Something to Drink

When you accept vulnerability and lean into that thirsty tired feeling, you embrace the sacred moment of God's invitation.

In God's invitation, He's asking you to do two things: surrender and focus.

I talked a little about the surrender yesterday - diving into that thirsty moment and owning it.  Admitting where you're at.  Finding the God who is meeting you there.  Taking the time to set your heart right.  Setting aside the to-do list for a few minutes to focus on what matters.  Rediscovering (or perhaps finding for the first time) that peace that is Him.

But His second offer is focus.  Or better yet, discipline.

This is why thirsty tired doesn't bother me so much.  Not only does it give me a chance to reconnect with God in a powerful way (though it is the tenderest of moments), but it gives me the opportunity to evaluate my schedule and figure out where God's driving me.

As exhausted as I have been, I have had the time to pick up a few of the new things I'm undertaking - putting together the May newsletter for the women's ministry, getting some design details into my new business card, setting the shovel aside to have a long woman-to-woman talk with the neighbor, converting my book to digital format (it hit the Kindle store this morning!), looking at the upcoming worship arts meeting itinerary, thinking about Prayse, reading the Psalms, getting into the music....these things that He really has put in me, these things that absolutely feed my heart...even through the exhaustion, I have more than enough for them.

Sometimes, sure, it's tough to get started.  But that's not Truth.  Once I get a few moments to really indulge myself in what He's doing...there seems to be a well of energy and all the time in the world and nothing else matters and I forget how exhausted I am.

Because God uses what He's created us to do to feed us.  That's why it's crucial that we remember what is in us.

I find this a lot in ministers I have talked to over the years in different capacities.  Men and women who say they love what they do but that sometimes, they wish they had a Sunday off just to feast on the worship service instead of agonize over it.  I understand what they mean, and there is one of two discouragements breeding here: either they aren't in a position that allows them to do what God created in them to do....or they've turned it so much into a profession that they forget to let their createdness (their art) drive them.  (See post about Who Does Number Two Work For?)

These thirsty tired moments are an invitation to a sacred encounter with God, but they are also an invitation to reassess what you're doing with your life and to take a fresh approach to building your life around what feeds you.  God has created in us this beautiful photosynthesis.  Photosynthesis is the process by which plants use light to make their own food.  It is true in us the same: God has created us to use His Light in the way that it hits us to feed ourselves, to fuel our passions, to grow in faith.  Thirsty tired gives us the opportunity to see that we may not have our leaves turned the right way to draw in this life-giving power.

It's the crazy little stuff that just likes to get in the way.

So yes, I am thirsty tired lately.  But I am also indescribably encouraged and filled with energy for the things that feed me.  It doesn't mean the other stuff isn't getting done.  It has to be done.  But some of it is taking a back seat for a few days.

I'm thirsty....and I'm feasting.  And it's absolutely beautiful the way God does that if we'll just be honest enough to admit our emptiness, our drained, wiped-out hearts and bodies...and turn to Him in surrender in a sacred moment.  He's waiting for us here.

Thirsty Tired

These past few days, I've been running on fumes.  It's pretty clear to anyone that's had to put up with me (and I hereby issue an apology for my grumpy, negative attitude).  Honestly?  I'm just exhausted.

I've long said there are two kinds of exhausted: there is the exhausted of good, hard work done well and the exhaustion of just overdoing it.  The former lets you go to bed good and tired, ready for rest, and confident of what you've accomplished; the latter leaves you feeling like you haven't done anything worthwhile, there's too much left, and you've actually made things worse, so it makes you miserable.

There is a third kind, though, and it is the place where I'm at now: it is the completely, totally, absolutely drained exhaustion that starts to even suck your spiritual strength out of you and you're just...wiped.

The difference here is that it's not about good and tired, having done something well, or energy-busted and worried about your contribution to the world.  It's about that off-feeling piled onto whatever other level of exhaustion you're feeling.

To put it in terms I think a lot of people can understand, it's the kind of exhaustion that makes you absolutely BAWL at the slightest refreshing taste of God in your life.  It's a thirsty tired.

I'm determined to live in this place for a bit and let God touch me in it, tears and all, but let me say a little of how this happens.  Because I know you've been here, too.  And I don't have all the answers, but I have my experience.  Perhaps you can relate.

