Pause

Main Entry:
pause
Function:
verb
Inflected Form(s):
paused; paus·ing
Date:
15th century
intransitive verb 1 : to stop temporarily 2 : to linger for a time

Though I know words can never fully define the movements and workings of God, if I were forced to pick a word that describes what He has me doing this summer, it would be the word Pause. I find it amazing that something I have so often prayed and hoped for, yet thought was unrealistic to do so, has actually come into fruition this summer. In so many ways, my life has paused while time keeps on playing simultaneously. It is a bizarre experience.

Yet there is so much purpose in it. God has physically put me in a place where I can rest fully, in the physical and spiritual terms of the word. I have needed it tremendously. I see it clearly now as I’ve been able to look back on the lessons He has taught me in the last couple of years, this last one in particular. A steep learning curve would be an understatement. The usage of the word lessons is really an understatement as well. It implies an act in which one obtains knowledge. I don’t underestimate the value of lessons, and I know God doesn’t either. But if we were to focus purely on the lessons we learn, we would only be focusing on one aspect the way we were created to live and act-coming to know and love God through our mind. In some ways I wonder if that is why I have craved time to reflect on said lessons in the past, because through that time I was able to tangibly grasp it through the processing of my mind. God has been doing something far greater over the last year-and that is through the “lessons” He has brought, He has been bringing me to love Him fully; with every aspect of my being. We were created with so many facilities to experience Him and the life He has given us; to limit the things He brings to just one aspect seems to belittle creation.

Obviously, the greatest commandment is “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” I find it interesting just now as I look it up in my bible and when the command mind comes in, it comes in the Gospels when the Pharisees asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is. He replied “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” However, mind is never mentioned in the cross references to that very passage in my bible. It comes from the Lord speaking to Moses to Israel, and all that is mentioned throughout the old testament is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.” Mind isn’t mentioned there. I’m not going to get into a theological exposition here and now, but it does strike my curiosity greatly.

Lately I have been finding myself overwhelmed at His character in every way. For the first time in my life one day last week, I wrote a one-sentence journal entry. It read, “Dear Lord, You are overwhelmingly beautiful…” That was all I could bring myself to say, all that my words could utter though my heart was overwhelmed with His presence. That has been one of the tremendous blessings of time pausing. For once I’m not so blinded by the burdens and responsibilities of everyday life that I so often let hinder me from the presence of God. With this pause, He is teaching me what it is to find Him, and find Him fully. I’m allowing Him to take my breath away because for once I am stopped from hindering the presence of God. The responsibility is not His to bring us into His presence; He is omnipresent. The responsibility is ours to strip away or push aside what hinders or holds us back from it. So often we are childlike not in our faith, but in how we handle what has been given to us. We are desperate to make excuses, to do anything that would keep the burden of responsibility on someone or something else. We also make blessings burdens. May we never do this injustice.

Time has paused in the place of my childhood and youth. I knew very clearly that I was to be home this summer several months ago, and one of those reasons is clear. I’m in this time in my life in between childhood/youth and the beginnings of adult life beckoning. In this pause, I have been able to see clearly what has laid behind me. Being back in the same environment in which I grew up in causes me to fall into old habits and ways of doing things. The main thing is my lack of vulnerability with my parents. There was a lot of stuff that happened in my childhood with my older brother, a long story in itself. My way of handling it or my response to it was to not let anything affect me. It was to force myself to be a steady, unwavering presence in my family, learning to work through things on my own or with my closest friend(s). My parents had so much on their plate already and the house was usually in more than enough turmoil that there simply wasn’t any room for me to be anything but steady. This way of being became so ingrained in my character over my childhood and youth, and God has had to largely break it over the past couple of years in college. Praise be to Him that He has. Yet, there has been more breaking, in a lot of ways, the final breaking, to happen here. I am to break this way of being in the very place it began. It is a tangible aspect of breaking one of the bondages of childhood and moving onto adulthood. I have been praying for opportunities for this to happen this summer. It came out of the blue last night. In a conversation with my parents about a lot of things to come, God broke me and helped me to be fully vulnerable with my parents. I can’t tell you what happened in it. It blessed all of us in so many unexpected ways. Fully beautiful, fully Him. I am home this summer to bring a closure to this aspect of my life, childhood, that hasn’t had a chance to be yet. More than that, I’m home to let God redeem these things of my childhood in order that I may move forward in what He has next.

It is good…but it is strange too. A perfect example is seeing a good friend of mine from high school get married yesterday. I have known her for seven years, since freshman year of high school. We wrote notes incessantly that first year we knew each other, and I read through the ones I have before her wedding. I found myself amazed at how much has changed since then. In reading those notes, it was like going back into time and fully understanding what life was like then for the first time. It made me appreciate all the more where we stand today, especially seeing her yesterday ready in every way to be married, to be a wife. God has shaped her in beautiful ways, many of which were unexpected to me. I am blessed to call her my friend, and I love that in many ways, we grew up together. Yet it is strange that I am at this age in my life where these things are happening, where people I know right around my age are getting engaged, married, even some having babies. In so many ways, that is the epitome of adult life to me. It encompasses all the challenges and blessings of that time. It has been so weird to have my life in pause while time has been playing around me. I see these people I have known since my youth entering full-fledged adulthood, ready to take on full responsibility, but more than that, ultimately, the fullest form of love shown on this earth, and that is to become one flesh with another. That is to enter a covenant of laying down your rights, entitlements, desires, wants, etc., for the better of another person. It is the ultimate form of love, and I find myself in this amazed wonder at how God has chosen this very love to show a picture of the love He has for us. It is so utterly profound. It is a mystery that we learn and walk in for the rest of our lives on this earth. It is no coincidence or mistake that God has designed this covenant between man and woman to be one of forever, through trials, blessings, pain, joy, all the things that life can bring-because that is the covenant we have with Him.

In this pause I am finding a contentment and joy that is contradictory. It is found equally in the past, present, and future. I see the foundation of the past, the joy of the present, and the promise of the future. It is all perfectly intertwined together, meant to be experienced as a unit rather than separate entities. It all perfectly bears the work and mark of our dear Creator, loving Father, precious Lord. It is strange, and it is foreign, because it is not of this world. But it’s where I’m supposed to be, and I rejoice in that. This overflow of my heart in this pause leaves me in no place to doubt, but to fully love, and that is the greatest commandment-to love. “To LOVE the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” We love Him in many different ways and should love Him in all ways, but we must remember our acts of doing are for the purpose to love…and that is the greatest of all.