yep I am back. it's been a while. it's been a crazy summer. and I am finally back in my apartment with coffee, quiet, and a few minutes to collect my thoughts. first of all I really want to tell you about all the things that happened this summer. camps, interns, kids camp, work stuff, personal stuff but as i sat down to have a little quiet time this morning I was smacked in the face with one of those basic truths that feel really simple but that i continue to forget. so let me say a bit about that.
the summer has been exhausting and somewhere around early July I pretty much stopped spending much time praying or reading my bible or really even thinking very much about the fact that there is more to this world that what is happening around me right at this moment. the urgent started crowding out the important. I kept thinking, "it's fine, it's fine, one more camp and i will get back on track, one more weekend, one more early morning, etc. etc.". Occasionally I would toss up a "Hey, God can you help me out with this one?" or a "thanks God that was really great". But serious, intentional time with God was just non-existant.
Then suddenly it's mid-August and I am back in my apartment and I am wiped out, and lonely, and sad, and frustrated, and angry with nearly everyone and everything, and feeling unloved, unappreciated, uncared for, and so on and so on. I am doing everything in my power not to sit down and say "God, I am tired and I miss you, and i feel like junk". So this morning I am thinking about all this and writing a lot to God about how I am frustrated and sick of myself. How I hate being angry, and hate serving only to be noticed or be patted on the back. How i am tired of being self-absorbed and responding to God's call to love everyone only if by everyone He means people I like or who are cool or who don't get on my nerves or who don't smell bad or who haven't disappointed me in some way. I am wallowing in this...just rolling around in it. Covering myself with all this self-accusation and disappointment and despair. And I am just talking and talking and talking to God about it, not even taking a breath to let a word back from Him sneak in. I am actually kind of afraid of what he will say.
Then something hits me and I get this picture in my head. A picture of a stream or river or something like that. Water flowing down into a pool of some sort. And I realize a very simple thing. God pours into me like a stream. And that stream flows into me and it's where all my "water" comes from. Everything good and pure and right and healthy and positive is in that water. Any ability to put others above myself or to love even when it's hard, or to pour myself out till I am empty is in that water. And this summer I built a dam. I blocked off that outpouring from Him. Every time I chose to sleep later instead of spending time with him I built up the dam. Every time I chose to go my own way instead of His I built up the dam. Every time I said "this whole time with God thing isn't that important I will be fine if i skip out on it for a while" I built up the dam. So I built this dam and my little pond started drying up. The source was still there pouring out as much as before but I have this dam and it's not getting down to me...
The dam got bigger and sturdier and my pond started to get dry. I started thinking this morning about what a drying up pond looks like and it felt a lot like my life. It seemed a lot like how I am feeling right now. The pond gets dry, it gets muddy, there is no movement so it gets dirty, stagnant, shallow. I am not fllled up right now with this river of good that He offers. All truth, all goodness, all life flows from that source but when I build these dams how can I be full of what is flowing down to me?! I don't want to be shallow, lazy, stagnant, muddy. I want to be fluid and dynamic, forceful, alive, and full of what God is pouring into me. I want to tear down the dam. I want this river of life to rush down into me, clean me out, fill me up, bring me back to life, bring me back into a place where I am receiving from Him so my pond can pour into others ponds.
Today I am asking God to tear down the dam, or to help me tear it down so that i can be filled up with all He is pouring down into me. Today I am coming back into the place where I realize He is the source and that I can't fill my own pond, or expect to remain full apart from Him. I am not sure if it's going to come down all at once or piece by piece but I do know I want it to come down and that I very much want to be filled from the source of all life and all truth.
