The me that can’t fake it

My Dearest Friend,

Lately, my soapbox has been this: what does it mean to abide? The Spirit—who makes His home in me—has been offering all these insights about abiding. Sometimes it’s choosing the better part and leaving anxiety, tasks, busyness, productivity, you name it, behind to sit at the feet of Jesus.

Like I read in Psalm 37:

“Be still in the presence of the LORD, and wait patiently for Him to act.”

It looks like practicing presence. Delighting in the mundane. Slowing down. Living with intentionality.

And it looks like so much more that I’m still learning and have yet to learn.

And yet, dear friend, can I be honest?
Most days, my life looks like none of these things.

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I’ve been thinking about how Jesus said that He would give us living water and how God through Jesus poured the Spirit into our hearts and how that Spirit is the Living Water Jesus was talking about and how it’s because of the Spirit making His home in me that I can have rivers of life pouring out of me.
Through my words.
Through these typing fingers.
Through my hospitality, my parenting, my friending.

But lately, I’ve been feeling a bit lifeless, a little lost, confused, I think? Focused on many things, trying to discern how to handle a new season, floundering in it, for sure.

When I look in my heart, I wonder to myself, Is the well running dry?

And I’ll just tell you now before you keep reading that this letter isn’t going to end neatly tied up with a pink bow on top (and not just because I don’t like the color pink). I don’t have all the answers yet, and I don’t have a beautiful resolution for you.

But I realized that I couldn’t be me on here—the me who couldn’t fake it even if I wanted to. The me who could never lie to my mother, not because I feared her anger but because even as a little girl, I felt strongly about speaking truth. The me who can’t pretend or even answer the question, “How are you?” dishonestly because that would be inauthentic.

I can’t sit here and pretend I’m always blissfully abiding cause I’m not.

I still strive.
I lose my temper.
I run ragged, my task-oriented nature rearing it’s head.
I swap time with God for another “productive” hour.
I listen more to my feelings than to truth.

The current of the fast-pace, high-capacity-glorifying, ever-hungry world still so often pulls me in and under, and I find my mental home has gone from the Fellowship with my Dad, my older Brother, and the Spirit to my phone and the vast world within it.

So this is just an honest, broken, raw letter from a tangled soul to tell you that this is often my reality. We’re all living in this tension of being wholly known, wholly loved, and wholly His while also not being wholly perfect—not yet.

So today, I’m holding on even though I don’t “feel” it.

I’m looking at the laundry on the couch, the chaos of two boys, the unread messages piling up—and I’m reminding myself:

“The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.” (Psalm 37:23)

And somehow, when I think about my Dad delighting in what I’m doing in that moment, it makes me smile and helps me to see what’s delightful about it too. That He would be so attentive to me and my life that He’s delighting in every boring, mundane, messy, uneventful little moment is baffling to me, but to be that loved. It’s undeserved and that much more beautiful.

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And I wish I could tell you that now that I’ve written this letter I feel world’s better and, wow, what a weight off, I’ve been completely cured!

But I don’t. And that’s okay.

What I do feel is a subtle peace within because I know that He and I want the same thing.

His presence is still my Promised Land.

And I feel a peace because I’ve shared this weight with you.

And, dear friend, I want you to know this too:

You don’t have to be on the mountaintop to write me, where it’s sunny, happy, and glorious.
This is a safe place for the broken, the weary, the confused.
Because I’m all of those too.
But somehow, I feel less broken when we’re tired and tangled together.

With love,
Rachel

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