It is a strange thing to have an epiphany. After so many years of following the Lord. Seeing things as though I have never seen them before. Like the other day as I watched a 5 month old baby crinkling a newspaper her daddy had left too close to the edge of the table. I want to live life like that. Remembering the newness of life’s little joys. Like the sound of crinkling paper. The things that surround us everyday that we have learned to take for granted. Like hot water from the faucet, and first snowfalls, warm blankets, and hot cocoa. The joy of Christmas, and the fascination we used to have over the lights on houses, and the glitter in store shops windows. The first feelings of Spring, and the crisp air on fall days. The joy we get when someone invites us to a party, or remembers our birthday. Like popping bubble wrap, I love that. The list goes on and on. We all have those things that used to bring so much wonder and joy.
As I was praying this morning, I thought about how my relationship with the Lord is often like that. I have let the wonder seep out. I have let the sheen where off like silver that becomes tarnished over time. But then you get polish and a rag and you begin the task of restoring the thing that you love. With time and patience the old sheen starts reappearing. I am rediscovering God like that. Like embers that were just glowing, and are now being breathed back into life. Like prayer. Like quiet time with the Lord. The times I used to guard above all else somehow started collecting cobwebs and dust.
I began analyzing this sad reality. Wondering why things that brought me so much joy had gradually become the thing that I put on a shelf and walked by everyday. With excuse after excuse covering the time that I could have been using to rediscover, rekindle, reawaken a lost love. I started thinking about those excuses. The ones that I had let rob me of my “Jesus time”. The reality is that they were not so much excuses as lies. Lies of how this year has been so hard and so I have had to expend that time on just making it through the day. That if God had just “fixed” things like I’d asked then I would have more time for Him. The lie that prayer had to look like “setting” a mood, and getting my thoughts, emotions, and attitudes right before I could come to Him. That I needed to be able to pray with a passion that I just haven’t been feeling for the past few months. The lie that has simply come from distractions. Distractions of how I feel, what I need to be doing, and so on. So that when I do come, God will be more likely to answer me the way I want.
Then a gentle reminder came today as I spent time talking with the Lord. The reminder that prayer looks very different then I was ever raised believing. That when I am thinking thoughts with Him, that I am praying. When I am sitting alone thinking, and asking Him questions, I am praying. When I am sitting thankful and content, and recognize that it’s all from Him, that I am praying. When I lay on my bedroom, living room, or rec room floor, thinking of others and wishing things for their lives, that too is prayer That it doesn’t have to be a passionate outpouring, but a simple projection of my thoughts onto Him. Knowing that He has received and is moving on my behalf whether I see it or not.
He said, “Annie, what does your time with YOUR friends look like? Does it look like a passionate conversation between you where you are begging and pleading with them to do something for you? Or a constant outpouring of your souls deepest pains? Do you yell, scream, cry a lot in your conversations? Do you always shower? Put on make up? Dress up when you are with your friends? Do you hide things about yourself when you are with friends? Edit your personality? Then why would you think that I would desire you to do any of those things for Me? I simply want to sit with you. I simply want you to allow me to see your thoughts, with the awareness that I DO see them, and I take every request, desire, joy, sorrow, dream into account. Let us just be friends. Accept my friendship, not just my Lordship in your life.”
One more box in my life shattered. God and I are friends. Wow.
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