I have been reflecting on a season of my life that was pretty rough. All I could feel was sadness and anger. Circumstances had backed me into a corner and I was unable to move forward in some places of my life. It’s so strange that somehow these things have the power to narrow our focus and gain our attention so strongly that we can’t feel or see anything else.

Do you know the feeling? Have you been there?

Looking back these situations had put me on pause and caused me to ask the question “Why God?” and “What did I do wrong?” All I could hear from my soul within me was “Oh God, how long, O Lord?” My spirit within me was so full of anxiety. I was crying out for resolve, for change, for movement, for salvation. My soul lamenting in anguish “when will this season be over?” If you are anything like me, then when you have gotten to a standstill space like this, you will do one of two things. (or a vortex spin of both.) I would have liked to say that I always land somewhere else but hey, that’s a post for the perfect women and I am not her.

Here’s what I do:

1. I look for any way to control my immediate surroundings to release the pressure like a valve. I do anything will help me tell myself “I See Movement!” I clean like a banshee. I drill sergeant my kids to clean their rooms, the bathroom, and the kitchen. My dear husband gets the feeling that I am not happy and I don’t even think about trying to alleviate the pressure for him. I am not thinking of him. I am fixated on making me feel better at the expense of others. I just set out to FIX something, anything to feel better! or….
2. I fall on my knees in desperation for the presence of the King hoping that this posture will be like an insta-fix it. Thinking that doing the right motions and positions will produces what I am really searching for. It doesnt!

Getting unstuck from the place of waiting:

1. Let God call you: He calls us out for connection, for communion and not just with Him but with others. “Carry each other’s burdens…” (Galatians 6:2)

You are not alone. Go look for the “me, too’s!” in the room of your life.
I had taken a work phone call from a friend and in the middle of it, my friend, on the other end of the phone said: “Hey, are you ok?” The easy answer was “yeah, I’m fine.” But the true answer was “I’m struggling, I am freaking out, my faith is wavering, and I’m a mess!” We talked a few more minutes. She heard me. She could feel me. I was not my normal self and she knew it. Another friend who had come to help me in the office that day just sat with me. Her comforting presence, to just be there, was enough for me to verbalize “I’m sad! and I’m angry” and while I cried, she hugged me. It was what’s inside these little exchanges between people that is so profound and moving to the heart. It’s the moments of connection.

1. Rest

I do not want to live life being resistant to what God wants to do in me! When I find myself in this place I often also find resistance in my soul, clogging me up, as I am just trying to hold it all together. (When I resist letting the truth of God in the current situation to touch my mind and heart. Instead I find myself in la la land mentally talking to myself in my best “positive” voice but I am wearing my angry eyebrows. That is when I know I have walked away from the peace and rest of God for me.) When I resist letting others into my heart and I fear to let them see my pain, and sadness it is there with blazing red flag I must learn to recognize I am resisting truth and living a lie.

REST or RESIST – RES (is) T

We must learn to trust the Father with what IS and REST in what Jesus has already done!! I have to trust the Father with what IS actually happening around me and in me, then I must crawl, claw and drag my resistant heart to the place where Jesus meets with me and He will give me rest.

….And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Cor. 12:9-10

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

2 Timothy 1:7

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways a acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Waiting really can be our move because He is in the waiting.

Thanks for Listening,

Starla