He Still Shows Up

I spent this weekend with some amazing women at our church's women's retreat. It was a sweet time with dear friends and new friends who all love the Lord. It is always a privilege to hear how God is working and speaking in other people's lives and retreats allow the time and quiet to really have those deep conversations with one another. It is also supposed to be a time to reconnect with God. And it was.

On Saturday morning, after our morning meeting together, we were scheduled to take a one hour quiet time. Now normally I would love to sit with God for an hour. But after being up until 2 am the night before laughing and talking with my roommates, I was tired. Tired to the core of my being. I may have been able to pull that off in college, but I am old now. I need my sleep or my body starts to shut down. So I decided to take my quiet time in my bed, with my eyes closed, rationalizing that I would get more out of the rest of the day if I got a little sleep.

I am a rules follower though so I made sure to put some JJ Heller on my iPod. Listening to Christian music while resting my eyes is quiet time right? I say to myself while rolling my eyes to myself.

As I wrote recently, we are relocating (again) to the Bay Area this summer. I can give lots of intellectual reasons why the move makes sense because it does. But then the song Everything is Changing by JJ Heller started playing in my ears and pierced straight to my heart.

Everything is changing all around me
Is this the ending of a dream
I thought I was doing what you wanted
It isn’t as easy as it seemed

Those lyrics matched something my husband had said about all the things I am doing being a distraction from what I (and we) thought God wanted me to be doing. I don't always understand the why's of God's direction. Often I find out later. But I do think that this move will help me refocus on what God has planned for me. I have learned a lot from the times I said yes over the last few years. I found my strengths and my weaknesses. I found what made my heart sing and what distracted me and weighed me down like a heavy blanket. The yeses were good. The things I did these last few years were good but I am realizing that they are not necessarily where God has me, not what He made me to do. I needed to hear the words to this song.

Turns out God will show up even when I only give Him a small part of myself. He will whisper to me what I need to hear. He will use what I have given Him to take me one more step along the journey.

If you want to hear the whole song you can hear it here.