After a night of fitful unrest I showered and headed to morning prayer with wet hair. There was no outlet for a hair dryer (figures…too much NOISE)! 🙁 Do you know what I look like when it is raining AND humid?
However, it was quite freeing to NOT sweat under the hairdryer for 20 minutes! 😉 After morning prayer and silent breakfast I went back into my room to journal and came clean with myself. “I see what I’m doing,” I wrote, “I’m avoiding what I know I need to work on. I won’t avoid it any longer. Lord, take me deeper with you.”
Picking up Sarah Young’s ‘Jesus Calling’ I read the day’s passage coincidentally it began with – “Rest in my presence…be yourself with me.” There was great comfort in that statement. ‘Be yourself with me.’ Who else could I be with God? He knows everything…but yet I was avoiding and hiding. I laid on my bed and allowed my mind to ramble and eventually it settled into a coherent train of thought. I realized in this meditation how I hadn’t forgiven certain people in the most recent past that I felt were not appreciating me for me or giving me the same respect I offered. At the same moment I realized these people probably didn’t know I was hurt because essentially it was my insecurity that is the real issue. My eyes popped open and suddenly I was filled with a new energy. I grabbed my bible, notebook and headed outside. The rain had subsided to a sprinkle so I sat under the porch in a lounge chair and looked out into the lush green landscape.
My mind worked along with my spirit and I began to receive a clarity about a few things I’d never allow myself to touch on before. Such as the great desire to feel ‘protected’. I grabbed that nugget of insight and began journaling recognizing that this is a wound I needed to heal. “I fight for you every day,” God says to me and finally the tears began to roll.
Crying has been hard for me over the past few years since I lost a teen in my youth group to a tragic car accident. The raw emotion of the loss had been put aside so I could be there for the teens and community and somewhere along the way I never revisited the emotion. Ever since the four year anniversary in May I have found my tears but this day I let them flow freely. We all have wounds and tears are like the solvent that helps to mend and heal.
Picking up the bible I opened it again to Psalm 139 and this time these verses plucked a chord: “Lord God, you have probed me, you know me.” v.1 “Lord you know it all.” v4 “Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand hold me fast.” v.10 “If only you would destroy the wicked, O God, and the blood thirsty would depart from me.” v19
I sat back and allowed these verses to nourish my soul. My hand rest on the bible that was on my lap and I thought about my call to ‘rest’. I looked in the back again for another possible reference to the Sabbath rest and found was directed to Hebrews 4:9-11, “Therefore, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God. And whoever enters into God’s rest, rests from his own works as God did from his. Therefore, let us strive to enter into that rest, so that no one may fall after the same example of disobedience.”
When we don’t rest our hearts get hardened.
For the next nine hours I took advantage of this new freedom in rest and tranquility. I sat and stared into the eyes of a peacock that came right up to me, looking me in the eye, cocking its head as if it were examining me and not the other way around. I watched the clouds gather and darken and the winds pick up blowing off random tufts of leaves from the trees. I looked into the wind and remembered a friend who made her presence known on the day of her funeral by the sudden gusts of wind and I smiled.
I remembered Kate, the young woman who passed four years ago, and my grandmother whose spirit I knew was praying for me at that very moment so that my spirit could learn to be free in the silence. I remembered Joe (aka: Matt), my grandpa and all of the people who have gone before me and I smiled knowing I was never alone. I reflected on my marriage, my relationship with my sons, my friendships and the ministry and though the tears kept falling I was at peace and full of joy.
That night I received Christ in the Eucharist and knelt in gratitude for his blessings. I remained silent that night allowing my thoughts to go wherever the Lord needed to take them. And in the morning I found that I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to spend one more day with Him. Before leaving I made a list of all the personal revelations that were given to me over the last 24 hours and yet I could feel the pressure build up in my chest. I was packed and walking down the hall to turn in my key when I passed the chapel.
I turned and went inside, set my bag down and found that I was alone before the tabernacle. I went to my knees and acknowledged the final revelation “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” the Lord said to my heart. “Walk with me daily that is all I ask of you, nothing more, nothing less.”
That is a message for all of us. We are His beloved and He just wants us near.
Blessings
Shannon