Enough!

So confession time, I don’t handle change well. That may sound like a weird confession, especially for those who know me well because my life often looks different from day to day. While I get to enjoy a lot of different during my week, I also have several constants in place that are like air to me.

But in the midst of these twelve months of loss and huge changes this morning it hit me that I have been gasping for that air for a while. I’ve been waiting for my new normal but the fact is, it may not come for a while. There are things I’ve been putting off till I have the time in my schedule, which for me means till I get my schedule figured out and back to some semblance what it was before. It’s effected my relationship with God. I’ve not struggled with being mad at Him like I have in the past. In fact in all the changes I’ve seen His hand at every turn. But I have become numb to Him. Despite seeing Him move daily in my life and take care of me, I still have struggled with just being with Him. For those of us who are followers of Christ, we have different ways we connect to Him. I love how He wired us differently and for me, my set aside morning time with Him is my most precious time of my day. But like all relationships it goes through an ebb and flow. Some times I feel great connection and other times He feels as distant as Saturn. And for a while I’ve been sensing the distance and have tried to white knuckle my way through it. I’ve fasted. I’ve prayed. I’ve tried to just believe my way back to the feeling of closeness. In fact, this morning as I was talking to Him about a situation that weighs heavy on my heart, I wondered if I need to fast and pray for it. And even as I threw the idea out, I knew that if I were to fast today it’s not led by Him but rather me trying to twist His arm. Don’t get me wrong I totally believe in the power of fasting and am in awe of how God honors us and our requests when we fast. But I also am aware of my struggle of trying to lead God instead of being led by Him. And this morning I was tempted to try and lead Him because I was just at a loss as to how to “fix” our relationship. Oh the fixers... man we can hurts a lot of people in the wake of trying to make everything OK. I realize that I’m not someone who handles tension in relationships well. If someone I care about is having a hard time or upset, I am tempted to bear the responsibility of fixing it. Sitting in the tension while things work themselves out or other people go through their own struggles is hard for me. And it’s the same with my relationship with God. In the time of numbness that I’ve been feeling, I have tried to fix it. I’ve listened to sermons and pastors who in the past have been used by God to ignite the fire to fight for my dreams and tackle every day. I’ve tried to just push through the numbness and ignore it. No book I’ve read or movie I’ve watch has inspired me but instead I have found myself growing more and more apathetic. I don’t remember the last time I really belly laughed and even in the fun adventures the last few months there’s been something missing. So I found myself up early this morning, with coffee in hand, trying once again to figure out how to fix my current predicament. I tried to give myself a pep talk again and started to settle for yet another day of the same numbness while still being thankful for all the good things I have. But then something amazing happened. As I was writing out my morning devotion for my small group, a tear fell. An honest to God tear. It was as if the dam that had grown over time in my heart started to fracture and I felt the spiderweb cracks developing until finally the tears streamed down my face letting me know God had been working the whole time. With those tears came the freedom and feeling my heart has been craving. And with those tears came joy because I realized I’d fallen for the lie that this is as good as it gets. I don’t know about you, but when I struggle with something and life isn’t looking like the dreams God has placed in my heart, something inside just resigns to this is how it’s always going to be. And without knowing it, I had settled in the numbness and even started to make peace with it. I told myself that life isn’t all about passion and living everyday to it’s fullest can look a lot of ways. But with those tears the lies my heart has believed were exposed and the numbness was washed away like the sandy shore in a monsoon. And I was reminded of Acts 7:56 when Stephen, who was a follower of Christ, was arrested for his faith. He gives this amazing speech before the leaders and their reaction is to murder Him. And as he’s in the midst of dying, he says he saw Jesus standing. As he was dying he was given the gift of seeing where he was headed. As a follower of Christ, the whole account is so powerful and I think it’s such a sweet gift that Stephen got as he was dying to know without a doubt that God was there with Him. But the reason this verse stuck out to me today is that so often in scripture Jesus is depicted as sitting, but here, when Stephen is suffering on account of his love for Him, Jesus is standing. And for me, that’s the visual picture I get of what I need when my heart is struggling so deeply. God is always powerful and He is moving in my life everyday and He is working all things for my good, but there are times I need to see Him active. I need to see Him standing. I don’t know why He allows some of the things He does, and I’ve wondered these past few weeks as my heart has started to feel so blah, why he allowed it. And I still don’t know why, but that doesn't matter anymore because I felt Jesus stand in the situation in my life. And with that movement it was as if He said “Enough!” and this season came to an end. My situations haven’t changed and my heart still grieves for certain things, but the point is now, it is grieving. I am feeling again and it is wonderful. I can feel the faithfulness of God where as yesterday I was only able to choose to trust it And processing all this, I felt God put it on my heart to type it out and I’m guessing that today someone else is needing to be reminded that God cares. Someone else is needing to feel faith today as opposed to choosing to trust alone. And even though choosing to trust is a powerful thing and has it’s place, sometimes we need to feel the faith that God has placed within us. For anyone who stumbles onto this little babble of my heart, I’m praying you too will feel God today in a way that lights the fire in your soul. I’m praying that you experience the miracle you need and that you’re so reminded that The One Who Put The Stars In Place is so crazy for you.