Putting it out there

I have been hounded by a few to start a blog. I am not starting a blog--I already started this back in September 2004 ("Check the records...I did stuff!"). And Christina was the impetus then. And she's still worth it.

But she's not why I am finally back here. Even Beth's encouraging, sweet comment isn't it, though I salute her with haiku. I'm in here tonight because God told me twice today that I need to do this. And then had someone else tell me. I think I better not ignore it.

I want to record that today was a turning point in some way, I believe. The short of it is that I was prayed for today by two people in the most intercessory, direct, and commanding way I may ever have been prayed for. It was amazing. It was holy. And it was a moment I need to remember.

These are two people who will be out of my immediate life quite soon as a result of the MAF relocation. One will move to Idaho in a year, but the other is leaving MAF. We, along with one other person, have shared a unique season of meeting and praying together. Today was the most powerful prayer time we have experienced together to date, and it was for me. I don't really know what to say about that, except, "Thank you, Jesus."

I feel selfish even typing, "it was for me." But that's kinda what the crux of the prayer was, and the marrow of some things the Holy Spirit spoke even as my friends prayed. I live in fear of being selfish and inconveniencing people. As Donald Miller says in Blue Like Jazz, "I love to give charity, but I don't want to be charity." This has now had a long time to seep into my relationship with God. So, while I wither away because I have come to relate to Him on almost a solely intellectual level, and I know I need more of Him, I only ask timidly and half-heartedly, living in the shallow, dried-up mud hole John Eldredge describes.

I am tired of being there, and if I stay much more, I will not make it. I will not make it in this ministry work. I will not make it to being the kind of daughter, sister and friend I want to be. And I will wind up skating into Heaven by the wrinkled, shriveled skin of my teeth.

And what would have prevented me sharing this much sooner? A combination of: threatened, I told you so's; not wanting to be pelted with platitudes from well-meaning people; and the simple fact that, even though I would joke along these lines once in a while, I didnt really realize what the problem was. God has spent the last six weeks or so, starting just before the Lebanon and Jordan trip, bringing the hole in my heart to the forefront, holding it up before the light, and gently turning it while He held my face still enough to look at it, despite my every effort to look somewhere else. Hallelujah.

What started the prayer time today? Me sharing that when I picture myself before the Lord, I never imagine Him smiling. He pats me on the head and says, "You're trying hard. Keep it up." He has patient love in seeing me, but no expression of joy.

What started my first trip to a Christian counselor last Wednesday? An incident with the vacuum cleaner the Saturday morning previous. Truly.

And do I know better about all these things? That this vision of Christ not embracing with me exuberance is not true? That my emotions are valuable and important in my relationship with the Lord and in engaging with Him, as well as my intellect, and I should not ignore them or refuse to feel them? That he created me with weaknesses and limitations so that He can be glorified, because "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."?

Of course I know it. That's the problem. It's in my head. I was carried to the throne today by friends who knew these things needed to be moved to my heart. I was the paralyzed man lowered through the roof on the mat by his friends. And praise the Lord for it...I couldn't get there on my own.

I didn't know it until today.