The past month or so has been one project after another.  The rock garden.  Preparing the deck to refinish.  Getting things going on my website.  Committing more fully to this blog.  Looking at what God has for me down the road, both near and far.  Working on publicity for my book.  (Have you read Recess with Jesus yet?  Have you told a friend?)  Birthdays.  Family.  Parties.  Events.  Mother's Day (yes, I'm started...but hopelessly far from finished).  Job searching.  Applications and interviews.  Dog grooming.  Dog tending (my 12-year-old lab/shepherd is really struggling with her arthritis...severely).  Mowing.  Preparing for the workmen to get started on the house.  Not to mention the daily little things that have to be done - dishes, laundry, vacuuming, cooking, cleaning, emergency runs to Lowe's to fix the new faucet that just cracked in four places and is leaking out the drain pipe...  It's how it goes.

None of that is bad in itself.  It's just that each thing I'm working on is coming in pieces.  Little, teeny, tiny pieces that are making me work five minutes here, ten there, another five over here, and maybe fifteen over there.  Without, mind you, a pogo stick to help in bouncing from one place to another to another to another. If I could sit down and work through and even get an hour or two at a time on one thing, it wouldn't seem like as much as it seems like right now.  It's the bouncing that's killer.

The lack of a nice chunk of time - to do anything - is stifling.  It's hard to get into the things I'm really hungry to do - like pick up a new chapter in my next book (Prayse) or really start hammering out the new website (details coming soon).

I know that's how the world works counter to God.  I know that's how what stands against God gets into us.  Because all I want to do is this that I've been thirsting over that God is graciously pouring into my heart - ministry.  Writing.  Visiting.  Talking with people.  Having time for time and space for space and heart enough for all of it.

It's no coincidence that just as my energies for all of this increases and I have confidence and hope and promise and absolute peace about moving forward, something stupid steps in to try to suck that out of me.

Wanna know a secret?  It's not going to work.  Here's why, and I hope this is what you can take from all this:

The key to overcoming this third type of exhaustion - this completed wiped that puts us on edge, makes us biting, and drains us to the point of spiritual void - is kind of to give into it.

I think it's easy for us to look at ourselves in times like these and say there's no time for this.  To push ourselves to overcome by will or by might, to just stick it out and pray that it gets better.  That is a very good way to make yourself more miserable.  Just own it.

Admit it.  Admit that you're exhausted and that it falls clear into this third category - thirsty tired.  Turn on some praise music (I've got MercyMe playing right now on my "Praise and Prayer" playlist) and let the words pierce you.  Open the floodgates and cry as much as you feel like you're about to anyway, as embarrassingly as you fear you will, as tenderly as God has created you to.  Be deliberate about entering into the drained feeling and ask God to meet you there.

He will.

This is not weakness; this is invitation.  Through the weight of the world that is piling on your shoulders, there is the whisper of God that says, "Let's grab a latte."  It is His invitation to enter into Him, to take this hollow moment and turn it hallowed.  Even when you feel like it'd be the same as diving off a cliff to admit this emptiness, to enter into it, to ask God to touch it, to pierce it with worship, to agonize it with truth and push yourself over the brink into absolute meltdown (we feel like that, don't we?  like all our "put-together" is about to fall apart)...you have to realize God is waiting there.  He knows that as much as it doesn't feel like it until we show up there ourselves, this is a sacred moment.

Take what time you need with God.  Find a good friend and get together just to breathe; she probably needs a break, too.  Take some time...because you know you're hungry.  Thirsty.

Turn to God and let Him feed you.

And give yourself permission not to worry about the to-do list.  Dishes piling up?  Buy paper plates and eat off those for a week.  The world is not going to come to an end if you stop doing the piddly little stuff (or even some of the big stuff) for a few days; it's not your feet that makes this world spin.  It's your love.  And trust me on this - if you're letting yourself get wiped, it's only a short trip until you run out of love.  Then what?

Whisper

A few weeks ago, I wrote about lemon drops and how refreshingly mild I found them.  It turns out, the tastebuds weren't the only things itching for a little relief; there's a place in my heart that's been searching for it, too.

As many of you may know, I am putting a lot of time right now into building something more.  I'm focused on stepping into a future that I admit may be 20 years down the road, but God has put it so beautifully on my heart that every moment I'm not letting it drive me is disobedience.  So I'm working on a better web presence (yes, this blog will be moving.  More details to come) since...well, ok, it actually started with this: I won 1000 business cards from a giveaway on a friend's blog.  God put it on my heart to use those not in the job search or focusing on the 9-5 but on the real gift He's put in my heart - to begin reaching out in ministry, in authorship and writing and speaking and just ministry.  It's what He's got for me, and this prize, as simple as it may seem, was His way of nudging me to take the risk and step into all that.  (See last post for things that try to trip all that up.)

