Give It Up

I startled into sudden wakefulness last night at 3:30 a.m.  Had there been a sudden loud sound?  I didn’t know, but I couldn’t settle down, let alone go back to sleep right away.  So I rose from bed and stumbled to the computer, hoping for diversion. 

There I groggily wandered around on Google for a while, then watched the cursor blink-blinking on a blank Word screen while wondering what on earth I could write about to fill the empty minutes. The FaithWriters topic of the week was “media,” but absolutely nothing came to mind about newspapers or radios or TV. All the while the raucous tinnitus in my head screamed and screamed its incessant 40-year-old plea: do you hear me, do you HEAR me, DO YOU HEAR ME?

I wanted to hang on to yesterday’s encouraging light.  Certainly it was still there, a glowing ember in my soul! And yet I recoiled beneath the power of that pressing inner noise, as I sometimes do, and stared outside at the blackest dark, knowing the lake was out there somewhere where wild swans slept peacefully with their heads tucked securely under mammoth wings. 

After dutifully drinking a glass of water, the bed called me back.  I closed the lid of my trusty laptop and returned to the sheets to audibly cry a prayer of longing, of letting go of sour grapes and weariness and reaching out for more of God.  I had a vision of being in the Garden of Eden with a perfect body and psychology, of walking and even skipping and leaping like a child with the Father in an intimate relationship, eating nothing but the best of what He had given for my good, knowing I was safe and free to express my own creativity.  It was idyllic.

I slept, but not without interruption.  The Apple from the Forbidden Tree came rushing in, cornering and badgering me, tainting the clarity of my own identity I so desperately tried to maintain.  It was as if the noise in my head took on the shape of rebellion and became the Adversary in my dreams, reminding me that I was NOT free, I was NOT able to maintain a life in Paradise.  It reprimanded me.  It led me astray.

This morning the lake is bobbing with choppy little waves while a few swans swim out in the deep like icons of almost-perfect freedom.  I feel groggy in the head, and yet also refocused and strengthened in much the same way as yesterday:

Before and above everything, let us take time when we pray to realize the glory and presence of God…Be quiet, and trusting, and resting, and the everlasting God will shine into your heart and will reveal Himself…There is never a trial that comes to us but it is God’s will for us, and if we learn to see God in it…then we bid it welcome…You complain of weakness, of feebleness, of emptiness.  Never mind; that is what you are made for – to be an emptied vessel in which God can put His fullness and His strength…Begin to live day by day with the prayer, ‘My God, I am given up to You – be my all in all.’  You say, ‘Am I able to realize that?’ Yes, in this way: Let the Holy Spirit dwell in you; let the Holy Spirit burn in you as a fire…crying unto God to reveal His presence and His will in you…Beloved, there is no knowing what God will do for a man who is utterly given up to Him.”

-Andrew Murray