why you woke me up

I have had a lot going on.

My job, my family, best friends, boys, moving. As much as I would like to buck up and be one of those breezy, go with the flow kind of girls [i just really don't do that well], all of these things have been weighty, heavy things. The sort of things that stay with you throughout the day. It took me several weeks to figure it out, but I've been carrying these things around with me like sandbags. They are heavy.

I've felt overwhelmed by them. Some of these things are directly mine - some are not, but simply having the information in my brain has been distracting, heartbreaking, and it's starting to get suffocating. I know that there is very [very] little that I can do in any of these situations, beyond what I've already done, to help or improve or ease these things. But they are all still there- rolling around in my heart like bowling balls.

I've gone so far as thinking about asking someone who will give me an un-involved, Godly ear - like my Pastor or a counselor or a friend far away - if they'll just listen for a while. I just want to talk about it. If someone could just listen. I just need to say these things out loud and know that they don't only exist in my heartbrain.

[I know what you're thinking. "That doesn't sound like you, Erin." That's right. It doesn't]

This is weird for me, because I'm not really an external processor. Generally, I know how I feel about any given thing and it is rare that I find it necessary to "talk it out" with someone to figure out my perspective or how I feel.  If something is eating at me, you will know it, but it usually takes me a while to sort it out in my head before I wanna talk about it. I don't exactly know how I feel about these things going on, but what I do know is that I feel suffocated by them. I just gotta.get.them.out. I don't want advice or input or fixing, I just want to say them out loud.

I have started adding to my stressy state by agonizing over whom I could convince to just listen to me. Then Sunday came.

I have been singing on Sunday mornings at my church. Oh gosh. It's so wonderful. It's never perfect, but I am learning [all over again] what it means that He is strong when I am weak. And there's just something right about using the gifts you know you have been given.

The caboose of a good, but kinda lonely weekend [not for lack of stuff to do. I'm plenty busy. Don't start asking me to come over for dinner because the word lonely makes you feel obligated to do so. Lonely. There, I said it again. It just happens sometimes. It's a part of life.], I was happy to be with my church family, but feeling pretty asphyxiated on well... my life.

There I was, trying to settle my heart, and comfortably sinking into the harmonies of the song we were singing when a reminder came and knocked the breath that remained, right out of me.

There is none like you

No one else can touch my heart like you do

I could search for all eternity long and find

there is none like you

I might become crazy in the process, talking out loud to the thin air. But He is there. And He is listening. And He will take the troubles and treasures in my heart and hold them in His hands like porcelain. He knows the best in me even when the things in my heart are fearful and judgmental and cowardly and angry.

And that is really, really nice.

Imagination, Bethany Dillon