Stop

 "It is not hard to find, it is hard to stop running from."

I'm thinking about how often God feels silent,

The skies shut up and far from me.

But I wonder: Am I so busy "running,"

doing all the things I've been instructed will prove 

my faithfulness

or His existence,

rather than just. stopping,

that I do not see? Do not hear? Do not feel?

God IS here.

In the fluttering butterfly,

the breeze that allows me to be outside, even in this late September heat wave,

in the sweet silence of two babies resting,

the singing cicadas, reminding me that Oklahoma is not quite finished with summer. 

If I will stop, just STOP, He may indeed be silent, but He is not absent.

Resting here, I can learn that it is okay to not have answers.

It is okay to doubt.

He is much better than my doubts, and fully surrounds all of this in His love. 

Not a squishy love that needs constant propping up, defending, reassurance.

Not a harsh "truth above all, your feelings be damned" love either.

A steady, constant, shalom kind of love.

"He spares us from nothing, but sustains us in all things."

This world is hard.

It is harsh.

It is unknown

And we cannot be spared.

In the midst of this reality, He is with me. WITH me.

Look for Him in the ordinary, the beautifully mundane spaces around me.

STOP