Only read if you’re ready to ramble and come back around: I have spent all week in my bed, running high grade fevers on and off, face feeling like it’s being crushed between two heavy metal plates… all due to some dumb sinus infection. I started to tell Charlie today–I don’t have time for this! And then halfway through, realized that I did. Over the last (almost!) two years of marriage, my sweet man has slowly been helping me clear my plate, learn how to prioritize, and how to let go and say no. Before this last year, if you had asked me how I was, I would have told you “busy” with a smile on my face. We live in this very BUSY culture, where we always have to be doing something everysinglemoment. So little room to breath, always going to the next thing, always on our phones between the next thing to fill the space, always dreading Mondays after the last next thing and cramming our lives until the next thing and the next thing. Do we stop for air? Or when we think we stop for air, do we really? As we instagram our lives since those quiet moments didn’t really happen if you didn’t throw them into the roar and whirlwind of social media to be sucked in to see how the roar approves of your breathing air, and how other people are breathing maybe better from the tiny square you saw of their latte in Rome. Which makes you think you didn’t go far enough away to rest so your bubble of air then quickly feels very dry and mundane and not enough. And so it goes, a vicious life sucking cycle.
I was e x h a u s t e d and I didn’t even really know it. It hit me 13 months ago. I don’t want life to be busy, I want it to be FULL. Your tummy can be full of just one warm stew on a cold winter night. Your head can be full of just one song you heard and it plays on repeat and brings you joy. Your heart can be full of one sweet sentence or even word from another who is dear to you. Your spirit can be full of just one verse of His word which brings strength and hope to your soul.
Two phrases which have filled my being this week are from Psalms: “Have mercy on me.” And “Lord, be my help.” I need Him, so desperately, I realize that more everyday. The sweeter life is living with Jesus, the more you notice the bitterness of the world around you, and crave His sweet refuge and respite from the world. His yoke is easy, His burden is light, and I don’t think it is busy. The Lord can call us to long seasons of hard work and long hours but He also calls us to abide in Him. When I abide in Him, I see more clearly what is most important and what can wait, the things I do are with His unending strength rather than my own, and when I can’t go further He carries me and fills in the gaps. But He does all this only if we ask. He is not a God who will force Himself upon us. It is our choice to seek Him, to stop and rest from our busy lives, and rest in Him.
This last year has forced me to stop and rest, and realize I simply cannot do it all. And as I have stopped, I have been overwhelmed by exhaustion. I recently have been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue (because busyness physically takes it toll), which explains so much of how many days I just felt like I couldn’t get up. But I always did, because God is my help. I cast myself on His mercy, because according to my own righteousness, I have no reason to ask for His help. But He is a merciful God, and I rely on that so many days.
As He has strengthened and carried me, each joy infused day… My busyness has begun to slip away. And this week, out for a whole week, I can simply rest in Him and get well. This week has been full of soup and calm reassuring hands from my husband, giggles of delight from my baby, and the only thing I have done is teach two photography classes from bed, and listen to an audio book. The pain I have been in has caused my body to cry out and ask for healing. But the rest I have experienced has caused my soul to breath in deep and know my (recently) simple to-do lists can wait until next week for God is my help. He so wants to be your help too. He love you and I so deeply far beyond our human comprehension, and He is a good father who desires to give good things to His children. Will you stop with me and accept them? Oh friend, it is the sweetest, most blessed place, to be–no matter our physical circumstances.
My heart is full. Especially with these two dear humans pictured.
“Hear, LORD, and be merciful to me; LORD, be my help.” –Psalm 30:10
“Another compact, expressive, ever fitting prayer. It is suitable to hundreds of the cases of the Lord’s people; it is well becoming in the minister when he is going to preach, to the sufferer upon the bed of pain, to the toiler in the field of service, to the believer under temptation, to the man of God under adversity; when God helps, difficulties vanish.” (Spurgeon)
