Maybe you’re wondering where I’ve been? Why the last time I blogged (before last Sunday’s Joy Restored) was almost 9 months ago?
Huh, I only just realized the significance of 9 months. No, I haven’t been incubating a new human life…but in a way I think God has been doing that that for my soul.
Like in pregnancy, God began a process inside of me, a process of healing and a work of restoration.
At first, I didn’t know that’s what was happening. Fittingly like in pregnancy, a woman usually has no idea about the amazing miracle occurring inside of her for the first couple weeks. Sure, she’s aware of the initial “encounter” but will have no conscious knowledge that a sperm has found it’s way to an egg her ovaries have released, and that in that moment of penetration by the sperm into the ovum, a whole new person has been conceived right there inside of her own body!
She’ll have no direct knowledge that this human-egg-sized person has traveled down her Fallopian tube and found its way to her uterine “nest” and snuggled herself or himself into the thick and fibrous walls of her uterine lining. She’ll be completely oblivious to this quiet miracle until a few days before or after she’d expect that uterine lining to begin shedding (menstruation), when she confirms her suspicions by urinating on a stick and seeing a sign that there is a new fully human life inside of her!
And only until that moment – that looooong poignant eternal moment – she’ll know of the quiet and sacred work of life going on inside of her.
In a similar (but not exact) way, God impregnated my soul and began a quiet and sacred work of healing and restoration inside of me.
Again, like in pregnancy when the body gets to work on developing this new fully human life and the woman often starts feeling the need to rest and reflect on what’s happening inside her, I too went into a time of contemplative and somewhat isolated reflection.
I didn’t really know why but I knew this was what was needed so that I could allow the process God was trying to produce in me.
And only until very recently have I felt the first heart beats of the Restored Joy that has been developing in my soul and in my life.
Sometimes, when God first begins working in us it’s unrecognizable.
