Stir and Slow

My heart is stirred too much sometimes. I fight the impulse to change everything about the world and nothing about me. Why don’t I just take a step back and let it all be?

You are my core, You have to be. Your voice is like a lullaby and I cry into Your chest and let You collect all these tears. You are always on my side, even when I can’t be on my own. Everything changes, but You do not.

Deep is the emotional resistance I might put up when I try to move through any thing new. Not as deep as my soul and all the complexities of my heart. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to know what it is that has me so exhausted. I’m so afraid of things that are less and less of a reality, so I am not so sure why I struggle so much.

I’m a fighter, to be sure. Most of the time that serves me well, but sometimes I fight so hard for everything that I can’t keep sight of what it is. If everything weren’t so desperately important, maybe I could take a break, or get my heart to slow down. It’s all the beating I can’t control, even when I breathe deeply.

How great is Your love, lavished on me? I am daughter of God, daughter of Jerusalem, dreamer of dreams, prophetess of visions, holder of hope. I am all these things, and sometimes it’s too much.

There is just no way to equate household tasks to ending slavery or daily routines to fighting injustice. But I can defy the system in all these mundane things—not bowing to the expectations and oppressions that history set up to continue. My name, my vote, my career, my consumption, my marriage, my church, my entire identity screams against that injustice and sometimes the smallest things are the loudest.

I don’t have to be anything. I don’t.

And maybe one day I’ll be able to see how all my small decisions took some major steps toward overturning the system. You came to redeem, to reconcile. The whole order that denigrates women, discriminates against brothers and sisters of color, privileges the wealthy, and rapes the earth doesn’t have to be the keeper of my destiny. You keep it. You keep it safe.

You know when I sit and when I rise, when I go out and come back, when I sleep and wake up and all the moments in between. Love is worth the pain. It’s worth all the agonizing over small decisions and large heartaches, and moving in and through the uncertainties. Because You never change.

It’s why I fight and why I can’t sleep and why, finally, I can rest.