When Strivings Cease.

 I have been home now, basically on bedrest, for 5 1/2 weeks.  And the Lord has been good to my soul.  I lay here without movement, none at all or I am excruciating pain from the herniated disc.  But my bedroom has become my solace, a quiet respite when usually I rush and worry and run.  

Yet he prepared me.  May I remember that he prepared me.  

This fall, Catherine Nations regarded our Growing Together group to read "When Strivings Cease" by Ruth Chou Simons.  Frankly the book wasn't great.  But it was used!  God prepared me for a time like this when truly in all ways, my striving has ceased.  

The premise of this book comes from Psalm 46:10.  

"Cease Striving and know that I am God."

or, as I learned as a child in the NIV84 "Be Still and Know that I Am God."

I think the literary emphasis is changed when I read the two verses, and the meaning of them impacts me so differently in these translations.  Perhaps because one I have memorized for years, have on mugs, and championed and different times.  But for me - the command to be still simply can cause anxiety these last few years of parenting, so it hasn't reverberated in the same ways.

However, "Cease Striving" hits me like a fork in the middle of head.  Light a knight losing a fencing battle.  Cease Striving!  When now that lets me drop it all, all my efforts, work, frantic fears and poof, let it fall at the floor.

Reading this book in the fall, I mostly skimmed what seemed obvious, truths I had already learned.  But I gifted it to my sister and thought even the quotes were scrolled pretty.

However, I had no idea what was coming.

What he prepared me for:

Cease Striving.

Here I lay, I do not move for carpool, groceries, volunteering, or meal prep.  I can't.  None.

My striving has ceased.

And oh, how it is good for my soul.

The pressure, because I literally can't, relaxes in my chest, and I dwell in it.

Trish calls it a Forced Sabbatical.

And I agree.  And I call it good.  

A few weeks of permanent rest, when strivings cease.

It has been a cocoon for my soul.  And He prepared me.  So I rest.