There's a bit of a theme going on in my life these days. It reflects an image of deep sensitivity, dry branches and a dash of helplessness.
Feeling helpless is weird. Feeling helpless over things that you know you're capable of overcoming is even weirder. And by weirder I mean a strange mix of embarassing/pathetic. :)
It's Holy Week and if I'm being brutally honest I've felt like anything but "Holy" this week. I can't remember the last time I've gone through a season that made me feel like I can't catch up with my life! The cycle of stress and shame is basically like DROWNING but walking daily in it.
Ann Voskamp, the beautiful gem that she is, has been speaking to that part of my heart recently in her posts and it's been so so, painful and so, so good... "On the weeks you've felt messy and behind and burdened...."
... yep!
Hello Holy Week!
A Holy Week where you are stuttering 'HOLY CRAP' almost every day and feel like your treading to the point of exhaustion just to keep your head above water. And because you're trying to learn to be introspective about your OWN mind, you realize that fact that you're TREADING during HOLY WEEK and the shame just comes.
So suddenly you're a treading, stress, exhausted, ashamed woman who feels like a hopeless, hypocritical failure!
It's ridiculous.
A Holy Week where you feel anything but "whole" and realize you need to be saved, if anything, from yourself.
To be in a season where it's "hit & miss" daily - where you have to FIGHT to see joy and sometimes you decide the joy isn't even worth the effort...... you choose instead to live in a numbness. And suddenly your living becomes existing and existing becomes complacency and complacency becomes stoicism and you start highlighting the negatives instead of choosing the positives and it's just that.
I've felt helpless in this place. I've felt slightly hopeless in this season.
I've found myself randomly uttering "God, save me from ____!!!" at the most random times of the day.
Sometimes that's the extent of my prayer life for that day... the uttering of "God, please God, change my heart! Change my perspective! I'm begging you, change the way I SEE things! SAVE ME from my BRAIN!!!"
A prayer is a prayer and God is God and maybe that's the best place to be?
The place of KNOWING you're fallen and KNOWING you need to be changed, renewed and transformed?
The prime place.
Maybe encountering and acknowledging your ugly should be a daily thing, not a one time achievement -- forever fixed? But the "forever" is found in the "daily" workings? I don't know.
The reality is that repentance is powerful.
The TRUTH that TRUMPS is that I'm never, ever hopeless.
The current REALITY is that yes, it's Holy Week.
It's the brutal week leading up to Christ's bloody, gory, sickening, rated R death on the Cross.
And it's this very week that, if EVER, I should be slowly but surely realizing my desperate need for someone to SAVE-CHANGE-HEAL-RESTORE-ACCOMPANY-LOVE me. To be fully seen, hopelessly loved, and desired.
To be ruled by PEACE, not ruled by stress.
To exist in a place where you aren't TREADING every day... you're TRUSTING every day.
What if?
I was driving into work today.
The new Matt Redman song came on KLOVE and it just HIT my heart. And my tear ducts.
If what good ol' Matty is singing is true.... and I believe that every. single. word of it is true... then that's the best news we can and ever WILL have.
The lyric that got me the most is.... "there in the very breathe we breathe..."
The realization that EVERY. BREATH. is GRACE. Let it sink in.
His grace FINDS US!
His grace is RELENTLESS!
His grace PURSUES!
His grace is PEACE!
His grace CHANGES UGLY!
His grace GIVES HOPE!
His grace COVERS SHAME!
His grace GENTLY HUMBLES!
When you GET the fact that every single aspect of your life... down to the very breath you breathe... is pure GRACE.... it's impossible to be proud, ya?
So the season is here.
A season of struggle.
A season of stress.
A season of hopelessness.
A season of being desperate for something different.
A season of being brittle and dry.
It's there.
But as the lovely Ann once again points out...
"The days that are dry and brittle, ready to snap — these days are perfect kindling for a burning bush."
Bahhh. How beautiful is that?
That brings so many tears to my eyes.
And in case you missed it...
"My heart the altar... thy Love the Flame."
My heart is dry and stressed and struggling and treading water and this is where I am.
I sometimes feel like I have NOTHING good to bring to Him, NOTHING to offer because all I see is the cycle of shame, regret, stress and pure ugly.
And the thing is that the perfectly dry things in my heart, happen to be perfectly PRIME and READY to SPARK...
The DRY bones, the UGLY things that I try to keep from Him, are the VERY things that will catch fire on the altar with FORCE!
And as His grace pursues, in EVERY breathe...
His love covers my sin..... and I'm here.... dry... but kindled.
It's there in a newborn cry
There in the light of every sunrise
There in the shadows of this life
Your great grace
It's there on the mountain top
There in the everyday and the mundane
There in the sorrow and the dancing
Your great grace
Oh, such grace
From the creation to the cross
There from the cross into eternity
Your grace finds me
Yes, Your grace finds me
It's there on the wedding day
There in the weeping by the gravesite
There in the very breath we breathe
Your great grace
It's the same for the rich and poor
The same for the saint and for the sinner
Enough for this whole wide world
Your great grace
Oh, such grace
From the creation to the CROSS.....
Through the ugly, through the shame and the striving and the treading and the exhaustion and the pathetic....
through it all....
He makes everything new.
He brings forth life.
He raises the dead.
His grace finds me. :)
Sunday Sunday Sunday.
