Find Rest

You know those days you wish you just didn't feel? How often I just want to wrap up in my little cocoon and pretend there is no world around me. I look all around and I see madness. My heart grieves. I am numb. I feel as if just as the world is starting to be put back together it crashes down again. I fall to my knees and right as I get back up another wave crashes. I am not unfamiliar with the losses of this world, with the waves crashing and forcing me under. I am always plucked back up but at some point you just say, "Oh, Lord, when does it end?" When can I breath? Just as I start to feel the sun a cloud comes. Life is heavy. 

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened; and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Matthew 11: 28-29

I must be missing something to feel so heavy. It's the release of the burden on my heavenly father. But I do release, it just seems that as soon as I release something there is something else again in my hands. It is a constant giving it to God. And giving the next thing to him to. Just like the waves of the ocean... Sometimes the ocean is calm and its a gentle roar, waves lapping on the shore. Other times it's a storm. The waves crush you and pull you under. You reach out to be rescued and as you catch a breath of air you are pulled back under once again. Release, release, release. Oh so weary. 

I have peace. My peace is found resting in the arms of God. I do have peace, but I wonder sometimes why do we have to go through this at all. When can we be done? I know what is birthed through the pain. I would not trade who I am for an easier life. I also know that there are many with harder or more tragic lives. 

I often feel like the storm is raging all outside my four walls. My home is a shelter in the storm. In the night it is in the quiet that I meet my Lord. And it's in the quiet that I get to lay in the arms of a man who shelters me to the best of his human ability. I am so covered in grace and love, so very blessed. But waves and trials are not something that you can run from... Growth is not something you can hide from, it happens inside you. You cannot run from yourself, you cannot run from God. 

Tenderness isn't something I should avoid. God tells us to laugh with those who laugh, mourn with those who mourn. He made us to feel. He knew that we would be overcome with emotions we could not begin to describe. He knows my day before my sleepy eyes open. I could choose to be hard, sometimes I do choose to be hard on the exterior. It's in the quiet that I deal with my emotions, this is where I process. Where it is safe. Safe in my four walls, I can cry or laugh or whatever random emotion I have for unknown and known reasons. I am a complex little mess. Sometimes I want to cry just because I need to cry and I don't even know why. And then I go and snuggle next to my human comforter... God really knew what he was doing when he gave me my husband. He gave me a man that often knows me better than I know myself...

I wonder if being in a tornado is like being in my mind. It will be the little things that I cannot deal with and then you explode the earth on me and I'm ok... That is not normal. How can I listen to a raging child, a broken heart and just be. But the emotions come, the processing happens, it's in the safe quiet of my home. Am I broken? Or was I built for storms? No, I'm not always calm, but there are so many times when I look and think, I shouldn't be calm right now but I am. I don't even understand myself sometimes. Maybe it's not that I'm built for storms, maybe it's just that I recognize a storm for what it is and run for the shelter of God. I'm running. I know that is why I felt heavy. I need to run because this is too big for me. I can find rest in the storm.