Day 8

Sometimes I think it's life's business that gets in the way of my perfect peace. This is a balancing act, to be sure. So many of us are not just over-booked with our "stuff" work, school, housework, cooking, shopping, bill-paying etc. We also become over-run with everyone else's priorities. Kids play dates,kids school work, friends important dates, church,small group, bible study and volunteer projects, working out our bodies, working out our minds and it's easy to be totally unavailable to actually check in and see "How AM I today."

Today's been one of those days.

Now I will take a moment between work, running the kids to youth group, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, doing the kids homework with them and before tucking them in to check in.

You can take a moment, I hope, to do the same.

How are you? How am I?

I'm a little numb. I'm tired and I've have a couple of glasses of wine.
That said...let's see.

My pain in mostly in my body and not my spirit.
My back hurts. My head hurts. My hands and feet hurt, too.

The brokenness I'm healing from right now is well. It really is.
It feels like a thin disk in the center of my heart. Thin, though. Not overwhelming.
I'm going to invite the Lord to fill that disk.

(Pause)
I felt the Holy Spirit fall on me. I felt the disk disintegrate into sand and fall away.
Thank you, Lord.

This is not for nothing. This is not for gibberish. This is for real and it takes real commitment. I realize that each day as I come to this work, God is doing something in me. Something good. I offer my hurt to Him. I offer your hurt to Him. If you're not it a place to receive His healing, I understand. I wasn't always either. I'm grateful to be there now, because it's the best hope I have in this world and especially in the world to come.

If you're still following along with this, I'm guessing that you know at least one big thing in you that needs to be healed. I'm also guessing that you know that Jesus can heal it, and that's awesome.
Literally.

Let's make a commitment to be true.

Before I was a Jesus freak, I was (and still am) a Shakespeare freak. Quoting Shakespeare now, "To thine own self be true."
Let's not b.s.
Let's do the work.
Let's dig in.
Let's be honest not just with ourselves, but with God about what's going on in our hearts and minds and lives and let's expose our ugly so that He can bring His beauty.
What do you say?
Let's heal.

Prayer:
Lord,
I think you for times of peace and stillness. I am needy and I need more of them. Will you please show me where and when and how to find them? Will you make those times of quiet available to me. Lord you say "be still and know that I am God." I confess that the business of life has me enticed enough that I have trouble being still. Forgive me and show me how to be still.
Father. I also confess to you that I am still confused and more than a little angry at you for stealing my parents (insert your loss here). I know that they really didn't belong to me, but to you. I'm still mad, because you put me into a world and a "reality" that made me believe that they were in fact mine. I'm still not okay with the fact that you could just hijack them the way that you did. Yep. That's how I feel...like you drove them away from me for your own reasons and I think that that was selfish and mean and I have a hard time understanding it. A really hard time.

Yet, I do know that my life is not my own. It is a gift from you and I do know that my mom and dad did not belong to me, but they were yours all along. I really do get that.

Please, Father, help me to bridge that gap because a very large part of my pain lies there.
Lord, today I don't just ask you to heal my heart. I ask you to heal my mind.
Give me right thinking.
Give me a glimps of your goodness in this ever present pain and disaster.
I love you with all my broken heart.
I am yours.
They are and were yours.
Everything is yours.
My confusion and disappointment and hope is yours.
Even the struggle is a blessing.
Thank you for the chance to hug into you so tightly.

Scripture:

Psalm 51:17 (New International Version)

17 The sacrifices of God are [a] a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.