It takes a while for me to process things. I got back from a week and a half in Thailand (which felt like so much closer to a month) eight days ago now. And I still don't know that I have full answers to everyone's questions about what I took away, or what hit me the most even. These things take a while for me to be able to fully identify. Maybe it's because I no longer relive the circumstances of the day every night--though usually that sort of thing, back in the day when it was indeed habit, was spent beating myself up over how I could have responded differently to moments I can never go back to, most often based on what could have made me look better in the eyes of others. Or maybe it's because I've spoken too soon after too many moments in the past and now lean more towards waiting to see what stands out after time has washed away the nearness. I guess maybe I just see better from a distance.
But there is something I know I can share, even if it's not as full an update as I'd like to offer. I can't say it's something I learned as if I mastered the knowledge during this trip (something tells me it'll be a lifetime study), but I can tell you it smacked into me like an ocean wave, and is still sloshing around in this crazy heart.
It's funny how sometimes travelling elsewhere brings up all the issues that have been buried like papers beneath the stacks of our routines at home. In a sadly-typical pattern, once we were there I promptly pressed out on things I wanted to ignore, to pretend weren't going on in my heart. But they were still there, despite my pretending, and everything comes to the surface at some point. I kinda knew it was coming, that God and I needed to have a heart-to-heart about a question that kept resurfacing in my brain. Some distractions just must be dealt with.
So one of those nights--or maybe it was an early morning thanks to the jet lag--I stole away to still my thoughts and hide from human eyes and open up my soul for a peek at what was going on in there. It opened, a little hesitantly, to the One who knows my heart better than I do, who at any given moment knows every random thought flitting through it, every emotion swelling and swirling in there, every hope and every fear and...well, just everything. And as always, He was gentle. But He still didn't do what I asked.
I wanted Him to just tell me, to speak with as much clarity as He has in the past, to give me a heads-up so my heart could stop spinning and my head could quit trying to come up with possible scenarios and answers to each one. I wanted to know. And in the midst of that demanding, part of me remembered the moments driving with a fresh license in Bartlett on a Sunday morning, when I'd held my life out in an open palm and realized it wasn't my right to know what He planned to do with it. Memory highlighted that day, when the morning's surrender set the stage for hearing Him give what I knew I didn't deserve: a glimpse into exactly what I'd just given up my sense of entitlement to. He didn't show me the entire course that day, but He did highlight some of the specifics I've known ever since would play some role in the future He had for me.
So back to Thailand: memory made me yearn for that young, easy letting go of rights that were never mine to begin with, while the observer in me pointed out the pattern that such surrender most often leads to a satisfaction of the yielded desires. But knowledge can only take you so far, and I know that by now. What I needed was more than knowledge of what I should do, which was of course surrender afresh; I needed God to do what I could not and steer my heart in that direction once more. So I asked Him to, meanwhile still pleading in the back of my head for Him to give me some kind of a sign or a signal, some hint to know what lay ahead.
His response was silence.
Truth is a potent weapon against the lies that get my heart twisted in knots. It fought skillfully that night. As much as I wanted what seemed easier--to know the answers to my questions--He wanted what was better: for me to be drawn near to Him.
It hit me, in that silence, while His Spirit spoke without words or answers, that He knows how to speak to us. He knows how to draw out the details that may spark memory in my mind but to anyone else just seem pretty or even plain. He knows when to be clear with me, when I need to know specifics in order to take the next step in faith in the direction He's leading me. And He knows when I need to hear silence. He knows when to withhold the answers to my questions, because it's best for me not to know them yet.
As much as He knows when to press on my heart so strongly that I know I have no choice but to obey, because I know without doubt what He's directing--He also knows when I need to hear and feel and see nothing, in order to know He's God.
So often I find myself caught up in doing, in seeking Him for directions more than I seek after His heart. Time feels short and close-packed and like there's never enough of it, and maybe every once in a while we all need to get hit with some sort of jet lag just to realize it's not so much about time, but the One who created it. I was convicted that night, not just of my need to know, but of my need to always be task-oriented rather than Jesus-oriented.
And do you know what happens when you reach that breaking point, where all your efforts collapse like crumbling plaster and you're left staring into the eyes of the One who made you and knows you and orchestrates all things across the span of a universe too vast for you to even partially comprehend in all its complexities? Well, I don't know about you, but I sure felt small all over again. I felt a little like that teenage girl telling God she had no right to see the blueprints or the battle plans, because honestly, what can I who owes everything I am, even everything I think, to the One who gave me a mind to think with--what can I demand from Him?
If He loved me less He'd tell me. He'd answer my questions and send me running off to try to make it all happen in my own strength, and get me out of His hair. If He loved me less, He'd be fine with letting me stay centered on tasks instead of drawing me away from the busyness to deal with my messy heart. But He loves me more. He loves me enough to withhold the lesser answers because He Himself is the greater answer to my needs. He loves me enough to silence my fears and felt-need to know what lies ahead. He loves me enough to once again ask me to trust Him.
And sometimes, such communication comes in silence. He knows when to speak; He knows when to whisper; but perhaps more remarkable is the fact He knows how to lead without speaking, too. He knows our needs far better than we can even pretend to. He knows when we need to hear from Him, and what we need to hear, and how we'll respond when we do. And though He's not blind to our desires or deaf to our questions, He knows when not to answer them, when not to give us what we expect or demand or even plead for. Because He alone knows how to lead us at each step, not just in the way we are to walk physically on this earth, but in the way our hearts are to tread closer and closer to His.
Sometimes it takes the silence to better know His heart towards us. Sometimes we truly just have to be still, and know He's God. Be it jet lag or a sleepless night, or one of hundreds of other unplanned delays and holdups to our plans for our days and lives--He knows how to speak to us, how to get through to us, and how to meet our needs at every step. It was true in Thailand, and it is true on American soil. Has He answered me since then? Nope. No, He has not. But at the same time, He has--because He's answered me with a silence that I know means He's got me. He knows me. And He has me and my life and my questioning, wavering heart, in His most capable hands. Always.
