All My Life, In All I Do, Soli Deo Gloria

...this day...

It’s been a rough week and an even rougher 48 hours.  My emotions have run high, my anxiety higher.  As I sat on my couch this evening, a song we sang in church when I was growing up came to mind:

Give us this day
Our daily bread
You said you would
Provide all my needs
According to your riches
I have but to ask and I shall receive

I’ve gotta admit, I haven’t done much asking for reasons I’d rather not go into here.  But that refrain did remind me, that its about ‘this day’.  Not tomorrow or the next day or even two weeks from now, it’s about today.  That’s really hard because I NEED to be certain that my tomorrows are taken care of.  Call it the control freak in me. 

This week, there have been incidents that have caused me to question the certainty of the security of my tomorrows (should I be fortunate enough to see them).  And I have struggled…mightly.  But the key lies in that song and even in the Lord’s prayer.  “Give us (me) this day.” 

And while I expend energy being anxious about tomorrow, losing sleep, my needs this day have been met.  My stomach is full, my AC is working, I’m in a safe home, when I lie down to what I’m sure will be a fitful sleep tonight, it will be on clean sheets in a quiet room, in a conflict free country.  My daily bread this day has been given and received.

It’s hard to see beyond what I perceive to be giant issues, issues that send my heart racing and make me long for the days when my anxiety was pharmaceutically controlled.  But, despite my struggle to regain control, my ever present anxiety issues and my lack of asking, He continues to give me THIS day what I need. 

Restoration

Driving home from the gym this afternoon, I was listening to an album I’d purchased on iTunes earlier this week.  As I piloted my car down the tollway, my mind wandered as the voices crescendoed, decrescendoed, intertwined harmonies rebounding off the confines of the inside of my car. 

Into the fog of my wandering mind, pierced these words: “Restore my joy oh Lord, I need your peace in the midst of my storm, I need your strength and your power, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait for you.”  And because repetition penetrates even the dullest of minds, the singers sang it again: “Restore my joy oh Lord, I need your peace in the midst of my storm, I need your strength and your power, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait for you.”

The summer of Novia has been more about inner change than outer change.  Yeah, I’ve seen some physical changes, lost pounds, stronger legs that have exponentially increased my efficacy as a runner.  But, it’s the inner changes that have been the hardest, that I have fought with the most.  Those changes that I can’t measure on a scale or in the mirror are the most frustrating.  But then I heard those words: “Restore my joy oh Lord, I need your peace in the midst of my storm, I need your strength and your power, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait for you.” 

Restoration is a process, in some cases a long arduous process.  One that does not find completion in one or two tasks, let alone, one or two days.  It’s draining on the restorer and painful on the restoree.  But in the midst of the ‘storm’ caused by the removal of the old to replace with new, there is a peace that comes from knowing that (as Israel Houghton sings), the latter will be greater than the past.

I’m confident that if God wanted to, he could restore me in the blink of an eye.  But what good would that do me?  It’s in the process of restoration that I’m healed, that ‘life lessons’ are tattooed on my soul, where piece by piece He replaces the old rusty, rotted with the glory of the changed, the majesty of the new.  With that assurance in mind, I’ll wait.

 Restore my joy oh Lord…I’ll wait, I’ll wait for you.