I’m not sure if it’s due to being unwell or if it’s the effect of yesterday’s returning – but I’m not easily provoked today. An inner quietness graces my hours. I’m fretting far less. Today, it matters more to me that I give of myself, than seeking to be filled.
Today too, I’m not catching myself scanning the skies, the air, the winds, for a sign of something to come. Today, when I think of what lies ahead, I’m content to let things work out their own course. No meddling in God’s affairs for me today. A friend wrote about the terrible floods in Nebraska, wondering if the floods were connected to a sign we had both received some years back – a sign of water, water in the month of March. I remembered that sign but as I sought to recall it more clearly, I sensed a veil gently slip over my mind and heart.
And I released my hold over the seeking.
God had promised me that spring would come to me, that winter would not stretch its frigid, barren arms across my life forever. That promise evoked in me a deep yearning for spring, each and every day since I heard Him last year.
Yet, while I had waited for spring to emerge triumphant from cold hollows of snow and ice, after yesterday, I’m sensing a gentle pressure to let that be too. Because I have no way of knowing if spring for me would come this year or later. To expect it at a specific time – and to not have that wish bloom in joy – would mean yet another wounding for me. It is wiser to keep the hope of spring – but without desecrating it with a date.
Has hope dried up in me? I hold my heart up to scrutiny. If it has, I would have known it by the dirge a broken spirit sings in mourning for lost hope. No, this is not loss of hope, not when it’s accompanied by this strange, mellow softness of heart.
The hours at work bring me an understanding: this is what it feels like when a long time occupant of a room has left to seek life elsewhere. The occupant who has ruled me strong for long, by whom I’ve defined so much of my life. By returning to Jesus the lines I’ve written and maps I’ve plotted to chart my course, I’ve been emptied of myself.
I’ve felt emptiness before, in the Lent of old years gone by, hence, I would recognize the clean pain that comes from giving up everything of value to my heart.
This is different now. What I’ve held on to is gone. But there is no pain, no anguished calling back of what was returned to Jesus.
It’s as if I’ve… moved on.
writingonmyheart 