I have blogged before about my Aunt Barbara, how with the weapons of peach tea and cookies she waged war upon the pain and troubles of this world by loving everyone she came in contact with.

Looking back after all these years, I see an additional, deeper lesson in Aunt Barbara’s life. Looking back, I see how Aunt Barbara accepted the constant physical suffering she went through in her later years… and, instead of choosing self-pity and dwelling on her losses, made room inside herself for God to fill with kindness, caring for others, and love.

 Thomas Edward Browne has a poem in which God wants to come and dwell inside someone, but can’t, because they are too full of themselves, too  “replete with very thee.”  In the poem, God says that what he wants is for someone to empty themselves of self, so there is room for God to dwell within.

I know Aunt Barbara got discouraged.  I know she wept with frustration and anger.  I know she deeply missed seeing her friends and  going on the cheerful everyday outings we all take for granted.  I know she suffered from the crippling loneliness of constant pain, week after week, month after month, year after year.

But so often, her gallant spirit rose above her suffering.

When the steroids affected her body, she bought nice-looking mail-order clothing in a larger size.  She did her hair, every day, and put on bright lipstick. Late in her life, when I brought my teenage girls to visit her in the hospital, she gave us only the briefest of status reports on her condition, then turned the subject to ask about my girls’ lives. What were they studying? How was cross-country going? What movies were they interested in?

Sometimes I get discouraged about the small impact I seem to have in this world. About how the little I can do seems small and unimpactful in a world gone stiff with rage and hate.

When I feel that way, I need to remember Aunt Barbara, and what she did with what she had. How she served me piping-hot tea in her best teapot, with a china cup and saucer, and cookies on a flowered plate. How she listened with single-minded attention for as long as I needed to talk. How she radiated unconditional love out into this world like a beacon.

I need to remember that if I can just get out of the way, stop toting up my “successes” and “failures”, stop dwelling on all I haven’t done… then I too might let myself be filled by Him. That, like Aunt Barbara, radiating love out into the world might be the best work I can do.

Indwelling
Thomas Edward Browne

If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,

Like to a shell dishabited,

Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf,

And say, “This is not dead,”

And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou art all replete with very thee

And have such shrewd activity,

That when He comes He says, “This is enow

Unto itself — ‘twere better let it be,

It is so small and full, there is no room for me.”