Anything else seems like a waste of 1000 business cards.

Thus, I have spent the past week or so designing my cards.  The company would probably help me out, but part of what I do is art, and I asked if I could take over the design myself.  They were more than happy to let me.  Then I ran straight-on into blank page syndrome because...what is me?  Where is this going?  And what am I doing?

God put the answers on my heart.  To be honest, He's kind of got me a little distracted with how awesome He's making what unfolds before me.  So I have to balance my energy and excitement with the honesty that it's not here yet.

Anyway, He gave me those answers and I immediately put my own spin on them, as I tend to do.  I designed this sheek, bold, edgy, modern but simple business card, something just to start with as a template and then to go wild with.  Make a statement.  Set myself apart.  Be LOUD...and demand my place, my recognition, my name.  Bright orange.  Bold angles.  And searching for the right font to say "Look!"

Then it happened...

The font I was searching for was for my name, something I could easily see how it would look with the design of the card.  There were several grungy, graffiti-ish, agitated fonts that caught my eye.  And then one simple, classy...dare I say, elegant...one that made me throw away the whole project.

Every. Bit.

Truthfully, I wasn't engaged in the process like I should have been.  It didn't have the joy and excitement that the initial nudge to pursue ministry with my giveaway win had given me.  It was more drudgery, something I had to plow through to get it done and get moving on.  I was looking at it for a few days, thinking it needed something but having no idea what, and getting so frustrated that I just left it sitting there.

You know why; I don't have to tell you.  I was trying too hard.

I was taking this gift, and this invitation, as yet another chance to prove something.  It seems to be a common theme in my life, and it's easy to get locked into that.  My attitude, and the questions resonating from this unworthy-feeling place inside me, were sucking the promise out of the Promise.

From a simple font that defined my name, I started with a blank slate and built this delicate, intimate, elegant and classic business card that I still have open in another window right now.  There are a few little details to work out, but it's getting there.  It's softer now, more beautiful in its simplicity.  And it perfectly (well, almost - I'm getting it there) speaks into that Promise and invigorates me.  Not to prove anything about myself or even about my God, but just to step into what He has for me, what He's created in me.

The truth is that the new design, the new feel I get from it - it is energizing.  It is hopeful.  It is joy.  It is back to what it is in the dream that so charms my heart.

Not everything has to be bold.  Or loud.  Or demanding.  The truth is it's hard to live up to some of the statements we try to make with ourselves.  The original bold, edgy design?  Wouldn't people have been disappointed when they saw that isn't my heart at all.  That isn't how I approach what God has given in me.  He's got something quieter, softer in mind.  I would hate to have to be loud and edgy because that was the image I created me in; I'd hardly be able to stand myself.

It's better just to be in the image He's created me: the image of my God.  Where I don't have anything to prove.  Not one thing.  I've been thirsty for that: the lemon drop.  Something milder.  A reason to let enough be enough.  It goes back to my last post: who am I working for?  I know the answer, and He's answered.  It's cool to be able to live knowing that, to see when I'm getting out of it, and to be able to pull back and realign my life with my heart.

Softness, subtlety, sincerity - these have their own voice.  Maybe in a whisper, but they have something to say, too.  And I never thought I'd say it, but God has blessed me with a life that speaks in a whisper.  And I actually like it better that way.

Has God given your life a whisper or a roar?  To each of us, He has given a different voice.  If you're driving even yourself crazy, you are probably trying to live at the wrong volume.  Tone it up or down; ask Him how He would have you speak.  And remember that it's not always those who speak loudest who have the most influence...the world is searching for more than volume.

Who Does Number Two Work For?

As you are, you will always be number two.  Even the most self-serving, egotistical, arrogant jerk of a human being is number two.  What you have to decide is: who do you work for?

It's a good question to be asking, both in the philosophical sense and the practical one.  That is, you should be asking both who you should be working for...and who you actually are working for.  It's about perspective.

God has been working on my heart with an incredible vision of ministry.  I wouldn't say it's entirely new - more a future reignited, but there are some new aspects to it.  Like for the first time, I'm in a place where I am able to realize it's fully about Him.  (There was a time I was pretty sure He was going to make me great because, well, look at me!  Wouldn't I be great at "great"?)

