I am trying to center myself so I can do what I need to do and be who I need to be. This never seems to have anything to do with my daily tasks that are so time-consuming. Regardless of how centered I am, I still have to scoop kitty litter and make supper. I have to do life. Yet often, life feels more adrift than this anchoring I seek.
The need for centering pulls at me reminds me that my busyness isn’t my primary business. I sit with it sometimes and try to make sense of what is so urgent. It’s uncomfortable and I have to fight the urge not to get in my car and drive to the store to look for a new coffee table. I’ve decided my coffee table is too small for my living room and even though that involved a small measure of math, it makes sense to me. This centering that I crave – not so much. I know it’s God by its persistence and truth be told, it makes the distraction of the coffee table seem like a welcome muse.
Then, of course, I question why I can’t sit with this God I adore and listen to what I need to do and who I need to be. Why do I resist? Why do I let myself succumb to distraction? God probably doesn’t think the six-inch difference in a coffee table is paramount to his plans for me.
So, I still myself. It chafes this stillness that God commands. I listen to the emptiness of this space and try to discern what is so relentlessly nagging at me. Is God in the quietness? The busyness? The mundane? The despair? The spiral? The spaces between it all? “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.” (Proverbs 15:3).