215 N

I was driving to work this morning. Praying. Thinking about what it means to trust God, really trust Him. I realized so clearly, more clearly than ever before, that we don't trust God because He promises not to let us hurt. We don't trust Him because He protects us from bad things happening. Death. Disappointed hopes. Heartache. Flat tires. Restlessness of heart and mind. He doesn't promise us life without pain and He doesn't always make the ache go away. He doesn't always break the silence. And He lets us wiggle and squirm inside our skin from time to time.

But just as clearly as I realized all of this, I knew. I knew with the kind of knowing that lands somewhere too deep for words. And something happened--something I've been waiting for for a long, long time and I didn't even know it.

My heart settled on Him.

That is my final answer. The end of my story, or just the beginning. I feel sort of free. Strange. Like the pieces just fell into place. In a moment, on the freeway, my heart settled on Him and peace came.

Lessons Learned

I should have known. Ground turkey that has a green tint and smells slightly minty should probably be thrown out instead of added to spaghetti sauce. I really should have known this after eating a little of that spaghetti for lunch yesterday and having, how do i say it...an unpleasant experience...at Target, 30 minutes later. Without giving you more detail than you want to know (believe me), I'll just say that the aforementioned incident involved me, the Target ladies' room, and a customer in the Target ladies' room chuckling these words to a fellow hand-washer as I listened from behind closed stall: "I can hardly wait to get out of here." I definitely should have known better than to decide to eat some more spaghetti last night for dinner, just to be absolutely sure I knew what the culprit was. Well, I can safely say that I am sure now and rest assured that spaghetti met its rightful demise a little while ago when I shoved it down the garbage disposal. I should have known better, but instead, I learned my lesson the hard way. So what is the moral of this story, you ask? Don't eat bad meat. Especially not repeatedly.

A Settled Heart

Maybe there will come a time when all the jumbled, awkward pieces will fall into perfect place. Questions will be answered or forgotten in a Better Knowing. Peace will fill the corners of our minds. Hearts will be settled, deeply. I have a feeling that I'm not the only one to long for this.

My heart is not settled. Not yet. Most of the time, especially lately, there is mostly striving and frustration there. Restlessness. Big restlessness. Someone shared an idea with me recently. My loose restating of it is this: it is when we fumble our unanswered questions and jumbled pieces in hands that can't seem to grip that we are most Vulnerable to the Lover of our souls. Isn't that what we really need the most? To be vulnerable to Him? We want a formula to follow and success to boast. He wants us stripped of the sufficiencies we carry, dependant on Him and the way that He loves us. We want to offer Him polished plans and capable hands. He just wants us, weary and spent if necessary, in need of Him and only Him.

I have never been as restless with life as I am now. I have also never been more aware of my need of Him. Maybe I'm not in such a bad place after all.