be still
/
When I hear someone describe me as a quiet person (which is often), I just want to tell them - you don't know what it's like inside my head.
It's loud sometimes, loud like thunderclaps and tornado winds. It sucks the wind out of me like a punch in the guts and it paralyzes my fingertips and my soul. Ironically, at times like these, I naturally look for an external source of noise in hopes of deafening myself to my internal thoughts. My car radio, my Netflix account, and even the workouts that make my muscles scream become my friends while I shut the rest of the world out.
And the two things that could help me breathe again - my writing, and my time at the feet of Jesus - become nearly impossible to accomplish, because both of them demand silence, and both of them require that I honestly confront the storm in my head.
So when it gets quiet here on the blog, know that it is chaos in my mind: that I am fighting the natural urge to blanket myself in noise so I don't have to deal with the root problem. That I am trying not to be afraid of the quiet, or the long and silent wait for the voice of God to break through.
Because I have learned that it is in stillness - quietness not just of environment, but of heart - that the presence of the Lord often comes.
Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!
Psalm 46:10
Be still - in Hebrew, harpu: to relax, to go limp, to stop struggling; to let go, collapse, fall, or release.
This is the state of stillness in which I can meet God - the kind that comes from a perfect rest in the who He is and what He has planned.
He IS God.
He WILL be exalted.
The rest of the clamor - the fretting about finding my place in ministry, the wondering if I'm wasting my spiritual gifts, the frustration of feeling useless, the loneliness and the fear of living alone inside my head - it is all just noise, distraction. In the end, only His glory matters, and it WILL be achieved.
So it is time to open my hands, surrender my anxieties, and rest in Who He is.
