What is that noise?

What a racket!  I have just figured something out about myself, an epiphany actually.  I have a hard time hearing silence sometimes.  Through the years I have attributed me not wanting to hear loud music or watching tv/movies to have sensitive ears.  It recently dawned on me one day that the real factor here is not sensitive ears but too much noise in my own head.  I love driving in complete silence at times.  I do not know about you but I create my own noise.  I give way to thoughts that cause anxiety and confusion.  I allow the megaphone of life to blare in my own head telling me I am not worthy or not qualified.   I far too often listen to lies that I am pretty sure to have never even been spoken to me!

For far too many years I tried to figure out who I was.  What was my purpose?  I grew up in the church if you were married to a pastor, as I am, you either sang,  played the piano, or could speak eloquently, I can do none of the above.  I worked hard the first few years of my married life trying to figure out what I could do.  I always felt I came up short, lacking and continually searching.  I would feel exhausted and burned out trying to be…I just wanted to be something, significant.  As many of us do on our journey with Christ everything about me seemed to point back to what I lacked, not what I had to offer.  I would drag around a giant old trunk (figuratively) filled with every lie I could possibly believe as to why I would never measure up.  I would often go back just a short ways as to the 1 million and 1 ways I screwed up as a parent, I thought at the time I was killing it doing my mom thing…I killed it alright but not in the way I thought I had.  I could think of all the ways I fall short as a wife.  I would try to figure out how to be the best pastor’s wife, and I would dwell on all they ways I could be a better friend.  Days that were particularly noisy, I would unpack even more and revisit my childhood.  Why did I always fall short?  Why would I give up so easy?  Where was my push through spirit even as a kid?  The fact is for myself as I am sure with many of you, I never wanted to fail.  Better to not try at all than to fail.  Better to hold back in relationships than to see them broken.

Somewhere in this last year, God has really changed me.  I cannot tell you how it started or really even when it started, something has just happened.  It isn’t an overnight transformation it is a slow steady process, that I am still in the throws of…kind of like losing weight.  I started telling the noise in my own head to BE STILL.  Psalms 46:10  God says, “Be still and know that I am God.  I will be praised in all the nations; I will be praised throughout the earth.”  God is not a God of confusion so everytime all that crazy noise comes creeping back in I have to put it back in its place.  I have to remember that I am perfect in my flawed, messed up state that I often live in.  I was far from the perfect mother, I have more than fallen short as a wife, as a pastor’s wife I am certain that there should have been some sort of training certification program I should have gone through and as for being a friend, it is just me learning to put myself out there, just as I am.

There are no perfect Christians even the ones in the so-called “Christian limelight”. Author Brennan Manning wrote The Good News of the gospel of grace cries out: We are all, equally, privileged but unentitled beggars at the door of God’s mercy.  I know I want to knock on the door of God’s mercy and enter his presence to be able to enjoy the quiet whispers he wants to share with my heart.  I choose to replace the noise with the whispers of his grace.

Until Next Time…