Sometimes you have to retreat to advance

So…this is my second attempt at today's blog; the first was finished and made me cry, but I hit something in the last line and lost the whole dang thing but the title.  Ironic. Retreat to advance. Go back to move forward.  

Trust.  Five letters and one common word.  

I am so frustrated.  The original post was really good, doggone it.  I'd prayed, asked for His help, and that He would be honored…and then it all went away.  And now I'm left with a new picture and a whole lot of cluelessness. 

That is too dang of a familiar feeling.  

When Kenan and I drove the truck out to Adventures in Missions from Manhattan, Kansas, it represented an act of faith – a plunging into the deep – that was not well represented in my repetoire.  Typically, I'd know or sense what had to be done and then go with it.  Calling on God and trusting him was always a cute stamp I'd slap on the package, but it was rarely the process.  God was to give me my marching orders and get out of my way.  

It's not that I was determindly arrogant, just terrified.  I had been trained and conditioned to not rely on others – they let you down, wounded you, kicked your dog, mocked you for your God crafted goofiness, and pillaged what they wished.  

I've been carrying the weight of a grudge against God ever since I heard of him while reading Judy Blume's Are you there God? It's me, Margaret.  I remember reading that and thinking, "Whoa!  That kid in the manger might be real?  Where the hell has he been all of my life through (long laundry list of wounds and criminal acts on my person)?"  If this was God's way of showing me He was (errrrr…is) and that He loves me, than he isn't strong enough to be Plan A.  He'll be plan B (if he's lucky).

Cue up meeting him face to face a few years later…and all these years later, I still consider him the B Squad.  Self-preservation, self-protection, SELF steps in to run the show.  God just needs to show up to make sure the harbinger of pain does not return and that my efforts to seek and reflect him aren't wasted.  The theory has holes – lots of them.  I've known this, I knew this, I know this.  Unlearning is not my gift.  

So, I move to Gainesville and everything changes.  Suddenly, I know nothing.  Diddley.  Squat.  If I could rub two brain cells together, goo might come out, but not that familiar spark.  Nada.  

So today I listened.  I read, cleaned up a bit, listened some more, aired out the comforter, talked to a neighbor, listened, prayed quite a bit, listened even more and kept listening.  

I heard birds.  The cat mewed for dinner.  Cars drove by.  The washing machine protested the jeans and towels I tossed in.  My ankles cracked.  A lizard skittered over the flowers on the railing.  Still listening.

The only thing that I have is this:  Sometimes you have to retreat to advance and God is too much of a gentleman to capitulate me from steering my sinking kayak.  

He's up to something and yes, I am afraid.  Not afraid of Him, but afraid.  And even though I know that He loves me and works everything for good and not evil, I am well acquainted with evil.  He is also "not slow in keeping his promises as some would consider 'slowness'".  He loves me-not as I've generally experienced, but as He is.  My bunny slippers are still shaking.

And He is waiting in the silence.  And working.  And I know this because the people I love most in this world don't have to talk when we meet – sometimes we are just quiet and so much happens in the silence.  Good company – presence – is what matters.  

So tomorrow, I expect to continue to retreat so that I – in a God I cannot see – can advance; shaking off the death that has kept me chained to a sinking dinghy.  And hopefully, He'll be revealed to a heck of a lot more people as a result of this re-orienting relationship than if I had kept paddling my sinking kayak in the direction of the falls.  

Will you pray for me, please?  For freedom, for Madi & Kenan, and friends in Kansas and Michigan and Georgia and places who are somewhere on the lake – in their kayaks – hoping that God is real and worth listening to.  He needs to show up or…"we're sunk."

I'd be interested to hear your heartbeat, too.  

I'll be listening.