I lead the prayer time at church again today. Here's what I said:
I was on the beach in Pacifica for my 31st birthday and asked the Holy Spirit that if there was one thing it would have me focus on this year, what would that be? I already had a very detailed list of goals and intentions I had set for myself for the new year and was curious what God would say was the most important from the list. God, of course being God, didn’t name one thing from my long list of self-improvement goals. I simply heard, “Be easy.”
Be easy.
I immediately thought of an example of this “easiness” that I believed the Spirit was referring to. In 2009, I went through a healing crisis, as many of you know, that after much physical and emotional distress, finally lead me to a career switch among many other changes. One of the physical symptoms I experienced that year was dizziness and other balance-related issues, which caused me to have motion sickness when I drove in a car. After a while, as I attempted to surrender to the healing process, I was lead, step by step, towards health and my dizziness started to dissipate. But I was still feeling the dizziness when I was in a car. And instead of focusing on what was working and healing in my life, I chose to focus on what I was not able to do and was very hard on myself. I was done with this whole “sick thing” and just wanted to get it over with already and be back to “normal.” I kept trying to force myself to drive and then feeling sick when I did, which would increase the fear, which made everything worse especially the dizziness, I’m sure.
So I eventually surrendered to the fact that whatever I was doing was not working, and I stopped trying so hard. I went to God. . . . I slowed down. . . . I asked, “What am I missing?” and “What else can I learn from this?” And then tried to listen to what the next step was in this whole, slooow healing process that God was leading me through, and that I was starting to have faith in. I began following the Spirit’s subtle instructions again, listening to the still small voice, instead of trying to rush into something I thought that I should be doing. And lo and behold, one day I found myself driving again. I was very surprised about how easy a transition it was! There was no pushing. There wasn’t even any fear. The instructions the Spirit had given me towards healing had prepared me, had fully dissipated the motion sick feeling this time, and I was driving again. I was ready, and it was easy. I did it with ease.
Contrary to what I believe our society constantly tells us, it’s not always about pushing ourselves. God wants to be so gentle with us. Way way way more gentle than we are with ourselves most of the time. And it’s not about focusing on the one thing or the many things that we want to change. We can ask ourselves, “Where do we already have ease in our lives and how can we build on that?" "How can we slow down and join God’s process in God’s timing?” When we’re doing things with God, in God’s timing, I believe there is not overwhelm. There is ease. Overwhelm can be our clue that we’re not letting God in. That’s how I’ve been using it in my life. (And I sense that many in this congregation also experience this overwhelm being the activists and self-improvement junkies that we are.) He wants to carry us along with ease. He wants us to “be easy.” With God, in God’s timing, there is ease. And there is joy.
Today, let’s pray together in silence and ask God how can we “be easy” today. How can we build on what’s going well in our lives and leave room for even more ease and more joy. . . within ourselves, with those around us, in church while we plan our future structure, and with the work we do in the world. Let us pray.
