Fighting

I wrote a whole post with this title yesterday, but blogger ate it.

I feel like this week has been a fight. I can feel it in my body. I'm exhausted for no apparent reason. I've had headaches almost every day, and restless nights. As I'm sitting here to write my stomach is convulsing and the muscles in my lower back have knotted up. And all week I've wanted to cry, but the tears just won't quite come.

Looking back, I think I saw the battle coming on on Tuesday night. Funny, because Tuesday was a very peaceful day - the day I wrote about in my last post. I had some uncommonly honest conversations about spiritual things that day, and I know a few others did too. As I sat in my car and shared life with a friend into the wee hours of Wednesday morning I was praying silently for a conversation that was going on elsewhere, for nothing in particular and everything in general - my spirit nudged into prayer even as I spoke and shared some of my story with my friend.

Work has been central to whatever emotional or spiritual thing I've been fighting with this week. It's been harder than ever to go there. As I would walk into the building I quite literally felt heaviness and dread descending on my spirit. My brain was foggy and I made odd mistakes - nothing serious, just things that wasted time and energy. Sometimes I fought the heaviness, humming worship songs, meditating on their words and passages of scripture, and sometimes I just worked.

Tonight I'm tired. Still two work shifts to go. Six hours tomorrow, four hours Sunday. The week has been odd. Weird snippets of dreams. I've done a lot of thinking on the subject of good and evil. I've been reading through the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling, enjoying them, but thinking deeply about the questions of good and evil they propose. They've even invaded my dreams at times, snippets of thoughts - conversations with characters from the books. Nothing I can remember when I wake, just the impression that I haven't been separated from the characters and thoughts even while I'm asleep. Every once in a while I stop ever so briefly and wonder when I became weird - odd dreams, God speaking to me for others, feeling everything so intensely, unable to escape words and themes...

The lines from Delirious? "Revival Town" that say "You let a broken generation become a dancing generation," have been floating through the mess of thoughts this week too. I think this statement so closely describes what God has done in my life, what I see Him doing in my generation, and in my church. I wonder sometimes if we have cycles of brokenness and cycles of dancing, or if we perhaps simply choose to dance in spite of brokenness. Because I feel more like the broken person than the dancer tonight, but I persist, because God is calling me ever deeper...

Been listening a lot to Delirious? this week, alternating them with the same Jason Upton CD I've been listening to for the last couple months and one or two others. Water imagery, images of nurturing warmth, and fire imagery have all been strong this week. Snippets of lines from different songs have been playing nearly unceasingly through my thoughts this week...

...Find me in the river, find me on my knees....

...Now I'm waiting if you please....

...We didn't count on suffering,

we didn't count on pain

but if the blessing's in the valley

then in the river I will wait...

...Jesus' blood never fails me...

...Where every woman, every son

will life high their chains undone...

... Don't be afraid of your blind belief

because the more you fly the more you'll see

you're not alone, you're not alone...

...They're calling me and they're calling you

from the cold hard facts that we're on our own

to the age old truth that we're not alone...

...A cloud by day a fire by night

I'll keep moving on

It may seem strange but I know it's right

I'll keep moving on...

...In the place of suffering there's a God worth worshipping...

...The Lord has a will and I have a need

to follow that will, to humbly be still,

to rest in it, nest in it, wholly be blest in it,

following my Father's will...

...So I have to find the river, somehow my life depends on the river
Holy River, I'm so thirsty...

...I'm so thirsty, I can feel it
Burnin' through the furthest corners of my soul. Deep desire, can't describe this
nameless urge that drives me somewhere
though I don't know where to go...

...I'm abandoned to the river and now my life depends on the river...