A new season
All three kids are at school this morning and I’m not working today. The stars are aligning for the first time in perhaps a year, perhaps more. I look at their desks in different nooks of the house, sitting still and vacant, and I feel both wistful and relieved.
With a rare morning of quiet, I puttered about this house this morning, cleaning a little, doing assorted tasks, reading a bit, never settling down. The same restlessness I’ve often felt in my life, driven by a niggling goad – “don’t waste your time.” Don’t waste your time. You only have this fragment or that – while a child’s napping, in between errands or meetings, this half-hour, those 20 minutes. Don’t waste your time. And I find myself zipping from this to that, never settling into anything out of fear that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do.
I open up my notes, and see the 3 or 4 dozen blog entries that I’d started over the years and were at different stages of being “completed.” And I felt the need to rush through and write something. As soon as I sit down, a neighbor starts a sawing project, and my mind is yanked away from the zone, and I feel a small fear in my chest.
What is this fear?
A few days ago, I thought about the fact that I had turned 36 a few months ago, and how, for the last 6,7,8, maybe even more years, I’ve told myself that I would sit down and write. Between interruptions and detours, and priorities I’ve taken up by choice, I haven’t written much.
Soon, soon, I’ve told myself over the years. When this or that stops, when this or that changes. Soon. A month passes by, a year passes by, then two, then five.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a few openings to write, and I found myself without any motivation to do so. I felt… tired. I felt tired about everything. Tired about relationships, tired about ministry, definitely tired about work. On a walk, I told Ryan that I couldn’t muster up the energy like I used to to plan fun things for the kids. Maybe this is what happens – you do it one round, and then a second, a third, and then you run out of gusto. Is this it? Have I used up my store of energy, creativity, love, and vision? A thought settled into my consciousness – I had one shot, and I wasted it.
Today, I scroll through the notes all the way back from 2018, and I see the pattern over the years of questions and anguish: Why this season of operating out of weakness? Why the unrelenting chaos – the physical, relational, and temporal overload and overwhelm? Why this waste of gifts, of time, of emotional energy? Why the strife and lingering wounds in relationships? The fruitlessness of ministry?
What was it all for? What is there to show for all the years of my young adulthood?
“Ah,” comes His loving voice.
That you might know Me.
This was the fire of the last ten years – years that did not go according to my plans or expectations. A fire burning away the flotsam, showing me that I had pursued the Lord for what He gives, for a sense of achievement, of being righteous, of being good. Now – will I love Him for who He is and not what He gives?
That you might know Me.
Let my plans be swept aside, and let my preferences go unmet. Let my energy be drained to the dregs. Let my prime be past. Let my contributions be unnoticed and my daily tasks produce no fruit. So you can search my heart and know me, and show me what you see, and who you are.
This restlessness, this need to do a lot, to experience a lot, to suck the marrow out of life , to squeeze in more, more, more – heal me of it, Abba. Heal me of it.
I cannot heal myself. My way is frenzy, my way is scarcity, my way is fear. Your way is unhurried, your way is abundance, your way is contentment.
Right here, right now, not some day soon. Whatever this season looks like – with kids, with ministry, writing or not writing.
Here are my five loaves and two fish. My are my two little copper coins. Pour the water over the altar. Cut the by half, and send home another nine-tenths. I believe, help my unbelief. Have all the glory.
Yes, yes to both of Bach’s inscriptions. “J.J.” at the beginning. “S.D.G.” at the end. Jesu Juva. Soli Deo Gloria. Jesus help me. To God alone the glory.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” – John 12:24