I took some time off of work this week. My plan was to spend Wednesday and Thursday at home, working in my flower beds and planting my pansies. However the 4+ inches of rain of Wednesday foiled that plan, so instead of cleaning up weeds and digging in the dirt, I decided to dig through my closet and clean out my drawers.
Even though my day didn’t go as planned, it was still so good to be home and away from my screens at work. And I intentionally stayed away from the screens at home too. My heart has been hurting from all of the terrible stories on the news and all the noise of the interwebs. So I let the solitude and the quiet do their sacred work of bringing me back to myself.
In her book, Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Haley Barton writes,
One of the fundamental purposes of solitude is to give us a concrete way of entering into such stillness, so that God can come in and do what only God can do.
For me, stillness doesn’t necessarily mean being motionless in my physical body. But rather, it’s more of a unplugging which leads to a quiet mind. And it is in this sacred space that I can finally stop actively seeking answers and trying to fix problems, and instead, just be with what is and be with God and allow God to do what needs to be done.
As I’ve been sitting here typing this, I had to laugh a little because this concept is nothing new to me, nor is this topic new to my blog.
As I went back through some of these older posts, what I realized is that during these times, God didn’t always do what I wanted him to do when I wanted him to do it. But in every. single. instance. God spoke to my heart and I had the comfort of knowing that God was with me in my time of need.
This week has been no different.
On Wednesday afternoon I baked some cookies. Which, as a ‘maker’, is so therapeutic for my soul. Something made with love for people I love. Of course food isn’t love, and I am not so naive nor am I that obtuse to think that I a batch of chocolate chip cookies can heal the hurts of the world. But it brought a little peace into my day…and I’m wondering now if that isn’t such a bad place to start.
Peace, Kelly
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