My muscles began to fully relax. I was laying on the ground in the middle of the forest in the cold. I breathed in, the smell of dirt and pine filled my nostrils.
Oh, I haven’t fully been resting in you, God.
I didn’t realize it until then. Fully trusting, fully resting is different than partially trusting and partially resting. Fullness is what calls our name. The fullness. I chose to surrender and offer myself fully to the fullness of God in that moment. I had a choice, I could surrender and rest or not.
Sometimes life moves on in such a way we forget where we’ve been. Learning and transformation have taken place but we forget. Sometimes we can’t articulate how it has happened. I know I’ve changed: from stuck in guilt to learning to move about in freedom, from drowning in insecurity to learning to cling to God’s unconditional love, from anxious in comparison to learning to accept who I am, from bound in selfishness to learning to give love away.
It is all about what God has done. Anyone who has walked with God in an authentic way will tell you how much he has done. We marvel at the God who pierces through human stubbornness, pride and self-hatred. Jesus meets us in our weakness and emptiness. His power causes what is to become something totally new and different. It is hard to believe, but it is true. I wouldn’t believe it, except I have experienced it.
Today the choices I made along the way are striking me. Granted, out of desperation, exasperation, and hopelessness, but I did make choices. I cried out. I looked for God, pressed into him, moved away and pressed in again.
In the middle of the night with a newborn, crying like a baby myself, I asked God for help because I was so tired. After time with a group of people feeling insecure, I asked God to show me what was going on, ready for the ugly truth. Before I went to bed at night, I laid on my face on the upstairs hallway floor and begged God to capture my kids’ hearts and guide and protect them. In the evenings, I furiously flipped through the pages of my Bible to discover everything I could about Jesus. During my days, when I could grab a moment amidst little kids, I scribbled phrases, definitions, pictures in my journal to process my heart and God’s word. At night, I put worshipful, truth-filled songs on repeat as I went to sleep. When there was tension between what God said and what happened in real life, I questioned Him about anything and everything.
There is the unexplainable working of God in our hearts and minds and lives. And there is our furious seeking of Him and His ways. This is the mysterious combination of what He does and what we do.
Look for God, he can be found. Offer yourself to God, he will show up. Choose God’s fullness, it can not be matched. Breathe in God’s presence, he will give rest to your weary bones. Lay on the forest floor, face to the ground. Offer yourself to the God who is above it all, wait to see what he does.
“He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed-the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” Romans 4:17 (NIV)
“Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time–remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!–into God’s ways of doing things.” Romans 6:13 (Message)
jennifer mary smith 