This morning I woke up late looking forward to not having anything pressing me or stressing me. I just wanted to take a breath. Kick my feet up. Leisurely lounge around. Listen to the birds. Sip on my coffee without having to reheat it three times because I am rushed or can’t remember where I put it. My back deck was gloriously bathed in morning sunlight and was calling my name. So I sat. I sipped. Little did I know, my slowing down and being quiet was going to bring on a different dimension to my day. No other voices sounding off around me meant there was room for the one in my head to speak loud and clear. My time of being still ended up being a time drenched in reflection and emotion. 

Being still usually requires aloneness. Being alone often means we become “alone” with our thoughts. Surprise. There they are. The door is flung wide open and whether we have put the welcome mat out or not, they just seem to come right on in! So when we sit, we think. 

We think about the past. The present. The future. Yesterday and tomorrow. The to-do list. The wish-I’d-done-it list. The shouldn’t-have-done-it list. Every list. We think about those things that we have filed to the dark, back room of our minds, possibly because of being too busy to think about them, but more often because they are too painful, and just too much to think about. There are thoughts and memories that we have shuffled through like a stack of important papers that felt so overwhelming we just ended up scooting them to the side of our desk. That stack may have names of people who have annoyed us, hurt us, or needed something from us that was more than we could give. Maybe in that pile are memories that seem to pop up occasionally because they need resolution and closure, but we stuff them back down in a compartment of our mind, slamming the lid down quickly as to not let them escape. Possibly hidden throughout that dubious stack, are little scrap pieces and sticky notes with things I’d really just like to deal with later, hand-written reminders of decisions we need to make, debts we owe, and definitely some IOU’s from others who actually owe us a lot! There all there, waiting for that day that we don’t have anything to do. Here it is! That day. 

Now we have time to think and to feel and to deal. Time with our emotions that are attached to some of our memories. Time to really feel the weight of what we have carried around in our backpacks of life. Possibly this is what it means to be “heavy in thought”! It is good though. Stillness needs to happen. Making time to be still and alone is essential if we want to be healthy. Thinking. Feeling. Sifting. Reflecting. It is all vital. Crucial. Especially since we were each created for growth, for purpose, for relationship, for life in abundance. Being still and allowing our minds to make room to “deal and feel” with even just a few things at a time, brings so much freedom. It pries our hearts and our thoughts out of those places we tend to get stuck in. Stillness shovels off the weight and pulls off that which has buried us, one layer at a time. 

So today I allowed myself to think. I allowed myself to feel. I cried. I got angry. I sat. I felt joy and I felt disappointment. I sifted through my thoughts and my feelings being intentional, asking God to show me if there was unforgiveness, offense, sin. I put out the Welcome mat and invited Him to walk in the same door that all of my emotions came through, and to help me sift through them one at a time. I got some answers as to why I had been feeling some things. For others, I didn’t get much of an explanation, but I felt a peace in letting them be swept right out the door by my Savior and my Comforter. I looked at some of those lists and checked off some of the boxes and tore up the others that have loomed over me for so long. I wrote a few more sticky notes of reminders of things to tackle on another day. I didn’t feel overwhelmed by that or discouraged. They will be there when it’s time to deal with them and the Lord knows when I’m ready. In the end, I breathed in deeply, felt weight that I didn’t even know was there, lift off. And then these words popped into my mind …. “Praise God for what He will do next, before you see it happen, before you feel it. Praise Him. Don’t be afraid to be still. Don’t be afraid to feel. As you make room for these thoughts and feelings to come, you also make room for HIM to come. I sipped my coffee and smiled.