a jar of river water all shaken up.

i was at saranac village for intervarsity's basileia summer conference and was told that carrie (our IV staff worker) was giving me a book discount for being one of the first seven people to register for basileia. i had already given in and bought a book called, "unceasing worship," and, if you know me, you'd you know i wanted to buy out the whole bookstore. i wanted to read everything. but i knew i couldn't, so what was i to do with my $10 discount? i preened my way through all the books again and again and finally settled on a book called, "living the sabbath." but when i told carrie, she showed me these three other books and said, "that could be a great book, but i'd like it if you could get a book that'll help you think about the concept of spiritual disciplines." so i was like, oh alright.

now if you know me, i have a terrible time picking one good thing from many. three books that looked really good to read? how am i supposed to choose? so i took the three books with me to the fireplace, curled up on one of the wooden chairs that could've swallowed me whole, and started reading a little bit of each book. they all sounded like good reads for me, but it was ruth haley barton's sincerity of thoughts and feelings that seemed to align with mine that caught my attention.

in the midst of the outward busyness of my life there was an inner chaos that was far more disconcerting. it was particularly alarming to realize that even though i had been a Christian for many years, i was struggling with some of the basics of spiritual life. for one thing, i could not seem to consistently love my husband and children, elements of selfishness and self-centeredness were being exposed in the crucible of marriage and parenting and were frightening to acknowledge.
...but the deeper truth was this: even though i had been a Christian for many years i did not know how to love - really. particularly when love was demanding or inconvenient or interfered with my own desires, i did not know how to die to myself in even the smallest way. true transformation in the places that really counted seemed just beyond my reach. i was beginning to wonder whether some of the core promises of the Christian life were true at all.
...as it turned out, my limited capacity to love was just the tip of an iceberg. there were enormous questions right under the surface of my busy life, questions that i could no longer keep quiet. there were questions about identity and calling: was there anything truer about me than the externals of gender-related roles and responsibilities? was there anything more defining than how hard i could work, the level of excellence i could achieve and other people's assessment of that? there were questions about the possibility of true spiritual transformation: what about those stuck places i was just beginning to acknowledge - those places where i could not break free to love? was there any power effective enough to touch those intractable places here and now, or was my best hope for transformation some distant possibility beyond the grave? and there were questions about what was lurking deep in the subterranean levels of the soul: what was motivating the frenetic quality of my life and schedule? why did i find it terribly hard to say no, even when my overcommitment hurt those closest to me? would i come to the end of my life only to mourn poor choices that did not reflect what is most prized?

if i was chewing gum in my mouth, i would've nearly swallowed it as i read those words. barton put into words many of the questions, thoughts, and feelings that had surfaced since coming to college, but bubbled up more visibly in my life at the beginnning of this past school year.

so i bought "invitation to solitude and silence," by ruth haley barton, and i read.

and of course, if you know me, you know i soak up visual metaphors and analogies like sponge. so in the book, barton explains that she began seeing a spiritual director, who described barton this way: she was like a jar of river water all shaken up. if she would just be still and let the sediment settle, the water would become more clear and less murky.

that's what i feel like - a jar of river water all shaken up. i'm shaken up every time the stress plows through my life, and when i don't get the chance to be still, pieces of everything from all areas of life cloud the direction of my life. i think that's why i'm not like katy, who thinks like in time spans of five years. i can't think that far ahead because i know that what happens today and within the next few months will affect and change what happens years from now, so that's what we should be concentrating on. i need to sort things today and tomorrow and next week and next month before i can think beyond that.

but it gets frustrating because it seems like when things finally start to become clear, my jar just seems to get shaken up all over and maybe even turned upside down.

but these past two weeks of going to basileia and participating in work crew have shaken me up in a way that i haven't gone completely beserk. somehow through the chaos of floating sediment, God has pierced through me and caused me to be still. i have been learning to hear His voice through the noise from external circumstances and my own internal being as well.

karen's right. work crew can't be summed up at all. neither can basileia.