Monday, November 1, 2010

Searching...

I wrote this yesterday during the announcements at church, in the briefest of respites over the last while.

Feel like I can't get a breath or a firm foot on where I want to be, like
the waves keep crashing over my head while I'm trying to breathe, to gain a foothold. I want a break, some time, to connect with you Lord, without needing
to rush or be distracted. Is it possible that I'm looking in the wrong place to
find you, trying to set conditions that you don't need to meet with me? Am I
wrong?

Don't take this to be whining. Ok, maybe a little whining. This is mostly frustration. I want what God wants, but He doesn't arrange it like I think He should, so then I miss what He has been arranging. Does that make any sense? We get an idea of what spending time with Him should look like, and then circumstances beyond our control, or at least not entirely within our control, hose up our plans. Does this sound familiar? I get up early, fix my coffee, bring my Bible to my favorite room, just in time to hear kids who are supposed to be sleeping wrestling and fighting. Or, I get the perfect thought in my head just begging to be written out, and something comes up. I scribble the thought down, hoping to get back to it, hoping it doesn't fall in to one of the black holes in my brain, but when I do have time, it seems to have lost its intensity. I feel like I have lost control of my life.

This may be the very way the Lord wants to grow me. Just because I have lost control of my life doesn't mean He has. For me to assume I have control is just a farce anyway, right? Maybe this is all about learning to rest in His timing, and seeing His provision for what it is. He provides the experiences I need to become the woman He has in mind for me. Like different types of flowers, we don't all prosper and flourish under the same set of conditions. What would drown a cactus would starve a tropical flower.

I am finding this life to be like a game that I don't quite get the rules for, but even as I write this, I know I have the playbook in my hand. The bible promises that nothing, "neither height nor depth, not anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus."

Since nothing can separate me from Him, I just need to tune my ear to hear Him differently. It's like when you hear the first note of a song, and you think it will be one song, but it turns out to be something entirely different, but you can't get the other one out of your head. You don't fully enjoy the one that is playing because you can't stop "hearing" the other one. A whacked Name That Tune, perhaps.

This is sort of like the Love Languages...I am waiting to be shown love in one way, and all the while missing the language you are speaking your love to me in. I could go a million different directions with this post, and if my life were my own, I would have the time to do it. But, the life He has chosen for me calls...and I must go now to meet Him there. "Seek Him now, while He may be found, call on Him while He is near." Isaiah 55:6.

2 comments:

  1. I don't quite know what to say,those were exactly the words I needed to hear. Affirmation that he does have a plan I just need to relax and let it unfold in his time.

    Thanks for the encouragement.

    By the way did you see the P31 devotion yet? needed to hear that one too.

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  2. One thing I forgot to mention, you may have heard this already, I was watching some old sermons from Andy Stanley online and he quoted something his father told when he was growing up, "God takes full responsibility for the life wholly devoted to him", love that, more affirmation that he is always with us, even when he feels so far.

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