Thursday, July 30, 2009

Desperately needed smiles...

Because I'm desperately needing the reminders tonight, these are a few things I'm thankful for, things that are making me smile...
  • good Chinese leftovers for lunch every day this week
  • having our landlord decide to change the venting system on our dryer so that it no longer sets off our smoke alarm every time we use it.
  • good sales at Ikea tonight (even though I'm having trouble assembling the product I bought)
  • finding the music I was looking for available for download on itunes
  • not having to cook dinner tonight
  • an email exchange that reminded me that a dear friend knows my heart, even when I feel quite exhausted, buried, frustrated and invisible, and loves it.
  • an email from my brother, wondering if he and his girlfriend could spend the evening of my birthday with me
  • comfy pajamas
  • much needed relief from the heat with a summer rain storm
  • peanut m&m's
  • a funny gift (a sleeping bag!) from my mom, who bought it at the grocery store yesterday of all places and then phoned me at work to tell me she'd bought me a present.
  • potential plans to do something a bit "girly" and restful tomorrow afternoon after work
  • that Jesus still speaks, even when I'm hiding for him, and wish he wouldn't speak.

Not quite sure...

I am trying to rest.

Stillness is hard.

My body physically refused to allow me to clean and putter tonight. I got home from work and a few after work errands, and collapsed. Thankfully, my roommate had made dinner. I ate, showered, and then, as my roommate put it "blobbed out" on first my bed, and then the couch.

My heart shies away from being still right now. I think I'm a bit afraid of what further depths of Jesus could mean. And yet, I long for Him...

Actually, my heart literally feels skittish, like it's skirting around the edges, but unwilling to draw near.

I woke at a very specific hour in the middle of the night (one of many times I woke through the night, but this one stood out) and found myself having thoughts of regret. Regret that I'd made a particular vow to Jesus. Regret that I needed to continue to live that vow out. The lines from the Bruggemann prayer I posted earlier today came back, as I considered what it was to once again discover the "hard deep obedience".

so, I'm again trying to find ways to choose life in the midst of this exhaustion... to find joy...

A Hard Deep Call to Obedience

I read this prayer by Walter Bruggemann just before I fell asleep last night, and felt the truth of it hitting my soul deeply as I prayed it back to Jesus...

You are the God who makes extravagant promises.
We relish your great promises
of fidelity
and presence
and solidarity,
and we exude in them.
Only to find out, always too late,
that your promise always comes
in the midst of a hard, deep call to obedience.
You are the God who calls people like us,
and the long list of mothers and fathers before us,
who trusted the promise enough to keep the call.
So we give you thanks that you are a calling God,
who calls always to dangerous new places.
We pray enough of your grace and mercy among us
that we may be among those
who believe your promises enough
to respond to your call.
We pray in the one who embodied your promise
and enacted your call, even Jesus. Amen.

Stillness

The ability to simply "be still", I'm discovering, is not the easiest thing to develop. That was the thought that hit me as I was driving to work this morning.

By all accounts, I should be good at "still." I'm an introvert, who prefers quiet and alone to noise and people. Most of my happiest moments are alone, or with the few people with whom my relationship is so natural that I feel as free as if I were alone. In fact, I force myself to schedule social events in my daily life most of the time, and, while I enjoy them as a general rule, there is still often the sense that time alone would have been equally if not more enjoyable.

There are moments where I am easily able to move into stillness. And moments when stillness is the space in which I am able to live.

These last few months have not held those moments.

I've felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins. The stress of hunting for a place to live, the relief of finding one relatively easily. The stress of packing, then moving, and then unpacking. The end of wedding central with a wedding out of town. Family obligations. Dealing with moving various utilities to our new house. Taking care of the need to upgrade and renew my drivers license. Wondering if the money would hold out in the midst of somewhat higher than usual financial obligations. Anticipating another out of town wedding that will hold both joy and some very big challenges for my heart. Working through some very challenging relational issues. Some frustrating health setbacks. And God working deeply in some very raw and painful spots in my heart. Intense and vivid dreams. Launching a new product at work, and this week having a week where because of a vacation, I'm juggling my own job and another job with full-time responsibilities. Hot weather that my body doesn't handle very well. All coupled with many weeks where sleep was fleeting if it came at all. I've felt almost manic in my desperate attempt to juggle it all, and my continuous reminders to myself to "not be stressed, these things don't matter hugely in the grand scheme of life."

There have been "oasis" moments. A conversation with a new friend in a coffee shop that unexpectedly went to the deep places quickly, and reminded me of the things my heart loves. A period of time sitting in a mountain-top meadow, praying. A beautiful wild rose, shielded by a stone and the roots of a tree, near my favorite lake. But the moments have been a bit fleeting, and I am weary.

I've known for a bit now that I was running on fumes. That I was becoming deeply soul weary. The crash came suddenly, but not totally unexpectedly last night. I'd simply been hoping that it would wait to come until after this long weekend full of obligations.

It didn't.

So. I'm thinking about stillness, and how, after a season that has been nearly manic, it's hard to settle back into that place of stillness. About how I'm banking on a few short days off to be restorative, but how I realized this morning that if I can't manage to find stillness before those days, I will be unlikely to find it then. About how I fear that though I desperately need to meet Jesus, he won't show up in the time I've set aside for that, and how I fear the bereft and broken way that will make me feel. About the rational voice that reminds me that I'm in trouble if I'm only meeting with Jesus in the rare times when I can carve out a few days for him, and that I'm not meeting with him in my daily life.

Stillness is not my best skill when I'm coming off a time of driving, nearly manic stress, but I'm going to make an effort at it for the next couple of days. I'm going to try to do things that my heart loves, and that I find restful. Please don't laugh at me when I tell you that one of those things is a trip to Ikea to buy some much needed organizational supplies, followed by unpacking. It's starting to bother me that there are things scattered around our living room, and it will help me to be still if I can get that last bit of unpacking off of my plate. So, I'm going to take my time shopping. I'm going to rest and read. I'm going to intentionally (more than ususal, since I do this nightly) spend some time in scripture. I'm going to restore order to some places where my stressful month has left havoc - physical and emotional spaces.

And I'm going to practice stillness, push into it, rather than backing away from it, remembering a moment just recently where my heart was nearly still, and I turned away from the calming things, back towards that driving mania and stress (and paid for it at the cost of a night of sleep.)