Though the first two items I repeat somewhat hourly to a boy or two in my life, the whole of it, the patience, the stillness, the remembering, the reminder, is a mantra for myself. Words repeated daily to keep my spirit focused and my flesh in check.
Journeys are historically not my favorite. I am a finish line girl for sure. Check it off and move on to the next thing. There is a reason Mary Poppins was a role model in my early days and still is for that matter, and it is not because I desire to be practically perfect in every way, well it's not JUST because of that. Mary Poppins was a doer, a planner, a packer, a cleaner, a beautiful, musical, loving, but to point lady who could snap her fingers and be done.
My desire is to dream and plan, to pray for the Spirit to direct me and show me how He wants me to proceed. When you pray for paths to be directed and listen to the dreams that arise you feel joy as ideas come flowing into your mind and onto the pages of your journals. The difficulty for me is in realizing that saying and accomplishing are entirely different things. Not a far step away from the voice of encouragement is a less than encouraging voice demanding that I hurry up and accomplish all the things. There's your job now go and do it. Alongside is the fear that if I don't in fact get it all done I have failed and should give up trying any further lest I just fail again. It is a daily, yes daily, struggle for me to ignore those lies and wait. To ponder before producing. To give grace to myself as I have been given. To remember that seeds do not grow into oaks overnight. They are watered, protected, pruned and left to grow at the appropriate pace until one day you look over and beauty shades ground around you.
However, in the past couple years I have been learning to appreciate the process. To soak in the scenery and not just wish for it to whiz by faster so that I can get where I'm going and be done with it. I expect this to be somewhat of a lifelong learning process as hardwires are hard to replace and default modes are the easiest thing to slip back into. So while my lists of hopes and desires may seem as if they are sitting dormant, I am reminded that Spring does come and without the season of preparation nothing can grow. So I praise my God for patience and stillness and promise of Hope that He is the one who began the work and He will be the one to complete it in me.
This was a great read!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, I was reading this morning about German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was just chosen as Time's Person of the Year. She was born into Soviet controlled East Germany and lived there until she was 35 when the Berlin wall fell and she began her path to where she is now as leader of Europe, the EU, and arguably the free world. One of her criticisms is how slow she moves when making things happen, they have even coined the term "Merkeling," to describe it. When asked about her process she responded:
“We’ve always had this experience that things take long, but I’m 100% convinced that our principles will in the end prevail,” she told the audience in Munich. “No one knew how the Cold War would end at the time, but it did end. This is within our living experience … I’m surprised at how fainthearted we sometimes are, and how quickly we lose courage.”
How quicly we forget, like Lucy on the bow of the Dawn Treader staring into a fearful darkness, that our God whispers in our ears "Courage dear heart." Philipians 1:6(And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ) is one of those verses oft quoted but no one ever talks about how hard it is to actually believe it.
Really enjoyed reading this!