I haven't spoken from the core of my heart in a while. Really anywhere or to anyone. I've said what's on my mind and maybe a layer or two from my heart, but not from the core. I'm not okay with that.
It has recently been brought to my attention why this has been happening. Why I feel like I have had my arms wrapped so tightly around myself that I find it's hard to breathe. Why I fill my schedule to the brim and then overflowing. Why I seek the small thrills that I can beckon whenever I please and assume they cannot be taken from me against my will.
These things that I thought were allowing me to feel are really making me numb when I seek them with a heart that's not right.
In the car this morning on my way to work, I had one of those moments where I'm really honest with the Lord and myself - moments I love and wish I had more often.
I was reading the (truly brilliant and inspiring) blog of a woman that goes to my church (who I would love to get to know better) and the Lord used it to unveil my eyes to the season of life that I am in- a season of labor. That's the best way to put it. While I know there are sweeter things to come and it's hard to see them presently, I look forward to what's over this hill. I can even see from the place where I'm at now, that the unpleasantries of today are worth what they will produce tomorrow. But I still feel pinched. Unrested.
I don't have kids and I don't know what it's like to physically be in labor but from what I've heard about it, that's what my spirit feels like.
Life's just not easy- especially right now.
And that's why I clam up. That's why I surround myself with fleeting things over which I have (a false sense of) control over.
But that's not what I'm called to do and that's not what I want to do. And it's not okay.
A lot has been going on in my life, by my standards.
I got a new job, some of my relationships are just tricky and trying right now, I'm growing up, I'll be moving in about half a year. There are those things.
But it's not so much the things going on around me as much as the fact that my heart is very reactive, that makes life hard. It's a lot of pressure for me to learn how to keep walking the straight and narrow path when my heart feels like it's being pulled on and pushed at from so many different directions.
But I'm learning that my job isn't to be finding the way to the place where I was before with the Lord, but learning to crawl to my father's heart from where I am now. And the thing is, it's not about finding the way. It's about calling out to Him. Because I don't even have the strength to find my way to Him without His help. A song entitled "See Me Through" that seems to always speak to my heart has the lyrics "Lord have mercy cause it's my only means to find you here with me."
And every time, He does. He has mercy.
Sometimes not how I expect, but He has never denied the cry of a contrite heart. Not all the times before, and not today. And that's all He asks of me; that I lay the burdens of my heavy heart from a busy and sometimes pain-inflicting life at his feet - because He is the way.
It has recently been brought to my attention why this has been happening. Why I feel like I have had my arms wrapped so tightly around myself that I find it's hard to breathe. Why I fill my schedule to the brim and then overflowing. Why I seek the small thrills that I can beckon whenever I please and assume they cannot be taken from me against my will.
These things that I thought were allowing me to feel are really making me numb when I seek them with a heart that's not right.
In the car this morning on my way to work, I had one of those moments where I'm really honest with the Lord and myself - moments I love and wish I had more often.
"I don't want to have to give up these little things that I love, but I want to be with you, Lord."
"I'm not asking you to give them up. I actually want you to have them. But I want you to have me first."Bam.
I was reading the (truly brilliant and inspiring) blog of a woman that goes to my church (who I would love to get to know better) and the Lord used it to unveil my eyes to the season of life that I am in- a season of labor. That's the best way to put it. While I know there are sweeter things to come and it's hard to see them presently, I look forward to what's over this hill. I can even see from the place where I'm at now, that the unpleasantries of today are worth what they will produce tomorrow. But I still feel pinched. Unrested.
I don't have kids and I don't know what it's like to physically be in labor but from what I've heard about it, that's what my spirit feels like.
Life's just not easy- especially right now.
And that's why I clam up. That's why I surround myself with fleeting things over which I have (a false sense of) control over.
But that's not what I'm called to do and that's not what I want to do. And it's not okay.
A lot has been going on in my life, by my standards.
I got a new job, some of my relationships are just tricky and trying right now, I'm growing up, I'll be moving in about half a year. There are those things.
But it's not so much the things going on around me as much as the fact that my heart is very reactive, that makes life hard. It's a lot of pressure for me to learn how to keep walking the straight and narrow path when my heart feels like it's being pulled on and pushed at from so many different directions.
But I'm learning that my job isn't to be finding the way to the place where I was before with the Lord, but learning to crawl to my father's heart from where I am now. And the thing is, it's not about finding the way. It's about calling out to Him. Because I don't even have the strength to find my way to Him without His help. A song entitled "See Me Through" that seems to always speak to my heart has the lyrics "Lord have mercy cause it's my only means to find you here with me."
And every time, He does. He has mercy.
Sometimes not how I expect, but He has never denied the cry of a contrite heart. Not all the times before, and not today. And that's all He asks of me; that I lay the burdens of my heavy heart from a busy and sometimes pain-inflicting life at his feet - because He is the way.