Emerging Light

Gosh, tough week.

Work has kicked my tail, but has been fruitful with more promises of tail-kicking as these 5 escrows and 2 listings close within the upcoming months. In my line of work, one can never tell when the rainstorms hit. The pace will be even keel, almost leisurely, and then - BAM! - deluge city.

Not that I am complaining. Work provides for life and is therefore a good, necessary thing. In my case, I also happen to love what I do professionally, so I get a double bonus. God is good.

But this week has brought me to my knees. I worked 17 hours yesterday. 17 hours the day before. 12 hours today. Tomorrow is Sunday and God said to rest, so I am RESTING - working only 2 hours. I anticipate a bit of a slowdown next week, but not much. As I sit here, I am so exhausted that my legs are actually tingling and I have to move them around to avoid having them fall asleep on me entirely. And my eyes keep glazing over - making the words on the screen look like... well, squint your eyes and stare at the screen. There you have it. My patience has been short and my voice has been louder with my kids.

I need to slow down and I have a plan to do just that over the next 2-3 weeks.

But the unexpected blessing in all of this is that I have realized that I am not being replenished or used or growing at the rate and depth I could be within my church and on my journey towards more clarified, useful, deepening faith in action. When you are so tired and so spent, you become aware that - outside of family and a network of friends - there is truly no place I can go to just REPLENISH my soul. Church, once serving that vital function, no longer does. The exact reasons why are difficult to pin down, but are not universal. I love Jesus and seek to know and follow Him and care for His creation and people, but in terms of my OWN journey, I am just not challenged, not comforted, and not satisfied. I want so much to be a part of the Church Paul talks of in Ephesus and Philip - emerging, on FIRE, holistic and more naturaly occuring and practicing, honoring the ancient traditions while embracing ne forms of faith expression and worship. I see this as having the capacity to meet a closer model of Christ's church than people who have no natural interraction with one another coming together in a forced, rigid structured worship service once a week to TRY to form the body of Christ.

I struggle against the regulations and rigidity of the church as a STRUCTURE, not an entity, and not theologically. Church as a practical concept needs to be sandblasted, and I am thrilled to death to see the "Emerging Church" come more openly onto the scene in the past few years and notably within very recent months. I have struggled with the structure of the current average church for some time. It seems stagnant to me, isolated, comfortable, rigid. And I so long for intense communion with other believers in natural, holistic settings where worship, connection, outreach, sharing of love and gifts, and honest communication as the key elements of the journey and Jesus is always the uncompromising destination. I so long for churches to not be PLACES, but be people. Loving others and getting OUT there to attend to as much of the needs and hurts of the world as we can. But making sure to hold one another accountable in ways that don't happen with typical brick and mortar churches in contemporary society today. Church should not be someplace you GO and come home from each Sunday. It should be PEOPLE and a feeling of coming HOME every time you get together to seek and celebrate Jesus.

Couple all of this with my realization a few weeks ago that I need to be singing. And my deeper yearnings for more children, and I'm not sure where that leads me. But I do know that things are stirring in my life. I am beginning to believe that these are the ingredients in a smashing recipe that is in the making in my life, with the Lord as head chef. I just keep waiting for more to be added to eventually have a clue as to what God is doing with my life.

This thrills me and excites me. Somehow, even as I contemplate how to listen to what God wants me to DO with all this, I am not afraid. If I am meant to be a part of a new church movement, OK. I am to pursue adopting children instead of having them, OK. If I am meant to seek out my place in the Emerging Church and to use my gift of singing in ministry, OK! I just feel so poised and anticipatory about what God might do here...

I feel like I am being prepared for something. And I am preparing my heart for the ingredients to come together in unexpected ways.

Tired but jubilant. I feel and emerging light in my heart, mind, and soul after a heck of a week. But I also feel an overwhelming urge to merge with my bed and become one with the mattress for at least the next 7-8 hours. May I wake with continuing hope tomorrow.

*smile*