There is no new information this morning.
It’s not news to me that if Jesus is truly the key to rest and life and joy, then I have access to rest and joy and life all the time. Nothing has to change about my life for me to be present and find life and rest and all that I’m searching for. It doesn’t lie on the other side of a circumstance, it lies in Jesus, who is mine now.
Today is the seventh July 9th since the July 9th that I flew from Italy to London. I touched down, and drove to our destination, and turned my phone onto the wifi and heard the soft ping of the message letting me know it was finished. He was gone.
I sat in a room by myself for a few moments, and heard strange sounds coming out of me that were sobs I supposed, but felt fake. And then I got up quietly and left the 15+ women I was leading on a mission trip to get on a train to get to my sister’s house. I sat in the fading rain, waiting for her to pick me up from the station, my heart hollow and numb and absently watched as the clouds parted and the light and mist turned into a rainbow.
[We had Women’s Thing last week (was that just last week??) Folks asked for a recording, which obvi, I failed to create. But I figured I’d do a quick series of blog posts to try to recap what we covered and why we even did this thing. Part 1 is here!]
In Part 1 we talked about how God has asked us to stop molding ourselves to what culture says about us, and instead, believe what God says.
What do the cultures you’re a part of tell you about women?
Things I don’t like include:
But I’ll tell ya this – in the days since I hit post on this women’s thing/in process collective situation – things ain’t been breezy.
What is there to say on this day?
That the Lord is risen? He is risen indeed.
I feel it pressing in on me today, the weight of it pushing on every square inch of the skin of my soul: an awareness of the kindness of the Lord to me.
And I could fill your Instagram feed with pictures of His kindness: of the faces of faithfulness and the bountiful gifts, but it is not of these things that I speak. I speak of the pain, of the mistakes, of the failure, of the darkness. How kind He has been to me through these things.