quiet thoughts...

i've had lots of thoughts and this space hasn't been the place to share them...moments of hard wrestling  that are tender and private and so this place has become quiet.


i read the words somewhere, penned by someone who probably would never have realized the impact of their words, that when a blog is neglected, it is akin to suicide for the keeper of said blog.

of sorts.

i don't know if i would have worded it that way personally, but in the middle of all the quiet here, i've wondered why i share my small and unrefined thoughts...why i make it public when those pages bound  and private and easily closed and shelved aren't enough.

because they are.  the words i haven't shared here have filled the pages there and yet, it's almost 11 and i find myself in front of a blank screen with that blinking cursor that flickers as it waits, as though it's a metronome keeping time to the pauses and starts. and while i try and reign in words and thoughts it holds infuriatingly steady.



i think a lot is changing, a lot has had to change. in my heart, in my parenting, in our marriage.  and maybe it took until today, maybe even yesterday, to see how i have gone from desiring to be transparent before Jesus to feeling as though i need to guard my heart and my dreams from Him. which, is so incredibly foolish on my part, but maybe there's someone out there who understands? understands what it feels like to stand in the middle of the road...that one you've been walking on for months only to realize that what started out as smooth is actually rather rocky, and it's only become rocky because you took your eyes off of Jesus and instead of keeping your eyes on the Only One Who knows how to get where you are supposed to go, you focused on everything else.  the hard things. the past things. the broken things.

and suddenly, your feet aren't even on the road anymore at all.


suddenly, you're scraping along in the gravely parts on the side of the road,


and the only way back to where He is, is done in the quiet.

it's those words that are spoken from the pulpit to the congregation, from the lips of fathers to bless their children, from the pen of jude "to those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ...", it's those words that keep making their way into my heart this evening;

now to Him Who is able to keep you from stumbling

and to present you blameless before the presence 

of His glory with great joy...

jude 24

He is able to keep my feet from stumbling...

and i think when the journey becomes hard, or the way unclear or the sin that is so buried deep within my DNA breaks through, i forget that while He is able,

 i am too.

not to keep my own feet from stumbling, but to reach out, to call out, to strain to keep my eyes on Him.

and until i see that and believe it far deeper into my soul so that it changes and transforms my old into His New, i wonder if my feet will always find their default in a detour all scraped up and bloody.


maybe?

but a journey, whether loud or quiet, never stops moving for long. we may take moments to catch our breath or capture a scene or rest our bodies for a night...but the movement is constant, always taking us forward and He'll lead us there, to Himself...

just lift up your eyes and keep them on Him.