I’ve learned something from living in Florida: only tourists and children feed the birds. If you’ve spent enough time on the beach, you’ve had an experience with a bird that you don’t want to recreate for yourself or anyone else. You know not to feed them. Doubt is like a hungry seagull. Discouragement like a wild animal grown accustom to people feeding it. The lies that such digestion create fall on everyone standing close by.
God has me in the cleft of a rock right now. It is a hard, rough, cold place but also the place Scripture tells us that Moses stood when he saw God. I’ve often asked for the seeing but never wanted the rock hard ground. I wouldn’t have chosen this. Not this way. Not this time. Not this hard. But something has shifted in me. It’s a very subtle shift, like an ocean current that slowly moves you so that 30 minutes later you’re no longer in the vicinity of where you started. The shift is this: I ask God to heal me not because I desperately want it, I could ever earn it, or it would validate His love for me. I ask Him because I believe every word He says, and I want all of me to fall in line with His commands, His ways, and His promises. He is a healer, and therefore I ask that my body would reflect that and glorify Him in it. It’s a shift that was almost unnoticeable, but I now turn back and realize it’s taken me far from where I was.
My resolve that was once by faith is now deep in the depths of me. I processed and grieved for several weeks, because I’ve learned through the years that it isn’t wrong to wrestle with God. He’s not afraid of our sadness or our questions. I was determined to get from Him what I needed in order to make my heart right. Now, my unbelief, doubt, and ungratefulness in the processing grieve me deeply. It grieves me not because God is a hard dictator, but because He’s not. I know that full well. He deserves my trust. It grieves me that I ever let the birds near me. That I let them steal my food and that I let them near my stuff. It grieves me that my feeding just one attracted so many more. The mob of them stirred up so much grit. The swarm of them was so loud I couldn’t hear.
I am now more resolute than ever. My story isn’t over, but while I wait I will gladly step back and serve behind the scenes. Like David, I’d rather be a door keeper in the house of the Lord than anywhere away from Him. I’d even clean the closets if that’s the job He chose for me. Now, I get to show Him that I mean it. And I am determined not to feed the birds while I do.
Lord, I’m sorry for my doubt. I’m sorry for the fear. I’m sorry for my unbelief and not because I want what could be on the other side of faith. But because it grieves me when I don’t love you well; when my heart, soul, and mind don’t reflect that love. Help me to glean all You have for me in this season, not because I want to move quickly to the next, but because I know it will draw me closer to You. I want that more than anything. I love you more than healing, more than clear vision, a strong voice, my ministry, or my desires. I love you more than all these things.