I had a Favorite Things Monday: ROAR Edition that was just about ready to roll, then I just couldn’t.
Yesterday, all the noise reached a max volume for me. The finger pointing, name calling, self-righteous soapboxes, assumptions…you name it.
I wanted to rant but then I feel like the problem. I don’t exactly have a solution but that wasn’t it.
It was not just politics. It felt like it was in everything.
How you raise your kids. How you vote and how that TOTALLY TELLS ME WHO YOU ARE. How you eat. How you don’t care. How the season premier of the Walking Dead affected you. What you should do instead. Who you should vote for instead. What you should watch instead. Read this book about parenting instead. Get it right, instead of wrong. Hashtags and sharing don’t change minds, hearts or accomplish anything. Yup, I’m looking at you #justsaying #truth.
Remember life before the internet? I barely do. I do just enough to be able to tell my kids how good they have it. Information and connection is great until it isn’t all information and we aren’t connected.
Remember life without all the noise? It’s hard to remember.
Remember that we do have some control over the volume? I needed to.
Driving home yesterday…and what felt like a good 4 hours before I finally felt like I was calming down, I laughed at myself.
I was ranting about self-righteous soapboxes, then realized I was going to tell you, dear reader, what I prayed.
I have written about David’s prayer in Psalm 139, a few times. I think it’s one of those crazy prayers. Sort of like Isaiah’s, “here am I, send me” or the bold and audacious New Testament prayers. Jesus praying in the Garden is the big winner but this one always gets my attention.
I can’t even say that I was so offended, because I wasn’t. I was annoyed and tired…and maybe a little hungry. Other than pray and eat a snack, I had no other solution for how I was feeling.
So I prayed the scripture I have had memorized since I was 12.
Psalm 139:23-24 – Search me, Oh God and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts, see if there be any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
Instead of getting annoyed by noise, I needed to stop and ask God to do in my heart what I could not. I need Him to quiet me. I needed Him to show me. I needed His perspective. His grace.
I needed to calm down. I think I am ok now.
For all of us in desperate need of the perspective shift, you are in good company today. It is possible and we won’t find it looking at ourselves.
We got this.