Up and Down Day

When I finally settled in to pray yesterday, it was a very good thing. For an hour and a half or so I paced my home, and had a conversation with Jesus. We talked about a lot of things - about dreams, about promises he's made, about the things I've been struggling with lately, about the many fronts on which I've been encountering opposition in the last several weeks. I walked away at rest - peaceful in the things He spoke to me.

It's a lot easier to rest in those things when you're not at that moment in the midst of the opposition. That's the lesson I began to learn today. Work was horrendous. By noon I was feeling equally exhausted to the way I had felt going into the weekend. I left for a few minutes to collect myself, and came back to discover an email from a very dear friend inviting me to dinner with her tonight since she was coming into the city. I think that email got me through the rest of the day - the promise of relief and enjoyment with a friend.

Time with Kari was relieving. We talked and she managed to encourage me, maybe without even trying. I went into the rest of my evening with restored peace and energy.

Funny how that goes, and how perspective can be so quickly gained and lost.

I'm working to learn to rest and live in the promises of protection that God has spoken to me both personally and through dear friends. This morning as I woke, the Lord gave me a picture of myself being clothed in a cloak, having it wrapped around my body, and then a hood pulled up over my head. The comparison that came to mind is the invisibility cloak from the Harry Potter stories. An ability to walk unseen in enemy territory. I think Kirk said something about that to me on the weekend. I went to work with that assurance, but quickly lost sight of it in the face of the opposition and tensions that have become commonplace there in the last few weeks.

So tomorrow, I'll try again. Again to rest in the promises of the armour of God, in the promise spoken to me from Genesis that He will be my shield and my reward, in the words of Psalm 91. I'll wrap the cloak of His protection around me and walk unseen in enemy territory - and this time I'll work to remember that though I can see and hear the enemy, I cannot be harmed, my peace cannot be snatched from me, the lies cannot affect me.

Resting

I woke up when my alarm went off this morning, and began the mental, physical and spiritual evaluation I run through most mornings. Basically, in the fifteen minutes between when my alarm goes off, and I have to crawl out of bed, I like to figure out what the baseline for the day is.

Today, I lay there and began to ask the Lord how I was doing, and what came next for the day. The weekend was amazing, but intense and exhausting, especially coming on the tail of the two previous intense weeks.

I have a number of sick days remaining, and only a week left in the employment year to which they apply. As I lay there and prayed, I felt very clearly that it would be okay for me to take a day and simply rest. To catch up on sleep, to do nothing mentally, emotionally, or physically exhausting.

So, I got out of bed long enough to send an email letting my office know that I wasn't coming in, and then headed back to bed to sleep another three hours. Now, it's noon, and I'm sitting on my couch, smelling my lunch baking in the oven, watching tv on dvd, surfing the internet, and beginning to feel restored. Almost ready to settle in for a long conversation with God.

I'm resting, allowing my body to catch up with my soul and mind. Reconnecting the parts of myself. And it's good.

Interesting headline...

Mentally Ill Suffering Neglect - this was a pretty interesting article, talking about the state of mental illness around the world, and the way that mental illness affects other health conditions.

Processing

I'm home from a crazy intense weekend. So good, I think. Full of great people, and great time with God.

I'm exhausted. Stuff has ramped up again, and I've only slept about 3-4 hours a night for the last four nights. Here's to hoping tonight is a bit longer.

Eventually I'll probably put some thoughts here. It may take me a while to figure out what, if anything can be shared. I'm feeling the need to pull back and take some time to really absorb the events of the last two weeks of my life, and particularly of the weekend.

Bone Tired

It was a kind of wild morning at work today, and I'm really glad I'd prearranged to have the afternoon off. I'm tired. Bone tired. Emotionally, mentally, and physically drained. The only more trying day I can think of in recent days is that one about a week and a half ago where there was weird stuff going on in the spiritual realm.

Today was kind of like that, only everything was very much spilling over into the here and now of our physical office space.

To be honest, this is not the state I wanted to be in as I prepare to join a group of people for a weekend of prayer, dreaming, and worship. I wanted to go into this rested, feeling at peace. I'm a long way from that right now.

I got home from work, took a shower, and threw in a load of laundry. With the possible exception of one phone call, and getting up to switch my laundry from the washer to the dryer, I don't intend to move from the couch I'm reclining on for the next hour and a half. I'm hoping to sleep, maybe pray, at the very least calm and distract my mind.

Pray for my work situation if you think about it. There are some very special people there who are facing some difficult times, and it's beginning to wear on all of us. Pray for wisdom, for leaders to step up, for peace.

As a peacemaker by nature the kind of tension infecting the office these days is draining. Pray that I would be able to guard my mind and heart in the midst of this, and truly offer the peace of Christ to all.