Trusting Abba

 

Sometimes a moment comes in your life where you realize you're not as mentally healthy and put together as you thought you were. I've been going through a lot of that in the past couple weeks. Thinking back over a sizeable chunk of my childhood. Events that my brain classified as trauma, my personal experience with depression, as well as many decisions I've made that I'm not proud of, and how all these things have been affecting me even up to the present times. Guilt, shame, fear, and a hesitancy to take action on things, in a strange combination with a mild savior complex and an urge to try and control things that its not my place to control. Afraid to exist and take up space, yet constantly taking up space that isn't mine because of a paranoia that if I don't do it, bad things will happen. And it is a work in progress to figure out what "healthy" actually looks like. But in Abba's grace, I'll get there.

But in light of this, I wanna share an experience I had with Abba, just the other day.

One of the things I'm currently doing to put money in the bank is mowing/landscape maintenance twice a week for a lady that attends my church. And the days I go there, I like to finish out my day by stopping at a nearby park, which is a long and skinny park running along the Conococheague Creek. Part of the park is heavily wooded and the creek is very shallow along there. The other part is a clearing with picnic tables and a playground and such, and the water gets deeper. Enough so that somebody hung a rope swing over the creek. Though it doesn't get used a whole lot because there's usually lots of people fishing right there. So, that's the background setup to my story.

Like other days, I stopped at the park, and I walked through the woods to the creek, where I swapped my work boots for sandals and walked in the water. On this particular day, with all this stuff I'm trying to process, I waded across the creek to sit on a fallen log and reflect on life while the water bubbled around my ankles. My mind went to Psalm 51:7-8, “wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.”

I sat there, praying, feeling the current, and wishing that it was somehow powerful enough to somehow carry off the shame and guilt and such. That it was somehow powerful enough to give me boldness when I need to speak and wisdom to know when to hold my tongue.

“Why can’t you make water powerful anymore? Like when you cleansed Naaman of leprosy?” I asked.

Of course I know all I’ve done is forgiven, I've known that since my experience at the 'David' production at the Sight & Sound Theatre back last July. But sometimes it’s hard to forgive yourself when you feel like you've been a stupid idiot.

But then I had this small whisper poke me. Remove your sandals for you are on holy ground. So I did that. 

Be still and know that I am God, the whisper said.

So I laid down on the fallen log and closed my eyes and simply breathed and rested and waited. I dangled my hand in the current.

Look at your hand, the whisper directed. What do you see?

“Just a hand. It is wet. Nothing more. I don’t see anything at all. What am I supposed to see?”

A hand is just a hand, nothing more. Your body is just a body, nothing more. This creek is just a creek, and water is just water.

"I already guessed all that," I answered, disappointed to be right.

Unless I am in them, the whisper finished.

That is when it started to rain. And my mind started singing “Healing Rain” by Michael W Smith. But also the breeze picked up. And the breeze and rain were both cold. Not like freezing kind of cold, but kind of on the thin border between refreshingly crisp and annoyingly chill.

“No warm rain today?” I asked.

Healing is not always comfortable.

“Okay, point taken. But did the wind have to be cold too?”

My spirit comes as fire when I mean to give power. This is not what you are being given right now, because I am not calling you to walk in power. You are being given a reminder that you are my child, and I am calling you to trust and hold my hand. This is restoration. Sometimes restoration is cold.

And so I laid there a while, letting the cold rain and wind physically wash over me while the spirit washed away the guilt and shame.

“Should I just lay here till the rain stops?" I wondered.

Come. Walk with me.

Sandals back on, I walked back across the creek and through the woods out to where the main park area was, a little bit upstream.

As I said, I’m not often up there, cuz that section usually has multiple people fishing. But everybody left when the rain started.

Naaman dipped in the Jordan River seven times.

“Are we seriously doing this?” Sure, I dressed for the occasion. But I hadn't expected cold rain. 

Go ahead, it’s all yours.

“I couldn’t have a warmer day to do this?”

No one said life was easy. Besides, the cold rain has you basically acclimated anyway.

*sigh* “Seven times, then?”

So that’s what I did. I doubt Naaman had a rope swing, but then again, I wasn’t cleansing from leprosy. I was getting a reminder that I’m not in control. There’s a lot of trust involved in riding any rope swing.

On the seventh time, it would’ve made for a cool story of the clouds split open and the sun burst out and it was all warm and dry and everything. And I had some new feeling of power and boldness. And wisdom just rushed over me like a flood. And so on and so forth. But none of that happened.

Because a creek is just a creek. Water is just water. And I’m just a kid blundering his way through life.

Unless God is in them.

But while there were no dramatic theatricals, what I did get was a renewed sense of freedom from shame, a renewed sense of childlike wonder, and a renewed joy. And a feeling that no matter what comes my way and what other people see in me, I know whose I am. And those things are just as good.

We can't always control life. We really shouldn't try. Abba is in control. We are simply called to hold his hand and follow where he leads.

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.
~Isaiah 40:30-31