New Wine
Forty-two years ago, a wedding anniversary and 32 years ago a divorce. In between and since, babies born, another wedding anniversary, death, wounds, healing, losses, wins…..growth.
One-time years ago, I was looking for some sandals. Not the kind that you have four pairs of that are cheap and cute, but then again you bought them BECAUSE they were cheap and cute. No, I was looking for a significant, sturdy, credible pair. One that I loved and could wear with all of my summer clothes. I looked for a long time. A long time, everywhere I shopped I looked and tried on and left without. But finally, I found the pair I wanted - strappy, leather, sturdy, sleek, fashionable, comfortable and fit perfectly. They were not cheap! I wore those sandals for many, many, many summers and enjoyed them as much when I needed to let them go as I did when I bought them.
Why do we settle for cheap and cute rather than take the time to find what we love? What happens to our desire to pursue love, the willingness to risk loving someone, the willingness to endure the growing pains of sustained relationships. Why do we settle for cheap and cute? Maybe BECAUSE it doesn’t cost us much in the way of acquisition and the chances of loss are mitigated as EASY COME-EASY GO.
Low value is assigned to the less fought for, the less sought after, the less costly. This day and time long term relationships are challenged with “social media informed” scrutiny. Let’s just say very few people make it to adulthood without trauma baggage of some sort and that trauma, if left unhealed, is going to spill out and even if healed, will flare up and bite our partner. And the “shouldn’t I be happy” approach….well, of course, we all want to be happy. The problem with setting “happy” as your goal is like taking a sack of sugar to sprinkle like fairy dust in the middle of the fiercest battle there is. “Happy” is the most transient, fickle and circumstance dependent concept ever naively asked of a union designed to create and sustain real life, growth, pain, loss, healing, learned self-awareness, learned selflessness.
Some 25 yrs. ago, my husband of 2 yrs. at the time, lost his oldest daughter in an automobile accident. The pain that engulfed his heart and mind, our family and relationship was unbearable. An impossible situation. We needed sturdy. Sturdy doesn’t guarantee happy. In recent years I was lamenting to a trusted friend about the most recent argument. She asked had we ever been happy. I told her we haven’t been happy in 25 yrs. It has been hell!
So what do you do? You keep walking is what you do - finding moments of joy left like manna from heaven, appreciating the happiness, however brief, as something to hold very loosely like the seasons that pass. Seasons of bright sunny days that include sunburns and bugs, bitter cold winters that include a magical snow with laughter and snowmen, new children, new grandchildren all part of God’s good plan.
Luke5:36-38 talks about not patching old garments with new fabric - it won’t match. It goes on to say don’t put new wine into old wine skins because the old skins will burst and both will be wasted. Put new wine in new wine skins.
I have always wondered about this passage. Lately it feels like God is helping me understand the old garment, old wine skin is that low value life we surround ourselves with trying to numb the pain. Cheap but cute, a life we control and manage, demanding happiness by our standard, the old with its predictable affect. The closet full of garments that do not change the contempt we feel for ourselves. The old wine, though drunk in ever increasing quantities and unceasing regularity that provides no relief from the painful reality of this life that you can scarcely look straight in the face.
But the New Wine, God’s love, alive with fresh fermentation, full of transforming power doesn’t want to just add new wine to our old wine skins. God’s love wants to make us new, wants to fill us with New Wine. A brand-new life that can sustain true growth with all of its painful revelations about our deepest wounds and traumas, sustain the weight of commitment to another person’s pain and traumas. New life with the capacity to stay present and not hide in avoidance or addiction, creativity, joy that is awareness of God’s intense love for us and what it cost Him to save us when He could have just saved it all for Himself. He chose to pay for it all. He chose to foot the bill on all of it so that we can have all that it takes to get through this life all the while giving us good gifts along the way. Don’t give up my friend, you may need a new pair of sandals.
Mary Mobley