Only Still Waters Ripple

My days and my season are quiet. I’ve moved my family and spent the past month creating a home of comfort, support, and safety for them. The pictures are hung, furniture placed, and food is in the pantry. If I were to do nothing else from this day forward, my home is lovely, inviting, and cozy.

Now what?

There is a quiet in this home I have not known before—a stillness begging to be absorbed. Like so many I know, my mind and physical body rage against stillness. Stillness in my mind is equated with uselessness, laziness, and lack of purpose, drive, and achievement.

Yet here I am. Feeling forced to be still for lack of no other choice. My Jesus is faithful to meet me here. I am never alone. This morning, in my reading, He gave me this promise and this challenge:

“The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me. Psalm 138:8……What a blessing to lose our own strength, wisdom, plans, and desires and to be where every ounce of our being becomes like a peaceful Sea of Galilee under the omnipotent feet of Jesus!” (Cowan, Streams in the Desert, pg. 345, 1997.)

The Lord WILL fulfill His purpose for me. In my mind’s eye, the word will is bold-faced and in all caps every time I read that verse. It’s as if the Lord is stamping His promise into my soul to keep the fires of hope alive. He does see me, exactly where I am. He is working His purposes even in this stillness. He has a plan for my life He will fulfill. My Jesus wants me to cling to Him and wait and not lose hope.

He is Lord of the insignificant too. What I often view as meaningless, He is already weaving into the plan of eternity. I hear Him whisper in the quiet, “Trust Me.” If it wasn’t so quiet in my life right now, I wonder if I would hear Him so clearly?

Then the challenge! To consider it a blessing to be given a clean slate, to be stripped of my strength, wisdom, plans, and desires?!?! I’m not sure I’m there yet, but I can tell you the process is painful. To wake up every day with only the day before you, trusting God to fill it as He sees fit, unable to use the gifts He’s given except in the small realm of the four walls where you generally just exist. Every fiber of my being rages and strives, and I inwardly scream at the Lord, “Give me more! There must be more I can do for You! There must be more You want me to accomplish!” Only to be answered by the quiet stillness of this home, this season, this space in time, and my Jesus’ abiding presence.

You see, my soul is not a peaceful Sea of Galilee…yet. Lucky for me, my Jesus walks on the water in the middle of the storms of life as well, and He brings the peace with Him. I do want my life to be a peaceful sea for His feet to tread. I want His every step on my life to ripple as far as the eye can see, so that when people encounter my life, they can’t help but be touched by the ripple effect of His feet walking across my deep waters.

Only still waters ripple.

“Father, forgive me for raging against the stillness You have given. Make my life as still as it needs to be for You to ripple across the surface, for all who encounter me, to encounter You.”

Surrendering to Stillness

God is moving in my life deeply in a way that is hard to wrap words around.

He's literally called me to a place in time where I am to BE STILL...and breathe. Really breathe. Breathe deep His presence.  Breathe deep His glory and majesty in His creation. Breathe in the blessing of my family.  My family.  Just the four of us. Breathe in a Genesis 1:2 moment in time--the stillness of beginnings.

I've continued in BSF again this year, and God is already beginning to plough the fields of my life with the study of Moses.  Moses who spent the first 40 years of his life thinking he was somebody, only to spend the next 40 years of his life as a nobody, so that God could use the last 40 years of his life showing the world what God can do with a nobody by turning him into a somebody for His glory.

I want to see God's glory.  I've asked to see it, and God has answered, "Here you are.  Here am I. Trust Me with the three remaining most precious things I have not removed from you.  Trust Me fully and be still and watch Me work...in you."

And so I am learning to see space for God's opportunity in the white space of availability on my calendar instead of believing the lies that I do not matter, that I am forgotten, that I am useless.

I am learning to relish hours of long quiet moments in time when I can actually sit and take in and breathe deep the beauty of this land where I live.  Not just stare at the bird feeder in passing, hoping one day I will have a moment to go refill it, but actually taking time, not hurried, to fill the feeder and sit and just watch birds.  Just watch birds.  Practicing being still.  It's the practice of filling a day with rest and meditation and prayer, instead of a long list of things to do, and believe it or not, this is so counter cultural and opposite to my own personality that I find this to be harder work than the list of things I love to accomplish!

