The sun shines bright in the brilliant blue of an over exposed sky and the sweet wind carries the scent of spring and the last chill of winter. It is pressing and full of hope. I stand staring into the promise with hands on my hips and a scowl on my face. Looking at the Almighty I say with my careless words, my frustrations, that ‘I am not on board’. He can take his plans and well, that’s up to him. The blossoms don’t cheer me and I sense the pollen on the wind more than the whisper of joy. I’m disgruntled and grumpy and I just took it out in my latest bout with the King of Kings. Only to have him land me completely and lovingly on my rear end.
Oh, you don’t have this type of relationship with the great I AM?
Well, let me share a little with you, how complete and total, desperate, loving intimacy can look.
You see, I look at the last three years of our life and I get mad. I get mad at the choices we’ve made, the places we’ve gone, and the life we seem to have missed. I get mad that we aren’t where we want to be and I feel like we lost so much as we trekked out, following what we thought was right. So I take these things to my father and I look at him and say, ‘God we thought, we were following you, we thought we were doing your will. Look where it has gotten us.’
It feels as if the last three years have been a waste. That we’ve walked in circles and we’ve sunk when we thought we’d flourish. I can’t tell you, ‘oh, but look we learned so much’, because we lost seems to outweigh the gains. Though there have been amazing things we’ve been taught and huge hurdles in our life and marriage and family that we have crossed and emerged stronger. We have fought through and while we may seem a little weary, we are also victorious.
I still don’t understand. I don’t have a lot of answers.
I do have a lot of peace.
I don’t have a time when we’ll be where we want to be and can settle in to life and family, friends and home.
I do have rest.
And. As I take my hands off of the plans of our lives and let go of my expectations, I have a welling of joy that fills my chest and takes my breath.
I look at my hands and how they have white knuckled it through so much of the last three years. How they have held the mast together when it should have toppled. They are cut and broken, bruised, and just ripe for healing. I let the ship go. I just stopped. Stopped trying, wishing, demanding, wondering, and let go. I put the whole of our lives in the hands of the God I adore and gave in. I gave him permission to take us where he will, to plant us where we’ll bloom, to use us, to mold us, and to create a deeper, more desperate love and adoration for him.
Before this venture, this journey, we were settled, we were planted. Then what seemed like a sudden ripping we were cast out of our moorings and set in a rough and troubled water. I fought, desperate, to hold it together, to keep it like it was. I created a mess. A massive disaster and stressed myself beyond my personal resources, becoming a broken record, of ‘we will survive’.
Sometimes it’s better to break.
To let the break be clean and brutal, so that it may heal.
When we get handsy with our lives and try to prevent what we see coming, it creates a mess. Then what needs to be healed is greater than what would have been if we rested through the process and allowed it to come.
But me and my fear, we fought. We fought hard. And we lost. It is here, lying face up in the water, the scorching of the sun on my face, the tumult of the waves beneath and nothing to hold me up, that I’ve fallen quietly down. It is here that I’ve found my rest. In the quietness of surrender. In the heartbreaking finale of trust. That no matter what comes, I am okay. That God’s goodness is not to destroy me, but to hold me through it. That he is not lurking around the corners with my greatest fears, but he is wooing me to his goodness.
The resting place of his mercy is that no matter what comes, he will sustain me. He will strengthen me and if I take my hands off, he will free me.
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