I feel jittery and over-caffeinated, and just plain yucky.  I’m hungry… or at least I think I’m hungry, but I also feel stuffed, and ready to throw up.

Some carrot sticks sound good right now, but I feel to shaky to handle a knive.

Blech.

You wouldn’t think it’d be so hard.

I wasn’t doing the set “chore” of the dishes, yet… that’ll come after quiet time, dressing the kids, and fixing my hair.

Nobody’s coming over, that I know of.  I had no need of the table, and really, breakfast wasn’t quite over, since Sleepyhead still remains in his room.  I’ll have to clear it all over again in just a short while.  Most inefficient.

 No, there was absolutely no reason at all for clearing the table… except that a clean table, with an egg and a slice of toast set out for Sleepyhead, and that cup of coffee that I’m still nursing…

Well, it’s just a lovely, energizing thing, that’s all.  A lovely orderly thing, that makes our home a place worth living in.  That’s all.

And that’s enough.

 It really is.

But if that’s not enough… and though it IS enough, it’s awfully hard to convince myself that it’s enough… well, it’s a scene much more congruent with the Gershwin wafting from the stereo. 

All these little hurdles are a whole lot easier to overcome with the right music. 

 And right now, Rhapsody in Blue is most definitely the right music.

Probably because it’s orderly… but so very confident and free.  It breathes a confident spontenaity that makes me feel as though order might not be an opressive, constricting thing… that it might actually be empowering.  That I can be flexible, but not chaotic… and maybe George Gershwin can help to teach me how.

Somehow it’s okay, necessary, even, to want beauty for others… but for myself, when I’m alone, when there’s nobody else around… I desperately want to be surrounded by beauty, but I’m so afraid.

It’s just too humiliating to admit that I think I might matter enough.

Always the refrain “His faithful love endures forever” echoes between each line, in the midst of it all.  Through slavery, wilderness, and war, His faithful love endures forever.  He himself, who made the heavens so skillfully, who placed the earth on the water, who made the heavenly lights–the sun to rule the day, and the moon and stars to rule the night…. it was the very same God who shaped their long, painful, and confusing journey.  And his faithful love endures forever.

So it is with my life.

It’s hard to see, sometimes.  I’m not where I want to be, or where everyone around me thinks I ought to be.  And yet, as I look back, I’m utterly convinced that this road is exactly the road God has carefully laid out in front of me, that He is gently leading me every step of the way, and that His faithful love endures forever. 

And though I wander in the wilderness, His presence is always before me in a cloud, and a pillar of fire illumines the dark night of the soul. 

Though I grumble and wish for the sophisticated leeks of Egypt, I must confess that the manna is sweet indeed.

I’d been doing so well lately.  My thoughts had been filled with prayer and Scripture and a sweet, humble reliance on Christ’s mercy.

No more.  My thoughts are filled with vitriol and self-loathing, and I’m finding it all but impossible to keep from muttering them aloud.

And I do NOT want the kids to hear what I have to say about myself.

It was my dear little boy who set me off, I suppose, just by sheer wonderfulness.  He’s recently learned to say “thank you,” and he says it all the time.

Constantly.

Every time I get him a glass of juice, or change his diaper, or put on his shoes, or disentangle him from some scrape or other, he beams and thanks me.

In other words, all the time.

He recieves so much, and so freely, and with such gratitude.

I wish I knew how to do that.

I have a few thank-you notes burning in my mind…  it’s so hard for me to accept that people do nice things for me, and I never know what words to use to thank them.  Which is so ironic, because writing’s my thing.  It’s what I do… but nothing comes harder.

And so I procrastinate, and the guilt over the delinquent expressions of gratitude snowball, paralyzing me.  Can”t eat, can’t write, and tonight I can’t even sleep.

Ironic, is it not, to be suddenly struck with insomnia?

And yet perhaps that is how it always is, what we give to Him, He must first give to us, like a child Christmas shopping for her parents.

Perhaps this too is mercy.  The God who loves me too deeply to allow me to slide through life without a deep relationship with Him, who will not even let me eat without feeding my soul on His mercies, this same God will not allow me to freely and gratefully recieve from others until I will open my arms to recieve from Him.

