Are You Tired?

Lately I’ve been under the attack of insomnia. Lack of sleep and always being on the go have left little energy for anything else. Though I’m still praying and spending time in the word, I have not been spending good, solid quiet time with my God. And I’m thirsty, so, so thirsty.

I’ve been blocked, completely without inspiration, and all the times I’ve sat down to write, words do not come – or if they do, they only spill onto the page in a jumbled mess.

But I will not let the enemy win by giving in to this severe exhaustion. He’s been able to take me down by depriving me of sleep in the past, but it will not work this time. I will not crumble under the weight of this fatigue. After all, I can rest in the arms of my Jesus.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-30, MSG)

I gave today completely to God. After church I came home, changed my clothes, then went to the place where I always feel so close to him: the beach. It was a glorious, sunny day and I walked with bare feet on the sand, allowing thoughts to come in and go right out of my head, trying to clear the brain-clutter and just be with God.

When he said, “Be still,” I stopped and sat down in the sand. I laid back, arms stretched out, and until my mind could quiet, I asked to give over anything I was holding onto, for God to reveal and help me release whatever was holding me back. I gave him my exhaustion, my sleep troubles. Then I focused on asking him to fill me up, to breathe into me. And then I was still.

I would’ve thought more time had passed with how peaceful and rested I felt, lying there in the sand, just hanging out with God. And as the rain started to roll in and I walked back to my car, I didn’t feel quite so tired anymore. My energy was renewed and the light was brighter in my eyes.

Here’s to making the time to be still. Even when I am exhausted and I feel there are other things to do, what can wait until tomorrow so that I may take a few minutes to just sit and be still with my God?

Gratitude

Matthew 6:31-34

“What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (MSG)

Amen!

Going on the Of[fence]

Ephesians 5:1-2

“Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious, but extravagant.” (MSG, italics mine)

I do my best to love, I really do. Admittedly, I don’t always like other drivers on the road or people who cause me to have to work harder than necessary, but I really do try to have love in my heart for everyone. I pray daily for God to let me be a channel for his love.

Having love in my heart for everyone is actually rather easy. What I find difficult – and I know I’m not alone in this – is caution vs. extravagance for love in action. Loving in a way I thought extravagant, trying to be like Christ, to give, to be kind, etc, has caused me pain, gotten me into trouble, and brought people into my life in a way I didn’t want them to be there.

I am currently taking some fear-based precautions with a new friendship. Recent events during my wilderness time reinforced these fears and sent me racing to the find my bricks and rebuild my walls, the same walls I’ve constructed over years of undesirable experiences. I tend to succumb to isolation. As much as I want people in my life (I really do), I simply don’t trust them (they make it hard). I am safer being lonely (that’s a lie).

In a conversation about this yesterday, though I realized that I am not doing what I’ve always done. I’m not falling back into old patterns despite the fear that I am.  I feel like I am being cautious, but what I am doing is working to enter this friendship slowly and develop appropriate Boundaries.

There’s a book by that name by Cloud and Townsend that has come up several times recently in unrelated conversations with unconnected people. A sign perhaps? I did a small group study on the book four years ago, but I am in such a vastly different place in my life – a place where I feel I really can set healthy boundaries – that picking it up again might not be a bad idea.

The problem with my old walls is that they are old. They have gaps and holes and cracks in all the wrong places from being torn down and rebuilt time and time again. In the book it refers to boundaries being more like a fence than a wall. A fence protects me, yet is still open. And it has a gate. I can talk to a neighbor over the fence without letting her in. I can walk away from the fence if the neighbor tries to attack me.

My walls, however, keep me closed off. They create an extreme of inside and outside with no intermediate space. People try to break in, and if they try to attack me, I can’t see it coming. I am actually more vulnerable with my solid walls than I would be with an open fence.

I just pulled the book off the bookshelf. I’m going to work on tearing down my walls, one-by-one, and putting a nice fence up in their place.

Now the question is, what do I want my fence to look like?

God, help me pull down these walls and put up a fence. Your hands and mine working together, help me to put each board in its appropriate place and properly locate the gate.

Amen!

