He Restores My Soul: Part 3

Read Part 1  |  Part 2

You know what makes me stay up at night? (Well, aside from my worst-case-scenario anxiety, desperate need for alone time, and good books.) What keeps me awake is the desire to make a difference. I want to believe that by working and reworking I can create something that changes things.

It’s a desire that is core to my personality, but it’s a desire that has also fueled my doing tendencies. It can turn that passion into frantic, required motion meant to prove and accomplish.

The chorus of the song by Sleeping At Last I quoted in part 2 says:

I, I wanna sing a song worth singing
I'll write an anthem worth repeating
I, I wanna feel the transformation
A melody of reformation

When I first heard that chorus I ached with sympathy. Yes! I know that feeling. I want so desperately to know that what I do will be worthy and worthwhile. It’s what motivates me to perfect things, to keep going when other people give up.

But in his beautiful and uncomfortable way this year, the Lord brought me back to Psalm 23 when I heard another song several weeks later. Internally the Spirit pointed directly back to the previous song while I was singing:

Let the King of my heart
Be the mountain where I run
The fountain I drink from
Oh, He is my song
Let the King of my heart
Be the shadow where I hide
The ransom for my life
Oh, He is my song

(King of My Heart)

The song that’s worth singing is Jesus. The anthem worth repeating is Jesus. The melody of reformation is Jesus.

The story isn’t really about the sheep and our clumsy adventures. The story is about the Shepherd. And what a Good Shepherd he is.

If I stick close to the Shepherd, he’ll lead me into paths of righteousness…paths that bring reformation and transformation.

The worth-earner in me is tempted to feel desperate and demotivated by this revelation. Like, what am I supposed to do now? I could literally sit and do nothing and still receive God’s love and grace. But of course, accepting unconditional love makes you want to reciprocate. In that way “doing” isn’t something that is required of me to measure up, it’s a gift I can give back. When the gift is something you know the recipient will love, it’s a joy to give—it’s restorative and replenishing.

So I’m going to keep trying to be a sheep that knows I’m loved and to follow the Shepherd and I’ll keep you posted.

He Restores My Soul: Part 2

Read Part 1

There’s a song by Sleeping At Last that says:

The list goes on forever
Of all the ways I could be better
In my mind
As if I could earn God's favor given time
Or at least "congratulations"

Now I have learned my lesson
The price of this so-called perfection
Is everything
I've spent my whole life searching desperately
To find out that grace requires nothing of me

Grace requires nothing of me. Gut punch.

As I’ve been really honest with myself, I fear that God is like every other area of my life and relationships and I need to try to be worthy, I need to have done the right thing to get his favor. And if I can’t get his full favor at least I might be able to earn a “congratulations.”

Maybe I can’t truly be loved, but I can at least be respected for a job well done and that can almost be enough, right? You know what the price of that kind of thinking is? Everything. It’s cost me relationships. It’s cost me sanity. It’s cost me peace.

This song settled in my soul and has walked me through Psalm 23:1-3 by the hand of grace. I don’t have to DO anything to receive God’s grace. I know that, but I have the hardest time really believing it. I’m working on believing it now.

The work I’m doing this year, my job as it were, is accepting. It’s a terribly vulnerable job, to just sit with arms outstretched and dare to hope that I can receive just because I am who I am and God is who he is.

I can be a stupid sheep, sitting on my wooly butt, and still have the Shepherd's love and favor. I can wander away and fall off a cliff and his opinion of me won’t change. That really makes my eye twitch.

But you know what? It’s also been a little bit delicious.

Instead of feeling like I need to “do” to walk with the Lord this year I’ve started just trying to be. I’m trying to embrace the fact that my spiritual self is not made up of a check list and progression chart. Part of finding restoration of the soul is acknowledging who God made me to be, who he delights in, and accept enough grace to just BE that.

I’ve found green pastures in late night fiction reading. I’ve found still waters in an obsessive and fascinating research project. I’ve found plenty when I’ve decided to say no. I’ve found freedom in my soul when I’ve relinquished control. I’ve been restored when I sit quietly and listen.

Grace requires nothing of me.

Read Part 3

He Restores My Soul: Part 1

For the past few years I’ve prayed for, and received, a spiritual theme for the year. Usually it’s an idea that’s crystallized before the new year, I feel like I have a handle on its potential impact and then I write about it. It feels neat and tidy and I just unpack the outline throughout the timeline.

This year, it didn’t come to me until several weeks into the year, and I’ve felt like it is a message, a work in me, that is still so much in process that I haven’t quite known what to say about it. Here we are six months later and I feel like I’m just now beginning to put words to what is happening in my soul.

I think it is a profound shift for my life. One that will take a lifetime to grow into and one that humorously has required the least “doing” of my entire life—humorously, because I am a doer. I do the heck out of things. I earn every ounce of my self-worth and relational respect by doing the right things the right way, so in some ways, I felt a little gipped out of a job. And yet, I also felt hope of relief.

This year my theme is Psalm 23:1-3: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

As a tired, over-extroverted, over-scheduled mom, the initial appeal of these verses was the imagery of rest. How amazing it sounded to lie down in cool green pastures instead of having to move a pile of laundry just to lie down in sheets that hadn’t been laundered in far too long, only to have someone yell for you to get up and wipe their butt. How refreshing it would be to be led to a source of life instead of feeling the pressure to lead everyone else in life.

A little rest, a little fantasizing about being a sheep without responsibilities and voila—my soul would be restored.

How I underestimated this year’s journey.

Read Part 2