Still Cranky (but improving)

It was a long day. (well, literally, I suppose, since it's after midnight, and I'm just sitting down to write). It's been a long week.

I'm not the biggest fan of the holiday season. It stirs stuff up. In me. In others. Not so pleasant stuff. Big stuff.

This has been the week where everything has come in flashes of intensity. Nothing simple and easy. Just intensity.

There have been moments of intense intercession for various people and things.

Mostly, though, there have been the moments of being intensely exhausted and angry, and working hard to shut God out, to not listen when I know that He's prodding me.

I was thinking, tonight, about how many people in my life have deep needs again. And how exhausting that can be for me. I'm trying to figure out which friends to see before I leave for Malta, and I find myself hesitating over the list. Trying to gauge and conserve energy. "If I see that person, I probably can't afford to see that other person." There aren't many on the list that I'd desperately love to see because I know that the time together would give life instead of taking it from me. And a few of them are busy. One lives out of province, but we'll try to connect by phone.

And then, I feel guilty. Guilty for ignoring God, for shutting Him out. Guilty for not wanting to see people I care deeply about, because I don't want to deal with the drain on my energy. Guilty because I know that if I see these people, I'll have to stop ignoring God.

I talked on the phone with a dear friend for over four hours tonight. We mutually vented, laughed as we discovered the rather similar spaces we're occupying this week, and I'm feeling better - lighter and somewhat less cranky for having shared these things with a friend. I value this particular friend deeply - our relationship was completely unexpected, but has been one of the greatest gifts of God to me in this crazy season of life I've found myself in. She offers perspective, a listening ear, things I have not often had access to in the past. We laugh together, which I love. And I'm always delighted to listen and offer whatever I have to give in return.

In one of the few moments of prayer that I had this week, I was reading further in the book of Daniel. I came across this passage in Chapter 10, and went back to it tonight, as I was chatting with my friend, and then sitting here, thinking and beginning to pray once again...

Daniel 10: 15-18
While he was speaking to me, I looked down at the ground, unable to say a word. Then the one who looked like a man touched my lips, and I opened my mouth and began to speak. I said to the one standing in front of me, "I am filled with anguish because of the vision I have seen, my lord, and I am very weak. How can someone like me, your servant, talk to you, my lord? My strength is gone, and I can hardly breathe."

Then the one who looked like a man touched me again, and I felt my strength returning. "Don't be afraid," he said, "for you are very precious to God. Peace! Be encouraged! Be strong!"

As he spoke these words to me, I suddenly felt stronger and said to him, "Please speak to me, my lord, for you have strengthened me."

I am praying this passage for some friends, but I am also praying it for my life.

I am praying for strength to return to me. I have felt this week the way Daniel describes at the beginning of the passage - unable to utter a sound. I have said to the Lord, "I am filled with anguish, and I am weak." I have been frustrated and exhausted, and I have desperately needed to hear the whisper of the Lord, "Don't be afraid. You are precious to me. Peace and encouragement on you. My strength I give you."

I think I'm beginning to hear that whisper, just the tiniest tickle from far away, and I am asking the Lord for it to grow louder, and for my strength to be restored.

I find myself thinking again, of that exclamation from earlier in the book of Daniel which so captured me (and continues to capture me) earlier this month. "There is no other God who can rescue like this!" (3:29b)

I need my God to be the one who offers that sort of rescue. The one about whom I can exclaim, "No one else could do this!"

I long for that rescue, that restoration, that peace.

Send it quickly, Lord.