When the waves knock you down…
I felt like I entered the year of 2021 excited and now I am holding my breath…
So many losses in 2020…and I am not even talking about the virus my friends. and I felt as if the waves of grief and loss kept rolling over me as I fought to ground my feet and stand up to catch my breath.
Then 2021 came…I love the idea of a fresh start, a new year, a new beginning…perhaps it is why Easter is one of my favorite Feast Days.
But here is the thing…
you can’t skip over the ocean to get to the shore
You have to make it through the storm to witness the rainbow
You have to be planted deep in the earth and tended to before you can sprout new life…
And in the waiting…there is HOPE, even when we do not feel it.
I have been fighting with myself the past two months trying to skip over the middle because to be honest, I am TIRED of being IN IT.
And in the midst of it all my anxiety has spiked, my health has struggled, and my autoimmune has roared…
I keep hearing from my doctors I need to lower my stress and take it easy. I need to let go of the things I am clinching onto, I need to relax and take some things off my plate…
And I KNOW they are true…but what do I let go of?
And then today it hit me as I lay in bed unable to move because anxiety was paralyzing me…
The path to healing is Surrender.
Not the pretty scripted word you hang on your wall.
Surrender…like permanent ink tattooed on the walls of my heart.
My word for 2021 that God gave to me is “RENEW”, and with my word each year there is always the mystery of Him revealing to me what it means.
“Lord Send out your Spirit, and Renew the face of the earth…” (Psalm 104)
If I am holding my breath until I turn blue I am depleting myself of the oxygen of his Spirit that leads to the surrender.
TO BREATH in and let RUAH fill my lungs…
When I am anxious I feel as if I cannot breath. I feel trapped. I feel buried without the memory that I am held in this safe space of the Fathers arms.
I feel abandoned and forget I am wrapped tightly in the mantle of my Mother.
I feel invisible and forget I am the woman whom Jesus sees weeping at his feet and has love and compassion over…
and so are you.
As we come to this one year anniversary, when our world felt like it tipped upside down let us stop holding our breath. Let us stop skipping over the water…and learn to swim in the spirit. Let us stop cursing the storm, and see Jesus with us walking on the water calling us out to him. Let us stop feeling we are buried in the darkness of a coffin and see we are planted in fertile soil that is being watered well and cultivated in grace.
On hard days and good days let us make them all Holy with a surrender…
God does not only love us at the finish line…he is loving us now.
He sits with us while we weep
He sings with us while we worship
He holds us while we rest
He heals us even when we can’t see it yet…
So my Friend…if you feel you need to get your footing so that the waves stop crashing over you, might I suggest you join me in the boat of surrender.
Even though it is being knocked around a bit, the Lord is in the boat and he is not sleeping, he is guiding…
or perhaps he is asking us to lay down and rest with him and trust him in the storm as he leads us through and then shows us the rainbow.
