Those of you who have lived with me or even been around me very long know that I am NOT a clean freak. As a matter of fact, I just don’t mind walking over and on top of clothes in order to get across my room. I wish it was different; I know it’s disgusting, but most of the time I’d just rather be disgusting than do laundry. So sue me.
Anyway, there’s this circuit training workout class that starts at work today, and I’ve signed up to attend. Well last night I was digging through the laundry scattered in the corner of my room by my closet (the only place where, if I stack clothes, they’re out of the path to the bathroom) for a sports bra (I have two and could find neither) and was really getting frustrated in my unsuccessful search. I began throwing clothes and shoes every which way, thinking I’d recently seen the illusive sports bra hiding in the dark at the bottom of the pile. If I could JUST get to the bottom of the pile, surely it’d be where I last saw it.
So my frustration grows and grows (of course focusing it on inanimate objects that are OBVIOUSLY plotting against me) only to finally, in a big flop of surrender, sit down on the ground cross-legged, amidst the dunes of clothing. I actually said out loud “fine, I’ll just sit here then.” Not 5 seconds later did I find my dumb bra, at the bottom, right where I saw it last.
Then something happened that I should be used to by now but just am not: God spoke to me in the exact way I’d understand. It’s crazy how He does that, alters not His message but the delivery in order for my pea-sized and underdeveloped human intellect to grasp it. Sam’s language of choice: metaphor.
God took this very basic act of searching for undergarments in a pile of clothing to calm my fears and thoughts, to speak to me as clearly and as surprisingly as if it’d been Balaam’s talking donkey from Numbers 22.
Stop striving. The moment you just give up the search, throw off your boxing gloves, surrender yourself to the honest truth that you can’t dig your way, or pray your way, or will your way to an answer (or to your sports bra), you’ll find it. I’m not saying praying is a bad plan of action when you’re confused or sad or overwhelmed. I know more than I know the color of my own eyes that God wants to hear about our broken hearts. He wants to hear from our lips exactly what we need, why He’s the one we’re bringing our brokenness to, that we trust Him, that we don’t trust Him, anything. He’s such a flawless Lover that He wants to know our emotions even if they’re irrational, and He won’t hold what we say against us later as having been stupid or accusatory or morose. He just wants my heart, no matter how childish and beating-for-its-own-good it is. He WANTS my uselessness. He WANTS my tied hands. He knows I’m ridiculous when I question myself and Him and “how things are”, but He’s sovereign and outside of time enough that my freaking out was all part of the plan anyway.
All this may be old hat to you, but it doesn’t change the dramatic, universe-altering truth of it all.
So, I give up. I’m sitting down in the middle of the pile of mingled clean and dirty clothes that is my life. As of that moment, and as of this first moment of putting it into type, I’m admitting once more that the things I’ve been struggling with and trying to will myself to get over: the loneliness in my family-less Colorado Springs, not being satisfied with my station in life (career and relationship), the memory of sin spiral that inevitably follows the first things listed; these things, I cannot rescue myself from.
You’re gonna have to do it, God. Make diamonds from this dirt, because I got nothin. You’re the one who gives me faith to believe at all, so it can’t be a stretch to ask You to just swoop in and save me from my stupid thought patterns.
After this revelation last night, God told me to begin reading in Joshua. For the first time in weeks I have some direction as to where to read in the Bible. This led me to Psalm 25, which fits my wallowing heart just perfectly. Thank you, Holy Spirit. Out of the depths You’re drawing me continually.
