The garden of the soul

“After all he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart. He walks with God in the garden of his own soul - and who but God can walk there with him?” – A.W. Tozer

a beautiful mess.

The words “beautiful” and a “mess” kept resurfacing as Mack was walking through the garden. He finds out at the end of the chapter that the garden Sarayu is having him work on with her is his own soul. Sarayu represents the holy spirit in the book. (The Shack)

That chapter started getting the water works going just a little bit, but I was determined to stay at Starbucks so I kept reading. A couple chapters later was the breaking point and I had to go drive around to be with God at one of our secret spots.

There is a beautiful mess going on at work in my heart right now. I’m a mix of emotions. Yesterday was probably the most fun I’ve had in a long time and a great weekend with one of my best friend’s and her sisters and her fiance’s sisters and all her old friends… and a time of just feeling so free and alive the last couple days. Then today all of a sudden, I’m leaving the second of Jenni's showers in two days and my head was spinning once again. I just needed to be alone. Away from people. At a remote place. There was a lot going on in here and I wasn't even sure what.

Starbucks it is.

“to be alive is to be broken.”

I love whoever said that because I think we can equate tears and brokenness with bad. But who are we to judge. I'm learning to trust my Father in a way that means I get out of the Judge seat and quit trying to determine what of the things he does or has done is good or bad or unfair. Stemming back to my first days on earth and the family He placed me in.

The tears and brokenness are the best thing for me right now, in god’s economy, anyway and are producing things I will never be able to see with my own eyes but are the careful works of the Father in my life and in my heart. I'm seeing and experiencing the fruit however, in my heart and how I perceive things.

I’m liking the fact that a series of circumstances are shedding light on some deeply rooted lies I’ve been believing about God from my earliest conceptions of Him. The things that could have gone undetected for years, but things that were forged in my heart through circumstances I cannot explain.

It is powerful and freeing, yet there is a painful surgery at work here, for divorcing these realities from my heart isn’t going to be a quick or easy process.

But I’m in good hands. Jesus is especially near. If it means I will cry every couple of chapters and then have a good day, I can take it because it is more than worth it.