My Island Getaway

Journal entry from 9-16-12

"Sometimes I feel like only now am I really living, really getting to know you.  In the midst of all the financial issues, any issues, there is an island of peace that I share with You.  If I could visit more often, if I could stay.  I fill up my bags with your peace and hope and bring it back to the people around me, my world.  Hand it out and then head back to get more.  The more I come to You, the more I will have to give.  The freer I will be.  My past haunts me.  People asking if I still preach.  Sort of.  To my children, my husband.  Nothing so 'high and mighty' as a pulpit.  It's embarrassing that it ever happened and at the same time that it isn't still happening.  Not sure what to think, what you think about it, if it will ever happen again." 

This is what I found when I decided to see if I had an entry from last year.  It's been a year since we lost the house and moved into this apartment that's actually bigger!  A year since I let go.  A year of figuring out when to hold my breath and when to just breath.  Kind of like swimming.  Get those two mixed up and things get a little more difficult.  I would love to say I don't so much care about the preaching thing anymore.  I care less but it's still there.  I've lost or purposefully thrown away most of my notes.  Honestly, I feel like I'm learning everything all over again.  Like learning to walk again.  Getting a new heart, new legs, new attitude.  There is a lot I don't remember because of my massive stage fright.  There are the parts of the service before and after the sermon but in between is just a blank. 

Watching God move this year has been amazing.  I know he was moving all along but I feel like this year I was actually awake to see it.  I've been hanging out at my island getaway more often and I can tell because I can certainly tell when I've been away too long! 

The Message puts it like this in Deuteronomy 30:6, "God, your God, will cut away the thick calluses on your heart and your children's hearts, freeing you to love God, your God, with your whole heart and soul and live, really live."  This is what I feel is happening.  I'm finally letting him do the clearing away he needs to do to get me to a point where I can really live.  But I do know a thing or two about calluses.  I won't say much because they are gross and not a very popular topic but there is one thing:  they come back.  If you let them.  I used to believe that once "God had freed me," I could go on my merry way skipping down the yellow brick road and I'll talk to him again when I have another problem.  No, I know that the calluses come back and build up over time and experience and keep us from living, really living time and again. 

This is something I'm working on.  To stay close enough to the One who wants to work on my heart continuously, not so that I can be perfect, or "better than", but so that I can live, really live.