Shut up and just sit right back

Starting with Ben's talk on Sunday through a dvd I watched by Don Miller (Free Market Jesus), my conversations with the manager at the bookstore Monday night while working and during my study and prayer time later that same night God's been speaking. Tuesday I heard the message in songs and read it on blogs, today I was beat about the head and face with it by Beth Moore during our last meeting of Life Groups, it was confirmed in the study I had done in preparation for tonight and in the conversations I had with Diane before everyone else got there. I come home, completely ignoring what I've been hearing over and over again and I hop online to run amok a little before collapsing into an exhausted heap. I log into google reader and see that Anne Jackson has a new blog post. I see that Jon at Stuff Christians Like linked The Prodigal Jon site's new post.

I get it. But I don't get it. I don't do "still" well. Being still makes me uncomfortable, it makes me nervous, it makes me ugly. Being still helps me hear things being said to me that I don't like to hear. Things that I need to change, address, face. Being still usually means growth, and darnit there are some things that I'm uncomfortable changing. I've been stomping my foot and shaking my head at God because I've heard him, softly but clearly telling me to be still. To shut up and listen, to be still before him and adore him and allow him to chisel off some more of the armor that I have spent years building up. I don't want to. I like my armor. It's cozy and familiar, it's comforting even when it's restrictive, even when I feel trapped inside of it the armor is still better then stepping out and believing that it will be ok.

I love God, but sometimes I don't trust him. I don't trust him because I place the human characteristics of all the people that have encouraged me to jump and then dropped me, of the people that let me get close to them only for me to hear that I sort of suck at life and could I just quietly go away. I trust the God in my head, but not always the God in my heart. I get a little closer then I pull away. I'm never really sure that I want to hear what it is that he is telling me. I feign ignorance, "surely THAT isn't what you mean, surely that can't be what you just said".
But since Sunday, person after person, source after source, song after song, book after book, blog after blog has pinched me with conviction.

I have no idea what's going to happen really, if I actively work on being still. There are so many voices in my head sometimes, and the ugliest one is usually the loudest, and I'm so tired of hearing what that voice says. I'm so tired of seeing myself as that girl and not the woman that God wants me to be, that God sees already in me. But confronting that ugly means having to tune into it, follow it to the root and then yank it out. It's so much easier and so much more immediate gratification if I would just be allowed to do what I've always done. Eviscerate myself and not address the root issue.

Being still isn't my strong suit, there's always something to do, someone to talk to, and quite frankly I don't want to feel left out. If I'm still. If I say no to things because I want to be still and not because I'm already booked, then what if people stop asking me to do things? What if people stop inviting me places? What if people forget about me?
Silly, yes. Selfish, absolutely.

But it appears God isn't letting up on this one. Dangit.