Because believe it or not, I didn't realize I didn't know how to be still anymore.  Do you?  Do you know how to be still?  Not just take a nap or a vacation or lounge for 30 minutes over a cup of coffee. To have nothing so pressing in your life more than the responsibilities of raising your family and being a godly spouse, being a true child of God.  No planned activities.  No family to call and invite over. Heck, with a three hour time difference, I find it difficult to even call my family! No church function to attend.  Nothing to volunteer for.  Just space and time and stillness....and God.

His presence is palpable in the Stillness. Seriously, sometimes I can almost physically feel my Jesus right beside me.

No, there is a deep, abiding stillness enveloping our lives here that requires we only follow God's cloud cover by day and His pillar of fire by night.  (Exodus 13:21) That's it.  Nothing more.  He's even provided all the manna we could ask for.  We have all we need.  Now, it's time to settle in to the stillness and follow God wherever He leads us next.  I'm trying not to search for anything more than that.  All it requires is my availability and courage to make myself available.  I'm not walking through any doors that God doesn't hunt and find and open for me.  No, my days of hunting and pecking and opening for myself have dwindled to a stopping point.

Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness of Midian with just his family.  He became intimately acquainted with the wilderness.  God used the wilderness to humble him and mold him.  He spent 40 years in Midian with only his wife and child to minister to him.  No one was probably more prepared to wander in the wilderness of Sinai that would come next more than Moses.  I wonder if he ever actually came to love it?  To call the wilderness home?

We all have a choice as to what wilderness we choose to sojourn.  Like Moses, we can allow the wilderness to mold us into who God wants us to be or like the Israelites we can moan and whine and complain and rage against a sovereign God, letting the wilderness kill us, heart, body, and mind.

I choose to be molded.  I choose to be wrapped in silence and stillness for as long as God sees fit because I think my heart has finally grasped the truth that I am NEVER truly alone. (John 16:32)  Loneliness is a lie from the devil.  Stillness is a rare treasure from God.

I should have been seeking for the stillness sooner.  I should have been seeking it not only for myself, but for my family.  I should have built a cocoon of stillness around our lives, creating a haven in my home where Stillness was honored, appreciated, and practiced, but I let the busyness of every day life dictate my "ministry" instead.

My family within the four walls of my home is my greatest ministry, and had God not physically removed me from my busyness in all things good and godly, I think I might have missed raising my children.  I think I might have missed the small conversations and teachable moments in the chaos of trying to remember where I had to be next at what time.  I think I might have missed connecting with them because I was too busy making sure they had a relationship with every other member of our families back East.  I think God saved my family from my own blind ambition by bringing us to California, by placing us in stillness.

(Deep Pause)

I am grateful for the stillness.  It is deep and warm and intimate here in the land of my sojourning. There are difficult days.  Days when you wish you were remembered.  Days when the thorn in your side of loneliness throbs deeply.  Days when you fight the antsy, urge in the bottom of your throat to just do something for the sake of doing something!

But no.  The lesson is to be still.  So be still I will learn to be.  As my favorite podcast coined, 'I'm going to sink down into this stillness and just BE.'

I'm going to sink down, sink in, and learn what it means to savor.  Savor time to snuggle with my kids and just watch TV together.  Savor time to pack a picnic and watch time pass as the sun settles into the ocean for bed.  Savor so much white space in my life that I can sit at my kitchen table and stare out my patio window for hours if I like, Bible open, heart open, ears listening.  I'm going to be still and savor.

And in His time, God will move me.  A burning bush will call me out of the stillness back into the fray.  You can be sure He will never let you get TOO comfortable=)  And my prayer is that when He calls, when I return from the stillness, I pray with all my heart I will not be the same woman who sits here typing today.  I pray I'm stripped of pride and filled with courage and faith. A deeper faith than I've ever known. I pray that I will have learned how to be a still person on the inside despite the circumstances whirling around me.

Which probably explains why my blogs have been so few and far between.  Dropping off the radar of life is not necessarily a bad thing.  It's definitely not a bad thing when you're being obedient to God's call.  For me, it means I'm careful about when and what and how I blog.  May God always get the glory!  For some, it may mean deleting that Facebook page, monitoring the number of hours you and your family spend on "screens" during the week, or maybe it means cutting down or cutting out extracurricular sports and activities in your life that you find yourself just doing because everyone else does it.  I think my pastor said it best this past Sunday. I want to spend my life doing less things of more importance than doing more things of less importance.  Let that sink in.

