Resilience

Puppies are such resilient little things. You wouldn't have even guessed that Chuy had been neutered if you'd seen him on Tues. or even today. He's just as playful as he has been, almost a little too playful to handle. I guess after that full day of rest, he was rarin' to go. If you ever need to spay or neuter your pet, I recommend scheduling it for the month of February, Pet Over-population month. It took our cost down 50% and I was able to get all the pre-operative blood work and pain meds total for less than the cost for the neuter alone, had been done it in Jan. or March. Chuy will be 6 months old on Feb. 18th, so he's just at the right age to have it done.

Speaking of resilience, I just started a pottery class last night and it's SO fun! What a great creative release and stress reliever. I am looking forward to next week when we get to work on the wheel. Last night I made 4 pinch pots, by hand, and 3 ornaments for the Christmas tree. Once they get fired, we can paint them and glaze them and fire them again. :) Greg has his quartet rehearsal on Wed. nights so that's his male bonding time w/ the guys. This class is all women, who'd have thought, and they're all from post college age to grandmothers and some people sit and gossip, but I mostly focused on my creations and keeping my thoughts in my head. It was my way of sorting through the day while doing something creative and constructive. Pinch pots are made by manually turning the clay in your hands while pinching it from the inside out. This is how the Indians used to make their pottery.

When I started kneading the clay in my hands and began to form a pot, I couldn't help but think of the Potter and the Clay. We are the Clay and God is the Potter. He is forming us in His hands. I was amazed at how a lump of dirty clay can become something useful and beautiful in the Master's hands. Each pot I made got better, though the last one was a bit abstract or "organic" as they like to call that type of art, but they still weren't as good as the teacher's example. Though she makes pinch pots 20,000 times a day, being an art teacher at the HS, our work as humans still isn't perfect. However, when I made something that didn't look right, or when I poked my thumb all the way through the bottom of the pot, I balled it up and started over with a new pot.

And then it made more sense. God never wastes anything. At first I was going to make a clover leaf pot, but it became something else, I realized it would be better used as this abstract little dish with three sections. I didn't really like clovers that much anyway.

God can take a person who might have thought she would have been a teacher, but make her a singer instead. Or He can take an engineer from GE and make him a math teacher in an inner city school, where his ministry was greater for God and where he could touch the hearts of so many young people in an after school Bible study. Did that "change" break the person? No, because God also created us with such resiliency that we are sometimes surprised at the difficulty and trials we go through and come out on the other side even stronger than before.

God never gives us more than we can handle. Like the pottery, I could have cut out the walls of a votive candle holder with cookie cutters last night, but the clay was too soft. It needed to dry more and harden a bit so that it was leathery and strong enough to withstand the pull of gravity on the holes in the walls so that it would not lose its shape. God won't give you a trial to destroy you. He knows you're strong enough to handle it. If you think you're not, lean on Him and He will give you strength in weakness. He is the Potter, we are the clay. We are created for His glory. We are being formed in His hands into His image, and into the man or woman He wants us to be.