Prepare Him room

These days, my mornings begin very early.  Thanks to medication and an abundance of God's mercy, my two-and-a-half-month-long sickness seems to be easing up and I'm finally sleeping through the night again.  Awake and alert, I've been getting out of bed every morning between 5:30 and 6:00am which is so very unlike me.  Usually, I stay under the covers and press the snooze button on my alarm five times before surrendering to the morning and my daily routine of work and then traffic and dinner and being a mama and dancing to a concert in the living room like last night's activities called for.

(Tommy's new thing is finding a station on the TV that plays music, turning the volume up loudly and dancing to it.  And he will tell you that it's more fun to do this with your tongue hanging out.  It's all rather glorious).

But the perk to this getting up early business has been that I've had more time to spend with God.  There is space for me to share my heart with Him and I've needed that.  Which I suppose is why He is allowing my body to be up for some early morning communion with Him.

I was doing some reading at dawn this morning and came across a question.  It was incredibly triggering and it sent me to so many places.  Mostly, it made me wish that a friend who knew and loved me had asked it.  Because for some reason, it felt cold to read the words in black and white instead of through the face of someone who cares for my heart.

And there I was, face-to-face with one of my biggest disappointments this year.  Where I feel let down by friends, old and new.  Where I realized how I've been working my ass off to manufacture a new community for myself and I simply can't create it and turn it into what I want it to be.  I've taken meals to friends in need and actually invited myself to things and showed up at every event I could just so I could feel like I'm a part of something.  All in hopes that me and my friendship is wanted by someone else.  I've done this in attempts to take away the pain of this great, huge thing that was lost for me - the numerous friends who moved away, and the community of friends I once had that no longer exists.  I've been trying too hard and I know it.  Trying too hard feels easier than letting myself feel the void and the haunting loneliness that seems ever present.

I've been feeling lonely, left out, forgotten, used, cast aside.  Feeling as though I have a hundred "friends," but none who take the time to sit and be still and really want to hear my heart and share theirs with me in the same deep way, that as a woman, I so desperately crave.  I hate where community eludes me.  Where I see others become "best friends" while I feel left without that kind of relationship.  And it's easy to go down the "what's wrong with me?" road because this feels like a recurring theme in my life - not being invited to the party, not included at the lunch table, left out of an event, ignored in the conversation, excluded from a gathering - and it goes on.

And I don't say any of that to lash out at any one specifically.  I suppose it's easy to go to contempt towards others, but it's more than that.  It's just what is and what life looks like and many circumstantial things.  I'm lonely and disappointed with friendships in general and I wonder how much of it is my fault.  Or if it's anyone's fault at all.

But the question that triggered all of this?  It was nothing extraordinary - just a question.

Where are you right now?  I mean, stop thinking about where you wish you were, but where are you?  Here, today, right now?

The question feels loaded.  I was convicted because I've been sitting in the place most often of wanting to be somewhere else.  I have come to almost hate the here and the now - I'm angry and resentful and disappointed and antsy.  I feel stuck.  I don't have answers to my questions, I have no security, and little to look forward to.  I'm discouraged and scared and down and much of me feels hopeless about certain circumstances in my life.....and there's more.  But, I had no one to share that with.  Except for my husband who was just getting out of bed and out of kindness and love for the man, I simply don't attempt to have deep and serious conversations that early in the day, especially while he's brushing his teeth.

So in the early hours of the morning I cried out to Him.  To the God who has been waking me up early so we can carve out some time together.  And of all things that could have came to my heart, it was the words of one of my most favorite Christmas carols....Joy to the World.

Joy to the World, the Lord is come! 

Let earth receive her King.  

Let every heart, prepare Him room  

And heaven and nature sing....

Let every heart prepare Him room....

Of all the things He could bring to mind, this what was hit me today.  Prepare room for Him in my heart.  What has been taking up that room and space in my heart where only He needs to dwell?  What have I been filling that room with instead of Him?

Much to ponder and think about.  Perhaps I need to sit in my loneliness and disappointment and in doing that, I'll finally make some room for Who needs to come in and fill those sad and broken places of my heart.