the quieting
As is often the case, I have struggled to find the place to start. It feels both that there is too much and not enough to offer…. but I will simply begin where I find myself today.
It is so very hard to be still.
Even when my body is still, my mind races with all the tasks that need doing, the details that need remembering, and the children who need feeding… which is a fairly constant reality in our house these days.
It’s not that I mind the time to reflect or to pray. My introverted-self quite enjoys the spaces of quiet: slow mornings, with tea in hand, and the crisp air of a new day.
When I remember to receive these small mercies, they are a delight and I feel at home here.
But embracing slowness is not easy. Choosing quiet in a world of noise is actually quite a radical practice. And it certainly won’t come by accident. Stillness requires a choice. A choice to surrender our schedules, lists, and goals for the day, even if for a brief period, to rest instead in the presence of the One who loves us because we are, not because we do.
There is a right-sizing that happens in the quieting. A remembering of who we are that is somehow both humbling and empowering at the same time. We remember that we are not God; we do not need to hold the burden of all the hard pieces of our lives and of those we love. We remember that we are not the ones who are holding things together for our families, our places of work, or for those whose stories we are alongside. We remember that God is God. And while it seems straight-forward, we often live and operate as if that were not truly the case.
We strive. Oh, we strive. We exhaust ourselves with work, with worry, and with the weight of a world that is heavy with grief and loss. We succumb to burdens that are not ours to hold, and we may find ourselves feeling incapable of handing anything at all because it is just too much.
It is too much.
This humbling is a freedom, a release, rather than a diminishing. We can release the weight into the hands of Jesus, trusting and knowing that he is more than able to hold it all with perfect love.
We can rest when we are reminded of who God is and who we are.
In a beautiful way, the quieting will also lead to empowerment and energy. When we see ourselves right-sized before God’s sovereignty and faithfulness, we can receive his invitation to partner in bringing his purposes to the very places that we just released our hold on. He will hand invitation and responsibility back to us, but with his measured purposes as our guide, instead of the free-for-all chaos of our own ambitions.
In the quiet, this invitation is a quickening. When an expectant mother sits in stillness, she will begin to feel the deep, subtle movements of her unborn child. A fluttering, an awakening, that is the promise of new life being formed. This quickening happens in our souls as we quiet ourselves in God’s presence. This quickening is the promise that Jesus is at work in us, and as we pay attention, his invitation comes for both purposefulness, and the freedom to experience rest, joy, and delight in the days he has given.
The quieting isn’t the end.
It is the beginning of the new.
It is the place we must return to again and again, to remember well what it is to live and move and have our being in
the One who is God.
I have been keenly aware of my own need for this quieting in the past many weeks.
It is one thing to walk the quiet spaces with Jesus when we’re facing our own suffering; it is quite a different kind of heaviness to walk alongside one you love when they are in the middle of ongoing awfulness.
It is too much.
It is too much, and that is okay because Jesus is here.
And nothing is too much for him.
My own heart, soul, and body need the quieting so that I can hold the questions and tensions of real-life suffering with patience and gentleness. So that I can release the weight of hardship and pain into the hands of Jesus and remember again and again there is no striving needed here.
I need the quieting to wrap me in the safety to feel the real emotions that rise when I am powerless to help, and when nothing is going as we want it to. I need the quieting to remind me of God’s closeness and goodness when it appears that prayers have been unanswered.
I need the quieting to give space for the pain to turn my gaze to the One who saves and redeems, who makes beauty from ashes.
In the quieting I find myself right-sized again. Humbled, encouraged, cared for, fully known, and called beloved. In the quieting I feel the quickening of God’s invitation to live today rooted in these known truths.
Lovely ones, Jesus wants to meet you here too.
The quieting isn’t easy. I certainly do not have it down.
But I can confirm that it is a good place to be, and you are invited also.
In the quieting -
Lord, let the heaviness of my heart be an anchor that grounds me in you.
Let my questions, my disappointments, draw me into your arms for answers.
Let my grief be a river that flows to the core of who you are, finding a place to settle at last.
When it feels like forever, like too much, and too long,
Let me know again the breadth and depth and height of your love that holds fast.
With questions, confusion, worry, fear and dread,
Here I am.
In the quieting, I am expectant
Waiting for you
to bring light, to restore hope,
to be enough
to quicken my heart.
amen
