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