“What gets your attention determines your loyalty.”
-Beth Moore
I sit down to write this post only after I have checked my email four times, checked facebook a few times, looked at my phone, called a few people, watched a little TV, let Aiden play with a craw fish (don’t ask), and read up on Web Md ( i have an obsession with health). I have been planning to write for a few days but something always takes me away. Whether it be an urgent phone call, an email I have to answer, the grocery store for the hundredth time, or just the inability to sit still something always distracts me. To actually sit at my computer and write what has been on my heart takes hours, sometimes even days. I am so distracted. My mind seems to be going at a hundred miles an hour all the time. I have this fear that if I don’t keep moving I will miss something. I know God asks us to be still but I figured he meant like when I am lying in bed and mumbling prayers until i fall asleep. The truth is i’m distracted, which has been the story of my life since I was ten and diagnosed with ADHD (or maybe thats what the doctor said I was too busy looking at shiny things to notice). I am distracted by my phone, facebook, to do lists, and twitter. I am distracted by things that mean seemingly nothing but rank very high on my priority list. The truth is sometimes I like distractions, they draw me away from life, let me live in a fantasy world i’ve created around social networks and who I want to be. The truth is that if I am still with God there is a lot he wants to tell and a lot that i’m not ready to hear. Ben and I run around all week accomplishing somewhat meaningless goals together but it is only after we sit together at the end of the day that we go into any kind of depth. I need depth. I crave depth but I don’t always let it become part of my life.
It was only after last week that I realized that while distractions draw me away from God disruptions have an opportunity to push me to embrace God. The little things in life constantly beg at my attention and to be honest a lot of time they win but then something happens. Something that takes you our of your tiny world and makes you need God and not just a prayer kind of need him. Life disruptions knock you to your knees and find you breathing God’s sweet name with each minute that passes by, if you let it. Or disruptions can cause you to blame God, shake your finger at him and ask how could you? Disruptions are often painful, tearful, and can leave you questioning everything you believe but if you let them they can teach you something Great about God. They can teach you more of who God is by simply letting him to be him. He can teach you what peace that transcends understanding really means. Trust me when I say i have every reason to be uneasy. I could let this control my life or I could give God the control. Much easier said than done. I wrestled with God for days. I challenged him and questioned him and cried to him but then I saw he was only asking something of me that I already claimed to have.
I abuse grace. I take it with me everywhere I go and at each slip I throw out my grace card. Every time my friends are hurting I tell them to embrace grace, let it heal them. I admit though that until recently I had never had to truly extend grace. Then I was forced to choose, would I let this disruption prove I believed everything I professed or would I shake my fist at God. I knew I couldn’t do this without God. My email wasn’t going to get me through the day and facebook offered no helpful advice. So i found myself sitting, remembering from what great heights I had fallen. I found myself asking God to teach me the things I claimed to already know. I let him fill my days and suddenly i could breath again. Suddenly my life agenda didn’t seem so pressing. Ben and I found ourselves leaning on each other like never before and I realized I had been choosing so many things over God. My life disruption made me realize why God has asked me to be still and know that he is God because in the midst of it all he never changed. He is God and for that reason alone I should put my distractions aside and let my loyalty lie with him. For the fact that he is God says it all and remembering all that encompasses him takes time, time away from this world.
I don’t know where you are, I wish I did, but I hope you will let life’s disruptions point you back to God not cause you to point your finger at him. It’s a battle trust me I know but its much better to struggle with God than to struggle against him.
