"I need Thee every hour, most gracious Lord. / No tender voice like Thine can peace afford."

Every hour, of every day. I need his presence, his steadiness, his peace. This morning I am bogged down in all the things I gotta do this week! But...He is here. And...he lifts me up, and is speaking to me now, that I need not be worried - tomorrow will take care of itself.

When we sang that song yesterday - "...praise the Holy One, who was, and is, and is to come..." - I thought of Jesus' ascension and his promise to come again. What longing! To be reminded again that this is temporary but his kingdom is eternal. That this life is a dream (an important one, yes, but still a dream) and meeting him is the waking up. That this grocery shopping, and appointments and work and weariness are shadows...and one day we will turn around and see the Light [referring to Colossians, CS Lewis, and Plato].  He is coming back. Which reminds me to invest in activities with eternal value.

I just spent some time catching up on my friend Bonnie's blog (http://huckithuge.com/wordpress/). Andre and I are both sick, stuck at home, and for some reason (hmmm, I wonder?) I got bored of WoW backstory and current news and articles on autism and decided I would see what she and her husband have been up to.

As it turns out, Bonnie and Mikey founded an organization called "Survive and Thrive Adventures, Inc." whose mission it is to "To help young adult survivors of severe illness or injury identify, process and apply life lessons through adventure activites." Here is a quote that her husband Mikey wrote a little while ago, as part of his bio on the website.

"Just like leaving home and traveling the world and going to university had shaped me, this cancer journey was shaping me. I realized that this time is not just a big interruption in my life but a real experience that is affecting my world view and fundamentally changing how I think. I was trying to deal with cancer by just sitting in the basement with my eyes closed, waiting for it to be over so I could get on with my life."
-Mikey Lang, from http://www.survivethrive.org/history.php

My current experience of suffering is on such an incredibly smaller scale, I want to make sure that I don't compare it to theirs. But I want to share that Mikey's insight from earlier this year just had a perspective-shifting impact on my own situation. In the last couple months, I've been at home a lot. I've been cooking, cleaning, writing thank you notes, and paying bills. People ask me if what I'm doing, where I'm working, if I'm going to keep doing stuff with human trafficking, and on and on. I've also been having health problems, some new, some unwelcome relapses from years ago - asthma attacks, fatigue, sinus infections, back aches. I've been treading water, keeping my head above the surface. But demons under the water threaten to pull me under - feeling useless, lazy, unproductive. Feeling that I've lost my sense of purpose in life, that I'm weak and incapable and held back by things I can't control.

Where is God in all this? Am I failing Him? Is there something I'm supposed to be doing - or worse, that I was supposed  to do - that I missed?

Bonnie refers to something she heard in a sermon..."how you answer the question, “What is God doing in your life?” says a lot about your view of God and how He interacts with us, with suffering, with pain, with evil in the world, with life."

I'm asking myself now...What is God doing in my life? The strangeness of the question brings me to my knees in confession and repentance. I haven't been asking it, haven't been considering it. I've been viewing this season as one just to get through. As sickness as an unwanted companion and a hindrance to my progress. As lack of employment as a lack of purpose....But what Mikey and Bonnie have been learning, what C.S. Lewis penned, what the Bible has been showing us all along, is that God uses pain. He allows, permits, at times causes, suffering in order to get our attention, to shape us, to grow us.

What is God doing in my life? He is giving me rest. He has taken away nearly all the things that have consumed my time and energy and attention for the past two decades.

What is God doing in my life? He is teaching me patience - or rather, showing me all the ways I am impatient, so that I might be disgusted and dismayed with it and turn to Him for help.

What is God doing in my life? He is reminding me that my purpose is in His kingdom, not my own. It is prayer, and dance, and encouraging others. It is in being present in the moment and free of anxiety, among other things, that He might be fully sovereign in me.

What is God doing in my life? He is instructing me in lessons of who He is and who I am. He is God, I am not. The weaknesses and limitations I feel so acutely at times need not be causes of stress or frustration, but heartfelt reasons to call out to him and draw near to him...and to remember the suffering that others are going through, so that I may lift *them* up in prayer and encourage *them* in their own journey.

God is doing plenty in my life...I've been such a fool not to embrace it! I'm so thankful that I have a relationship with him, my Father, my most intimate friend, and with all the other people He has surrounded me with that bring meaning and joy to this fragile and fleeting life.