a long night...

It's early Sunday morning, very early. I slept so little last night I'm not aware of one half an hour I did not look at the clock wondering if the night would ever end. I was overwhelmed with thoughts billowing in my brain making my stomach tight and my body hot with anxiety.

Alot of it stems from the rollercoaster week I experienced emotionally, but some of it relates to the Sat night service and my inability to think straight. It's been some time since I felt so powerless to control my faculties. As I was speaking, there were times when my mind would blank out and I was left suspended in thought, not knowing how I started a paragraph and, thus, how to finish it. When my mind was functioning, my mouth was clumsy. I would stumble over words and repeat phrases over and over as I wrestled for clarity. This happened earlier this week with Heidi when we were talking through some turbulence. I just went mute. I wanted to say something, I just couldn't get my mouth to move. It was like one of those nightmeres where you are running from a villian and your legs sluggish and heavy. Last night felt like a nightmere to me.

I felt so bad when the night came to a close...I spoke too long and said too little. I left huge gaps in logic, made too many detours from the storyline. I feel like I let God down so badly. People came to hear from God and, instead, got to hear from me...broken and babbling me. I don't know if there's a worse feeling in the world than attempting to speak for God and feeling like you were a broken vessel, a broken record. Over a hundred people sat there and just watched as I crashed and burned...at least that's what it felt like. I pressed on to the end, but there were times when I almost stopped myself mid-sentence to acknowledge the incoherency of my speaking. I wanted to just close the night in prayer and let the people go home, but something inside was wondering if the haze would clear and I would find my voice. I felt a couple shafts of light break through the clouds toward the end...but it felt too late to recover.

I've felt lost a good portion of the week...a restless wanderer. I lost my place in the story somewhere along the line and I'm trying to locate it once again. My confidence is leaking out, my vision is shriveling, my joy has had the wind knocked out of it...and her I am, on Sunday morning, gearing up for two more services in the darker side of the the dawn.

I wonder if I'll tread water this morning. I wonder if God will come through. I wonder if I'll whiteout in my message. I wonder if the message burning in my heart will get a chance to make it into the open. I wonder if my insecurity will disable yet again.

I know this isn't a blog that most pastor's would write. Maybe they don't want to scare the sheep. Maybe they don't want people to see their foibles. Whatever holds them back, I'm too scared this morning to hold this inside. I want today to be different. I don't want to step in front of the people with nothing to say. I need God to fill my heart with His Words and His validation. I want to feel His strength surging through my otherwise bankrupt spirit. I want to sense Him moving my lips with His message.

But if it is His will that I am stopped dead in my tracks and brought to a place where I have no choice but to acknowledge my nothingness without Him, then so be it. Maybe these experiences are purposeful to give me a taste of being on my own and the absolute laughingstock I am without the permeating presence of the Life-giver. He gives life, I don't, I can't.

Bring Redemption this morning...restore what the locusts have eaten.