Offering

The last few weeks left me feeling like I got sucked into a wind turbine and spit out on the other side all akimbo.  As I arced through the air and landed in the middle of the busy street I'm left thinking, "What the heck just happened to me?!!"  Friday night was our Hearts for the City Benefit Concert and Silent Auction...the climax of a very harried, and short, story plot.  This weekend I had to close the book, take a deep breath (which looked like sleeping like the dead for hours at a time) before opening the pages tomorrow to find the resolution.  There is much yet to be done and of course, Christmas is upon us, which for all it's promises of wonder and cheer often adds to my stress rather than releases it.

But, God is teaching me things and I am resolved to try to be at peace with that.  I did manage to force myself not to open work emails this weekend and only rarely succumbed to the constant nagging list of follow-up tasks scrolling through my head.  If you know me, you would be shocked at how often I just sat and told myself to think of nothing.  And you know what?  It felt rather relaxing. 

In times of extreme insanity you are forced to prioritize.  Improvise, adapt, and overcome...as it is said.    There is a strange sense of empowerment in the realization that there is so much I am powerless to force into being...when I've done all I could do and the rest is up to the Lord.  Now if I can take that knowledge into the less "life and death" moments I think there'd be a lot less stress in my life. 

With my personality it is hard for me not to internalize my performance in tasks and roles as my identity and my worth.  I wrestled at the concert feeling like everything was so perfect for an audience of hundreds, yet less than a hundred came.  It smacked of failure and shame.  But, at one point I paused my administrating and sat and listened to the song our performer, Mark Roach, was singing.  He sang the chorus of his song "You Are"--"You are my God and my King/You are the words that I sing/You are the reason I made this offering."

It hit me that rather than sitting there thinking about the lack of attendance or what that said about my identity and capability I needed to rest in the fact that I gave everything I had and it wasn't really for anyone else but the Lord.  I heard a quote once that "Duty is ours and results are the Lord's" and that's exactly what I felt the Lord spoke to me in that moment.  We put on a beautiful event, we did raise some money, and some great people came...the amount of people and money was completely up to the Lord. 

I struggle to hang on to that perspective in life.  But, I want the Lord to continue to teach me to leave everything I have in what He's called me to do and take my pride and identity out of the results and put it in the faithfulness of my work to my King.

"You are my God and my King...You are the reason I made this offering."