Schtuff...

I taught Sunday school for the first time yesterday. We talked about fasting, about Lent and preparing our hearts to celebrate the deliverance of Christ. I don't know what they heard, of if they heard anything I said. I hope so.

Hung out with Andy and some of the other UM people last night, and had some great food and conversation. May have to make something of this sort a more regular occurrence in my life.

I fasted today, though I broke the fast earlier than planned to eat dinner with my family and some guests. I don't want to be religious about this, and I felt that it was the right thing to join them in eating. I just want to work to be conscious of my diet, conscious of setting aside significant portions of time in this season of life to seek the heart of the Father.

Since the call to see justice at work has been growing in my heart, I am focusing some of my lenten reading on this topic. Reading stuff by Romero, Buechner, Dorothy Day, Tony Campolo, Mother Teresa, Che Guevara and others.


I still find myself quite exhausted. Sleep remains quite elusive and disturbed. Dreams, and lots of times of wakefulness. Still wondering how to weed the God things from the other in my disturbances of sleep.

I've begun to ask God once again for rest to come. Hopefully that comes in the form of sleep, but I would like it to also come in a sense of peace and quietness within the deep places. I would like to have the energy and focus that comes from that sort of restoration.

The words vulnerability and humility have been brought up quite regularly in my life lately, by a whole wide variety of friends and voices. I'm asking God for the strength to live these out.

And with that, I think I'm going to read in bed. (Which you should read as, "I'm completely exhausted, and I'm going to read until I start falling asleep - which should take about ten minutes!" If only the sleep would last!)

Back to work tomorrow. I'm glad for a short week.

Tired

I'm tired tonight. You know it's been a stretch of not sleeping well when you startle yourself awake at 7:00 am on a Saturday and think "Thank God it's 7:00," with a great deal of sincerity in that muttered prayer. What I mean is, "Thank God I slept until 7:00 before startling awake, as it's been 2, 3, or 4 am for most of the last week or two."

There are some emotional things weighing a bit on me.

I'm wondering if the Sunday school lesson I spent a good chunk of today preparing will connect with the youth I'm teaching it to tomorrow morning.

I'm tired of this season of my life. It's been hard, and to some extent I'm tired of the fight. I'm feeling whiny, and possibly a little bit sorry for myself.

I'm also still waiting to see what God is doing next. (Though I found a very interesting option for this coming summer for improving both writing, faith, and entering some post-graduate studies via a series of web links tonight. Working to get a bit more information before I become less cryptic.)

Abba, I belong to You. Remind me of that in these moments of exhaustion when it would be so easy to just quit fighting. I belong to You. Show me where you're working and how I can join you.

Morning Musings

I woke early this morning, and didn’t sleep that well last night, though that is nothing unusual lately.

I got out of bed just long enough to grab my laptop and start my morning with a bit of writing, a piece that’s been bothering me all week, and will probably (after a quick edit and read through) end up on this blog.

My best friend gets home this afternoon after three months overseas. I can’t wait to see her. I’m leaving work at noon, heading downtown to the police station to get a police check done for my involvement with the youth group, and then heading home from there to pick up a car and drive to the airport to meet her. So excited!

And I made the mistake of wearing knee high, high-heeled boots to work this morning. I only thought the process half-way through. “I’ll wear boots so my feet don’t get wet in all the muck from the melting snow this morning.” I forgot this part, “Slightly frozen muck and muck three plus inches deep is a pain to navigate in sneakers, never mind spindly two inch heels.” Whoops. Made it safe and sound, though I nearly fell several times. I think we’ll retire the boots for a less slippery day when I get home at lunch!

Another dream... driving again

I woke up about an hour before my alarm this morning, so I popped something into my stereo, rolled over and went back to sleep, whence I very promptly had yet another disturbing dream.

This time, I dreamt I was driving in Southern Alberta, and stopped to get food at a Subway. A storm came up quickly, and I was stranded with a whole bunch of people at the Subway. We stood by the glass windows, watching the sky, and all of these tornadoes are trying to form, but not quite forming. Over and over again they would start, and then dissipate.

Finally, everyone in the restaurant leaves as a group. We’re driving, and then suddenly hiking quite desperately through this brush up a hill.

Anyway, the main image was again of driving as unsafe, of driving in the midst of this storm.

Apparently driving is the vulnerable area in my life that the enemy is choosing to attack these days.

Makes it hard for someone who has never liked driving in the first place to keep fighting off the fear and getting behind the wheel.

Clinging still, to God my shield. To the protection he provides.

Lenten Waiting

Stay low.

Come deeper.

For the last few days I have sensed the Spirit close to me. Burning inside me, pulling and tugging at things I don’t recognize or understand.

I keep hearing the phrases I opened this entry with, and other things very similar.

I have no idea where this is headed, but sense it’s important.

I had a powerful picture yesterday as I was on the train going home. It pulled together some things spoken and prayed over me in the last while. I saw myself laid out before God, in that sort of prayer position you see in pictures of Muslims praying. Kneeling, but with my face on the ground and my arms outstretched in front of me, palms up, open and waiting to be filled. And over me, shielding me, was the hand of God, curved, as if to cover and protect me from any harm.

My heart strings seem irretrievably tied to the calendar of the church. God has often chosen to work in me during periods typically set aside by the church calendar as times of waiting, anticipation, and preparation. I’ve written here before about the sense of pregnant expectation attached to these times in my life. Maybe it’s the history major in me, or maybe the church really had some divine guidance when they established the calendar of the liturgy all those years ago.

Lent seems to be a time of this sort of waiting and expectation for me again this year.

I’m praying that the voice of God will capture me with it’s clarity and direction. That I will be pulled ever deeper, ever lower, into the heart of the Father.

I’m anticipating the times of closeness gleaned from fasting, from watching the “diet” of things I take into myself.

I’m excited to see what He is doing. I feel something new being birthed once again.

Abba, I belong to You.

Show me where You’re working and how I can join You.