True Stillness requires sacrifice, which is why I believe it pleases God. (2 Samuel 24:24)

And should you choose to do the same, should you choose to drop off the radar of life in following of His obedience to a calling He's spoken to your heart, know that He is not through with you yet.  He's not benching you.  He's conditioning you.  And it's ok to quit everything and be still in your own home with your own thoughts with your God who loves you more than life itself if that's what He's calling you to do.

We need to learn how to practice stillness.

Praying you find the joy of the Lord in the stillness of His presence alone. (Psalm 16:11)

Stillness:How will you choose to fill it?

There is a Stillness in the wilderness.

I feel it most tangibly in the early morning hours. I feel it cover my being like the down comforter laying over me. Heavy and warm.

It is a dangerous Stillness that creeps under the surface of my whole self.

Dangerous because it is empty and begs to be filled. 

It is empty of activities, lists, to-dos, have-tos, friends, family, familiarity, normality, routine.

It is a Stillness full of time and space and possibility.

It is the Stillness we all long for!  A break from the busy, a break from the mundane, a break from the whirring spin of life, the fast steady pace of what we perceive as purpose-filled living.  It is the Stillness we all long for, yet when it becomes available, it is so foreign and unknown that the ground beneath you feels unstable, unsure. The bed I lay in feels safer than the world outside my door, but even from that perceived haven, the Stillness beckons to be filled.

In these wee early hours, I feel helpless. I feel forgotten. I look at the wide, empty expanse of my days--dry and barren--and I feel lost. I feel like purpose--the activities, the lists, the to-dos, the friends, the family--the things I always mistakenly fall back on as what defines me--they are all gone, all missing. 

And there is a hopelessness,  a uselessness, a loneliness that lurks at the edges of this wilderness Stillness. It wants to seep like a sponge into the dryness. It wants to be absorbed into my soul and take residence.  It wants to usher in depression.

Ah, but not today.

I know this enemy too well. I know the pit into which it drags. By God's grace I have learned the early warning signs--the sleepless, worrisome nights, the urge to sleep your day away, the desire to do nothing because everything feels too hard--I know these feelings well, and as the age old saying goes, knowing is half the battle!

No. Every morning, every moment the enemy tries to creeps into my day, I know now I have a choice.

I can choose Joy. I can choose Jesus. I can choose to fill the Stillness with His presence instead of my enemy's, the world, or my flesh.

I can reach for my Bible instead of the snooze button or more covers to pull over my head. (Psalm 119:105)

I can breathe deep the gift of this Stillness,  exhaling gratefulness for no time constraints,  no schedule,  nothing that God hasn't ordained. (1 Thessalonians 5:18, Psalm 139:16)

I can count my blessings and enjoy them instead of counting the minutes on my clock or the number of tasks on my calendar. (Matthew 6:19)

I can believe and trust that God has a plan for my day in motion instead of believing that my day is defined by the number of accomplishments I have planned for myself. (Proverbs 16:9)

I have a choice to make.  A battle to win in those small moments. (Ephesians 6:12)  I need to capture the emotion and reconcile it to God's Word.  It's time to use the full armor of God I've been given and wield the Sword to His glory and His victory in my life. (Ephesians 6:10-18)

I choose Joy!  I choose Jesus!

And in that choice, I reach for my devotional and my Bible.  Ashamedly, I do this somewhat reluctantly.  It's not always easy to choose the better thing.

And in the words of my devotional I find a beckoning from my Lord to come away with Him, to put the world with "it's nonstop demands" on hold instead of Him, to stop buying into the world's lie that more is better--"more meetings, more programs, more activities," to choose the better thing that can never be taken away from me.  To choose Jesus, to choose Joy. (Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, July 17)

The Stillness beckons to be filled, and I can choose to fill it with Jesus, but how?

I then open my Bible and read the chapter that comes after the one I read yesterday:
Psalm 143--with my sidebar thoughts as I read this....

