Yes, it's early and a Tuesday but feeling like a Monday, the one where we paused life in honor of those who sacrificed for us…..I rose at 5am and woke to enter the sacred space of the Holy Yoga prayer call room and sat and waited and watched….always knowing God would do what only He does best; orchestrating the hearts of the callers to be linked by the thread that continues to point to Him and His mighty hand in our lives! And as the lovely women stepped into their voices and stories, so it was….again God and the invisible thread that connected us all. The scripture Colossians 1:11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy
Oh that precious and painful season of wait….and here we sit, 7 daughters of the King, and we've waited, and we are watching!
The conversation rises with its own life as God reminds each of us of His presence and purpose in the wait. Then the word joy jumps back off the pages, ugh and the weight of how to be joyful as I hear these stories, but there buried beneath the muck of confusion and pain is the golden thread that rings brightly with His glory and I see it and I hear it…each after the other resonates the same words "but it has brought my husband and I closer"! Ahhhh there it is the Bride and the Groom; what waiting increase, the intimacy and the connection. The wait is to bring you closer to Me My beloveds, ever so much closer to Me! You'll need My Spirit to endure and to be the strength that lifts your head as you climb up the mountain! You'll need My Grace to be your backbone as you wrestle through the confusion and pain of not understanding My ways! After all, things really do come true in the most unlikely ways!
Sipping my sweet cup of coffee that warms, but waiting and longing for the burning reminder of Your presence Lord and as the playlist lingers on I am aware I'm here with You…I sit and I wait and I watch as You are in all those that fill this space. There You are in her smile, or his serious face as he taps on that keyboard. There You are as the rhythm of this whole world. The rain falls outside and you wash over us again and again if we will sit and wait and watch for You, never washing us away but washing us back to You and to life! It is all preparation indeed…one season leads gracefully into the next. Let it pour, sitting, waiting and watching for Your unexpected best Lord….Joy
Let me be completely honest and raw before you...I’ve spent the last few months beating my fists against God’s chest, with complete lack of understanding, the fullness of an excruciating pain and a dose of deep mourning! Can I just humbly express to you, and it moves me to tears even as I write this...but He stood there and He took it and let me have the outlet of His loving arms to absorb all of this ragamuffin’s confusion! Because He knew what I needed and that was to wear myself out in venting my pain and crying out with my “why’s”! So He graciously stood and let me get it out. We are sometimes taught as Christians not to ask why but instead to ask what. Most of the time I totally understand and agree with this offering, but then there are those moments where you really have to get alone with Him and scream WHY. May I boldly remind, that even Jesus Christ, our Savior’s last words contained a “Why”! It is when we will kneel in front of our Father, acknowledging that we do not know why and our understanding of Him is truly not big enough; this is where we are undone! This is also the very space where He rushes into us to fill the gaping space a broken heart creates. The vacuum waits to be filled and here He comes with the only thing that can fill it; His LOVE! He meets us with something bigger than knowledge and explanations can offer, He meets us with Himself and the vastness of mystery and the humbling realization of our limited capacity to understand.
I can attest that the tension, these last few months, of my Faith (my belief that God real, is good, is for me and loves me) swirling with really hard, unanswered questions had broken open my heart indeed and created an all consuming vacuum desperate to be filled. I’m sure my Faith lent to an even deeper pain than if I’d had none! There was nothing within my reach that would fill it. No matter how many explanations I tried to navigate, or how many explanations others could offer me, none were gonna fit or fill this pain! As I entered the studio last night so crushingly weary from this battle, the Spirit began to move! As I scanned the room and the hearts of those practicing with me, my message rolling from these uncertain and even a bit doubtful lips; the Spirit began to reclaim my mind from the mischief of the enemy. Because dear ones, in our searching for understanding, doubt penetrates all areas of our being. The enemy would like to infect you wholly with poisonous doubt. It is here in the Why’s that you indeed doubt God and feel let down by Him; you doubt everything from your understanding of Him, of yourself (identity, worth, value, purpose) and of others. Which, only magnifies the pain! You see, as I looked at them and let the words out from my soul, the Spirit began to remind me how big God is and that these little hearts of ours cannot contain the full understanding of the His Will or His Love...so He breaks them open to expand the space that He wishes to occupy within them! You see we spend our lives in an ebb and flow to construct an understanding of God and His Love; it is human and we are all guilty of doing this repeatedly. He is merciful to keep breaking that heart space open for bigger understandings and explanations. He is always revealing there is so much more going on here than we can possibly understand! The moments of no understanding press us into new territory and space, expanding these fragile human hearts of ours because they are still not big enough to contain all that God is....
Sweetly there came a moment where I just crumbled into Him, emptied of all my attempts to satiate myself with some explanation, wounded deeply and crying out at the very end of myself...and His Love rushed in to fill that Vacuum my broken heart had created. This expands my heart space and bends me gently to His will again; and the pain becomes worth it. Joy rises from the mourning. He turns the darkness into light, the crying into laughter, the doubt into greater belief, the despair into great hope. Outside of our understanding God awaits! You see He could stand back and explain the pain to us but instead He knows what we need is for Him to rush into the space and pour out a greater expression of His love until we are full, because then we will overflow with that very same Love and it will fall out on others through our every breath and movement! Although I wouldn’t wish the pain of Why moments on anyone I can fully see that if a vacuum is never created within our hearts to challenge our understanding then we will not have the capacity for the Love that comes for us...Finally I breath deeply and whisper yes Lord, Your will be done!
