Nights That Are Heavy

Tonight was one of those nights. 

An off night… a hard night… a heavy night… I wasn’t expecting it, it took me a little by surprise, but these days do still happen on occasion. I’m at the lake tonight… I finished up my work week at 5:00pm, packed up the groceries and the nine-year-old, and off we went to the lake together.

Usually these nights are a lifting of the heavy, a release of the anxieties, a filling of the empty… not a shoulder settling deep weight of added intensity and emotion.

I have come to cherish our Thursday nights at the lake. It’s typically just our youngest middle and myself… There are usually a few others already here, but not very many. The campground is still quiet. The golf carts aren’t the steady traffic going by yet. The children aren’t running, screaming, biking, and swimming yet. I can sit alone without feeling the guilt or worry of judgement that I often battle as a slight extrovert when everyone is here and gathered. I love my friends, I love the flutter of weekend activity, but oh I love my alone time and the silence as well {wink}.  

We often arrive close to dusk after a full, busy day and I unpack with my eyes gazing to the west, watching the hues of the sky change as sunset approaches. I’ll slowly make my way down to the beach to enjoy the peace of sunset. My sunset watching rock and bench will not have anyone else already there, no one rarely comes to join me on Thursday night sunsets. I have time to pray, time to watch, time to breath in deep the quiet my soul needs after a busy week of work and responsibilities.

The weather is often perfect on these nights as well. Tonight there is hardly a whisper of a breeze. The sky is black with the twinkle of bright stars all around. The big dipper hangs high in front of me. The moon a fingernail, hanging lazily in the sky. There’s a small buzz of bugs around our deck lights… a quiet distant lapping of waves down at the beach. Birds are chatting back and forth and there’s an occasional rustle in the grass from a passing squirrel or rabbit.

It’s a place and time that is woven with special magic for me… a secret location with a heavy mixing of soul care, and a large dash of guilt. Yes guilt. I have battled guilt all my life. And here is no different. I feel like I need to hide this all away, play it all down as no-big-deal, silence the fact that I’m even here.

I love summer, I love this place, I need this place. I need the slow, I need the relationships, I need the soul filling, salve healing minutes and hours each weekend to rest, to sleep, to read, to write, to pray, to run, to harness and grab the rabbit trails of uncaught creativity that course through me during the week when I don’t have time to hold, to grasp, to process fully.

I need these days, these nights, this place to refuel and recharge my tired batteries.

But tonight there is a heaviness, an ache, a frustration, an unsettledness that has followed me here. It’s holding my hand, pulling me back, it won’t seem to let me go.

I know there are changes on the horizon at my job. I try embrace change and be open to doing whatever I need to, but that still doesn’t mean that change isn’t hard. Change is uncomfortable. I’m not sitting in dread, but I am tiptoeing into that beforehand anticipation of unknown, and it’s becoming a constant little prink in the back of my mind. I got a jury duty summons for July and August, and in less than a month, my oldest will hopefully be a college graduate. He is in the process of moving into his own place, getting settled in a new job, fully embracing his final step into adulthood. And as a parent, I find this a bit of a hard spot to stand in. A shadowy stance of waiting and watching from afar.

I also know my body is physically tired as I continue to half marathon train. The runs are getting longer and harder, the battle in my mind with dates, goals, times, paces is intensifying as I continue to push myself while trying to not allow myself to sink into my obsessive tendencies which I’ve seen myself fall into in the past. My mind is knotted and jumbled up from the to-do lists back home, the responsibilities of day-to-day life. My soul is weary from the heaviness of watching so many hurt and struggle with the effects of sickness, health issues, relationship issues, and life’s daily battle of the burdens we all bare.

I sat on the dock tonight, watching the sun explode through the clouds in all its splendor and majesty. I closed my eyes, feeling the sun rays reflecting off my face - the brilliant brightness still evident through my closed eyelids. I breathed deeply in and out, in and out, looking for words…but the only thing I could utter was “Fill me Lord… Fill me Lord… Fill me Lord…”

I breathed deep, repeating it over and over. It was all I had.

