After a rough day at school (and there have been many of them the last few months) I would long for that moment of indulgence at the end of the day. It became a ritual. I'd nuke the carton just a few seconds to soften it and release the flavors, dish up several spoonfuls in my favorite coffee cup, then curl up on my cushy sofa with a super soft fleece blanket. It got to where I skipped supper all together - and on the worst of nights I'd have two cupfuls. In a bind, a mint chocolate cookie Cook Out milk shake would do...I'd order chicken strips as a pretend supper, but we all know what I was actually getting.
You get the point. You might also get why I felt this year was the year to give up something for Lent. In giving up ice cream, I found a challenge greater than I had experienced. I was so bent on feeling good. I had become so good at numbing the pain of my shattered marriage, that when my anesthesia was removed, I became so much more aware of the contrast.
I became more aware, too, of how often I would seek to get lost in that fun, overwhelmed full feeling where everything is intensely beautiful and exciting. The same feelings I got from my ice cream addiction, I find in other places.
Through choosing gratitude in all things, I realize now that there are two types of these orgasms of the heart.
There's the empty kind that comes from escape. Escape through ice cream. Escape through decorating. Escape through yarn. Escape through blaming. Avoidance through busy-ness, through procrastination and the adrenaline rush of 'catching up'.
And there's a *full* but sometimes sad kind that is found during worship and that comes only through sober surrender and the long exhale of discipline.
Surrender to the things I avoid.
Surrender to the challenges I long to escape.
Surrendering to my limitations, my hurts.
I don't have what it takes to survive in and of myself. I don't have what it takes to feel better in the midst of my hurts. I only have access to The One who had mercy on me, the One whose heart is filled to the brim with grace and undeserved adoration.
I only have Emmanuel.
He is the quieter, longer lasting, sunrise beam that warms my heart from within, filled with momentum and desire...and sometimes earth shattering tears.
I love how I feel when I get that perfect bowl of ice cream. Decorating my haven is a sometimes exciting pastime. There is nothing wrong with fully and completely enjoying these. Abba made us to enjoy His creation. He gives us these joys as His Blessing.
But as Buechner points out in his book The Magnificent Defeat, when I choose to steal those blessings like Jacob did with his father, even honey tastes bitter. Jacob lost his relationship with his brother when he stole his blessing and birthright. In contrast, the blessing Jacob begged for and received after wrestling with God all night was so much sweeter, and it was come by honestly.
Song of Songs 2:3-7
As an apple tree among the trees of the forest,
so is my beloved among the young men.
With great delight I sat in his shadow,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house,
and his banner over me was love.
Sustain me with raisins;
refresh me with apples,
for I am sick with love.
His left hand is under my head,
and his right hand embraces me!
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the does of the field,
that you not stir up or awaken love
until it pleases.
May I seek to stir up blessings only through the struggle to press in to my Savior in the midst of my struggles, rather than to indulge and escape.
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