An Unexpected Intervention

This morning is one of singing and thankfulness. You see, for the majority of yesterday I found myself tossed back and forth by waves of conflicting emotions. The details and events of my day triggering those emotions would honestly bore you because there was nothing extraordinary, nothing shocking about them. Nevertheless, it led to a classic struggle of wrestling with:

my desire to just fit in,

my fear of missing out,

my desire to put others first,

my concern for how others perceive me,

my desire to communicate well,

my frustration with feeling misunderstood,

my desire to serve my husband,

my focus on feeling appreciated,

my desire to prove a point,

my inability to turn the page,

my desire to just let go and graciously love,

my habit of building walls in an attempt to avoid pain,

my desire to be desired.

When all of those begin to mix and swarm simultaneously through me, I shut down. I long to deal with it. I want to work through it. But I simultaneously feel trapped, stuck in a big knotted mess. The more I let it build, the more I do not know how to break through. I lose perspective and begin to believe the lie that I am utterly alone in an ocean of distress.

I can picture myself flailing around trying to just find someone or something among the waves, anything… I do not know what to do and simply do not want to feel alone anymore. But all that flailing and thrashing accomplishes is unneeded conflict with my husband. Ultimately, it has nothing to do with my him (poor guy); it has everything to do with my wayward heart and its wild ways of reacting and wrestling with itself.

So why the singing?

Because I fell asleep.

When I reach that level of inner turmoil and have not broken through it before going to bed, sleep becomes elusive. And for me, lack of sleep or feeling unable to sleep catapults everything to a far more irrational and desperate state. So it becomes a crazy roller coaster of frustration and emotion before sleep eventually comes, which of course dominoes everything into the next day. But last night, in the MIDDLE of my crazy brain’s track, right when I was accelerating into the vertical loop of the ride…I fell asleep.

That is a mini-miracle.

I woke up this morning, stumped at how the last thing I can remember is feeling beyond frustrated, and totally incapable of explaining how I drifted off in THAT state. I am so relieved to not be spending time surveying the collateral damage that follows a night of flailing to free myself from the ever-tangling and tightening self-created web. I am thankful to not be assessing how to move forward in light of the previous night. In the stillness of this morning, reading the Word, sipping coffee, I am overcome with thankfulness that this day is instead starting with a quiet, a calm, a reminded and re-anchored heart.

I am thankful that God intervened and somehow, some way, put me to sleep instead.

I am thankful that He stopped the unnecessary from ensuing, that He silenced the emotional wind and waves, that He did not let my selfish mindset succeed.

I am thankful that instead, He gave me a new reminder of how He is constantly weaving in personal application of His promises and truth to my days and nights.

I am thankful that He shows me that some of my favorite and worn out songs have new depths to be discovered, new meaning waiting to be mined, new personal and powerful praises to become my own.

I am thankful that this morning He will sit and remind my heart of what is worthy of all my energy, my thought-life, my affection and my devotion.

He stepped in, He intervened, He took care of me at my weakest.

I am thankful He continues to write upon my ever-wandering heart.

#time #praise #thankfulness