the river

I hadn't wanted to go to some river. 

I wanted to go to the beach. Everybody else has gone to the beach! Always. I always, always want to go to the beach...and it's been such a long time. 

But 9 people, one income, hotels, 7 kiddos, all the things...going to Sharon's family cabin and walking to the river each day and buying groceries and going on hikes...it was what we could do this season.  And she's talked about it fondly for so many years, I was anxious to see what was special, and it was. 

But not the beach. Really not the Haiti beach. 

Then I sat in the rickety rocking chair on our porch this morning, early early, up with a crying baby now back to sleep, listening to today's segment of 30 Days to Resilient on the One Minute Pause app Elisa had pointed me to. 

It's been so deeply good, these 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at bed, leading towards recovering joy, strengthening our hearts and thriving through life following Jesus' path of supernatural resilience. 

Trying to hold onto the good things He pointed me to at the river last week, this morning with my coffee and my eyes closed, the scorching sun already beating down on my back, Elderdge said,

Just like oxygen, the presence of God and his kingdom surround you all the time. Take a moment and become aware of the presence of God with you. 

Help me become aware and tune in to your presence all around me and in me. I know you are gentle; help me feel your presence with me and within me. 

"I know you are gentle" unexpectedly sprung tears to my eyes. These past few years haven't felt very gentle.  

But Jesus. 

I made myself say it, sitting there, "I know you are gentle", and in my declaration I did know what I've forgotten. He is gentle. He is good. He is giving good gifts. 

But the voice wasn't done.

So much of the resilience we seek doesn't come from digging deeper or keeping it together. It comes to us from the kingdom of God. 

The life of God is described in Scripture as a river.

Suddenly I was right where I was just a few days ago,  right were I was last week, laying back in a lawn chair, sun warm on my face, kids laughter all around me, the sound of the birds and the rushing, bubbling water endlessly. 

The life of God is described in Scripture as a river--a powerful, gorgeous, unceasing, ever-renewing, ever-flowing river. 

I was there. Just. My feet in the unexpectedly icy rushing water. The life of God...that. powerful. beautiful. ever-renewing. fresh. flowing. 

What John Elderdge was describing, the life of God, I could hear it, see it, feel it, because I did not go to the beach last week. I went to the river.

That river, he went on, is meant to flow within you. 

Strengthening you, healing you, imparting resilience into your humanity. 

The woman on her porch this morning at dawn needed "strengthening you, healing you, imparting resilience" more than anything in the world. It was water to my soul. It was happening as my phone spoke to me. 

For the first time since my dad died, instantly, rushing on me, I felt not hurting, not stabbing.

I felt healing. I felt the sun baking on my head, and God to be gentle, and healing me, pouring into me a resilience that doesn't come from my own efforts or refusal to quit, but from His strength and Kingdom alone. 

Tears poured down my face as I physically felt healing, and whispered "Lord, the last time I have felt healing like this was...? I searched my mind and jolted forward in my chair, crying harder.

It was that day! 

That day. 

I've told you about it before. 2004. My mother. Port-au-Prince, women all around me, beating out the laundry, sun blazing on my heading, standing in...

THE RIVER. 

blog posts from years, years ago...

"Tears sprang to my eyes again as I instantly thought of that moment I've shared with you before...deep in despair over losing my mother, standing knee-deep in a river in a little village in Haiti, beating out clothes with a bank full of chattering mothers, when HEALING hit me full force with the sun on my back and I KNEW, no doubt, out of no where, for the first time, that He WASN'T finished. He still had a plan. There was still hope."

...

"I stood in the river knee-deep one day in 2004, stretching my back in the hot sun with a heaping red bucket of dirty t-shirts and skirts and jeans by my side.  Haitian ladies bent all around me, scrubbing and straining and twisting and rinsing and chattering as we worked, my feet numb in the icy water, sweat pouring down my neck.

For over a year I had been drowning in the shock and sorrow of losing my mom, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to find which way was UP. 

Here I was, wandering...I lived with a family not my own. I was in a country not my own. I was doing work not my own. I was even washing clothes not my own. 

I was utterly empty handed in every way that day, arms outstretched to the heavens as the women around me chattered and laughed.

And that day, that moment, that river, as I searched only for small ways to love those who were hurting, too, He met me strong, with healing in His wings. I felt Him be enough for me, Christ alone."

I started to bawl, and I'm crying again this evening. The River. I was standing in that river, in that icy water, and out of nowhere, by His grace, I felt the sun and His physical healing...a stretching out and setting free of of my crouching, wounded, withered soul.

This morning on my front porch, my mind and heart and senses fully at the river from last week, I felt His healing touch again, again at the river. 

The life of God is described in Scripture as a river--a powerful, gorgeous, unceasing, ever-renewing, ever-flowing river. 

I know this was the most disjointed post ever, trying to put into physical words a spiritual working, but what grace, today, that it wasn't the beach. What grace and gentleness and love, even when I grumbled, that it wasn't the beach.

I have miraculously felt His gentle, scarred hands graciously trace my wounds twice in my life...once for my mother, once for my father, both with a physical river by His powerful, ever-renewing spiritual living water. 

For the Scriptures declare, 'Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.'

Let's ask for them.