Balance: pilates & revelation
Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
This morning I went to Pilates and on the way I started this conversation with God. Really, it was a continuation of a conversation started last night.
January has been a busy month. I dove into the thick of wedding planning, started my second semester of grad school, started a new job, and got into my second car accident within the past two months (neither were my fault). Last night I had a project and a paper due and I was working all day. Eventually I sent one of my professor’s an email and asked for an extension because I had come face to face with my finite capacity as a human being. I had my best friend pray over me and ultimately just asked God to help me because a lot was going on and I felt overwhelmed but didn’t know how to fix it.
So this morning, instead of diving head first back into work, I went to Pilates. A chaos cloud was looming in the distance andwhen I considered the tangle of busyness and to-do I had yet to untangle from the past few weeks, I just decided to take a break. Today from the moment I opened my eyes to 12 noon, I was not going to do any work. My Pilates class was at 9 am, 40 minutes away so as soon as I got up, I got ready and hit the road. On the way there, I started the conversation back up again. I was trying to see if this was one of those moments where I just needed a moment to regroup or whether I was on the brink of full crisis mode. Thankfully, I felt like the Lord was saying, it’s not that bad, it’s just a matter of order.
For the past two weeks, I have been feeling a little uncomfortable with the weight and pace of life at the moment. Also for the past two weeks, I have been unable to figure out how to fix it. God and I have been having some great conversations about control so my heart was open to anything I needed to surrender. The main realization I have been having is that I can’t do everything and it’s a lot. It’s so funny because every time I utter those words aloud, it feels like Jesus is like “Yes!”, as if that’s the epiphany I needed lol! My next thought is always like, “okay…? So what do I did about it? What do I change?”
The strange thing about this seasons is that everything actually is necessary. I talked about this in my last post, how the Lord was still emphasizing rest in the midst of the busy. I can’t pull out of school, I feel called to my job, and if I want to get married, this wedding has got to be planned LOL! All this combined with the natural desire for social interaction, need for self care, and the ups and downs of every day life was turning out to be a lot. My friend said the night I called for help, was that if God brought you to a place, he will sustain you. That was encouraging because I felt like the Lord was truly confirming all of the things I was doing, and helping me through them.
Yesterday, God gave me this vision of me in this tight box. I was pressing against it with my arm trying to find a spot where it gave a little so I could be a little bit more comfortable, and have a bit more room. To no avail. The only place that was open was the top, since it had no lid on it. The Lord was showing me that I am not going to find rest through my own making, but I was going to have to reach up to find rest.
So what was the answer? After a two hour long conversation with my Pilates instructor and a quick call from an Italian mineral water brand (Pelligrino — iykyk), I realized that I needed to rest.
So much was going on in life, that I was afraid that if I didn’t get everything done as soon as possible, that everything would go wrong. My pilates instructor friend shared how the Lord was showing her than when you wait on God, you get better. We talked about how there are situations and things in our lives where we feel like we have to act right now or else, but God showed her that, “No, just wait a little bit” and she actually got a better deal in every area when she waited on God. I saw this in my own life with wedding planning, nervous that if I didn’t get everything figured out immediately, I would miss out. The Lord proved the opposite, that when I waited and trusted him I got exactly what I needed, when I needed it, with all the peace and confidence included. God doesn’t want us to move in anxiety and out of fear.
He wants us to trust that He is in control of our lives, loves us, sees our every need and desire, and will take care of us. He knows all that is required of you, and will provide. If you rush and hurry, you will miss the sweet unexpected and unplanned parts of life—the parts that make life sweet.
I was telling my sweet water friend that I took some time off this morning, and she proceeded to say how that connected to her as well. She had heard someone say recently, “God can do more in 6 days than you can in 7.” and that got me. I’ve been trying to do everything in my own strength, and utilizing every bit of energy and time I had and STILL coming up short. I couldn’t do it on my own nor did he want me to. Even back to the box vision, God knew if I had found even one place the box gave a little, one area of relief, I would have been fine, comfortable continuing in my own strength. I could handle a certain level of busy, but in this season, I’m one degree past my normal tolerance and I am uncomfortable. I was hitting walls in trying to solve this because I could not shift anything at the moment, I could not control the crazy thus I was at a loss. God is funny. He put me in a place where I had no choice but to rely on Him.
So after she said that, I realized I needed to trust God more with my life and the things I have to do. Thus I decided to take the whole day as a sabbath. Allllll of the stuff on my schedule, the schoolwork, work, planning—it could wait. It had to. I needed to rest in God, and believe that his hands are the ones who make things successful, not mine.
This was the order God was referring to. The piece I was missing. Put him first, tithe your time, and he will take care of the rest.
I hope this encourages you friends, rest. It’s wisdom.
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