Originally published Tuesday, 28 May 2013.
Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. Psalm 62:5 (NLT)
I’ve wiped the kitchen down. Put dishes in the dishwasher. Started another pile of dishes that still need to be wiped, wet, cleaned and put away.
My husband has just declared he’d like toasted sandwiches for dinner and I’m snapping at him for little things like not reading my mind and getting a plate when I needed it.
I’m flipping buttered bread when he yells at me from the next room that he needs his injection. I remember that we’re already two hours past schedule.
I wonder how I’m supposed to make supper and give injections to help him fight cancer - at the same time.
I’m wound up tight. I can feel tension in my shoulders. I can feel that I’m ready to blow.
I give my husband and injection while I smell the sandwiches burning. And I wonder how I’m supposed to do it all. How I’m supposed to hold it all together.
It’s unraveling. I’m coming undone. I can feel it coming because I don’t want to stop doing stuff. I want to stay busy. I grab my sandwiches and shove them down, barely tasting them.
I pray. I ask God to speak. To tell me what is going on. Request that he at least whispers something beautiful to me, something that will still my soul.
Nothing. God is quiet.
I’m having a breakdown and God is silent. (Tweet this)
I wonder back to the kitchen and clean up again. I think about baking choc-chip cookies and that’s when I start speaking to myself.
Not out loud. Just in my head.
Slow down. Stop. Think. Why don’t you want to just relax? What is driving you? (Tweet this)
Still. Be still. Be still my soul.
I start to settle down. There has been no great revelation, no burning bush, no holy moment where I stand barefoot before a holy God.
Just a stillness. A settling in my soul.
I realise my busyness has been driven by a need to control, to feel in charge of my fears and my future which seem so tightly intertwined.
It’s all tangled: My fears that something will happen to my husband, that chemo won’t work, that I’ll end up alone and my feeling that I can do something about it. My sense that if I just care for my husband well, give him injections at the right time and keep everything together that everything will be alright. My expectation that I can do something to change my world.
So I still. I wait. I quiet down my soul.
I murmur to God who is so silent right now in my untangling, words of apology, that I’ve put my expectations in myself and not in him.
No wonder I’m so tense. I know I can’t rely on myself, I know I’ll let myself down.
I roll my shoulders, breathing out my attempts to save myself and praying instead that my silent God comes and saves me.
Breathing in the hope that even when God is silent he is still good, he is still in control and he is still bigger than fear.
Breathe in. Salvation. Breathe out. Hope. (Tweet this)
Lord Jesus, I need you. I can’t do life without you. I give you my fear, my attempts at controlling my world. I trust you and I put my hope in you. I will wait for you. Amen.
Photo: aussiegall via photopin cc | Design: Wendy van Eyck
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