It’s time for me to rest.

I’m not so good at this.

I have been focused and battling and standing for God’s promises over my life for so long that resting is foreign.  Resting brings quiet. Resting brings stillness. Resting brings guilt.

Ohhhh….there it is.  I said it.

Resting brings guilt.

I’m a mom. I don’t rest. Even if my physical body is still, my mind is always, thinking, planning, organizing, solving, preparing, praying, pleading, talking, fixing.

Resting means none of this.

However…..Resting does not mean giving up.

For years, I have been living in constant anticipation in my head – and not necessarily the good kind.  I’ve either been waiting for God to break in, in an extremely dramatic way, or waiting for the shoe to drop.  One could say that both of those things have happened.  But those events did not occur within the box I had placed them in. God has definitely broken in….and He surely broke in because the shoe I feared the most, dropped.

So resting means letting go of the warrior in me for a season and letting God deal with it. I don’t know how to do this.  He had asked me to be still for a very long time, but in that season, He was talking about my mouth, my words, my actions, my thoughts. My mandate was still to pray and fast and intercede for my family….and I could do that. That was something.  It was action.  It was movement. But…

Resting means I stop focusing on the promise and focus on the One who promised…

Resting means I stop holding on to the ideas of how this all is supposed to “end”…

Resting means I choose to stop waiting to be chosen…

Resting means I love…

Resting is choosing to just hang out with God and not ask for a thing…

So now what do I do when God tells me to “Let it all go and let Me handle it from here?”

I choose Him over my will.

I let him shift me.

I don’t give up.

I just let go.

I choose the yes.

And I rest.

Shame.

Today I feel it.

Today I want to hide.

Today I miss human touch so much.

Today I feel broken….

Too broken to love….

Too messed up for reconciliation.

Today the void is really big.

I haven’t felt this in awhile but I know I can’t let it progress too far or I will be under water before I even notice.  So I fight this fight because I know that it is not truth.  I talk about it because I know that we all feel these things at one degree or another.  It is such a hard thing to feel something and yet tell yourself that the emotion is the one lying to you.  It is a hard thing to know truth but feel the opposite.

I need to throw it off of me with these words I write because I hate the way it makes me feel.  It’s like a blanket that is smothering me.  It makes me feel as if I am covered in fine dust that clouds everything and refuses to let my skin and nerves and mind breathe.  It is a perpetual pit in my stomach.  An argument between what is real and what is not.

I hear the words that I am not good enough….That there is  a better choice than me….That I am hard to love….That I make poor decisions….That I am not worthy of walking through darkness with….That I am not special enough to be in the trenches with…..That my history will always dictate my future….That somehow I always fall short. These words are feelings.  And these words are lies.

When I began to understand that I was not chosen anymore, when I began to see my failings that helped lead to this pain,  there was a choice that was laid before me.  And I’ve realized it’s not a choice that I only needed to make one time….It is a choice I must make over and over and over again, until God moves me forward into another season.  And that choice is whether or not I am going to believe what I am feeling.

The truth is, God doesn’t think I’m hard to love and He’s been in the trenches with me since my first breath.  He is not ashamed of me, even when people are.  When I make a poor decision, He walks with me until I find redemption.  He never believes that I am a hopeless case, that I will never get it right. He knows I am the right choice because He is the one who chose me.  And He chooses me every day, even when not a single person notices my existence.

So, even though, in this moment, I don’t see how all this brokenness could possibly be put back together, I am choosing to believe that my feelings are just that.  Feelings.  And feelings are not facts.

So while I am still trying to find my way in this maze, and reconcile what I know to be truth with what my emotions tell me, I will feel and speak and choose breath.  I refuse to live in dust and ashes.  I need to say it over and over again.  I refuse to live in dust and ashes.  As an act of my will, I WILL NOT live in dust and ashes.  I hope you choose the same with me.

It’s coming. I know it’s coming. The thing I have feared the most for more years than I can remember. 

I feel it. 

I am afraid but I’m reminding myself that I will be okay. Reminding myself that Sarah had to stand on what God had promised Abraham for decades. Having Isaac seemed so impossible. Far away. Surreal. Her mind could not wrap around how God was going to do what He promised. 
Sometimes, when I think of her as a real person, not just a story in a book, I can feel her pain. Her struggle with Gods timing. Her deep longing for something that was just too far out of her reach. Her body had moved into old age for heavens sake! How could she keep seeing Gods promise? How could she not have doubts?  God had promised Abraham, right? What if she wasn’t really part of that promise? What if it was to come through another avenue?  Of course! That had to be it. So she tried to solve the problem. 

Hagar. 

Ishmael. 

Trouble. 

I have so many questions and no answers. None. Trying to be still and learn what God is trying to show me. He shows me an area in my life that is out of line and I work hard to grab hold but I have never struggled with His timing so much in my life. I think that is my biggest ache. When I look at who God has been in my life, I believe with everything in me that what He promised, He will fulfill. It’s the middle that I can’t quite conquer. In the middle I question whether I heard Him right. Whether I have put Him in a box and His promise is really something different.  I question how the heck this is all going to look in the end. I question my ability to love like I really want to. I question my ability to keep rising. 

Loving without be loved in return is the most painful thing…I don’t know if I can make it. Some days I feel so weak. My nature screams at me to reject so I can just stop feeling rejected every day. Every minute. I struggle with the constant ache. The constant pain that sits just below the surface. Even in joy I feel it there.  I want something that I feel like God promised but in some ways, because I have a picture in my mind of what that is, I feel like it is pulling me.  How do I rise when I’m being pulled at the same time?  How do I keep going?  

Maybe I’m just in a more emotional state. I just left from visiting my son before another deployment. My youngest is about to graduate from high school. There is so much going on. I just don’t want to fade into hopelessness. So this, I must do. I have to process to keep it from drowning me. I have to write to keep it above the waves. Thanks for surfing with me…