Awakening to Decisions

sad girl © by Taston

Elijah crawled into bed in between our warm bodies, pulled back the covers and placed his body under them, and laid down beside me.  I rubbed his back or head and tried to keep on sleeping, even though it was Sunday morning and almost time to get up.  After a few minutes, my husband rolled over, got up, turned the TV on for Elijah, and crawled back into bed.  After some time, I tried to flutter my eyes open and pretend to want to wake up, even though in all honesty, I wanted to roll over, ignore his presence, and go back to sleep.

He may have kissed me a few times in an effort to wake his Sleeping Beauty, but I would not awake.  I was talking and my eyes were open, but I was still mentally asleep, or wanting to be asleep.  I simply did not want to wake up.  My body was still tired and my rest felt incomplete.  “What happened to days of sleeping late?” I asked in my thoughts.  I answered myself with, “Heelllooo.  You are an adult now.  You will sleep late when the kids are in college” or something such as that to pacify myself with the hope of staying in bed all day long one day, as if that was a luxury item I needed to have at some point.

I knew the minutes were ticking quickly, and all I wanted to do was roll over, lay in bed for a few more minutes, get up, hang out with the family, possibly go to Cracker Barrel for breakfast, and skip church.  Before I go too far, I love church, I advocate going to church, and all of that jazz, but frequently I feel this way on Sunday mornings.  I voiced out loud to my husband, as I do sometimes on Sundays, “Let’s just stay home.  Let’s go to Cracker Barrel.  Let’s hang out together.”  He considered my request, but instead of his faithful “No,” he entertained the idea.

I knew then I would have to decide to go to church or not to go to church.  I knew then the irony of writing a women’s retreat called, “Awaken,” and listening to a sermon series called, “Decisions.”

He got up to take a shower, while I lingered in bed.  Then he was out, and it was my turn, and he asked me what we would do.  I said we would go to church.  Or perhaps we could go to breakfast and be late to church.  “No, let’s go to church.”  I could not decide in good conscience to not go to church in this moment, with God bringing the women’s retreat to mind and knowing that I have a choice to make here.  I decided I wanted to meet with God.  The women’s retreat I had co-written was about awakening to His presence, His voice, His battle.  All the things I was wrestling with in this particular moment.  It was no coincidence that the call to awaken was beckoning this morning.

I could list off several struggles somewhat tormenting me now for several weeks, several questions:  what should I do in this, what should I do in that?

So I went and met with God.  Clearly Satan did not want me to go, but in this moment it was my own evil desires holding me back.  Clearly Satan wanted me to remain in the dark, but I chose to seek God.  And He spoke to me.  I would have missed out on many blessings had I chosen to stay home, though this is not intended to be commentary on why to go to church.

I knew I was in trouble so to speak when I saw the drama.  A woman handed the decision-making stool to Jesus.  Anyone who sits on it gets to make the decisions.  So Jesus sat there for a few minutes before a situation arose in which Jesus told the women to say no to a friend about going shopping with a new credit card even though the friend was trying to get out of debt.  She wanted to go with her friend, so she sat down on the stool beside Jesus (as if there were room for two decision makers).  Jesus told her two people could not sit on the stool.  So she gave it back to Him.  Then before you knew it, she was standing on the stool pushing Jesus off, picking up the stool, and starting to walk away.  Jesus asked her if this is really what she’d decided to do.  And she said she did not know.  Jesus then responded with a there is your answer response.  I knew right away, God wanted to speak to me and that I was doing this very thing with some of the questions I’d been asking.

God had dealt mercifully with me about my aches and pains when I was genuinely weakest, but now He was reminding me to be faithful to His leading, that to disobey is to decide to harden my heart against Him and would keep me from growing.  I’ve been in that place before, where I actively chose to ignore Him, and it stank, and I don’t want to do it again, even though I know I will stumble at times.  As Dan said, “If I’m waiting to see what it is before I do it, I’m already out of His will.” {Listen here, Part 4 of Decisions.}

After the women’s retreat, He’d asked me to rest, but I didn’t want to necessarily submit to the resting and allowed myself to be restless.  However in His discipline of that response from me, I submitted to the rest.  Sunday morning was His wake-up call to me.  My rest was over; it was time to follow Him somewhere else.  He’s the artist painting a beautiful picture of Himself with my life and my destiny; I must trust each brush stroke even though that’s not where or how I would place the next mark on the canvas.

My response was to awaken to His beckoning presence once again, not choosing to shrug it off or ignore it, to give Him my decision-making stool, and to say yes wherever and whenever He leads not knowing the result.

Will you choose Christ with me?