A Heart-Melting "Here-ness"

While living in Kentucky, the Army Corps of Engineers removed a mountain from behind our home. For many months, we endured daily blasting and the endless roar of huge dump trucks removing earth from behind our house. A monumental task for one goal to change the path of the Cumberland River in order to avert more destructive flooding.

When I think about making large changes in my own life, I often think this kind of superhuman effort is needed. After all, I try again and again to control my thoughts only to find myself continuing in the old patterns. If nothing else, this experiment has reminded me of my weaknesses and how far away I am from who I want to be. The more I want to seek God, the more my thoughts stray to other things. Soon the task seems overwhelming and well beyond my feebleness.

My dear friend, Frank, struggled with the same thing. As I read his words, I was surprised to hear his own struggle with the great effort it seemed this task should take.  While many entries speak of the extreme joy he found in his own experiment amongst them is one where he speaks of his own struggle. At first, he speaks of the extreme effort he believed it would take to achieve his goal.

"I have to make a greater effort next week. I have undertaken something which, at my age at least, is hard, harder than I had anticipated. But I resolve not to give up the effort."

But then he continues with another profound truth. For he sees that it is not a greater effort which is needed but something which seems so very counter-intuitive to us go-getters and independent folk.

"Yet strain does not seem to do good. At this moment I feel something 'let go' inside, and lo, God is here! It is a heart melting 'here-ness,' a lovely whispering of father to child, and the reason I did not have it before, was because I failed to let go."

What do we do when the going gets tough? We, the tough, get going. But that is not what God calls us to do and it is not what Frank tells me to do. We let go. Or as the saying says, "Let Go; Let God." In my own experience this month, the moments I have felt closest to God are the very ones where I find myself resting rather than working. It is in the quietness of rest where I have experienced the wonder of a "heart melting 'here-ness'." The chaos of work and the need to control are counter-productive to this task ahead of me.

As a fairly young child, my mom taught me the joy of floating on my back in the water. She would float for a long time in the pool not moving but just allowing the water to keep her body up. She talked about how relaxing it was to feel the water holding her up and moving with the gentle waves. I, too, enjoy floating when I have the chance. Nothing is more relaxing than letting go and resting on the water. However, the moment you tense up, the floating takes effort and becomes work. I use this image when I think about letting go in my life. Leaning against the one who loves me more than any other and allowing him complete control. And in the rare moments I can do this, I know the "heart melting here-ness only He can provide.