Working on My Butterfly

Psalm 51:10, 12

“Create in me a pure [clean] heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.”  (NIV)

“God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails!” (MSG)

Lent can be a pretty somber time. It is penitential, about self-examination and sacrifice, and as we move through the season in scripture, Jesus moves toward his final hour in the flesh. Yet every Ash Wednesday, after my priest marks our foreheads with ash saying, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” after we’ve said a litany of penitence and confessed our sinful nature, the choir sings Create in Me, a song based on the verses above.

Lent is also a time of rejuvenation. It is a time for growth and renewal. And at the end, as the sun and son rise on Easter morning, we can give birth to our new selves, move forward in new lives. Lent is a cocoon. Lent is a retreat for the soul.

Many people give up things for Lent while others add in something new. Growing up, my mom, sister and I attended church, and Mom would make the Lenten resolution for all of us. I swear it was the same every year: No chocolate. Every year, at some point during Lent, a bag of M&Ms would show up in the house.

As a kid, I didn’t understand the significance of giving something up and sticking to it through the season. Even though I attended a Catholic grade school and I am sure was taught about what Lent was supposed to mean, it had no tangible meaning to me. I couldn’t see or understand any of it, and our yearly chocolate routine proved that there were no repercussions for not keeping a Lenten resolution.

So why do we do it? In my current adult understanding, the idea is based upon the fasting that took place in biblical times. Fasting isn’t just about sacrifice, it’s also about turning more of the focus on God. Fasting can be penitential and can allow for heightened awareness. But perhaps most importantly, fasting is a conscious act. A person chooses to fast in order to repent or to grow in a relationship with God.

In my lifetime, I can only think of one time I successfully stuck to giving something up for the entire season of Lent. I have found that I am far more successful if I add something God-focused to my routine. For where I am on my journey, throwing in another devotional or reading a new book (or getting back to Little Meditations) will do more to bring me closer to God.

Besides, I don’t eat nearly enough chocolate these days for it to be a sacrifice to give it up. 

Lord, as I snuggle into this cocoon of Lent with you, let my daily prayer be those lines from Psalm 51: Create in me a clean heart, renew in me a steadfast spirit, restore to me your joy, and grant me willingness. May the things I add or remove with intention this season bring me ever closer to you and help me to live in your will for my life.

Amen.

Resistance is Futile, Anyway

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

“We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken.”  (MSG, italics mine)

I have been wandering in the wilderness.  There were only a few times I ventured very far from the pasture; mostly I was hanging out near the gate thinking about going in, or walking along the fence, but on the outside.  I kept my communication with God open, but I found myself resisting him.  I acknowledged my resistance, asked for forgiveness, then plopped down by the gate, where I sat for the last month, trying to summon the energy to stand, dust off, then run as fast as I could into the arms of my God.

The last three and a half months have been difficult.  A period of let-downs, loss, shattered hope, death, grief and confusion followed the catalyst event referred to in, Really, God?  Before Christmas there was anger.  After Christmas, I went into maintenance mode.  There was a lot of reaching for God through the final sickness and death of my grandmother, with whom I was very close.  Then came exhaustion and just moving from day to day through life’s busyness. 

Fatigued, I sat down just outside the gate of God’s green pasture.  I said, “I surrender.  Here.  I don’t want it, I trust you to do what needs to be done.  But I’m tired and I need to sit for awhile.”  And in my weakness, he found strength.  I haven’t yet run back into the lushest of the grass, but I am inside the gate.  My peace once again is not fleeting or easily disrupted, and I have amazed myself in this last week at how I have grown, at what God has done with me. 

It astounds me to no end how I can come and go and come and go.  I suppose it is human nature, and if I’ve learned anything from the Old Testament about human nature, it is that we come and go.  The Israelites are an extreme example, but reading through the Psalms and the stories of David, I find someone human to whom I can really relate. 

There are still troubles, but not nearly as many.  I still don’t know what to do, but I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God knows what to do.  So I’m going to let him do it.  And as we move into this season of Lent, I will strive to reignite the flame that burned so brightly last fall. 

“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God...” 2 Cor 4:6 (NIV).

Dear Lord, let Light shine out of the darkness in my life.  Help me to move forward in love with faith and trust, surrendering myself to you and believing that you are working good from this thing I call my life.  Grant me humility during this Lenten season and beyond.  Bring me ever closer to you and hold me in your heart.

Amen.

*In the spirit of no alle...lu’s during Lent, my equivalent happy face after the Amen will be on vacation until Easter.