Pick up your mat and walk

So the sun keeps on shinning and I can't even believe its radiance.  The warmth encircling and beckoning, inviting us into its healing presence.  And I feel warmed all over, even in the deepest parts of me. 

And the Holy week is here.  That hallowed week.  And the 40 days, the days that at first seemed like an eternity, are coming to their close.  And part of me is so ready to burst into the new life, to let Christ be risen in my life in places where I've never let him live, and the other part of me clings to the safety of this cocoon, to the safety of this exile.

As I sit in my chair, with my candles lit, drinking my coffee and soaking up the warm, life-giving rays, I hear the phrase: "pick up your mat and walk". And it echos over and over in the caves of my heart.

And I think about how sometimes we prefer the comfort and the known of being wounded.  How we get our identity from our pain and so when Christ comes and invites us to "get up and walk", we get scared, we become afraid. We become afraid because everything is about to change.  And the unknown, no matter how wonderful, feels scary because we seem to lose a sense of our barrings a sense of ourselves. 

"I must become less, and Christ must become greater".

And so we enter our own kind of deaths, we let go of the control.  We die to self so that Christ can live more. And then, then we pick up or mat and we walk.  And we walk even when we don't know the way, because he does.  The one who walked into the pit of hell, who stared death right in the eyes and said "enough". "enough death, you don't have the victory here". And he marched right back to this messy broken earth, to this land of the living, where he breathed his life all over us.

And so when the one you are walking with has done all that, you really don't have anything to fear besides him. 

So today, I pick up my mat and I take his hand, which is outstretched to me, and I walk.  I walk with him, knowing that when he calls me out of death and into life, into healing, into freedom, I can go with boldness and confidence. 

Take his hand, you won't be disappointed.

Because it's that day...

Because it's that day.  The day you wake up for the third time in a row from bad dreams.  The day when every other woman you see looks effortlessly more beautiful than you on the inside and out.  The day when your soul is weary all the way straight down to the bones.  The day you woke up at 4:02am and breathed in the equinox because transformation and rebirth are on their way.  And you wake up and it feels like fall outside...but it's the first day of spring.  And that's how my soul feels. 

And then quietly His voice speaks.  And it's not in the rain or the wind or a profound moment.  But that quiet moment at work in the midst of it all.

And I hear Christ say:

"Today is not just another day to get through.  Today is a day to unfold.  To unpack. To relish in.  To delight in. Today is a day to walk in deeper healing, in newness, in life.  So be on the lookout for My workings and get on board.  All is grace.  All is above and beyond.  Don't let your mind be bogged down on worries.  Step out of that.  Step out of that and into me.  Let me take you deeper.  Let me unfold you.  Let me heal you, make you new.  And I haven't forgotten about you.  I hear you.  I see you.  Rest your heart in me and you will know no fear.  You will only know light, love, life and truth.  Fall back into me for I am more than enough.  And today, today little one, is not just another day to get through.  Today is a gift.  Open it!"

"When it comes to quality, we dig deep"

Oh, have I been meaning to get here!  The house is a mess, the dishes pile higher and higher, the only moment to finish laundry was around 1:30am, my bed hasn't been made in days. And I beg the world to slow down, and it only seems to speed up, and it kind of literally did when we lost that hour. 

But this week, this week we're going to slow it down a little, we're gonna live a little more outside of time, live a little more in the moments and less bound by the ticking of the clock.

March is a pretty big month for me.  Two extremely significant things occur.  One: Lent, Palm Sunday, Easter.  In some ways it almost feels bigger to me than Christmas.  We spend more time getting ready, making room in our hearts, giving things up to enter into Christ's sufferings, preparing our hearts to be warmed by the amazing love and unfailing grace.  Two: my birthday falls the day before Palm Sunday.  As a highly reflective and contemplative person this makes for an extremely intense month of self evaluation and expectation. I reflect over the past year and prepare for the next year of life. Let's just say its a LOT! and leave it at that. 

I appreciate symbols, art, and stories because they seem to be able to communicate abstract concepts that our minds are conscious of but have difficulty grasping. 

At various times in my life I've felt like a building.  Not very far from my house is an active construction site.  Almost daily I pass by and observe and reflect on the parallels to my own life.  I'm coming through a long season of demolition, of reworking thought patterns learned since childhood.  With a highly analytical and critical brain I often feel like I never make it passed the tearing down and demolition phase.  But I feel like I'm finally emerging from a major one: "saying NO to abandonment, and being a victim of it." And as I watch this construction site I'm struck by several things:
(1) There is a sign with the construction company's slogan plastered on it: "When it comes to quality, we dig deep". Over the last few months I have taken hope in this phrase as if an affirmation from Christ himself.
(2) After you destroy everything you dig a really, really big hole.  You dig down before you can dig up.  Ironically, I recently read a devotional about this very truth in Thoughts that Make Your heart sing by Salley Lloyd-Jones (the lady who wrote the Jesus Story Book Bible). 
(3) Before you can pour the concrete you put what appear to be, molds in place, the temporary before the solid.  Its a process. A long one at that. 
(4) And after this long and not very visually exciting process of digging a large hole and a foundation that no one really sees, but changes everything, and is either going to make or break the entire structure, the walls go up. All of a sudden.  Just like that. It starts taking shape. In an instant.

And the lumber smells so fresh, like life, like growth, like hope, like newness. And it will be a while before this building is complete.  But the change, the transformation is amazing and only now am I beginning to see it.  And as I sift through the past few years, I can't believe the changes that have been made in my own life, the growth, the demolition, the digging of a very deep hole, the warmth of my cocoon. And I can't believe we're here all of a sudden. So I'm begging time to slow down, so that I can relish my last few weeks in my warm cocoon before the next phase of transformation.  And all I can do is give thanks and say that God has been very faithful to me, and that I know He will continue to be.