Untitled

I literally don’t know where to start. That seems to be the “norm” this year, if there could ever be a norm to 2020. At first, I thought I was receiving the tie up to a writing I had started but never finished. Then I thought I was getting some pretty package of what my words for 2020 really reflected. Then I sat and stared at the screen and read something that took me to a place where I could literally feel the “girl shrugging” emoticon rise up from my toes as the overarching gesture to God I’m feeling right now. 

I simply have no title to what is happening right now. 

I was drawn back to that thing I wrote about quicksand a couple years ago. Once again, an overwhelming feeling of being stuck, only to be reminded not to try to scurry out of it. Sure, there will be people who will tell me I’m stuck because I choose to be. Those people don’t know the eternal struggles I have on a daily. They aren’t with me in the midnight hour when all in me wants to run from this place. Those moments I want to pull my way out of a tough situation that seems to be swallowing me whole. The moment when what seems to be the “perfect solution” is placed in front of me…only to have the honest conversation with myself that I placed it in front of me, not God. What I’ve learned about quicksand, and more importantly, those places…the more I fight to escape, the more I am engulfed by the circumstance. 

What God taught me then, and He is ever so gently reminding me this morning…”Lean back into me. What’s the last thing I told you? When you find yourself stuck in the muck and mire of a circumstance? When you feel in your bones you are going under and this time for good? When you are fighting with all of your might to get out of something that you think I did not intend for you? My daughter, what is the last thing I told you?” 

It’s those moments that I’m not only reminded of the last thing He told me, but that also heard Him right. Just like the article said about quicksand, “Lay back and create a bigger footprint by allowing yourself to float. Yes, do the exact thing that sounds absolutely crazy. Lay yourself back and allow your body to float above the very thing trying to suck you in.” 

Fighting back in something He’s told me to release has always ended up with me even deeper into a circumstance I was not supposed to be in. A place I was not supposed to walk into. I was reminded of the last time I said yes to something that seemed like the perfect solution to me. One week in, and I had to make the painful realization that I had taken things into my own hands and walked into a place He had not prepared for me. It was hard to admit, but had I not made the hard decision to say, “This isn’t right, I need to leave,” I would have missed the last 4 years of the people I have met, the experiences I have had, the healing I have experienced, and the full understanding of how much my Father in heaven loves me. Even in circumstances that try to make me feel like I’m unseen and not valued, I have come to a place where I recognize I am fully known, seen and loved by God…and that is enough. 

Today’s Forecast: A story with no title. 

Silver Lining: God’s a better writer than me.