climbing. waiting.

I woke up yesterday and took a long run around Burke Lake.  The sun was warm and the breeze was bare.  But I felt fine.  I felt okay and there was a glimpse of happiness knowing that I was back to doing something for me though hard, right.  It could have been anything, but it was the fact that I choose to go back to watching sunrises, I chose to go back to running.  And now, I’m choosing to help myself in the way God wants me to help myself.  Alone. but no, not really alone.  with Him.  and with many of you being used by Him to hold me up.

—

I sat in the bathtub, half-dressed.  “Can you get me a towel please?”  I don’t remember how I got into bed.  I don’t remember how I got dressed.  Nor how he knew to come over, but I do remember saying this much, “I don’t want my kids to see me like this…check my computer…”  Too late, 214 people have now seen me like “this.”  I feel famous, definitely humbled, but more, I feel loved and SO SUPPORTED.  So thankful for an outpouring of phone calls, texts, emails, Facebook messages, spontaneous couch talks and even long distance road trips.  The truth is, maybe I do want for my kids to see me like this (to an extent).  Because faith is not a hamster wheel.  Thank you Rachel Harrington. “What’s a journey if there aren’t challenges?”

So here’s me jumping off the hamster wheel and climbing everest.  Though heavy and grueling, the selfishness has been terminated.  The running away, it’s over.  The distractions, they’re over.  And the month with the most amazing man I’ve ever been with, it’s over. And here I am.  For me.  For God.

I opened my Bible for the first time in 54 days to where His Spirit led.  Here I am.

Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to Himself?

…waiting does not diminish us. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

…Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves…keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

So here I am.  Climbing everest through wordless sighs and aching groans to reach the joy of being alive in Him.  Tuesday started with a visit to my doctor.  Wednesday was a “get out of the house and celebrate a miracle’s life” day.  Thursday was a sunrise day.  But today was a hard day.  Today was a lonely day.  A day when I wanted a snuggle and gelato and the chance to both give and embrace care and intimacy.  It was also a day in which I saw minor accomplishments.  Come Monday, I may have a job–a steady income type of job.  WITH KIDS!  And come March 30, I may be shooting a wedding!  Rejoice with me friends.  Goodness is coming.  It’s far.  And I’m not proud of myself yet.  Give me five more years when this has blown over and I look at 25 as a blessing and not a curse.

I’m climbing into the open because I know that the waiting will not diminish me.  I’m waiting with anticipation for the future, for His goodness to shine.  I’m still waiting…and still waiting.

and as I wait, I’ll rise up like the eagles.  And I will soar with You as the Spirit leads me on, by the Power of Your Love.