moon and stars and seasons, after He created every living creature in the sea and in the air and on land, then God created Adam. And then Eve. And He said to Adam, “Awake and arise.”
S Michael Wilcox said of this phrase:
“I always thought that that meant, ‘Open your eyes and stand up’. Eve had been introduced into his life!
But since my (own wife’s) passing … I think I was asleep all those years that I had her. I was asleep. And with her passing, I woke up and I realized what a treasure, what a gift, what a wonderful thing it is for a man to love a woman and a woman to love a man, deeply and eternally.”
What if I could have that experience, before the passing of my loved one? What if, before Bry ever takes his last breath, I could be so deeply grateful for his every breath?
All of him.
The 50 wonderful, the 50 not as wonderful. Michael talked about his wife’s single earrings. It seemed she couldn’t keep track of both of any pair of earrings. And it kind of bugged him while she was alive. But when she died, he wanted, more than almost anything, those single earrings. He wanted all of her.
What if I could wake up and love all of him, right now? What would that look like? How would that change me? How would that change our relationship?
Michael’s children offered to clean out the house for him, while he was away, so he wouldn’t have to face the memories and the pain. He asked them to wait until he could join them. He wanted those single earrings, among other things.
“We started in the closet upstairs and we went all the way down … We threw a lot away, and there were things that I wanted to keep.
When I was done cleaning the whole house, I was sitting in bed late at night, and the Spirit said, ‘Michael, there’s another cleansing I want you to do now. It is the cleansing of the memory and the heart and the soul, of every negative you ever shared with this woman – throw them all away. Every mote and every beam, I want you to throw them all away.’
So I get to remember my wife how? In absolutely perfection. She was the most perfect woman God ever put on earth. She had no motes.”
Is that looking at the past and at his wife with “rose colored glasses”? I don’t think so. I think there is a difference between ignoring the negative and “cleansing” our minds of the negative. In one, you are choosing to not see – you’re choosing to lie to yourself. In the other, you are choosing what and how you see.
Let’s stick with the example of the earrings:
- Ignoring the negative would sound like, She has two earrings in her ears!
- Cleansing his mind of the negative would sound like, She only has one earring in her ears. And I love her. What could be negative to someone else, and even what might have been negative at one time to him, he sees as neutral or even endearing.
This is a gift we can offer another person. This is a gift to ourselves. This is seeing. This is using agency. This is God-like.
“The REAL you is you at your best – all the best moments put together makes the real you. The you God sees.”
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