This has been a long week. There has not been one day this week that has not held some huge change or horrific news for me. I won't go into details. I will tell you that I went to church this morning and found that it had all caught up with me.
I belong to the Friends church. I'm a Quaker, and although my church is not unprogramed (meaning the kind that sit in silent worship nearly always) we always have 15-20 minutes of silent worship during the service. Boy, did I have a shocker today. It took me forever to still my thoughts, and I realized that I had done everything I could all week during all of my turmoil to never have silence. I had the t.v. on, the audible books, the kids, the radio in the car, a DVD during the laundry (anyone get the picture yet?)
I had done my praying in the morning, as I always do, but this week, in a hurry, getting ready for work, no morning scriptures, no silence.
So many huge blessings, light heart, and through all of it I hid behind noise. I did give thanks, cursory thanks.
"Yep God, ah thanks for that.. big stuff, been praying for it for years, don't want to emotionally deal with it right now though... let's do lunch. air kiss. amen"
Huge sadness's, heavy heart (I'll miss you Sky, Nancy's Heather, my heart aches for you and I am also so proud of you) and again through it all I hid behind the noise. I did not ask for help, I did not pray for peace, or acceptance.
The Quaker belief is simple, you cannot hear God (not literally folks) if you are cluttered up with sound. I need to stop, and take the time to truly meditate.
This is easier said than done, at this moment I have a 12 year old actively trying to not take a bath (he's in there, with soap, just not wanting to use it.) and it's 9:22 pm on a school night. Dinner dishes just got done, and the coffee is ready to brew in the morning. I have to be up at 4:15 am to be at work on time. You get the picture.
I write this tonight, because if I went to bed before I did, it would play in my mind again and again like a tape recorder. Maybe I can feel the stillness tonight because I have faced that I have been running away all week.
Stillness, silence is a habit, like eating right, exercising, not beating your children when they think dirt is an inalienable right. It is really easy to lose these good habits with just a little bit of laziness. McDonald's is faster, I don't have time to exercise (can't play basketball now anyway) and frankly a fatal beating sounds effective right now.
I think I need to rework the good habits again, at least the silence, and frankly the good eating thing really needs to work itself back into the picture. Just the little time of forced silence in Meeting today really healed me, re-centered me, at least put me back on the path of trying to accept that my ways are not the ways of God, and frankly, his ways are not really my business. I just have to deal with it. In silence.
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You know, sometimes life just gets in the way of the important things. Like your faith walk. The good thing is that He will be with you regardless and He will tell you when you need to begin your walk with Him again. There for a while, I became "too busy" for my talk with the Lord. And things just weren't jelling. Well, I finally realized that my time was being misused and I was off track. I'm back to talking with my Lord and my priorities are working out and my life is working out and life is grand, even if the little things still work my nerves... =-)
He will see you through.
Peace and comfort be with you
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