It was the thinking, the ideas needing to be expressed – from his eyes, to his mouth to his fingertips to his feet – and not knowing how to still it all.
“Your fingers need to go to sleep, too,” I’d say, sitting with him, – and he’d still his fingers. One by one, he’d try to still thoughts and expression – kind of like turning the house lights off one-by-one. He wasn’t even 5 years old.
Learning how to still it all isn’t just a 5-year-old thing .
I know how he feels. Except it’s not always a stilling for sleepy-time things – a stilling of fingers and toes.
My self-perception is affected by thoughts that need stilling. To-do list thoughts, How-to, How-to-achieve-things-like-dreams thoughts, creeping-in-sly-fearful thoughts, less-than-my-better-self thoughts.
When I think of God, His plans for my life – I think of action, doing, achieving, always feeling behind the plan instead of ahead of the plan – never just where I need to be in the unfolding of the plan.
Motion – never stopping, never stilling – for fear I’ll end up to far behind to catch up.
All types of motion are required for real, living relationship with God.
Sometimes with God, I am to just stand, in a withstand way.
Sometimes, He carries me.
Sometimes, I am to read love letters He left outside my door, in a nature walk, in the journey to a waterfall, in a thunder storm.
Sometimes, we walk, heads bent together, arms linked
Other times, it has been like sitting on a porch swing, quiet, no talking, nothing happening but just being together – being still together.
That was this week.
Being still was a tough lesson for me last week. For a time, it left me confused, empty, insecure, sadly forlorn.
Instead of me soothing my children to still themselves, He kept admonishing me to still myself.
He sat with me on a porch, in the mountains, during a storm that blew dust particles from trees into my face before spraying me with a misty coolness.
I wanted to read a love letter, to find a message from Him, but He just said, “Be still. Just be with me. You can read the letter later. It will keep.”
Sitting in a chair, casting and reeling because I couldn’t do much else, in a little pond in a little cabin where cleaning and cooking were off-limits for my surgery recovery, I tried to build a post out of it all.
“Be still. Just be with me.Everything else will keep,“ He said.
I couldn’t swim in the pond, couldn’t go rowing in the boat because of my stitches, so I watched my boys, took pictures and sat on the sidelines. I kept trying to find meaning for a message
But He just said, “Be still. Just be with Me. Everything else will keep.”
Sometimes I need to live out the “being” – let everything unfold – let it swirl down inside and “be” a part of it, even if it is just sitting.
Sometimes just to be with Him, recognize that He is sitting with me, beside me – that He wants to have relationship like that – like on a porch swing late in the afternoon when no words are needed, and we just watch together, just be still together.
I don’t think He created Adam and Eve for Big thoughts, Big tasks, Big achievements. Sometimes He calls us to those – the Father, also wants to walk with us in the cool of the day and spend time with us (Genesis 3:8).
“Be Still,” He says – fingers, toes, and, yes, my mind.
“And Know that I am God”(Psalm 46:10)
He doesn’t want us to just know He is God – He wants us to know Him – even in the stillness of just being.
When He wants us to be still, everything else will keep.
Still joining Ann Voskap at A Holy Experience learning how to see the gifts God leaves me daily – it has been like a training camp this counting to 1,000 gifts – filled with blessing!
Originally posted on Blue Cotton Memory.