After a long time

To my friends, I would like to apologize for not having written in so long....I don't know if you've been missing me, but I've definitely been missing you. This season can feel like such a long one, and yet it's breezing by and here we are in our second year. I can't keep up with the day to day details of life, much less recounting them, I'm afraid.

But, when I stop to do it, the chatting over it helps my perspective so much I wonder how I could ever have left it so long. Kind of like when you're stiff from too much sitting, but you can't get over the inertia and move, walk off the creakiness and the cricks in your neck. But once you get moving, and the blood flows and your muscles warm, you wonder what took you so long. Like that "body in motion" that "stays in motion", you feel like you never want to stop. Your mind is cleansed, the true feelings of your heart surface, for the cobwebs are stripped away and you begin to connect again to a vision...bit by bit.

We vacationed in Colorado in August, and were so glad of the fresh mountain air. Perhaps it was the "rocky mountain high" working on us, causing us to be light-headed, but we feel like we re-connected with our joy over the 10 days we were able to view the majestic peaks and feel the strong, western wind in our hair. I need more wind in my life to blow my mind clean. You see, I've already begun the crunching inwards and worrying. Merely a month has passed since our break, and I'm already crippled with anxiety. I had resolved so firmly not to give in to the pressures and burdens of life--to have some bigger perspective of the "world out there", a sense of the reality of life beyond this very minute world that is seminary. Even in that I failed to find an "indicative" big enough to latch onto and keep me going. I was trying to find it in self, my own imagination, even in this world, and there is Someone far greater. and He wants me to know Him.

What?

I just can't figure that out. I see more and more of my ugly, inward focused heart everyday: a heart that is out to serve me, me, me. What can I do to build MY comfort? my control? my adoration? my kingdom?


Keep close my heart to thine,
thy richness fill me up.
My appetites redefine.
and reaching for thy cup
let me there drink, and long
my soul's thirst there to slake
and sing to thee new songs
as I, your hands remake.
Not "mine" but "thine", oh God;
Not me; but to thee run.
Lead me with staff and rod
and make thy kingdom come.