The Beginnings Of A New Season
I just want to put something out there.
In these last weeks I’ve been a mess.
Not a pretty one either.
As lock down hit and everything changed so did my day to day (like so many of us).
Some talked of stillness, space, rest, meanwhile I felt hit with a wave of overwhelming pressure, anxiety and sense of premature failure at the thought of balancing school work, food shopping, the house, diving in deeper in God, worshipping as a family, exercise for myself and for the kids, zoom calls and finding the space to pause which seemed to be something God was laying on many hearts.
As I chatted with friends over video I cried on lots of them.
In fact I think I’ve probably cried most days.
*For those who are worried this is sounding a bit dire I will pop this in for you: there have also been deep moments of beauty, we live by the beach so beach trips with the whole family in wetsuits and the dog on the surfboard, dinners together, chess games.
There have been beautiful moments but the usual noise and distraction of life that drowned out the clamor of my internal going ons had gone and bit by bit the internal pain, unhelpful habits, unchecked self talk was deafening.
At first I tried to press on, create routines, quieten the internal clamors but with not enough activities to effectively fill the day and with Holy Spirit’s prompting I knew I had to look in the face, sit in whatever I had been trying to drown out, run from.
The change in routine had shifted the sand and revealed a few hidden wrecks.
I’m not trying to sound like a Psalmist but I have quite literally come to a place where I have been crying out to God day and night. My soul groaning. In the quiet of the night, lying awake filled with emptiness, buried under a weight of perceived demands, frustration with myself, I’ve been saying again and again ‘Father I can’t stay the same, you have to do what only you can do, deliver me, heal me, have mercy on me. Only you can do this’.
In this time I’ve come face to face with my lack, my sin, myself.
I had a phrase going through my head these last few weeks ‘open heart surgery’.
Even though at times I’ve felt like I’ve been internally imploding, unable to hear His voice clearly, I have a history, testimonies, files deep in my being of His faithfulness, His ever present help, His sovereignty in grief, change and pain, His divine and beautiful leading through the process of the soul. I know when we call on His Name He answers.
This discipline of remembering Him, His faithfulness, His goodness, His sovereignty in this time has been hard but key. No matter what the storm of the soul, the inner disturbing, the bedrock is Him, His constant and consistent character.
He doesn’t mind disturbing us, how many of us may have prayed the prayer from Francis Drake, ‘Disturb us oh Lord’. I sense the invitation from Him to submit, lay down on the operating table and let Him do what only He can do.
Face, with Him, what He wants to gently weed from the garden of my being, what He wants to reveal, what He wants to bring into the light and heal in this time; grief, abandonment, neglect, unforgiveness, insecurity, comparison, competitiveness, bitterness, self promotion, fear or man.
My most recent realization perhaps is this is a posture I want to take daily, weekly. To choose the table, come under His lights and open my heart. No matter how painful, no matter what wretchedness the light shines on. He knows exactly what to do, what to say. We just have to say yes to the invitation. He never forces us up on the table or forces a heart to open.
I believe this stuff has eternal implications but also I sense imminent earthly ones.
As you know I long to see worship on earth as it is in heaven. To see gatherings around the nation and nations that are ‘throne room’ times. Worshippers joining on earth with that in heaven and loving Him with all we’ve got. The thing is, He kindly showed me, there are things that are absent from the Throne Room in heaven, things like self promotion, pride, self consciousness, defensiveness, control to name a few. That perhaps as worshippers, as we accept His invitation if extended by Him for ‘open heart surgery’ we are becoming ever more prepared, clothed with His life, more and more able to steward the measure of His presence He longs for us to experience, on earth as it is in heaven.
I write this feeling very much in the thick of it, like a raw onion, this is present news, but it some ways I never want to leave this place. A place in His light where I have never been more aware of His strength and my weakness.
2 Corinthians 5:2-4
Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
'I guarantee you, when you are alone with the Lord and you let yourself fall apart, that is the place where you are more together than you have ever been' - Steffany Gretzinger
Prayer of Sir Francis Drake ‘Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim. Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. we ask You to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.
AMEN