dancing through the maze

I've been blog silent for quite some time.  I couldn't really put my feelings down.  There was just too much.  But I figured with our Thai adventure coming soon it was time to get moving on the blog front again so all you people can follow along as we go for this crazy ride God has for us.  I hope to do a couple posts over the next few weeks to tell you how all this came about and the things I'm learning along the way. I figure a good place to start would be the following post that never got published.  I wrote it at the beginning of this year (it seems like forever ago) and couldn't publish it because all the feelings were still too raw to put out there. 

I feel the story of how we got to this point is kind of like a Disney movie.  They all seem start with the quick build up to a sad event that begins a wonderful heart-warming story.  Hopefully we'll get to the heart-warming part soon but you have to begin somewhere and this is where it began for me....

 Broken

Have you ever been broken?  Not just really sad, or feeling a little defeated or overwhelmed, but truly broken?  I thought I had before...until now.  The last few months have brought a lot of new, a lot of change, and a lot of pairing away to the very basics.  It has not been a fun process.

Let me start with a recap for those that don't know me well.  In October of last year we found out that my husband would be losing his job at the church we were serving in.  It was sudden,  it was shocking, and it felt like the rug had been completely pulled out from under us.  You see we had the life I wanted.  We loved our church.  We loved the location.  We loved the activities we had the kids in and we loved their coaches.  We loved our house that we were renting and had planed to buy it in the spring...we had already negotiated the price.  We loved our dog.  We loved life.  And then it was all ripped away.  You see we were living paycheck-to-paycheck.  So when Adam lost his job it not only meant losing our church, but it meant losing our house.  It meant moving in with my in-laws 2.5 hours away so we lost the location, and in losing the location it meant losing the kids' activities and their coaches.  It meant shipping our dog away to live with my parents.  It meant everything either changed or was stripped away.  All my things were put in storage and I no longer have my own kitchen to cook in or my own decorations on the wall, or all the things that I had surrounded myself with.  It has been a breaking time for me.

So what do you do when all things have been stripped away and you are left broken?  Well, to be honest you cry a lot.  And by a lot I mean A LOT!!!!  And after you're done crying... you cry some more.  And after all the crying, or maybe somewhere in the middle of it you realize the reason for the crying has changed.  In the middle of mourning all the things that have been stripped away you realize what you still have.  In my case, I have my husband, who is a man of God and loves me.  I have my children, who, even though they frustrate me at times, are a joy and blessing to me.  I have my parents, my sister, and my in-laws who are holding us up in more ways than one.  I have friends both old and new that have listened, prayed, advised, helped, and supported us. And I have God. I have a heavenly Father that I can trust to work all things for my good.  And for that I am grateful to the point of even more tears.

Sometimes we get so bogged down looking for the things that aren't there, we don't see the things that are.  Sometimes we get so busy grieving for what's lost that we forget to celebrate what's here now.  Sometimes we look so intently on the past and on the obstacles of now that we forget our future. Sometimes we forget that God sees the big picture and we only see one small part. 

****"For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."***  Jeremiah 29:11 NLT

Ever have a clogged drain...maybe not completely clogged, but one that the water runs so slowly down that all the icky stuff gets left on the sides of the sink? I think that was me.

The last 8 months or so have been...we’ll go with challenging. I’ve faced things that I never thought I would face. I’ve had to be someone I never thought I would be. I’ve had to manage situations and emotions I never thought I would have to manage. I know I’m speaking in code. I’ll go into all the details at a later date. Point being, I sucked it up and prayerfully dealt with the blows life was landing on me. I sucked it up to the point of being a yucky clogged drain. The water and the Spirit still moved through me but at such a sluggish pace that I ended up with all the nasty stuff clinging to me. It was not a fun place to be.

So last week Adam and I went to a conference. Not just any conference, but re:create, the conference for creative people that invests in the people not just their craft. It is the best conference EVER (if you’re like me). I started the conference like a sluggish drain after a long night. The water had made its way down but all the ickies remained stuck to the sides. Then it happened: spiritual draino. Through the music, the worship, the people, and the spirit of God in that place my drain got dramatically unclogged. Water in the form of tears flowed and washed away all the yuck of life that had been sticking to me. It would say it was a time of refreshing but that isn’t right. Refreshing is tubing slowly down a river. I was washed away in the current of a broken dam and I relished it. I needed every moment of not being in control of my emotions, of my schedule, of my life.

It was in the beauty of not being in control that I realized this is what life is supposed to look like. Not in the sense that I let someone else dictate how I spend my time every day, but that I let go of my need to be in control, and let God do it. I need to stop waiting until the drain is clogged and gunk is sticking to me to let go of what I can’t do anything about anyway. I need to not only take the time to rest in my Father’s arms (because I had done that) I need to leave my burden at his feet when I leave and not pick it up again. I need to not let my drain get bogged down with all the craziness of life. I need to let the refreshing happen constantly so maybe I won’t need the broken dam.

It took 4 days of crying to flush my system of all the gunk. 4 days worth of stuff I had held on to. 4 days worth mess I had to let go of. I am so grateful for that 4 days. I’m grateful for the broken dam and the unclogged drain. I’m grateful to feel alive in God again, instead of spiritually sluggish. I'm grateful for a renewed fullness of life and the freedom flow again...