So I am sitting here doing some research on a couple of different Bible verses that have caught my attention lately.  My thought process is these can possibly be topics of upcoming posts.  I am doing some initial brain storming and using biblegateway.com to compare them to each other in different versions.  I also have my headphones on and am listening to Pandora, which just happened to be on one of my country stations when I turned it on.

You may be wondering why there are headphones blaring music into my head when I am working on a serious quest for knowledge.  Well the simple answer is we live in a very tiny mobile home so I don’t have an office, or even a normal size bedroom, to place my desk (whose name is Cordelia) in.  Instead it is in our very small living room.   If my husband is home when inspiration hits me and we are sharing the living room space, then the television is also going.  Normally when I am working on a post or a Bible study I will turn on music to help me center my thoughts in our little noisy home, and it tends to be instrumental versions of popular Contemporary Christian songs, similar to the music played at Hobby Lobby.  Tonight I was so engrossed in my research and totally lost in my thoughts and the words that i didn’t really pay attention to the music when I turned it on, it was just kind of going in the background.  Any one who knows me knows that I listen to a wide variety of stuff as testified by the rather eclectic collection of songs in my Ipod and the many different stations on my Pandora account.  All of a sudden it hit me that the song that was playing was an old Garth Brooks song — I’ve Got Friends in Low Places, not Contemporary Christian elevator music!  The sheer irony of the nature of my reading coupled with the idea of having friends in low places was not lost on me.  If ever there was a time to not take a coincidence as a hidden message from  Providence this would be it!

It is pretty safe to say that Husband thinks I am slightly more than a little crazy at this point.  He has had his suspicions all along but they have now been definitely confirmed.  When the above realization hit me instantaneous laughter bubble up and out of me.  The good, deep kind of joyful laughter that comes from deep down in your belly and brings tears to your eyes.  So maybe it was an “aha” moment from above after all.  Not one that had a calling or some deep meaning in it, but a simple reminder that I needed to take a moment to relax and unwind, and find my balance after a long, busy day.  It is necessary to take the time to stop all of the noise and just sit still, let it be, and breathe.

Life is a never-ending to-do list.  Take today for an example.  Wake up and shower, get Max up, ready and out the door, commute to work, work through an audit at work all day, commute home, make dinner, squeeze in a little time to start some research — perhaps my mind is going on over load.  Where do I make the time to just be?  Is all this busy-ness robbing me of the true joy that God intended for me to experience on my life’s journey?

There are a plethora of self-help articles out there that tell us that it is ok, even vital, to make the time to take care of ourselves.  They encourage us to find some time to unwind, pamper ourselves, focus on our needs, and forget about the rest of the world for just a couple of minutes.   They tell us we need to take the time to recharge ourselves.  What I don’t see in these articles very often is them telling us to listen for the whispers from the one with the great reset button.  If I don’t take the time to incorporate some quiet in my life, how can I hope to deepen my relationship with God?  Has society in general developed too far in the wrong direction?  I have access for instant noise 24-7.  I never have to be alone with my own thoughts or be available for those vital conversations with God that happen in the silence.

So the challenge I must accept is the one that involves me being more intentional about finding some quiet time each and every day.  A prayerful, meditative time each new day to allow my relationship with the heavenly father to grow.  I need to remind myself that in these quiet silences our Divine God will place balms of healing on my soul that will soothe and repair it, as well as encourage, motivate, and recharge me so that I will be ready to face anything that comes my way with wisdom, peace, and relative calm.  Sounds great! Right?  I think it does, but somehow I just can’t seem to get there.

Fear not!  God is loving and full of grace!  Even though I continue to mess up this simple thing, he tells me it is ok.  He is always available for me, in my busy-ness, in all the craziness, and in my silent times.  So as long as the sun comes up I will continue to try to incorporate some quiet times into my day, it only takes a few baby steps at a time.

Psalms 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God