From January 23, 2011 -- I am leaving it in present tense because that's how I pounded it out in the restaurant. And I'll just keep adding to finally post it tonight. So there.
Here's a first: Jesus wants to go to breakfast and I don't want to.
He wants to talk and I don't want to hear it.
It's the kind of thin-lipped, brow-scrunched, cheek-chewed morning that casts my memory back to the kicking and screaming I first did when He called me to start this blog. "You must be kidding: Because God said to put it out there ..." is not just a sassy little title I made up. I was mad, struggling with things that were too big for me, annoyed that my boat was rocking, and wanting to keep it bloody quiet, thank you very much. I'd say that I am ticked off all over again just thinking about it, but I think that's today's ticked-offedness roiling, not juice from five years ago.
It's been many, many weeks now that I have recognized an increasing tendency to let the noise and busyness of life be okay with me alongside a decreasing desire to hear deep things. I want to be efficiently surface shallow that I get lots of things done. I am more and more drawn to what my pal Amber calls "the siren call of suburbia". I want peace and quiet and simplicity and to do what I want when I want. In a cute little house.
It's been a stretching, tiring few years, and I think God has given me some sweet respite in there, where he said, "It's okay. Just be quiet and rest." And there were things I couldn't sort in my brain and it felt good to ignore them to some degree and say, "Too hard. Don't need to know. Yours, God, not mine."
And I don't think there's anything theologically wrong with that. In fact, it's probably the way to live with him if I could find the groove to stay in it. But I do think that I have let the brain vacation dally on more than was intended and I have become too content with making me cozy and allowed that in turn to blossom into an impatience to wait on God long enough to hear his voice instead of just the "not so bad" ideas and thoughts that well up from my lump of fatty brain mass.
An increased hunger for him combined with decreased patience on my part and an inability, and, frankly, a lack of desire, to quiet my soul and do the hard surrender that listening requires has left me here ...
desperately feeling the void in my soul and furious as heck that he wants to talk to me about it and maybe call me to things I don't want to hear about.
Mix that in with a current season of sensing consistent, loud condemnation in my heart and soul over just about everything connected with my work and ministry, which I know is not from him but is freaking loud right now, and you have a pretty ugly Sluss cocktail.
Which is why I am pondering locking this blog-thing down to invited readers only if I am supposed to get really honest out here. But then there's this out-loud, slightly shouting tussle I get into with God about why he says he wants me writing and putting all my blah-blah out there anyway. I am not pickin' up what he's puttin' down at the moment, if ya catch my drift.
All that to say, I was completely willing to turn down bacon in order to avoid breakfast with him. But go I did. We'll see what French toast and the Holy Spirit have to say about things in the long run.
Here's a first: Jesus wants to go to breakfast and I don't want to.
He wants to talk and I don't want to hear it.
It's the kind of thin-lipped, brow-scrunched, cheek-chewed morning that casts my memory back to the kicking and screaming I first did when He called me to start this blog. "You must be kidding: Because God said to put it out there ..." is not just a sassy little title I made up. I was mad, struggling with things that were too big for me, annoyed that my boat was rocking, and wanting to keep it bloody quiet, thank you very much. I'd say that I am ticked off all over again just thinking about it, but I think that's today's ticked-offedness roiling, not juice from five years ago.
It's been many, many weeks now that I have recognized an increasing tendency to let the noise and busyness of life be okay with me alongside a decreasing desire to hear deep things. I want to be efficiently surface shallow that I get lots of things done. I am more and more drawn to what my pal Amber calls "the siren call of suburbia". I want peace and quiet and simplicity and to do what I want when I want. In a cute little house.
It's been a stretching, tiring few years, and I think God has given me some sweet respite in there, where he said, "It's okay. Just be quiet and rest." And there were things I couldn't sort in my brain and it felt good to ignore them to some degree and say, "Too hard. Don't need to know. Yours, God, not mine."
And I don't think there's anything theologically wrong with that. In fact, it's probably the way to live with him if I could find the groove to stay in it. But I do think that I have let the brain vacation dally on more than was intended and I have become too content with making me cozy and allowed that in turn to blossom into an impatience to wait on God long enough to hear his voice instead of just the "not so bad" ideas and thoughts that well up from my lump of fatty brain mass.
An increased hunger for him combined with decreased patience on my part and an inability, and, frankly, a lack of desire, to quiet my soul and do the hard surrender that listening requires has left me here ...
desperately feeling the void in my soul and furious as heck that he wants to talk to me about it and maybe call me to things I don't want to hear about.
Mix that in with a current season of sensing consistent, loud condemnation in my heart and soul over just about everything connected with my work and ministry, which I know is not from him but is freaking loud right now, and you have a pretty ugly Sluss cocktail.
Which is why I am pondering locking this blog-thing down to invited readers only if I am supposed to get really honest out here. But then there's this out-loud, slightly shouting tussle I get into with God about why he says he wants me writing and putting all my blah-blah out there anyway. I am not pickin' up what he's puttin' down at the moment, if ya catch my drift.
All that to say, I was completely willing to turn down bacon in order to avoid breakfast with him. But go I did. We'll see what French toast and the Holy Spirit have to say about things in the long run.
