Hunger and Thirsting

 So work has been a bit of a bear lately. We are changing a lot of processes and policies (for the better) but we are changing them all at once which means there is a LOT more work and a LOT more stress and a LOT more failure on my part. This has dredged up an old lie that I have fought for most of my adult life. "You are not enough" or more truthfully, "You are useless." The story of how any why I came by this lie is a story for another day. Suffice to say that feeling like you are continuously not living up to expectations (your and others) knocks very heavily upon this door. I have had more breakdowns in the past two weeks than I have over the past two years before them. I knew what was going on, I knew that I was putting too much pressure on myself and caring too much about assumed opinions on other people's parts. But I was in so deep that we had already made it to survival mode by the time I got around to do anything about it. Now I kept telling people that I really felt like a lot of this was a spiritual attack. For those of you who have read previous blogs you will know that God sort of shook my world at a collegiate conference I went to a few weeks back. And it felt WAY to coincidental that all this stress would suddenly emerge the week (the day) after I returned. 

Well, last week was a "just hold on for a little longer" type of week. Seriously, I was counting down the hours to the weekend because I knew that this past weekend was going to be game-changing. I was going to be at IF Conference. For those of you who have never heard of the IF Conference, PLEASE GO LOOK IT UP!!! It is an amazing weekend retreat for women globally. And I knew God was going to be there and we would have hours of set aside time to be with one another. Not surprisingly I spent most of the conference crying my ever-loving eyes out. Some of it was from a place of deep hurt (see above) some of it was a place from deep longing, and some was from a place of joy. But the coup de grâce of the weekend was actually AFTER the conference. 

Having spent hours and hours focusing on God I suppose I was "in tune" to hear what I heard. It was Sunday and I was listening to a sermon on the tempting of Jesus in the wilderness. I actually was only halfway paying attention because my emotions were still in a torrent form the past weeks. I felt like I was in the boat on the sea when the storm came. Blubbering up in the tech booth where I was helping out (blissfully alone!) when all of a sudden I felt like God was telling me he wanted me to fast. Y'all, IMMEDIATELY the storm of my emotions calmed. Later I realized that I had been trying to deal with a Spiritual problem--spiritual attack--with physical solutions--I.E. coping mechanisms. God was (is) calling me to face this thing in the spiritual realm and fasting is one of the ways we step into that realm. Even later than that revelation, I realized that one of my coping mechanisms was (and has always been) food. God was asking me to give up this physical comfort in exchange for a spiritual one. 

You see, I've been hungry--really hungry--for a while now. Not physically speaking, but spiritually. There is a song that goes, "More love, More power, More of you in my life..." This is what my heart and mind has been crying out. So I will be embarking on a journey I have never taken before. I am going to fast, not just for a few days, but for weeks. Until Easter, in fact. It is a daunting journey to be sure. Please know that I am not telling you all this out of a place of pride, but one of deep humility and accountability. I am challenging you to ask me how it's going, to lift me up in prayer, and to stand with me. I have a feeling that this journey will lead to a breakthrough in my life. What kind? I'm not completely sure. And hey, I'll be praying a LOT so if you have something specific you'd like me to lift up, let me know! Who knows what God will do. I have no answers at this point. Only a desire to trust and be obedient. He must be calling me into this for a reason, and I can't wait to see what He'll do.