Thursday, August 24, 2017

And God Said ...

(reposted from a few years ago)
Not too long ago, I was going through a very discouraging “four-month funk.”  I was so stressed and depressed about life.  I felt like I couldn’t do anything right, and yet I kept trying and trying to accomplish something, anything.  All day, I would ruminate on all the things that were wrong, all the ways I was failing.  And I would plead with God to show me what more I needed to do to succeed.  My shoulders ached from being tense all the time.  My head hurt.  And the tears were always ready to burst forth.  


And one day, as I stood in my kitchen doing dishes, I asked God to help me.  To tell me one thing that He wanted me to do.  Whatever it was, I would do it.  I was failing, failing, failing … and I just wanted His leading in my life because I couldn’t do anything on my own.  What else did He want me to try?  What did I need to give up?  What needed to be pruned from my life?  What did I need to do to make things better?  What more could I do? 


Please, God, just tell me! 


And do you know what He said?  The big advice that He gave me in such a quiet whisper to my heart? 


“Turn up the music and dance!”



Turn up the music and dance!  As soon as I heard it, I knew that this is what I really needed to hear, what I really needed at that moment.  I didn’t need to keep trying so hard to accomplish something, to reach for something just beyond my grasp.  I didn’t need to try to make things better, to do more than what I was doing. 


I just needed to relax, to breathe, to celebrate the moment that He gave me as a gift. 


And so I did.  As the kids played outside, I turned up the music in my kitchen and just danced.  I shook out all of the stress and the ache, and I let the music fill me with delight and joy.  For a short time, I let go of my fears that I would fail and I grabbed onto the blessings of the moment instead.   


It filled me with joy to know that God knew what I really needed, that He cared enough about me to remind me to slow down and relax and enjoy the journey.  To breathe.  To smell the roses.  Pick a daisy.  Laugh with my kids.  Talk a walk. 

Sometimes, I make it harder than it needs to be.  I overwhelm myself with the idea that everything God asks us to do is going to be stressful and hard work and sacrifice and dying to self. 


But sometimes …

He just wants us to dance.