The Journey Begins: Recovering My Soul
Thank you so much for your prayers and support. Over the last few months, I have received many encouraging messages from so many of you. I am incredibly grateful to the Lord for the opportunity to have taken a sabbatical for the last few months.
He has brought me healing.
He has brought me rest.
He has brought me peace.
He has brought me new direction.
Are You Weary?
Matthew 11:28-30 says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Over the last few months, these verses have given me great comfort and are the very foundation of my road back to healing.
Is anyone else weary and in need of soul rest?
Surely, I am not the only one?
(Deep sigh)
To the weary and burdened today and in His day, Jesus offers these words, "blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)
I wish I could say that I chose to take a sabbatical - to take a break. That taking a sabbatical was somehow my wise choice. But weary people rarely ever make wise choices. The truth is that I had the gas pedal of life pushed to the floor for over two years. Going at a pace that was often not in step with Jesus. Working hard to "do things" for God, but not focused enough on "being with" God. Studying the scriptures but not taking time to meditate on them, allowing them to transform me from the inside out.
Slowly over time, my physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual health began to erode. Until one day, everything came crashing down, and I found myself at the bottom of a heartbreak. It was in that place that taking a sabbatical chose me.
Hitting Rock Bottom
In the first few pages of his best-selling book, Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer describes his own rock bottom moment this way. "But the thing is, I feel like a ghost. Half alive, half dead. More numb than anything else; flat, one dimensional. Emotionally I live with an undercurrent of nonstop anxiety that rarely goes away, and a tinge of sadness, but mostly I just feel blaaah spiritually.... empty. It's like my soul is hollow." Ironically, these words were penned at what seemed like to the outside world to be the peak of his ministry as a lead pastor at a megachurch in America. But on the inside, his soul was dead, and he was haunted by the thought that "in America you can be a success as a pastor and a failure as an apprentice of Jesus; you can gain a church and lose your soul."(1)
Facing his own spiritual reckoning, Curtis Zachary, in Soul Rest, wrote these words. "I was coming unraveled. I was losing my way. My "true north" on the compass of a community, friendship, ministry, and faith was becoming more and more cloudy. My love for Jesus and His church never wavered, but who I was supposed to be in light of those things was entirely unclear."(2)
In the early days of my sabbatical and even sometimes today, I feel the words of both of these men on a very personal level. Those were some dark and lonely days sorting through the mess of what I had become.
"More numb than anything else," check.
"Nonstop anxiety," check.
"Coming unraveled," check.
How Did I Get Here?
So if Jesus's words about offering us an easy yoke are true (and I believe they are), why does my life (and maybe yours) feel so hard? Why does my burden feel heavy and exhausting? To answer these questions, I had to come to grips with what caused my rock bottom moment. I had to answer the question, "how did I get here?" It was in this place that God rescued me. (And he wants to rescue you too if you can relate to my story).
These are the questions we will wrestle with together in my next few posts.
But for now, here are a few questions to gauge if your life is "coming unraveled," heading for the bottom of a heartbreak.
1. Do you regularly feel anxious, exhausted, and over-scheduled? Is your calendar bulging at the seams leaving you with no margin in your life?
2. Do you feel hurried and unsettled even when you have nowhere in particular to be? Are you always in a rush to get to the next thing?
3. Is your spiritual life primarily defined by doing things for God instead of being with God?
Notes:
John Mark Comer, Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2019)
Curtis Zackery, Soul Rest: Reclaim Your Life. Return to Sabbath (Bellingham, WA: Kirkdale Press, 2018)
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