The truth is, it was just a few months ago that I woke up and set about what I was doing - working on a chapter in the new book, thinking ahead to the next month's women's ministry newsletter, shooting a couple of emails back and forth with a good friend, chatting with my atheist sister-in-law about God, answering her questions and helping her with her theology homework, and taking a few breaks every now and then to get something done around the house or draw a little - and in the midst of all that, this pure and simple joy invaded my heart.  And not one bit of it was about me.  And I didn't care.

I couldn't help but smile.  And the thought on my heart was, "Lord, if this was my every day...how blessed would I be?"

Oh, He loves me so.  The more days that go by, the more He blesses me with days just like this.  With each of those days - not even days, but every moment - I am overwhelmed by the realization that this joy, this contentment, this peace, and even this energy is because this is precisely what He has created me for.  This.  This mix of ministry.  This fullness of who I am.  This place in my heart that is no longer raw with the pains of my own brokenness, no longer turned inward, but bursts forth with a burning ache for reaching out.

Because I'm discovering it matters little to me what you think of me when you walk away; but I'd like you to be thinking of God.  

That said, it's easy to let this perfectness, this beauty of createdness, and even the joy be distorted.  When you aren't focused on who you work for - or to put it another way, the measure of your success - it's easy to lose your way.

It's easy to worry about what other people think of you, what they might say, how they will perceive whatever it is you're doing.  So you start working for public perception, for popularity - and you become what you were afraid people might take you for in the first place: a poser.  Something less than legitimate.  Because your every move is dictated by the narrative: I have to get the masses on board.  And you subject yourself to disappointment and discouragement because not everyone is going to be with you.  Not at first, and maybe not ever.

It's easy to worry what about what you might think of you if you take the risk, embrace the journey.  You look in the mirror and see your perceptions of yourself and you either hold yourself back because you see something less or you get discouraged because you see a potential you're not quite living up to.  Putting your adventure second to yourself makes you exactly what you fear you are: shallow.  Not deep enough, strong enough, experienced enough, worthy enough to legitimately do what is on your heart to do.

These are the big two: others and self.  Then you wonder what happened to that joy and that perfectness of your even thinking about the journey.  You wonder where all that excitement went; because your journey just became a trek.  It became a task.  It became another endeavor to prove yourself.

Quit trying to prove yourself.  You wouldn't want to be that anyway.

When you realize that you're working for God, that you're number two to His Oneness, it changes your entire perspective.  The other people you were so worried about?  They see your authenticity.  Because what God has in you is pure.  You can't fake that kind of joy.  And the person you see in the mirror?  You see your own story with a sobering appreciation for how you've been carved out.  You see someone who is absolutely enough.   And you realize that's all you ever truly wanted to be: enough.  Enough for this.  Enough for this moment.  Enough for this journey.  You also realize that when the journey pushes forward, you will be enough then, too.

Because God has created you for this.  It is absolutely, positively, one hundred percent what He has for you.    The journey before you?  What a grand adventure!  The risk?  It's there.  The questions in the back of your mind?  Put them in your heart, and you will realize He has answered them.

All that's left is to take the next step.  Step into what He's got for you.  Maybe it will take awhile for your journey to catch on - for the right place to open up, the right doors, the right time to just explode into purpose - but it starts in one moment with a grateful, humbled, enthusiastic "Yes! Lord."  And there really is no other choice; once you've tasted what God has created in you, your heart will never settle for anything less.

Just remember that you're number two.  And make sure you know who you're working for.

Inappropriate Communion Thoughts: #2

This one falls gently into the "mildly" inappropriate category, and I might be able to swing it if Twilight comes out with another blockbuster movie or something dramatic happens with True Blood (neither of which I've ever seen).  Then again, there is also Johnny Depp's new movie...

But it's all about the vampires.

Specifically, holy vampires.

Bad Communion Thought #2: Holy Vampires

It seems that many of us are nothing more than holy vampires.  Or wannabe holy vampires.  Or seemingly-righteous vampires.  (I haven't quite worked out the phrasing yet.)  We come together every Sunday and celebrate this supper by drinking the blood of Christ, but we prefer living in darkness and most of us don't see ourselves when we look in the mirror.

Then when God wants to get our attention, it is a painful process in which He has to drive a stake straight through our hearts and pierce us...and it feels like death.  But He knows that something in us has to die because this isn't really living.  We do no honor to the blood of Christ just by drinking it; we need also to live it, to come out of the darkness and into the light even if it stings.  That's what this blood is supposed to do for us - not nourish us in darkness but strengthen us in light.