After the busiest month in recent memory—including Lazarus Sunday, preaching two weeks in a row, Easter weekend, leading worship, performing at a coffee shop, and more—I was given most of the week off from church duties. So I didn’t have to lead any of our Leadership Community’s organizing training, nor did I really have to do anything in the service this morning.
And yet this weekend was a doozy. I felt uncentered, my mind was all over the place, my spirit was unsettled, and my thoughts and emotions were out of control. For a couple of days, it was as if I’d entered a completely different existence.
Taking the time to think and pray about it, I realized that my busyness had replaced my centeredness. Doing things for God had replaced living life with God. I had come to a place where I was operating out of a desire to stay occupied than out of a deep grounding in the love and presence of God.
And so when a couple of occurrences this week sought to push me off course, it was never going to end well.
But this—I suppose you could call it a ‘crisis’ event—was, I think, providential in that it prodded me to a point of realization and recognition. I came to see that there were healthier and more intentional decisions that need to be made in order to set up a more beneficial and God-centered way of living. I came to realize that I needed to spend some quality time reconnecting with God and recentering my life on him.
I spent much of this evening with a baby in my arms. For much of the night, I held Natalie, walking in circles around the kitchen, rocking her back and forth until she finally stopped fussing, closed her eyes, and fell asleep. And as I wore a groove into the tiles with my pacing, I prayed, reconnected with my Father, and was brought back to the path I’d so easily wandered from.
Like I said, this weekend was a doozy.