So, it's been kind of a rough week around here. Or maybe I should say, it has been a rough week in my head. Nothing on the exterior has changed, just all kinds of thoughts healthy and otherwise rolling around in my head all coupled with choice fiery darts that sometimes were so wacky as to be laughable. Nope, not really your best shot.
It started with the after holiday normal letdown. I LOVE MY FAMILY! We have great discussions that range from the meaning of life to how to deal with our inherited insulin resistance, our sugar hormone-thing. There is honesty, tears, laughter and it always ends with, "Lets do this again soon..." Truly adult conversation. Adult. Conversation.
It felt like heaven complete with the continuous feasting...though we were not in Italy. I'm completely positive that heaven will look like a huge harvest table covered with great big bowls of pasta and overlooking Tuscan hills of olive groves. At least my heaven. Yours might look have more of a tropical look.
Anyways, I got home and got lonely. I'm surrounded by three joyful children bounding around with wonder in the Christmas season but here I was moping around combating my familiar frustrations with my un-Eden world. Understand that all this was just a vague dark feeling until I actually got to sit still yesterday and ask God what REALLY was going on.
Yesterday I Sabbathed and got to journal and listen to the kind voice of God reintroduce me to my two oldest buddies: loneliness and discontent. This time, instead of running to turn on the tv to drown myself in someone else's life, I sat with Him...and somewhat uncomfortably, with them. Though still ominous, I'm not afraid of them anymore. My God is big enough and wow, I've been on this road before and I have begun to learn the steps out. It always starts with: Lord, tell me the truth again. this time, patiently, the Lord took my hand and led me to Truth as told by Paul and Immaculee Ilibigiza.
Philippians 4 holds my go-to verses for discontent:
11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
Thanks Paul. So this is how I can go from feasting to hungry: Christ's resurrection-creating strength. Time to start speaking that one out loud again. "I can do all things through Christ who is strengthening me." On rough days, I admit I can have a little- engine- who- could sound.
Then, Immaculee. Immaculee lived through the Rwandan holocaust in a tiny bathroom with six other women for three months. Her story, told in the book Left to Tell, shares how she learned to live forgiveness, to love her enemies with power and establish a deep contentment in God is more than inspiring, it is supernatural. She became utterly fearless by living through death itself. Her book is so filled with light that the darkness begins to lose its power.
A small tasty morsel? After 7 weeks in the bathroom living on stale bread and water, she had lost forty pounds and had painful body lice but because of her time of meditating on Christ's lavish love, she says this, "We may not have been a pretty sight, but I'd never felt more beautiful. Each day I awoke and thanked God for giving me life, and each morning He made me feel loved and cherished." The entire book is packed with this kind of in-your-face strength in the face of evil. You will find a new hero as you read each page.
As I read pieces of Left to Tell again last night, I was able to begin to leave my desires in the hands of God again. Oh yes, You have my best interest at heart. And, oh yes, You can hold my desires and give them back to me in Your timing. I yes, I do trust You to give me enough manna for today. From experience I know that taking my will back to the point of truth will make way for my emotions later. Maybe I'll pray that God will do the rest of the work in my dreams.
Good night, loved one.
