Keeping Afloat Through the Holy Pursuit of Others

It's hard to wash away the residue of busy-ness when I don't get into a moment of real silence.  Thoughts just barge in unwanted like, the list of reports due on Tuesday, or the unfinished timelines for a sales plan. This week, I had to get into that mind-frame of shutting out everything else just so I can calculate the hours of how long a project runs until its finished and how much more do we lack to reach a month's worth of sales.  

Somewhere in between is the effort to fight off having to struggle with decisions that do not make sense and the question of how long till the realization of support be heeded.  It is that effort of balancing not having to retaliate to every person who can't quite grasp your situation that they unreasonably make conclusions of your lack of progress or your lack of compliance so that you can be more Christ-like in your openness to understand them and in a way find a solution that can appease your own misgivings and theirs. 

It is that effort to make your own "way of the cross" an act of surrendering to a higher purpose more worthwhile so that your sanity can be kept intact.  It is this effort that keeps me from being able to fully keep myself whole.  To keep the fragmented circumstances in my life from putting a limp to my walk.  

But it is this effort that also drives me to persevere in wanting to find that center that keeps my seams from tearing apart and that center is God.  

Today I read Ann Voskamp's words and it resonates with me loud and clear,

The Lord Our God is One and in Him all the fragments of our life are woven into one piece.  In Christ, we aren't ever torn.  In Him, all brokenness is made whole, all moments are made holy, all pieces are made one.  There is profound rest in this.

So I find my way into that center.  Cleaning up the clutter of leftover thoughts hanging around in my mind like an endless question.  Like cleaning desk clutter to make space for your journal.  Opening it and leafing through the pages and finding that perfect empty page to write and believe.

I make my way through my thoughts and with another's words and faithfulness, I follow the graceful path led by a witness of grace.  It seems that is all I have time to do on weekends.  Catch up on walking that peaceful way by following another's lead.  Humbly I make my way through and discover that I needed to look through my collection of books and revisit that pace I found over the holidays.  The silent peaceful pace of reading through words that illuminate and liberate.

I make my way into words that lift me up.  The letter of Paul to the Colossians.  He refers to the mystery.  The mystery that we always encounter in moments that do not make sense.  Moments where the toil of everyday work do not seem to lead to the prospering of the work of one's hands.  I find my way into the hope that does not disappoint and let the words take root in my heart and while I bear the tension and the struggle my mind battles with my unbelief, I persevere.  Watching the witnessing of others and encouraging myself to keep on.

I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God.  Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God's great mystery.  All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else.  (Colossians 2:2-3)

The words. They take shape and come alive. And the morning's heaviness, the mist that keeps the destination from view, slowly becomes lifted.

I remember a quiet encounter with a holy  man many months ago.  He had said that my restlessness is a result of my inability to accept and embrace that life is a mystery and how we live our lives should be a peaceful response to this mystery.  I ponder upon his words again today and see how I can easily fall short of my understanding of God.

How I easily fumble for control when anxiety takes over.  How I leave the peacefulness and seek for the answers myself.  It is my immediate impulse.  It is the impulse flawed by the thought that I can understand everything by myself.

This morning, I find myself lifted up by words of others who have passed this same journey.  It becomes an inspiration.  It becomes my consolation.  And I realize, that I have not been walking this path by myself.  I find great rest in that.