Give me a break

So, I'm taking a break and disconnecting from a things like facebook and this blog for a little while. Maybe a week. Maybe the month of May. I am mentally exhausted, spread much too thin, and far too distracted from the things that matter most. When I am gone for seven weeks, and perhaps someday for much longer periods of time, God will be the only constant. I want and need for Him to be the only thing I lean on.

I have been drowning out the Lord with noise from my busy life--planning things, finals, Maymester (starts tomorrow), work, the future, "religious activity", cleaning, creative avoidance (facebook, blogger, television), health issues, sleeping. He's been working on my heart, pursuing me, and showing me things about myself I didn't want to face, so I've been running and I'm done with that. I want to know my Father, my Savior, my Everything in a more real way than I've ever imagined. I want Him to have my whole heart. I don't want to think about how great something from my time with the Lord will sound as a facebook status (how trite and shallow!!), or how "selfless" an excerpt from my journal may appear on my blog (even though that's what I'm doing right now........). It's all a facade, really. Putting on a mask by saying that I'm not putting on mask?! I want to be REAL with people, I want to be OPEN, and I want to be vulnerable. But first, I have to be dependent only upon Christ.

I don't want to think about how I want to be pursued by my future husband, as though marriage is something I am entitled to. I want to know what it's like to be fully aware of Christ's pursuit of my heart. Only. I long to spend time with him daily, joyfully and willingly. I reluctantly admit that it doesn't always happen that way. Not really even very close. I'm so far from what I think a biblical, loving wife should be, so I shouldn't even be thinking about companionship apart from Christ alone in the first place, until I am fully satisfied in Him alone.

I want God's love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control to flow out of me. I want to be joyfully proclaiming His name and the message because I live, breathe and believe it. Right now, I don't constantly live, breathe and believe it. I'm just being honest. I have been teaching and training students to live out a faith that I don't always understand or know myself. We've been going through deep idols and the difference in self-righteousness/licentiousness, which are not gospel-true. Yet, all along, I've just been in teach mode, but not in learn mode. Oh, how much I struggle with the idols of control and approval, which manifest themselves all of over my life. What a self-righteous life I lead! I grew up on a "Christian checklist" and earning my salvation through a works-based faith, and I'm still doing that! With my head, I can tell you that grace is unmerited favor, but my heart is still hard to believe it. Lord, help my unbelief!

I found an old journal entry from June 21, 2010, very short, very heavy, very exasperated. 
"Show me how to have an intimate relationship with You. Faith based on head knowledge. View of love based on earning." 

I have been saying with my mouth, "I give these things up to God, they are in His control." But with my heart, I have then taken them, locked them away in a metaphorical trunk labeled, "IN GOD'S WILL, THANK YOU."  I truly want to open my grasp and give Him control, but I think it has to be a daily giving up, daily struggle. I read something that said "If you keep trying to carry out your intentions while God is leading you in another direction, you deify your desires." Ouch! And so, because I'm so forgetful, I've taken some visible actions to remind myself daily the things I want to give to God and discover His will for me. Not write my will for them, and label them "God's will." Things like control, the future, Germany (my long to go there can be idolatrous, even if it is what the Lord wants), desire for companionship, marriage, my whole heart, desire for independence, approval, comfort, school. I'm giving them over, but I will have to loosen my grip on the things I cling to daily. And so, daily, it shall be.