I felt heavy. I felt burdened. I almost felt like a fake, a fraud, as I fleetingly wondered if I’m even truly an all-in Christ follower, or if I’m simply giving great lip service to what sounds good on behalf of the Great God behind the magnificence of this earth, this creation, this joy and journey of life. I felt selfish. I felt like I don’t deserve this time and this place. I felt sad. I thought about the reason we even first found this little place, through the loss of our little Faith MaryJo and the start our Journey to Faith. I felt grateful. I don’t have words for the gift this place has given us through our loss. The healing, the people and community, the perspective. I felt guilt. Satan whispers over and over I don’t deserve to be here. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t have a four day work week this summer, I shouldn’t love and need this place as much as I do. I shouldn’t find as much happiness here as I do. I shouldn’t find so much joy and soul filling here.

But I do… But I do… But I do… and it makes me hurt, confused, heavy laden when I allow those emotions to hang so forcefully on the narrows my shoulders.

I have battled this teeter-totter of overwhelm and abundance since our first summer here. It ebbs and flows, but it’s always quietly whispering in the back of my mind. Today the whisper was loud. Today the whisper brought heaviness instead of release.

I know this is all a great gift from God. I know I should just praise fully each and every blessing in my life right now, as my blessings are more than the grains of sand right now. Uncountable, unfathomable are His gifts to me. I know I should grasp every passing moment with the grandeur and magnitude they were created to be, and open my hands to release the guilt and release the heaviness.

I know… and yet, I still feel that I need to hide it and I need to hang on to the guilt of it. I need to not share it, not fully embrace it. I worry what others looking in at me are thinking, what they’re judging me over, what they’re secretly harboring towards me. I know the world is all carrying a heavy burden and I feel a great empathy for their journeys. I want to love well and be aware well… so I feel I need to hide my good things for some reason. I need to downplay and under value the very thing that is the greatest thing for me.

I consider my own selfishness… I consider others pain, heaviness, burdens… I consider the pain of the worlds day-to-day living… and I consider just remaining silent. But God is so evident and so good here, and I just want to share that, I want to capture that, reflect that, to outwardly encourage, touch, help, connect…

I sit here on my sacred wooden deck in the silence, in the dark, in my own heaviness, my own emptiness, my own battle between overwhelm, personal blessings, and heavenly abundance amid the icky and sticky of life’s heavy. I want to simply share my struggle, my journey, my pain, my overcome, even though something inside continues to tell me I’m not worthy, I’m not deserving enough, and others don’t want to know, don’t want to hear, and will only resent me if I do share. I’m not sure where this logic stems from. I’m not sure if it’s a truthful whisper from above urging me to remain quiet, or if it is simply the stories I’m falsely weaving in my own mind.   

So tonight I will simply share the story of a quiet evening at the lake, an unexpected night of heavy emotions, amid the grand gift of my known gratitude and blessing. I will simply share the hands outstretched, uttering over and over and over “Fill me Lord… Fill me Lord… Fill me Lord…” I will somehow convince myself it’s ok to continue to share my journey - my pain, my hurt, my hard, my failures, my heart, my joy, my successes.

Today was a hard day, even at my special, happy place. But that is ok. Hard days are simply part of my journey - I have come to embrace this reality, but that doesn’t always make them any easier to trudge through.

Tonight I won’t hide behind a “I’m doing just fine” smile. Tonight I shall look the world in the eyes and quietly admit the heavy, openly admit the hard. I will earnestly pray to be filled. I will allow sleep and give rest to my mind and body. I will allow sleep and give rest to my weary heart and heavy soul.

I will continue breathing deep breathes of “Fill me Lord… Fill me Lord… Fill me Lord…”

I will say goodnight and call it a day. And tomorrow, I will simply trust the Lord will wake me to a new day, a better day, a lighter day, a brighter day…

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