Happy New Year to YOU and Yours!!!
After a season of hustle and bustle, ribbons and bows, carols and maybe a few too many cookies… Haha, I am curious, could you name an emotion for how you are feeling today?
If I were to ask you to finish this statement, “I am ______”— what might you say?
I am anxious.
I am tired.
I am hopeful.
I am excited.
I am uncomfortable.
I am thankful.
I am discouraged.
I am confused.
I am numb.
I wonder, for you friend, how it feels to simply name what you are holding or sensing in this moment? Resisting the need to change it, reframe it, make it sound overly spiritual or cleaned up… Yes, now I know as ministry professionals we are very good at reframing, but I wonder if there is freedom to simply utter the very honest truth of how you are finding yourself lately. No need to dress it up. No need to rearrange it. No need to even begin to fix it. However you are able… simply share what is true, raw, and real for you in this moment.
Friends, if I am honest, I believe there is a weariness around us. The “weariness of well-doing” is what my friend Sibyl Towner calls it. This weariness is different from burn-out, because “weariness of well-doing” points to fatigue, but truly it is resilience fatigue. I think it is safe to say we have been on a journey over the last few years, and for many of us we are meeting fatigue of a different kind. This weariness is a reluctance to experience, it is tested patience or maybe for you it is a loss of energy, the desire to enter in, or even an inability to find empathy. We are living weariness in our jobs, relationships, responsibilities, and tensions we are holding. We are living weariness with ourselves, and with others. A weariness of well-doing.
The invitation to name our emotions before God, to gently notice them, and be curious about them allows us to integrate what is, our own weariness, and the hope for what might be. For example, today I answered, “I am sad.” This is where I have found myself. And in my own weariness I cannot muster up the ability to rearrange this, but I DO HAVE HOPE that I will not stay here. By naming my feeling, in the safety of God’s presence, I am asking to encounter the resurrected Christ HERE!!! To name my emotion before God, and be curious about how God will meet me and how God will minister to my soul this day, this hour, this very breath. In my weariness, I want to encounter His presence. In our messy, mixed up feelings we are invited to find Him once more. In our weariness, He is willing and He is waiting to meet us.
I took a class on C.S. Lewis last semester, and while reading Yours, Jack, C.S. Lewis writes this thought about prayer, and I cannot stop marveling at what it might mean for you and for me. C.S. Lewis writes, “God is hearing you now, just as simply as a mother hears a child. The difference in His timelessness makes that this now (which slips from you even as you say the word now) is for Him infinite. If you must think of His timelessness at all, don’t think of Him having looked forward to this moment for millions of years: think that to Him you are always praying this prayer.” I have been challenged and comforted to know that when I am able to articulate something in prayer, even something small or to me maybe meaningless, it might be the very words God has longed to share together. Not necessarily looked forward to, but if to Him I have always prayed this prayer… might the invitation be for my own soul to know now we hold this together, we always have, and we always will. The act of praying, perhaps, is me returning to God with sobs, words, utterances of what I am finding to be true. The prayer might be going back in to find Him once more… and as always He is there… waiting, willing, welcoming me to come!
He is faithful to be found. “I am sad.” — Now these are words He has been holding through His timelessness, and they were finally uttered, maybe to my own awareness, but also to God. He was waiting to be found here, and to hold these together! I wonder what uttering small truths might offer to you today?
Friends, maybe our own souls need a little breathing room today!!! Maybe we need a break from dressing up our feelings, and simply accept the invitation to feel them. Are you aware today that you also need a Savior who sees you… all of you!
Maybe today the truest thing we can do is exhale all that we are carrying? Exhale our fears, uncertainties, and those sneaky wounds that creep up on us. Exhale what is true in this moment for you.
Exhale expectations and performance tendencies… exhale wounds, lies, and your own weariness.
And instead I invite you to inhale. By your very breath, sweetly inhale the truth that you also need a Savior in this very moment. Exhale what you are holding, and would you perhaps inhale God’s Peace for you today.
Exhale, ever so slowly. And aware of your very breath inhale His Love, and inhale His Grace.
Inhale that He is holding you now.
Inhale that He is asking us to come and sit on His lap for a while, and receive His tender embrace. Yes, it does not change what is, our circumstances or pains, our weariness, our fatigue, but my dear friend in our very breath it reminds us that He is close. He cares.
In the utterances we are able to make, He Holds Us and Breathes with Us… Peace, Grace, Care, Comfort… all for You.
Faithful God, Resurrected Christ, would you meet us and hold us this very day. In our weariness… Waiting, Willing and Welcoming us to come!