Isn't It Funny...

You know when you get to that place where you feel like you have everything you want. You so proudly boast about you newly found place of peace.  You just think, doesn't get any better.  Your feet barely touch the ground, you are so elated to be in this land of perfection.  You just are so unbelievably happy, and everyone who is around you wants to smack you everytime you tell that same story about blessed you are.  

Then out of the quiet of your heart, you are enveloped with the feeling of things changing, and shifting, and melding into something new.  All the sudden, while still maintaining some sort of decorum, your world is upside down.  You start questioning everything you have held near and dear to the heart.  Your brain is swamped with changing direction.  You feel like you are being pulled in many different directions.  You are in a state of being I like to call, "shake changing."  It's a place where everything is shaking and everything is changing.  I mean everything, mind, strength, desires, hopes, and even your passions, are changing.  It is such an uncomfortable and vulnerable place.  If you are like me, then you look back to those places you were just boasting about and try to convince yourself you did something wrong, and that's why you are forced to be in the place you're in now.  There is an old song by Sara Groves named "Painting Pictures of Egypt."  The chorus goes a little something like this:

"I been painting pictures of Egypt leaving out what if lacks, the future feels so hard and I don't want to go back."

The whole song is about this aforementioned "place."  We so long to be back where we were, but we don't really fit there, and we are finding it hard to fit where we are.  Just like the children of Israel; they actually stated that wanted to be slaves again.  When I read that in Exodus, I think how insane are they acting.  They had just watched miracle after miracle, and still they think being slaved is much more fun than living in the wilderness.  Then I examine my life and look at how unhappy and irrational I am when in the middle of the wilderness.  When all the things around me are changing, and I'm moving into a newness, but it's not what I expected, so I decided in my life to just hate it.  I fight against the things which are making you a better person.  All of this for God to change my character, and such.  I know myself well enough to know, when I am in the middle of change I cannot trust my emotions.  I am super sentimental, and that doesn't do well with newness. 

Just when you think you can't take anymore shifting; just when you are at the very end of every ounce of everything you have is exhausted.  In that stress you start to proceed into the place where you were promised, and you fought against the whole way......

Ahhh this place is the greatest place ever.  I love it.  It's so cool, and all my friends think so too.....

And the circle continues.....

peace 

-b