Rest...wait, it's not what you think

Okay, so I know I said I would write more about the whole "what was it like for the kids that lived in Jesus' time." And I will...I promise.  But today I need to write about something the Lord said to me a couple of years ago.  Some background first: at the end or very beginning of every year for the last several years, my husband and I have set aside a little bit of time to get away and ask the Lord for a fresh word regarding the upcoming year. Something specific and personal from His heart to ours...Well, about two years ago, He whispered "Rest" to me.  I thought, cool, I could use a season of rest...I've been busy, traveling, singing, starting a home construction project on some land we had recently purchased.  Lookin forward to kickin' back, enjoying some rest.  Well, pretty soon after hearing that word from the Lord, all kinds of things started happening. Crazy things. Unexpected things. Challenges and changes in relationships that had been stable and rock-solid for 25 plus years...Big, stormy, rock your boat and fill it with water till it sinks and you drown kinds of things...

Then, one night, when I was literally on my hands and knees in my walk-in closet (with the door closed and the light off so I wouldn't wake my husband--I would have gone to another part of the house, but we were living with friends and all we had that was private was our bedroom and walk-in closet)...so there I was on my hands and knees in my closet, crying out--as quietly as I could--Why is this happening? Nothing in my life is at peace; my heart is being crushed and shredded into pieces--this is NOT rest...What are You doing to me?  I am hurting so bad and so deep that I can't even think straight.  It feels like You don't care...It feels like You have taken my desires and slapped me in the face with them.  I am hurting so bad. I dont understand.

And then, as I sat there, all cried out (mostly), I heard His voice so close to my ear I could almost feel His breath.  I AM right here.  I know. I AM really right here, Little One. I have been right by your side through everything. I told you to rest in Me. I know. Honestly I know that bad things happen. I know life isn't often fair. I just don't know why you said I was entering into a season of 'Rest' when this has been anything but a restful time...It's just hard to figure out. I don't understand. I don't get it.  But I know I don't have to. I know You're God and I'm me. I have tried to live as surrendered a life to You as I can, so I don't want to resist You or anything You want to do. I'm just telling You that this season has hurt me and I don't know how to go on in it. 

There was a little bit of silence and then I heard Him say, Lori, I love you. I want you to understand something; when I told you that I wanted you to rest in Me, it was because I knew the storm that was brewing on your horizon. I knew you were heading into one of the roughest seasons you have ever had to face in your life with Me.  I wanted you to lean into Me, hold on to Me, rest in Me, so that we could walk through these hard and confusing things together.  You misunderstood what I said and when things started happening, you were too busy trying to make your interpretation of what I said true instead of stopping and listening again. It's taken you this long to finally get back to My lap and really listen to what I meant when I said "Rest."

Then He reminded me of the story in the Bible when He had just finished teaching a bunch of people somewhere; and He told His disciples "Let's get in this boat and sail over to the other side." So they all piled into the boat, Jesus went below the deck and fell asleep, and a huge storm came up and threatened to sink the boat and drown everyone onboard. Well, the disciples freaked out--they were sure they were all gonna die. So they woke up Jesus saying "Teacher, there's a huge storm. We're all gonna die! Don't you care that we're dying here?" Then Jesus gets up, speaks to the wind and the waves, and the storm ends. Then He asks them why they doubted; after all hadn't he said they were going to the other side?

Now I have heard this story a bunch of times in church. And I have often thought that if I had been in that boat that I would have had the presence of mind to go find Jesus and snuggle up next to Him to ride that storm out. Apparently not! I guess I'm just as human as His first disciples were.

I gotta say I got up off that closet floor a different girl.  The next day, things were still hard in places, but I wasn't frustrated like I had been. I had a deep sense of peace and I was back in Jesus like I was supposed to be.

Things Look Different

I think you could ask three people who all saw the same thing to describe what they saw and they'd all tell you something different.  The basics of the event would probably be the same, but the details would be different, unique to the individual...After all, what they saw would depend on how tall they were--how much they could or couldn't actually see; how old they were--a person's age influences their ability to interpret and then communicate what they've seen; and also, how closely they were involved in what it was that happened--if 'it' happened to them, they will retell the events significantly differently than the person who was standing nearby or who was napping on a porch swing down the street.  Right? Well, that's the kind of stuff I think I'll write about here.  Different views...for example, I wonder if the people who lived in the house that Jesus & the disciples had their last supper in had kids...If they did, I wonder what it was like for those kids to have Jesus in their house.  What did they think, how did their parents walk them through the events that followed in the next few days?  Jesus was arrested and crucified...and then rose again three days later...What did the kids think? How did they process that?  I think I'll talk more about that with my next blog.