HERE i am

There lives within me this tug-of-thoughts. A feeling of always being busy and yet never getting very much done. It's an unrest of the spirit. I've been frustrated with this current bout of unwellness that has me at home instead of work, tempted to kick the walls to vent my aggravation at my body. But we just painted so....I decided to complain to God. Actually God eavesdropped on my inner monologue. I sometimes forget that thinking it is the same as saying it where He's concerned. So there I was, doggone it I can't be sick right now! I have to go to work, I'm taking an entire week off! What will they think of me! Who will get everything in order so I can be off? What about the people that have to cover for me? This is so unfair to them!

Then God, eavesdropping and then adding his two cents says this to me, "Wow, you're really arrogant."

Indeed!

I am not arrogant! Again inside my head, where the Lord is not shy about poking around it seems.

The long and short of it is, that apparently (according to the Lord), the people at work are not in a state of panic because I am not there. His theory (and He claims to know this for a fact), is that they don't even talk about me beyond the morning meeting when they mention I'm out sick. I was going to pull up my work e mail as evidence that I am very very needed at work but unfortunately, there must be some kind of technical glitch, because there wasn't a single message in my inbox stating that I had to hurry back. In fact, the only e mails that showed up advised me to take it easy and come back whenever I was feeling better. Huh. Weird.

Realizing that God was going to poke around in my head invited or not, I decided to switch gears and change myself from thinking to praying and tell Him that I had a job to do. Wanting to go in to work was right and honorable.

The Holy Spirit gently chastised me. "No, you do not have a job to do. I have a job for you to do."

How easily and often I forget that I am not my own. And that what I do is not of my own strength. And that all is God's; the cattle on a thousand hills, the patients and staff at every hospital, the husband and sons and home that I care for and the two people in Alabama waiting for us to come get them. All God's business to conduct.

As I have prepared lists and agendas and schedules and plans I now realize, I did not include preparing myself. I have spent much more time in the choreography of things than in the training of my spirit. I am ordained by God at every moment to be here or there. Too often I am distracted by there and not enough here. I'm going to work on that. My job for today is to let Christ work in me through the quietness of my body and my mind.

And I think maybe, just maybe, someone else can be there for the day.

Psalm 50:10-11For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.