Refresh Me

The last two days have been really hard for me-- hitting a wall of depression that is a mix of crazy grief missing the DR and all it held for me, feeling out of place where I am, and a general malaise of the emptiness that comes from not knowing where you're headed.  Everyone keeps telling me to 'rest', but to rest the soul is much more challenging than resting the body.

After having breakfast with a loving friend this morning, I was invited by some other friends to go on a ride out to See Canyon to go buy apples.  Hmm, go on a long drive through beautiful country, letting the ocean breeze whip through my hair as I breathe deeply the spicy scents of scrub oak, eucalyptus and fresh orchard apples, or sit at home and mope.  I went for the windy road adventure.  As I sat in the back seat and let the conversations of others mill around my head, I silently put my mind and soul on cruise control.  Meanwhile, my spirit prayed.  God, I love you and I just want to feel you close.  God, I'm scared and I need you.  God, I miss my friends.  God, thank you for making me the apple of your eye and for caring about me even like this.  God, thank you for all this beauty.  God...

After a few hours I felt a bit of the heaviness lift.  My migraine went away.  Instead of taking a nap, I am blogging.

Today my soul, echoing the Shulamite, cried out to God, "Refresh me with apples, for I am lovesick!"

He answered me.

I am my Beloved's and He is Mine

The hand-woven hammock chair beckons me to come sit in it this morning.  "Amy, the sun is shining!  Come, let me rock you and hold you while you dream and feel the warmth on your face and listen to the wings of birds!"

How can I resist?

It has been days since I arrived back in Cambria, the little town that helped raise me, and these few moments in the swinging sunshine are the first in which I feel rest.

I have been going going going for a really long time.  Going for God, going for others; going because of good things and should things, could things and would things and I'm so thinged out that my mind has become like the web of the chair beneath me.  Today, I start unhooking the corners of that web so that I can see the landscape behind it more clearly.

This corner represents serving God out of fear. Unhook.

This corner formed when I adhered to the idea that to die for others meant forsaking my soul. Detach.

This one over here is just physical stress. Rip.

Down here are the hidden agendas that drive my will. Major undo.

Upper left is uncried tears, unanswered prayers, earth-shattering disappointments, disillusionments, anger.  Gently lift off and offer to the Wind.

The process of undoing and relearning who I am-- why I do things, what it is that motivates me--will be lifelong.  I know this.  I understand it.  But today...today I am committed to it because the process is not separate from me.  The process IS me; and it is God, and it is He and I together in the deepest, most honest, most vulnerable places that exist.  He is still hovering over the face of the deep.  He is still crying out, "Let there be light!!"  He is still forming boundaries around me, proclaiming what is good about me and resting in what He has made.  I want to rest in that goodness, too.

I climb up in His hammock, let the Son shine down on me.  I enjoy His creation and I breathe in and out.  I allow the Master Craftsman to put His hands all over me and laugh along with His joy in forming me.  I give thanks for what was and I let it all go, knowing that when I am still, I will know He is God.  I will know that He will be exalted among the nations, He will be known in all the earth.  And I can just be   His    Beloved.