SIT

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11: 28-30

At the beginning of the year, I participated in my first experience with prayer and fasting. I didn’t understand it to be completely honest, but everyone I talked to reiterated that they heard so much more from God during these times. Sounds good to me!

It was a three week fast. Most people were doing a version of the Daniel Fast, my husband was fasting sun up to sun down, and I was fasting all carbs and sugars.

Some people struggle with drugs and alcohol; I struggle with sugar. My body has been telling me for a long long time to chill with the sugar but I’m one of the people He skipped over the day God was passing out self-control, so I continue to indulge myself despite the painful consequences.

In this three week time period, I learned a lot about praying through anxiety. I also learned that the Holy Spirit in me is the same Holy Spirit in you! I mean, I think I understood this in theory previously but in the last three days of the fast, it was confirmed for me in a really personal and extraordinary way. (I’ll write more on that experience at a later time.)

Now here I am post-prayer and fast and experiencing a contentment and peace that I haven’t really ever experienced before.

Jennie Allen’s IF: Gathering was next up on the schedule. I watched speaker after speaker enter and exit the stage for two days. In the very last segment, we were asked to pray for a word from the Lord about what our next step in our sanctification journey would be, and then write it on a key as a keepsake.

Let me preface this with I’m not a prophet, a seer, or a visionary. I have never had a single prophetic dream or vision. You know those moments when people ask you, “Well, what did the Holy Spirit say?” I’m a deer-in-the-headlights. I think maybe the Lord hasn’t taken me through that step yet. Let’s be honest, there’s a whole mountain of junk He needs to wade through; prophetic words are probably not His priority with me right now!

All this to say, I’m a normal plain-Jane human. Hyperspiritualization is not my thing (I actually learned that word last week, and I’m just excited I got to use it in a sentence!) so please take that into account as you read what happened next.

I sat on the couch next to a couple friends, a dog at my feet, took a deep breath, closed my eyes expecting nothing but hoping for something, and simply prayed, “Lord, a word, please…”

I read Priscilla Shirer’s book Discerning the Voice of God last year (it was SO good!) and in that book, she mentioned one of the ways you can tell it’s the Holy Spirit and not your own mind is that whatever is downloaded to you doesn’t make sense. It’s a word you didn’t know or a revelation you could have never thought up yourself.

As I sat there with my eyes closed and trying to clear away my own interfering thoughts, I saw blurry color splotches, moving about in a kaleidoscopic way. Set inside the multicolored blobs were black out of focus letters. As the colors moved around, the letters started to come in focus until at last, I saw the word “SIT” atop an abstract array of blended colors.

I snickered and thought, “This makes no sense!” First thing I did with this word was look down at the giant pile of fur at my feet and told Lombardi, “I think this word’s for you.”

Before accepting this as His Word, I practiced it in different forms thinking:

Sit and wait.

Sit at the foot of the cross.

Sit at a table.

Sit and listen or learn.

Sit and don’t move.

None of it was resonating and it didn’t make sense. And that’s when I remembered the clue from Shirer’s book that it might be God is when it doesn’t make sense.

Alrighty, then. I wrote it on my key.

About 4 weeks later, the world was stricken with COVID-19. It was chaos in the home trying to find a rhythm, a quiet time, and a work space. The key was long forgotten.

A couple weeks into lockdown, my grandfather passed away. It was strange because in January and February, I found myself thinking about him more. I prayed for him and his health but mostly I asked God, “Why?” Why was he still here? Mimi, his wife, had passed a few years ago and she was his world! He was in a nursing home, suffering from dementia and I kept praying and asking the Lord, “What more do you want from him? He has dementia and sleeps for days. Are you really not finished with him yet?? What else could You possibly need him to do for himself or your Kingdom?! Lord, is it not time to bring him home so he can be with his bride again?”

I did this on and off for a few weeks as his face and name came into my heart.

End of March, he passed away.

I was raised by Granddaddy. He was a father to me when I didn’t have one present. I lived with him and Mimi from seventh through eleventh grade but they were my home away from home my entire life as I was raised by a single mother. He drove me to school. He picked me up. He took me to tennis matches and early morning practices. He made my breakfast every morning. He was such a devoted and loving man. I’m sitting here in tears thinking that if only I had been in relationship with Jesus back then, I would have been able to treat him so so differently than I did.

Talk of his funeral and arrangements were on the table with the surviving family members. We were in the beginning of a pandemic when no one really knew how bad the virus was but we did our best to trust the authorities and their instructions. One family member was insistent that we would have a funeral, open casket, and people would need to travel.