The place to start, I suppose, is with the thank-you note most overdue of all.

Thank you, Jesus, for loving me whether or not I deserve it, whether or not I want it, whether or not I’m properly grateful for it.  Thank you for continuing to chase me and to chasten me, thank you for not giving up on me.

Hold me, Lord Jesus, let me rest in your love.

What really matters is the sort of seed we plant for eternity.

Sobering, and strangely comforting, to think of an entire lifetime as a single whole, a dry little seed of life eternal.

Remember, o man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return…

“When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn’t grow into a plant unless it dies first.  And what you put in the ground is not the plant that will grow, but only a dry little seed of wheat or whatever it is you are planting… It is the same way for the resurrection of the dead.  Our earthly bodies, which die and decay, will be different when they are resurrected, for they will never die.”

I Cor. 15:36, 42  NLT

It seems I’m always flip-flopping back and forth between the two extremes… one day I’m entirely caught up in the day-to-day physical world, never seeing beyond it.  Next day, I despise all things earthly, being so far inferior to spiritual things.

It’s terribly hard to find balance, but I think the key is right here in Paul’s words.

 The balance isn’t somewhere in the middle, but somewhere beyond both extremes, where they come ’round together and meet on the other side.

 The physical is important precisely because it is a mere shadow of the eternal.

 Our fleeting lives, transitory, ephemeral, and insignificant as they may be, are seeds of the eternal.

And so it is that matter matters.

As a recovering anorexic, how best can I observe Lent?

I’m good at fasting.  Really good. 

I wish I could say that it was because I was so spiritually mature, because my flesh is so docile and submissive and moderate.  In truth, it’s just that my sinful flesh is a control freak, and finds it a whole lot easier to fast than to admit its dependence on anything, be it food or God. 

I’ve looked and looked, but I have yet to find anybody talking about this topic.  The universal consensus seems to be that anyone with medical counter-indications should clearly be excused from fasting, but there’s a resounding silence regarding what we should do.   

In years past, I’ve attempted non-physical lenten disciplines, such as giving up television or the internet.  Sad to say, that didn’t work out so well.  During my internet fast, I freely gave up encouraging others and keeping in touch with friends, while somehow managing to replace all my internet time-wasters with equally worthless passtimes.  What is worse, by making my lenten disciplines solely mental and non-physical, I reinforced the divide between body and soul that is at the heart of anorexia.

There’s a reason why the spiritual disciplines have traditionally been so physical and tangible.  If Jesus is not Lord of my body, any attempt to make Him Lord of my soul is an excercise in self-delusion.

So this year, I’m going to watch.  My flesh may not like to eat, but it sure loves it some sleep. 

In fact, as I think about it, sleep is what enables my flesh to declare it’s independence from food and from God.  Fasting, rightly done, should turn one’s attention and reliance from food toward God.  However, when I don’t eat, I just replace food with sleep, sleep, and more sleep.

So maybe if I replace sleep with prayer–just a little bit, each night–I can cut straight to the heart of things, and start to place my whole dependence on Christ.

I’m not going to give up very much sleep, actually.  After all, God is not glorified when I give shoddy service to my family.   I’m only going to give up the “extra” sleep–the sleep I use to make up for interrupted sleep during the night, or inadequate nutrition during the day.  When the kids keep me up during the night, with God’s help I will not sleep in, but will rather submit to this little sacrifice, remembering Christ’s sacrifice for me.  And when I just don’t eat enough to sustain much activity at all, with God’s help I won’t crash out early, but rather pray for strength… and accept God’s wondrous provision of energy, so graciously given in the form of a cheeseburger.

Sundays, I will rest in honor of the resurrection, but on Friday, in commemoration of Christ’s sufferings, I will wake for one hour of prayer in the middle of the night.

That last is intimidating indeed.  I feel weak and inadequate as I contemplate all the saints who have done that very thing night after night, year-round… and here I am, afraid to watch one hour on lenten Fridays?  As I count the cost of my tiny little discipline, I’m astonished to realize how frail and fleshly I really am.

But maybe that’s the point.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.