Deflated & Drifting

Ironic for someone of my continuous battle with the bulge to say, but today I found myself asking God to re-inflate me. Spiritually.
As you can see from my life verse, I truly believe in the promise of seasons. I don't really feel that any situation or idea is a promise (or a sentence) of forever. So when life ebbs and flows, I really try to flow right along with it, patiently awaiting the next season. For me, this is just an expression in my faith that ultimately God holds it all and His consistency is all I really need.
Back to me being deflated. Don't think that is some metaphor for depression or disappointment or disillusionment. I've been all three, but not lately. No, it is more of me feeling distanced from some of the personality traits that have often defined my spirituality. I have worried here and there that this shift in me might represent a drift from God. I didn't know how to interpret this down-time of mine. The weird thing is that I didn't feel convicted or uncomfortable in the drift. It has been gentle and soothing. Almost a relaxing of my spirit. Truly, like drifting down a river on a warm soft raft. Nothing pulling at me or demanding my attention spiritually speaking. I haven't taught anything faith-based since last summer, haven't counseled since last fall. Not in any official capacity. The last time I spoke I felt a forced-ness, an unnaturalness and the ugly mortifying realization that I had made no sense. For those of you familiar with Christian-speak; I felt no anointing. So I decided driving home that night, that's it for me. Clearly my time for teaching was a season and I was more than willing to leave the season behind if the alternative was this embarrassing display of babbling. And you know what? I have not missed teaching or speaking for a single moment. I have not missed counseling. I have felt liberated. Drifting without a destination. I've liked it.
This month marks a year since some people I love started down a painful path. I won't say I felt their pain with them, but I attempted to share some of the weight when I could. I don't believe I actually relieved them of anything in the end. But I knew then that I was anointed. I was driven by God. It was intense twenty four hours a day for my heart and I think I may have temporarily emptied myself out. It was just a month after God stepped me back and away from the situation that I had the ill-fated speaking engagement. Laying in bed that night I had the strangest thought, did I empty myself out once and for all? Maybe I had a limited store of knowledge and wisdom and using it so doggedly for those months had finished me. I found myself thinking, "Huh., I think I'm through."
Not wanting to direct the attention to myself and my own grief related to my friends, I pushed through and just quietly starting shutting down Ministry Sara. I felt like a rag doll and yes, now and again the devil tells me that I am a failure because I couldn't see them through. I have felt like the person who was supposed to throw out the life preserver and somehow I missed. I have drifted away from the teacher and counselor I've been for so long.
Now you might think I'm painting a picture of martyrdom and that is not true. I know most of the time that I followed God's call and the rest is left to others. I do not blame myself for my friends pain. I am honored to have been allowed to walk with them through dark days. And a year later, I love them more than before.
So I've just been drifting for a long while now. I've had to redirect my energy to my grandmother's illness and then her death. Arlene's illness and passing consumed my heart. I have started a new job that requires lots of new learning and long hours. I have moved into this new old house and invested my heart in other places. Places of no ministry. Places that reflected in and in and in.
Maybe I got selfish but it has felt good. I have not made myself teach a Lifegroup or even dragged myself to church when it seemed like I was enveloped in peace on my own couch. I have excused myself from dramas and battles and gone to sleep with not a thought in my head. Yeah, I've turned in.
Then Jada's Gigi commented the other day about "freedom in Christ" related to my shameful church-skipping and I cannot tell you the joy and revelation that she brought to me. I have not drifted from Christ, I've been free. Free to believe I'm safely in God's hands and that He is not tapping his foot waiting for me to teach a Bible study. I have been on sabbatical. I have spent all of these months enjoying freedom, the freedom of God. That is why when I wondered if I was sliding away (backwards no less); I never really felt that my drift had gone that far. I have been the one who needed a life raft. God placed me on a gentle sea and held the rope so that I would not drift too far.
I still don't have any desire to teach or counsel. Maybe that was a season that is truly gone. If so, that's ok. I won't mourn it. I have ministered and been exhausted in the same breath. Now I am quiet and joyful. I don't think either are mutually exclusive but I'm good with where this season has me.
I am like a balloon that has been, at times, over-inflated. When I am full and floating I look like I am at my best, that I am fulfilling my purpose. For several months I have slowly let the air out and been deflated and still.
While I thought I had left ministry behind, I was being ministered to by God. In all the personal ways that bring me peace, He has ministered just to me.
I am ready to be re-inflated now. Refilled and renewed. If I am truthful, I think I deflated a while ago and God has been breathing life back into me. I won't grasp after what I want that to look like anymore. I'll just greet the day of the season I'm given with faith in the promise of Life.
I am ready to breathe deep and discover tomorrow.

Romans 8:20-21 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.