Monday, October 26, 2009

I Knew a Man Who was 99 Years Old...


I just got off the phone with my dad. And we were talking about the waiting game that God seems to be very instrumental in using in my life. He told me about his old Bible study leader who at age 99, once said, "I have walked with God for my entire life, and if there is one qualm I have with Him, its that he is much too slow."

I know God operates outside of time, but I am stuck inside the clock. However, I found this ancient hymn to be very uplifting.

I am becoming a master in waiting, and I think that God may have many more classes in store for me....

Not so in haste, my heart!
Have faith in God, and wait;
Although he linger long,
He never comes too late.

He never comes too late;
He knoweth what is best;
Vex thyself in vain;
Until He cometh rest.

Until He cometh rest,
Nor grudge the hours that roll;
The feet that wait for God
Are soonest at the goal.

Are soonest at the goal
That is not gained with speed;
Then hold thee still, my heart,
For I shall wait His Lead!

Friday, October 23, 2009

Can't Stop This Feeling


Its been a long time since I wrote.

Its been a long time since I have thought about my thoughts.

Thinking gets me into trouble. I think thinking gets a lot of us into trouble. We begin to wonder why we are living our lives a certain way, and we begin to devise plans on how to alter our state.

An altered state is temporary, whether that's one glass of wine too many or a cross-country move. The issue is the the same. The problem is the starving heart.

That type of soul deprivation leads to a myriad of other devastation's. Losing hope. Making wrong turns. Looking in windows that don't belong to you. Sleep-walking through life.

Although, I do love my sleep.

I hate mornings. I hate getting up. Especially on rainy, moody mornings that envelop me like a rain cloud. And yet, I pull myself out of bed, stumble to the kitchen, down a cup of coffee, and proceed through the day in a haze of "have-to".

I have to be accountable. I have to help pay the bills. I have to make calls. I have to send emails. I have to work out. I have to lose weight. I have to make dinner. I have to stop telling myself I have to lose weight. I have to stop looking for other modes of employment that will be just as meaningless 6 months down the road. I have to stop coveting peoples lives and careers and art and freedom.

I have to create my own!

I am caught in the storm. The cyclone of conundrum in which where, how, and when wreck havoc on the edges of my threadbare dreams with the force of a defibrillator.

I mostly get bogged down in the middle earth of it all- the when.

I know I am not the only person who longs to get outside on nice days, who wants to see what they are really made of when all they are left to their own devices. Their own imaginations, their own God-given talents. To see what tools they really have when they get the chance to carve their own way out of that mountain in front of them.

And I do believe that God gives out talents. I believe that he created each of us to fulfill a spot.

But as I get older, that spot becomes more and more of a corner. More and more of a dead end. More and more of the one place in the world where I don't want to be...

And then that's when I realize (daily, mind you) this isn't the spot that I am supposed to be filling. I am in a man-made spot. I have made this spot. I have settled for this row of fluorescent lights. I have settled for an ashen version of the multicolored plan.

The good news is that there is a new year coming.

The good news is that God is working, ever so slowly on my behalf.

The good news is that change, whether forced, coerced, divine, or instant, is going to be mine in a matter of time.

And when that happens, this rut, this place, this corner, this learning experience, this painful pause, this momentary re-evaluation of what matters - it will be more than a spot, it will be the place where God wants me.

And maybe I will finally be able to hear His voice, in the hush of what has always been such...His plan.