Go Deep

We went today to a Good Friday service.  A play.  It was well done.  My heart was not quite in it, but it was nice to watch.

As I sat there quietly in the church watching people come and go, I began to think.  Life is so confusing right now. I feel like I'm being tossed about with no idea what is up.

And I sat there quietly and felt that God was quietly talking to me.  "Just leave it all.  Just swim back out to the deep.  Go deep with me and leave it all."

Right now, it is as if I am being tossed in the surf, bruised, banged, swallowing salt water, unable to get my footing.  All what went wrong in the counseling sessions destroyed the supports I had in place for dealing with what is going on in my life, stirred up all the pain of people telling me if only I would.... clean house more, smile more, do whatever more.... that the anger would stop, and left me reeling and without support.  I feel totally bewildered and hurt.  Rolling in the surf.

You can drown in shallow water, you know.  Battered about too much to gain footing.

Today as I sat, I felt God saying to me, "Dive back out into the deep."

I lived in the deep.  Allowed to think, allowed to process, allowed to ponder, wonder, worship, be.  I was comfortable there.  And then I was told that was bad.  That I was not to communicate with friends.  I was tossed into the surf.

Now, I am still under orders not to communicate with some good friends which is causing me an enormous amount of pain right now, but I doubt my internal world can be controlled by outsiders.

Today, I am going to walk away from all this surf and tumbling about bruised, and dive back into he deep.  Just to rest with God.  To not try to figure out people or what I should do or why someone would say that or.......

To just be quiet.  Alone with a God who loves me.  And a God, I am more and more sure, who had nothing to do with what I was just put through.

Taking time to breathe.

Once I went to visit my friend (oh, how I would love to go see her now and just sit on the beach watching waves), and we went to the beach.  Now she is not a deep water swimmer, but loves the beach and the shallows.  I love to swim.  I have no fear of water (when I am not responsible for watching my kids) because I float like styrofoam.  All I have to do if tired is roll on my back and rest.  I can even fall asleep floating on my back.

So I swam way out, past the surf, past the breakers, out to where the sea was calm.  I flipped over there and rested, thoroughly enjoying the empty beach and the quiet of the ocean gently rocking my as I napped.  Later I felt guilty, my poor friend might be worried about me - just a speck out in the ocean alone, so I came in.  But out there, while I floated, just beyond me dolphins played and I enjoyed watching them out there in the silence.

A quiet place.

That is what I feel now God is saying.  Go deep.  Drop all this stuff of what people did, what you lost, and all that is going on now, go deep and rest.  Out where the dolphins play.

I watched this play.  And saw how God responded to women.  I begin again to believe that God is different than His people.  To have hope.

And last night, a friend came back.  One friend who I can relax in her hug and shudder.  I told her what happened, what was said.  She was confused and angry.  Her comment, "That person is not like that at all!  That person is a person of integrity."  That comforted me.  Because not only was my integrity questioned harshly, so was another.  And both hurt me.

So I rested in her hug.  And in her words.  She knows the people involved.  Knows them well.  Unlike the counselor.

I take the hug, and I turn and dive out into the deep.  To leave all the people's confusion and chaos behind.  To rest out beyond where people go.  I am not afraid of drowning out here in the stillness.  It is the noise of the surf which was bruising me too much.

People may control who I talk to, but they can not control how I think.  And I can think deeply, rest, recover, run for safety to a God who I do not thoroughly understand, but I know loves me.  There I am safe, and there I will stay until I am strong enough to face the chaos this caused.

There tears can fall without even those tears being judged.  This hurts.  It hurts not to pick up the phone, not to write, not to share my heart, to ask for prayer.  It hurts.  And the hurt is making life harder right now.

So I go out into the deep.  Back into the quiet place by God's heart where He sheltered me so many times.  Where He took me the day my daughter died.  To the silence of being loved.  Where no questions or others are allowed to step.  To rest.