Ever find yourself longing you could eat a really big lunch and then not have to make dinner? Better yet, let’s make our huge breakfast be the only meal we have to eat all day. I do that sometimes, when it’s just me. I’ve yet to convince my kids what a good plan it is.
Don’t get me wrong. I really do like to eat. And I like to cook, too. I just don’t like to HAVE to eat. Or cook. It would be so much better if, on those days when we are exhausted and unenthusiastic, we could just eat once and have it last until eternity. But we can’t. That’s just not how it works.
Sometimes I think the same way about time with the Lord. I wish on an exhausting, no-good day, I could pull out a 2 hour bible study I had back in ‘83. Like a quiet-time filing cabinet that was stocked before I got married and had kids.
But that is me trying to be all into lists as if time with the Lord were equivalent to cutting the squash and roasting the chicken (as if I ever roast a chicken).
In my head, I used to be really great. That is, before I had my three kids and even better before I got married. I was patient, sweet, organized and virtually perfect in every way. I remember being so disheartened those first few months of marriage. Who is this crazy, emotional, needy woman and what did she do with patient, engaging, amazing me?
And I was sure my new husband was thinking the same thing. Until I realized there was really never such a thing as patient, engaging me and I had certainly never been amazing. At least not in the overboard standards that I thought. It’s just now that I was married; there was someone always there to reflect the reality of my lack…
Too kindly remind me of my need for a Savior without saying a word.
No more hiding.
No more faking it.
And so, after 20 or so years of life under my belt, time with the Lord is looking different now than it used to. I think it is messy, desperate, engaging, sweet, frustrating. And sometimes it is dry, quiet, and non-existent.
It is more real than it used to be.
He is more real than He used to be.
And that can’t be pulled out of a cabinet.