Showing Up

"In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us - that we be men and women of prayer, people who live close to God, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it. That is his call to us, simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced." -B.M.

Tonight as I type, I am wounded and sick, woefully distanced from my first love. I am dizzy, out of breath and exhausted spiritually. Also a little apathetic. I feel far away and disconnected, and this by my own doing. I feel happy, but the kind of giggly happy that has no depth.  I spent hours tonight talking with and apologizing to Bethany (which has become pretty standard in our friendship), and hugging her as I realized how far I have strayed this week. Amidst the chaos of my life, it is still amazing to me how fast I can become so fascinatingly out of control. Especially while knowing that God is always the answer and the way to everything that I truly want / need at my deepest soul level.

I don't know what's wrong with me sometimes. Everything gets to be too much, and I can't breathe. Waking up tomorrow seems exhausting the way running on a treadmill does, and getting out of bed is difficult enough in the first place. It sometimes gets hard for me to believe that we are all part of some bigger, less punishing and isolated truth. I frequently get caught up in the "what you see is what you get" here and now. I get caught up in the finite and forget the infinite.  I catch myself swirling around, drowning in the worries of this world while completely ignorant to the things of God.  All too often I end the days just as broken and frustrated and wholly insane as the day before and it gets a little mechanical and traumatizing. Augustine says that "You have to start your relationship with God all over from the beginning, every day. Yesterday's faith does not wait for you. You seek it, and in seeking, you find it." And so I get up in the mornings, clinging to the hope that I have in Jesus.

I honestly do not know why God wont just spritz away our hardships, problems, insecurities and frustrations. I don't know why the most we can hope for on some days is to end up a little less crazy than before, less down on ourselves. I don't know why we have to become so vulnerable before we can connect with God, and even sometimes with ourselves. But with the same token, I don't understand how my room gets so messy within a matter of minutes.

I'm guessing that God's answer would be something along the lines of the idea that the journey is somehow producing in us a desperation and need for Him. I have a friend who is always harping on the importance and beauty of the journey regardless of the end goal, something about how the hike is far better than reaching the top of the mountain. I don't even know if I agree, but maybe somehow the journey is allowing us to see facets of God's character and grace that we wouldn't otherwise get to experience if we were sane all the time.  And this idea that I am so magnificently adored despite how ridiculous and immature I always am has the power to cripple me in wonder and praise. Enough that the journey somehow seems worth it all.

So tonight, I did the most radical thing I could think of. I showed up and I prayed. Begrudgingly. I cleared my schedule and spent time with the one who made me and loves me. And to the shock of no one, I, in response, got the peace that I had been searching for in everything else under the sun. When this finally happens for me, my return to the Lord, I am always astonished. It always comes right after I totally give up on myself, and it is there in that glorious defeat that I find the strength to wake up again, drenched in the love and mercy of Jesus. It is then that I realize that my deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done absolutely nothing to earn it or deserve it.

The whole thing is just mind blowing. And awe inspiring.  And crazy.  Which makes me feel not so out of place.