Be Still

After finals week ended, I spent a few days catching up with friends, catching my breath. I felt an urgency to find quiet and rest after a productive, busy, exciting, yet scattered and fragmented semester. It's amazing how the human soul is wired to need order and peace, to resolve disorder and discordance.

 "Be still, and know that I am God." Be still, even though your heart is fearful and the tension in your chest feels like it will explode. Find the stillness and you will find Me. Though you are pressed on every side and everyone around you sings the anthem of racing time and deadlines, be still. 

And in quiet, I feel peace. I know that it is all a vapor, this life. A vapor that lasts a minute, and then is gone. 

And yet. The brevity of time gives it meaning. I'm home with my family for just a few weeks, but we can carve out our own little eternity. We are given all the time that we need. And for this I am thankful. 

The Thankful List

 

A few weeks ago, I started reading "A Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp. And I couldn't put it down. In her simple, beautiful, heart-cracked-open style, Ann writes about thankfulness to combat ingratitude and how she started a list of things she is thankful for, intending to list one thousand gifts. I began to realize how often I live in the valley of not enough and condemn God for all the things I seem to be missing, instead of thanking Him for all He has given me and is doing around me. As a intentional act to change the way I think and see, I started a list of my own. Not only has it been soul-refreshing, but it is a lot of fun. I carry my journal around and often will take it out and write down something that came to my mind that I am thankful for. Like right now: quiet moments by myself after everyone goes to bed. White steeples against blue skies. Acrylic paint. Windy days. 

The thing is, the more I list, the more I feel like I'm relieving myself of some obscure load and freeing up space in my heart. Who knew that blackberry jam and warm towels meant so much, could do so much to the mind and spirit? Sometimes it feels insulting. Could the key to thankfulness really be this simple? Is joy something that comes with a refusal to see the shadows? Or could it be that the shadows themselves hide beauty? That I should be thanking God not only for the blessings but the struggles? Maybe, just maybe, the rough edges and tears and difficult circumstances are a blessing if I see them as such. An opportunity to draw closer to God in dependence and faith. This has been the hardest gift of all for me to write down.  

Sustained

Tonight is a clinical night and I should be working on paperwork, but instead I write. My heart is so full of many things and I just need to slow down and breathe. On my iPhone I keep my notes app open so that I can jot down thoughts throughout the day. As I open it now, it looks something like this:
Thirsty heart // Off the beaten path // There's no such thing as ordinary //Seek His presence continually

And in capital letters, I AM SUSTAINED. The words that have been in my head for the last month. I am weak and fragile and seeing through a glass dimly, but I am sustained. My heart is alive because I am drawing from a source other than myself, relying on the Living Water, Christ the Solid Rock. And I am learning, following, often stumbling, but I am sustained. Life is happening so fast all around me and I'm fighting more than tiredness; I'm fighting for moments and simplicity amidst chaos and the glorification of busy. Every day, without realizing it, I make countless tiny decisions. Waking up thirty minutes early or sleeping in. Hurrying to class or stopping to smell the daffodils. Choosing thankfulness or choosing to pass these moments of grace by. I am learning to appreciate these days more fully.

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer man is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." - 2 Cor 4:16-18

The eternal weight of glory. Eternity. Weight. Glory. Unseen. Words to wonder at.

Finding Quiet

Experiencing beauty. Noticing details. Growing closer to people, creating things, finding truth, discovering.

Falling in love with the little parts of each day. There is beauty in everything, in the way that rays of sunlight find a resting place on the wooden floor and in the gentle sighs of the wind in the tree branches.

For me, this is a season of growing and simplifying and finding.
I'm trying to live deliberately and see the world through a prism of grace.

Finding little pockets of quiet in the hectic days that make up life. Choosing joy and deliberating in my heart to make time for what's important. Repeating David's prayer for God to "teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom."