Monday Musings

I've been staring at this blank screen for a while, wondering what to say in this space today.

I could tell you about school, but nothing particularly worth reporting occurred in the last week or so.  We worked in groups for four to five hours a day.  I didn't kill anyone (or feel particularly inclined to, for that matter.)  I gave a mandarin orange multiple injections.  I learned that influenza that you are vaccinated for, is NOT the same as the stomach flu bugs that make the rounds each and every year.  I finished the week tired, worn out from all of the constant noise and interaction, but maybe not quite so tired as the previous weeks.  Maybe, just maybe, I will find a rhythm in this that works for me yet!

I could talk to you about food, and eating disorders, and body image, and how Jesus is speaking and moving and challenging my heart in all of these things.  But these are things that are still fresh, that still have words forming, and even as I tell you that I could talk about these things, my heart knows that it is too soon, and that any attempt to write them out would be stilted and clumsy, and would prematurely expose the precious bits of my heart that are being shaped in these areas.

In the same way, I could talk to you about ministry, about leadership, about encouraging words from a friend.  All of these are topics where Jesus is speaking, where odd things are emerging and making themselves known within me.  And it would be premature to do more than name the existence of any of them.

I guess what I'm saying is that Jesus is working, and I'm finding myself in the position of waiting and listening to the new voices and spaces emerging within me, rather than expressing those things outwardly.  It's not a bad place to be, really.  It's peaceful, and quiet here, as I wait and watch and listen.  And I am thankful for these signs of life within me.  It makes for odd, cryptic, and quiet blog posts, but it does lovely things in my heart.

The Opposite Problem

Convincing my head and heart to be on the same page is an ongoing problem for me.  It's a problem when you are both intellectual, and yet intuitive.

Usually, in my case, my head knows something is good long before that deep interior part of my heart is convinced.

Today I'm having the opposite problem.

My heart is fully on board, and my head is not at all convinced.

Daily 5 - Day 164

Today's Daily 5:

1. Had a treatment this morning - hopeful that means I'll start feeling more like myself again in the next day or two.
2. Appreciated the love in my mom's eyes as I admitted some lingering irrational fears while we were doing errands together.  The love and the knowledge that she knows what it is like to have to face those fears.
3. Appreciated a conversation with a dear friend this morning too.  The words stung, but they will resonate, and help to shape my heart, and that is something that these days I find a blessing, albeit a painful one.
4. Thankful to have gotten the grocery shopping for next week done today - means I can simply be at home most evenings next week.
5. Spent a few hours clipping from magazines and listening to some podcasted radio interviews that I had a backlog of - still amazed at which things are catching my eye to clip.
6. Took a garbage bag of clothes I no longer wear to the thrift store today
7. Hamburgers and a really great Asian salad for lunch
8. Lavender in my oil burner
9. Holing up in my bedroom for the last 6 hours or so, and simply being
10. Got the budget updated - it's tight this month, but I'm going to manage to stay within it.
    

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...

Read this - Ripped Open

I loved this post on Hope's blog, particularly the last couple of paragraphs, which I've quoted below for you. They reminded me of some deep and ongoing conversations I've had with the Lord and with a dear friend these last several months.

She writes:

One thing I especially appreciate about this priest is his emphasis on a heart relationship with Christ. He often talks about the emptiness of praying, attending Mass, receiving the Sacraments without those things coming out of a heart relationship.

Today, as he was emphasizing that point, I gazed at a statue of the Sacred Heart Of Jesus. Often when I look on it I remember a day when I felt like Jesus told me he wanted my heart open, exposed and touching his. It wasn't a pleasant image - more like my chest had been ripped open and Jesus then grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me close so his exposed heart could mingle with mine. I don't exactly know how the cause and effect of that translates into daily life, but I continue to find that image a comfort, a challenge and something to ponder every time I gaze upon His face.

Hoping to Survive....

This last while has been a completely unexplainable, no words will quite do, period in my life.

My eyes are being opened to the world. I am being drawn to the nations.

There. I said it. In print, where it can't be revoked.

Can I now say that I'm absolutely terrified by that last statement?

Jesus is asking me to let Him have my heart in new and deep ways.

(hold on a second, I need to light candles as prayers if I'm actually going to write this)

An hour ago I sat in a hot bath, filled with sweetly scented salts made by a little company in Canmore, and fought back the tears. I finished reading a novel I picked up yesterday, and while it wasn't exactly the story that made my heart break, it was still a catalyst.

I wonder, at regular intervals these days if I am going to survive this expanding of my heart.

As I allow Jesus ever nearer, my heart is beginning to break.

Like a cadence repeating itself through my brain these days is the oft quoted prayer, "Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God."

Even now, years later, I remember so clearly the first time I heard someone quote this prayer. This funny Iranian evangelist, who lived in Alabama, a guy named David Nasser was preaching the story of Ezra - tearing his clothes and weeping at the sins of Israel, and he asked those sitting in the audience, "Does your heart break at the things that break God's heart?"

That question burrowed deep - I remember going back to high school after that weekend, and sitting in class and listening to all of the tales of partying and dissatisfaction from the weekend, and feeling my heart shatter, as I thought about the heart of the father for these people who surrounded me.

The prayer came back again, a whisper in my consciousness as I taught Sunday school a few weeks back. We worked our way through the story of Jesus clearing the temple courts, and stopped to pose the question, "What makes Jesus angry today?" It came on the heels of hosting a weekend of prayer in my home. A weekend where I found myself praying my way across a map of the world, and through the faces and hearts that belong to those nations.

I have guarded my heart selfishly and callously for years, wanting to avoid the heartache I knew would come quite inevitably if I allowed myself to truly see other people and other nations.

I have held myself in check, carefully, letting very few burrow past my defenses.

Those who do, sometimes surprise me.

I wept over a beautiful young girl who was three when she lost her life to the preventable illness of malaria.

I wept when dear friends suffered a miscarriage.

And now, so many things are slipping past those defenses.

I find my heart shattering on a nearly daily basis.

And I wonder, some days, if I will survive this painful stretching.