Hear my prayer, O Lord,
Give ear to my supplications!
Answer me in Your faithfulness, in Your righteousness!
2 And do not enter into judgment with Your servant, (The best and worst of us have bad days, down days, low moments, doubts, and moments of stumbling, this is me right now, Lord, stumbling....)
For in Your sight no man living is righteous. (See, even if I was busier, living more purposefully, it wouldn't make me more righteous in God's sight.  Why do we still strive?....)
3 For the enemy has persecuted my soul; (My fleshly mind is on a rampage....)
He has crushed my life to the ground; (I feel helpless, forgotten, and lost....)
He has made me dwell in dark places, like those who have long been dead. (My mind and emotions take me to the pits of despair....)
4 Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me;
My heart is appalled within me. (I am weak and I know it and I feel it and I hate myself for being weak.  I hate that this flesh gets the best of me more times than I like....What to do Lord???)

5 I remember the days of old; (Remember everything you've just come through.  Remember the Big God who parted the Red Sea.  Remember every small blessing along the way.  Remember....)
I meditate on all Your doings; (Keep His word before you.  Put these verses on a card, be aware of these truths, think about them every moment you feel the enemy creeping....)
I muse on the work of Your hands. (Let your mind mull over the meanings of Scripture, the truths in this passage and others.  Be amazed by the work of the Lord in everything around you.  Everything....)
6 I stretch out my hands to You;
My soul longs for You, as a parched land. (Trust fall into God's arms once again.  He is the deepest desire of your heart....)

7 Answer me quickly, O Lord, my spirit fails;
Do not hide Your face from me, (Lord!  I know You hear me.  Show your grace, your favor upon me in this hard moment....)
Or I will become like those who go down to the pit. (Or this will happen....)
8 Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning; (I'm here Lord, bright and early...)
For I trust in You; (I do.  I really do....)
Teach me the way in which I should walk; (You show me what my day should hold.  I will be open and available and will just keep doing the next thing until You change my course...)
For to You I lift up my soul. (I am Yours alone, O Lord.  All of me, all in....)
9 Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies; (Crush these thoughts and emotions.  Bring them under the power of Your will, Your truth, Lord....)
I take refuge in You. (You are my safe place....)

10 Teach me to do Your will,
For You are my God; (Amen!...)
Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground. (Level out my emotions.  Stop the roller coaster that leaves me anxious and edgy and unsure....)
11 For the sake of Your name, O Lord, revive me. (Give me new fervor for Your glory alone...)
In Your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble. 
12 And in Your lovingkindness, cut off my enemies
And destroy all those who afflict my soul, (Be the downfall of all those thoughts that plague me, so I can fully live to glorify you in all my thoughts and actions.)
For I am Your servant. (True and Amen.)

And the Stillness has been filled.  In a brief 20-30 minutes of time, God filled the Stillness with all that He planned for it to be filled with--simply Himself. (Acts 17:28)

And I no longer felt helpless, forgotten, lost or without purpose.  I felt full of His presence.  I felt Joy. And so that is exactly how God filled my Stillness with Joy instead of how I could have filled it with Emptiness.  How my day with no agenda became filled with a grateful fervor to do laundry, pay bills, cook, clean, and love on my kids.  How I ended up having time to spend 30 minutes on a phone call with a credit card telemarketer, relaying the story of our recent transition, and open and available to give God all the glory for my attitude and perspective.  How that lady expressed a longing for more of that in her life, and how I was able to tell her it's all available by having a relationship with Jesus.

A stranger got to experience my Jesus through me today because I let Him fill my Stillness instead of trying to fill it myself.

And isn't that really why we are here on earth?  Isn't that exactly what God calls us to do?  To be His ambassadors? (2 Corinthians 5:20) To be the ones that tell the stories of His love, His faithfulness, His goodness, His glory? (Psalm 145:10-13) How can I be open and available to do this when I'm too busy filling my own Stillness of soul with Busyness of day?

And folks it's really not that my day changed all that much.  I still would have had to do laundry, pay bills, cook, clean and love on my kids.  But I would have accomplished all those things just to check them off my list, to make myself feel full of purpose instead of doing them already knowing I am full of purpose. Already being full of purpose before my day ever really began.

Every day, every moment, before the onslaught of each of our enemy's attacks, we have a choice to make.  Will you fill your Stillness with the Emptiness of your own fleshly desires?  Or will you fill your Stillness with the fullness of Jesus Christ who is the deepest desire of every living soul? (Psalm 37:4)

The choice is yours. Choose wisely.  I choose Jesus.  I choose Joy! (Psalm 16:11)