Need Him?

As I walked Jaime tonight, I could hardly believe that November is right around the corner.  It felt good to slip on my flip flops and walk down the street and take in the fresh night air.  Everything seemed so still....so quiet...so peaceful.

There were no stars in the sky.. but there were plenty of clouds.  Often when we walk,  somewhere between random thoughts, I talk to God.  I talk to Him as if He were outside looking down on me as I walk.  I talk to Him as if He were right beside me  walking to.  I talk to Him as if  His arm is around my shoulder.  I talk to Him as if He were the only one outside.  To me He is.

Each time I walk out the door, for our early morning walk, I imagine that before I open the door, He is on the other side, waiting to walk with me.  And for those 20 or 30 minutes, as I am walking, talking, praying, confessing, crying, and sharing my dreams with Him, I feel in my heart that I have His full attention and nothing else in the world matters to Him except for me.  But He is so brilliant that while His eyes are on me and His ears are listening to me, He is holding the rest  of the world in His hands and attending to the cries of others...but not once does He look away from me.

Each time, I feel the wind gently blow, It reminds me that He is still there listening.  So I continue to walk and talk.    I talked to Him today about "healing".   How is it that healing can seem so complete and at the same time still need His touch because there is still something left behind? I thought about how I thought something must've been off  with me if  the healing that I experienced somehow seemed incomplete.

But I know that  healing is a process. Sometimes it's instant and sometimes it's not.  Regardless of  what it looks like, He will always be Healer and will show up as Healer as many times as He needs to. 

I thought about how He uses pain, in many forms to draw us to Him. I think  He uses pain as a means for us to get to know Him.   There is something about pain that allows us to experience His love and presence more deeply than we do when pain isn't pressing in on us.  There is something about pain that causes us to cry out to Him in sincerity with a loud or sometimes quiet desperation that says, "Father! I need You"

Does God long for us to say we need Him especially if we are self-reliant types?  Does He long for us to say we need Him so that He can step in and do for us what we can not do for ourselves? Does He long for us to just let Him be released of trying to do His job? Does He just long to be needed by us in the middle of our pain or while we are waiting to be healed?  Does He want to just hear us say, "I need you"?

I came in from our walk with  the lyrics of a song by Josh Wilson on my  mind.  The same song came to mind this morning.   The lines that stood out for me were: 

                                            "Why in the world did I think I could
                                             Only get to know you when my life was
                                              good?
                                             When everything just falls in place 
                                             The easiest thing is to give you praise

                                              Now it all seems upside down
                                             'Cause my whole life is caving in
                                              But I feel You now more than I did then
                                              How can I come to the end of me

                                              And somehow still have all I need?
                                              God, I want to know you more
                                              Maybe this is how it starts
                                              I find you when I fall apart..."


Tonight I  will rest in my safety net.  I choose to close my eyes and be still and know that He is God.