Be Still And Know ~

Somehow, I always thought that life would slow down, the older my children got.

It hasn't. If anything, the pace has quickened. What once was the occasional Major Event, now comes at me in rapid-fire succession. Take, for example, the last one week alone. I celebrated a birthday - okay, that really is a once a year Event for me. My husband and I went out of town on a brief holiday. We celebrated an anniversary. I taught at a women's meeting. My one daughter got engaged. My other daughter had an unfortunate experience, hopefully a once in a lifetime experience - she is emotionally a bit battered, but she will quickly recover. We had guests on Tuesday. My husband left for Haiti Tuesday night to minister at a week long pastor's conference. My uncle (dear to me) was severely burned, just hours ago, and is in a Nevada hospital - prognosis unknown.

Packed into the over-stuffed suitcase of my days, are also the so-called "small stuff" - little things like home schooling my last one through high school, remembering the birthdays of friends, spending time with the people I care about, cooking for a small crowd every day, cleaning, laundry for six, and baking my once-a-year big batch of Cranberry-Orange Bread.

(Hannah, Sarah, am I lying?? ...my daughters read my blog...)

It's all just another "day in the life of"...another week at the ranch....another chapter in the saga. This is our new "normal". I'm actually used to it; but sometimes, I do admit, to feeling tired to my very bones.

Now, more than ever, I need stillness. I was stunned to discover that the Hebrew word for still, as used in Psalm 46:10, and the Hebrew name for "The Lord, our Healer", is the same word, perhaps a Hebraic homonym: Raphah.

I don't think that is an accident. It is not a slip of the Divine tongue. It is not word semantics. Stillness heals. Stillness is a Person.

Some of us have experienced such prolonged seasons of upheaval and so many years of crowded schedules, that we need a prolonged season of stillness. If God is leading you by still waters, dear one, trust me, it is because you need it. Follow His lead, and linger there. I envy you, in the holiest of ways. ::she says, as she smiles::

For now, I shall have to survive on small doses of outward stillness - while actively seeking to live in life-giving, mending, healing inner stillness. The stillness of a perpetually restored soul.

Be still (raphah) and know that I am God: to sink, relax, let drop, abandon, refrain, forsake, to let go, to be quiet, to show oneself slack...

I am the Lord that healeth (Raphah) thee: to heal, make whole...

Maybe....just maybe...to allow things to Be What They Are is medicinal. To sink down into stillness, to relax, to just drop it, can be the very Balm in Gilead we are longing for. Abandoning our "chariots and horses", refraining from asking Egypt to save us, forsaking our own understanding, unleashes healing and delivering power. To stop the endless talking, to let go, and allow ourselves to seem lazy in the eyes of get 'er done, graceless Christianity - might very well save our health. It will at the very least preserve our soul, and renew our strength.

I want my life to mirror the beauty of the Lord. Waters with little motion are the most reflective.