Another considering factor was the health risk of the other people in attendance (all of whom are a generation older than me and my family which puts them more at risk than us.) But here’s the thing, how do you see family members, most of whom you haven’t seen in years, and not hug, kiss, squeeze, and comfort? What if Cody, the kids, or I unknowingly passed a toxic germ? I would feel aboslutely terrible.

I was caught in a hard place deciding whether to go or stay.

One morning that week, I walked into the study to do my morning devotional and saw something shining on the floor. It was the key with the word “SIT” written on it. In that moment, the definition felt literal and purposeful.

I hear you, Lord.

And that was my final decision. Fortunately, I didn’t have to let anyone down because the following day I received a message that informed everyone there would not be a funeral but a zoom call.

Thank you, Lord! SIT had proven itself worthy.

The COVID season pressed on through April, May and June, bringing lesson after lesson with it. In July, I was reaching max stress. I had just gone through a really tough healing process with the Lord in the month prior and it had left me feeling really distant and resentful toward God.

Day after day, I tried to press in but my heart was hardened. I continued with my morning quiet times but it was out of duty, not delight. On the days I felt a little less bitter, I would tearfully pray for Him to rescue my heart from the mud and the mire. I wanted to be back on track in our relationship, but I couldn’t will myself out of the funk.

I was struggling watching everyone around me begin to go back to some semblance of normal: having friends over, going to dinner, getting their nails done, scheduling massages. I chose not to do those things because I immediately felt guilty the moment the thought came to my mind. “But if they’re doing it why can’t I?” I would whine with a stomp of my foot.

And every time I asked that question, I was answered with one word: SIT.

I’d accept it, take a deep breath, lean into the Father’s arms, and relax knowing I’m putting my trust in Him and he told me to SIT. He didn’t tell them to sit, He told me.

And right on queue, I’d question myself (and Him):

But what if I was interpreting this whole SIT thing, wrong? What if He didn’t mean it literally? What if there’s another meaning for SIT I’m not thinking of?

I struggled with these questions many times and finally one day, I decided I had to figure this out right now so I spent a few hours with my Keyword Study Bible, a few word study reference Bibles, and a fierce determination to figure out what exactly He meant when He said SIT.

Like a true detective I scoured definitions, scripture, and categorized all the occurrences by topic. Six pages of notes later, I had read every occurrence of the word “sit” in the Bible and was just as confused as when I first sat down! I left the desk frustrated and still resentful.

For the next six months, I did my best to stay content, grounded, and wise about the choices we made outside our household. I didn’t throw caution to the wind but I didn’t live in solitary confinement either. I weighed my heart and spirit as best I could before every social interaction praying that the Lord would tell me when to come and go.

December rolled around and I was a few weeks into a new Bible study by Marian Jordan Ellis entitled For His Glory, when I rammed head first into this:

Ephesians can be summed up in three simple words: sit, walk, stand...

What does it mean to be "seated with Christ"? Watchman Nee explains:

When we walk or stand we bear on our legs all the weight of our own body, but when we sit down our entire weight rests upon the chair or couch on which we sit. We grow weary when we walk or stand, but we feel rested when we have sat down for a while. In walking or standing we expend a great deal of energy, but when we are seated we relax at once, because the strain no longer falls upon our muscles and nerves but upon something outside of ourselves. So also in the spiritual realm, to sit down is simply to rest our whole weight--our load, ourselves, our future, everything--upon the Lord. We let him bear the responsibility and cease to carry it ourselves.

WOW! I was floored! I’d been waiting ALL YEAR to read this!

Rounding out 2020, while there’s always areas of improvement, I feel like I enabled the Lord to carry a lot. Marriage, parenting, relationships, and a whole lot of personal healing, 2020 let me experience growth in it all.

One prayer I kept on repeat throughout my days this year, was this:

Lord, I don't want to miss out on what you have for me through this.  Help me stay focused on what You have for me because I only want to have to learn and heal through it once.  Help me to learn it quick and make it stick.

I should have started writing down all the lessons I’ve learned this year, big and small. I have a dream that one day (in the far far away future) when I’m eating donuts guilt-free and cheering on new salvations next to Jesus, that my kids will look through all my journals and see that I was far from perfect but because I was honest before God and I surrendered the wheel to Him, He took me through the life-long path of unwinding all my hurts and broken places, healing them, and then redeeming them, making all the pain worth it.

My prayer is that through my struggles a watching world can see that there is purpose in the pain and hope with certainty that what He is doing in my life, He WILL do in yours if you’d only SIT.