The Art of Rest

One hundred million years ago,  I worked as a makeup artist, wig fitter/stylist and solo hair stylist in a teeny, tiny salon.  I loved that job and especially the clients who were loyal to me.  I was working part time as a stylist and wasn't easy to get into most weeks.  At that time I had only two male clients.  One, kind of a creepy guy, was loyal to me for all the wrong reasons. I was married, but that didn't matter much to him.

The other is one of the most incredible photographers I've ever known.  He stuck around through my pink salon/makeup shop days because he's just a great guy.  After I moved to Alaska, I would sometimes run into him on vacations back to Montana.  When he found out I was living and working back in Montana, he fired his current stylist and returned to me...

"What do YOU do for fun Collene?"  The question was a scary one to answer back then, because my life was completely immersed in diaper changing, nap times and Well Baby appointments when I wasn't at work.  Dare I be so selfish as to dream a little about "me time".  My photographer client may have been the only one I talked to back then about my love of photography.  He was constantly encouraging me to "get out there and shoot"!  He was always irritated that on my visits back, I had nothing to show him, photographically speaking, of my life in Alaska.  (He was right to be annoyed, I sure am now, too.  I sense a vacation coming...) 

Last night, I was thinking about some of those conversations in that pink salon.  As I have been "getting out there and shooting," as well as editing shots of the kids from last summer, I've been extremely grateful for the gentle encouragement over the years from my client.

There is something incredibly powerful about being in nature, focusing on the details.  These concepts of life I'm constantly, restlessly, mulling are finding temporary comfort in the power of creation and capturing the beauty of those I love.  After a physically, emotionally draining day at work, I am somehow energized with a 2 mile walk with my camera.  Finding rest is becoming real to me as "...He makes me lie down in green pastures..." floats through my thoughts.

Thank you for ever encouraging me, my Fotogypsy friend!  Here's a sampling of what has caught my eye and made me smile this year:

The Season of Darkness

Well this has been an intense week.  It's somewhere between Tuesday and Wednesday, sooo, that's unfortunate!  Really, if I'm being honest, it's been an intense six weeks.  Aside from the constant internal work going on in me, a crazy little freakish accident resulted in elevated insanity for me at the salon.  It seems I'm barely taking a breath these days.

I have about four half-written blogs in cue and chapter after chapter of scribble in my blue raw journal.  Nothing is scrubbing clean enough for public consumption yet, but I've got lots of unfinished thoughts roaming around inside me, so I'll try again.

As usual, I have songs rolling around my head this week.  I can't really tell you details about what brought my heart to this place, but that won't matter anyway.  "Sufficiency" is the roaming word for the last month and a half.  Longer, maybe.  Tenth Avenue North is the group I've been listening to, these are fragments of two of their songs that I can't seem to get enough of. 

(Hold My Heart/Empty My Hands.)

 

How long must I pray, must I pray to You?
How long must I wait, must I wait for You?
How long 'til I see Your face, see You shining through?
I'm on my knees, begging You to notice me.
I'm on my knees, Father will you turn to me? 

I've been so afraid, afraid to close my eyes
So much can slip away before I say goodbye.
But if there's no other way, I'm done asking why.
Cuz I'm on my knees, begging You to turn to me
I'm on my knees, Father will you run to me?

 ...

Cause my mind is like a building burning down 

I need Your grace to keep me, keep me from the ground  

And my heart is just a prisoner of war 

A slave to what it wants and to what I'm fighting for

So many questions without answers, Your promises remain
I can't sleep but I'll take my chances to hear You call my name
To hear You call my name

One tear in the driving rain,
One voice in a sea of pain
Could the maker of the stars
Hear the sound of my breakin' heart?
One light, that's all I am
Right now I can barely stand
If You're everything You say You are
Won't You come close and hold my heart.

Sufficiency in Christ.  Christ alone?  How?  How do I find ALL of my/our needs met in Him?  How does HE compensate for what I lack when it comes to parenting my children? This month it has been well documented that I absolutely cannot do it all.  I don't want them simply to grow up because enough time passed.  I want to raise them- with standards, and insight, and hope, and discipline, and warnings, and examples, and truth...

"Take care of what's important to you"... The final text from a friend who left too soon.  His words pinpoint my current anguish.  "I can't" was my reply...

Last week, a man made the off-handed comment to me: "if we know what needs to be done, yet don't do it, the consequences fall squarely on us".  I feel like I'm watching a train move steadily for the washed-out bridge.  I can't stop it, but I see the consequences of my own insufficiency pending... I am completely unable to "take care of what's important to me" and still unable to completely trust Him to fill the gap, only because I can't see how it could possibly work out in every facet.  It feels urgent, yet I am in the dark.  The plan isn't clear.  Is there a plan?

Furthermore, how does HE cover the specific loneliness and want- or dry the tears that seem to leak, WAY too often, from the corner of my eyes until I drift off to a fitful sleep?  Obviously, I CAN do fallow, as it pertains to love. I just don't want to anymore.  Yet, just any ole' guy won't do.  I'll stay alone, thank-you-very-much.  Still the nonsense tears fall, the foolish heart aches...

I feel like my questions are "wrong" to ask. They seem faithless and ignorant.  It's not Christian "PC" to ask.  But, then I'm not exactly a politically correct Christian these days, either. So, I'm asking anyway.

The truth is, I'm physically more exhausted than ever before, in my life.   It turns out I wasn't built to work 9-12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, in the summer, with the absence of a seven hour school day, while feeding/entertaining/encouraging/disciplining/correcting/teaching/enjoying a 9, 12, and 13 year old.  I had a green yard. It's 85% brown today.  I bought a ridiculous amount of gorgeous annuals and potted them this spring.  They are 96% dead.  I have a dog.  I think he hates me, but desperately wags his tail and licks me, reminding me of his attention starvation, every time I walk in the room.  I have enough dust bunnies under my furniture to make a sleeping bag.  I am certain there is nothing green (that should be green) in my refrigerator.  I have amazing friends.  I couldn't tell you what one of them has going on this weekend, or last weekend, or the one before.  I have no idea what their voices even sound like anymore.  The "check engine" light has been on for weeks.  The oil change was due about 1200 miles ago... (Dad, relax, I'll get to it... tomorrow?...)  This is all temporary, I know, but are the effects long-lasting?

Those who know me well, know that physical exhaustion leads to mental gymnastics.  I've done my best to reign in my mental performance on the uneven bars, but alas, I'm the Nastia Liukin of the 2012 Mental Olympics.  It's actually quite impressive, however, gold medals are not awarded at the 2012 Mental Games, only silver hair, forehead wrinkles, frown lines, short tempers and elevated blood pressure. 

So, maybe if you pray, I can solicit your prayers?  I desire nothing more than to truly understand "sufficiency in Christ, alone".  My prayer is that the darkness I find myself in, is simply the shadow of His hand and not the very long, very cold, winter months of night, in a frozen, arctic, wasteland.

Yeah, that's my son's Lego guy.  He's hangin' out in the Comfort of the Shadow.