Cease striving and know that I am God…
Psalm 46:10
It’s amazing what happens when you
stop running, stop avoiding, stop doing, stop resisting, stop hiding in the
dark, and take a good, L-O-N-G, honest
look at yourself. Really examine yourself,
your goals…your life’s purpose.
It’s tough, and often horribly uncomfortable.
Yet so revealing and rewarding.
When Chris and I ceased striving,
unexpected joys and revelations bloomed as we drew close and developed intimate
friendships with church members.
We recognized the need to
communicate more with one another. That meant really listening to the other
person’s hopes, concerns, and fears; to make a concerted effort to recognize
their needs instead of concentrating so fiercely on our own.
We admitted that there are so many
things in life over which we have no control, that “having it all” is a big, destructive, worldly marketing myth. We realized—painfully—that there were so many aspects
of our life together we’d neglected and failed to nourish.
The harried life I’d eagerly
ascribed to left me with little time to enjoy the many gifts the Creator had
bestowed upon my family and me. Blindly, foolishly, we were fine-tuning the
classic American, throw-away lifestyle. It wasn’t so much the material goods we
acquired, then ignored when boredom set in. (Chris and I were proudly criss-crossing Southern California in two bare-bones vehicles, displaying a combined
mileage/odometer total of 400,000 miles).
It was human life we’d taken for granted.
The insidious stress—much of it
brought on by our arrogant, misguided decisions and poor choices—was killing us physically, emotionally,
spiritually, and I’d had enough. The cost was too high, the rewards too few.
(Because he’s the press ahead, make-it-happen now, visionary type, Chris took a
little longer, and a few more years and deep disappointments to relent.)
I needed to stop, pry open my eyes,
and acknowledge what God gave me for my pleasure and enjoyment simply
because He’s good, it pleases Him to do it, and He loves me.
Nothing I could work twenty-four
hours a day for would ever compare to
the masterpieces God created and gave
to me: my husband, my son, my family, my friends, Victoria. Precious people,
inherently worthy and priceless simply because they were created in the
miraculous image of God.
They should have been inestimable to
me, but I’d taken their value for granted. I’d miscalculated their shelf life
when misused, disregarded, ignored, left unpolished or neglected. Somewhere
along the way, I’d forgotten, or dismissed, the value God Himself places on
life. Even my own. I was jarred awake
by our devastating loss; involuntarily driven head first into painful self-examination,
and into making an honest relationship audit. The personal, self-analysis
results shocked and disheartened me. There was a pile of dust on my very-important-people
shelf—the ones I'd casually tucked away in my human china cabinet—and I needed to do some serious
polishing!
But in order to do a thorough,
effective cleaning, I needed God’s help. I needed to abandon the arrogant self-sufficiency attitude. Trying to transform my life without
Him would only land me right back where I started: floundering, in pain, lost. Minus the pressures of work and
college classes, I was free to make the slow transition from a frazzled
organism to a God-fearing woman of joy and purpose.
Before that transformation could
occur, it was necessary for me to return to the location of my Peniel, the place where you encounter
God; where He confronts you. The place where He grabs hold of you, and the two of you
wrestle. Where you finally give in, hang on, and BEG for Him to bless you.
But
in order to go forward, I had to look back, to return to the place where God
brought me in the hospital, when I first acknowledged my powerlessness without
Him, first recognized how barren, frightening, confusing, chaotic and downright
dull life is when you ignore, de-value, or reject God and go it alone.
But just what would be different? I
can’t remember when I didn’t believe that Jesus is Lord, the Son of God, who was nailed to a cross until death and
then resurrected bodily from the dead.
What more did I need to know? Wasn’t
that enough?
Now that I was finally being honest with
myself, I knew instinctively there was so much more to know, so much more to
understand.
There was so much more with which to
fill my aching, dying soul.
~ ~ ~
Have you ever been where I was? Are
you there now? Are you stuck? Are you in so much emotional pain you don’t know
where to turn? Do you think no one understands, that no one cares?
Someone does and He stands ready and oh, so willing to lead you out of the abyss, to heal and fill your soul, and make
you whole.
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NEXT WEEK: The Transformation Continues: What I encountered when I finally
stopped resisting and turned my face toward God...
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Until next week,
Thanks for
joining me!
Blessings,
Andrea
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