my heart in a... bottle?!

Picture a crowded home, bustling with activity.  It's almost time to eat, and there's a thousand and one things that have yet to be done.  'Someone take this dish to the table!'  "Why didn't anyone put ice in the glasses!??"  'Can you check the oven... I see smoke!'  It's chaos and all hands are needed on deck!!  However, in the corner we find a completely different scene; a man is telling a story and a woman sits at his feet, hanging on every word.  It's out of place and it almost seems a bit rude.  How can they be in their own little world, so content amidst all the commotion?
Now another story:: same group of people, hosting a dinner in honor of this man; the story teller.  Things are going well, dinner is on the table and everyone is enjoying themselves.  Out comes the same woman, the listener, and she does something outrageous!  She take a bottle of perfume; worth an unbelievable amount of money, and pours it on the story teller's feet.  Within seconds the whole house is drenched in the smell, it's THAT potent.  She let's down her hair; absolutely unacceptable in this society, and uses the long locks to wipe the feet of the story teller!  The group is shocked!  The silence is suffocating; dripping with disapproval and disbelief!
People have various responses to this woman's actions.  Some say she's lazy for not helping her sister with the preparations.  Some say she is wasteful; that the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor!  She is labeled excessive, disrespectful.  But the Story Teller's unexpected response is that this woman's actions were RIGHT?!  He said she had chosen the ONLY thing that mattered and that she had her priorities straight!!?  He labeled her actions BEAUTIFUL!!?
This is the lesson I'm in the midst of learning.  The stories are true.. found in the Bible!  The Story Teller is Jesus and 'the listener' is Mary of Bethany, Lazarus and Martha's sister, but I also want it to be me!  I want to be so surrendered that I can sit, contentedly at the feet of Jesus even though I have a million things on my list; even when it seems out of place.  I want to be so captivated by Him that His presence is the ONLY place I want to be!  I want to worship extravagantly even when the world points their fingers at me, labeling me what they will.  I want to be SO in love with Jesus, so absolutely content within His approval of me, that nothing else matters!
Three Monday's ago we sang a song at YWAM worship that I really just didn't like... the chorus says "Here's my heart in a bottle, God.  I break it at your feet, I say I love you."  I didn't like the tune, I didn't get the words.  Why would my heart be in a bottle?!  And why would I break that bottle!!?  Something within me flared up; but I had no idea that it was my own pride.  By the time we left the base I had already forgotten about the song, but God hadn't!  I'm still reading through the Old Testament, but for the next few weeks I kept finding myself in the gospels, reading Mary's stories over and over.  There's so much more to this story, surrender and growth and round two of the audio book "Beautiful Outlaw", but the moral is that I'm falling head over heels in love with Jesus!!  This last Monday when we went to worship, they sang that same song and it had a completely different effect on me.  The words made absolute sense!!  My heart in a bottle is my everything; my hopes, my dreams, my fears.  It's all I have to give... an outrageously expensive perfume, and I'm breaking it at HIS feet in the ultimate act of worship; surrendering my all to Him!!  And just like with Mary, Jesus says 'What she has done is BEAUTIFUL!' and my heart feels so full!
Life is absolutely wonderful when lived through that attitude of surrender and with an overflowing heart!  There's still frustrations and weeds with thorns are still weeds with thorns!  But I have a strength that is not my own and a ridiculous amount of joy, and that makes those weeds seem a lot less intense!  We continue to make progress on that last field, and although we're trying not to get our hopes up, we're pretty sure we'll be finishing up the weed wacking next week!  My shoulder/rib is on the mend, thank you, JESUS, and I'm starting to feel like my old, Rambo-self again!  Which was a good thing because we finally got our wild boar and that is not a challenge to take on if you only have one functioning shoulder!!!  Let me tell you, it was quite the adventure!!  Mr. Bacon got himself all tangled up in one of our neighbors snares and was making quite the ruckus so we went up to investigate.  Only problem is that I got distracted by the baby birds that I rescued the day before and the next thing I know, Derek is no where in site!!  So, Sacagawea that I am, I had to track Derek's path through the jungle and found him just before he took his shot.  After that it got really dark, really fast and it was a wild night of gutting, skinning, cleaning and packaging... all by light of a head lamp and with a little guidance from a you-tube video!  Now we have a freezer full of pork and one more skill to add to our resume!
One last story for the week::  We were on our way home from the grocery store when Derek saw a sign for a yard sale, made a spur of the moment decision to go, and did a maneuver I'm sure he learned from The Fast and the Furious!  Although impressed with his driving skills, I wasn't really in the yard-sailing mood and made my opinion known.  He insisted, though and we wound our way through the neighborhood till we found the right house.  We couldn't see much out on the tables and I quickly said "Oh, looks like they're closing down.."  But Derek was still adamant that we go!  We browsed through the few items they had out and decided to go with the $1 scale!  As we were paying the woman she picked up this wooden carving of Joseph, Mary and Jesus and asked if we'd like it, saying that it was made in Bethlehem!  We both lit up, and started asking if they'd been to Bethlehem, and the next thing we know we're talking about church and then found out they've done YWAM, too!  This woman started sharing her heart with us and telling us about her and her husband and their heart for people battling cancer.  They want to have a place where people can come to heal, whether they've just found out they have cancer, or they're in the stages of fighting it, or they've conquered it, or lost a spouse to it, whatever the case may be.  They have a house here and a house in California and they know they're not supposed to live here but they're not supposed to sell the house, so they're trying to figure out what God has in mind.  Long story short, by the end of our conversation the woman was asking for our email and numbers and scheming on the possibility of us living at their house, almost as care-takers!!  We were absolutely blown away by the whole thing!  Her husband came home just as we were leaving and after she told him the short and sweet of what we'd been talking about he grabbed both our hands and started praying, right there in the front yard!!  It was an incredible experience, and we're so excited to see what might come of it!  AND even if nothing more does come of it, it was a HUGE reminder of the amazing ways God works!  I'm constantly putting God 'in a box' and things like that remind me of how great He is; His ways are not my ways and He can open any door He wants at any time, in the most un-obvious of ways!!  Even just the strong feeling that Derek had, that we HAD to go to THAT yard sale.. that was the Holy Spirit, and I'm so glad he listened!!
All the things that we are experiencing here, whether the daily battle within the fields, or learning about the exotic fruits and vegetables growing all around us, or the 'random' encounters with people that could lead to a whole new world of possibilities, it all just serves to pull us closer to our incredible Savior!  If you take anything at all from this post, I pray that it is a deeper desire to get to know Jesus!  To experience Him in every day life and to be so in awe of Him that you can't help but sit in His presence when everything around you is screaming that there's more important things to do.  To be so in love with Him that you pour out your everything at His feet and live in the joy of hearing Him say that what you've done is BEAUTIFUL!