"Unsettle Me"

Unsettle me. These are words I read this morning. Words that slapped me smack in the face because they were words I needed to pray but hadn't yet --simply because I didn't know I needed them until I read them. They are simple words, the prayer of a woman who refused to go one step further the way she was: desperate, miserable, lonely, broken, clingy--All the things we don't want to be and wish someone would take from us. But how often do we forget to offer them for the taking? Unsettle me. This is my new prayer.

So much of what we do is done to bring ourselves comfort, to ease pain, to mask or distract us from what hurts. From what should hurt. The stuff that won't go away until we let ourselves live in the pain., the loneliness, whatever it is we run away from or try to feed or numb with the emptiness the world has to offer. Empty calories. Instant gratification.

This is what I'm giving up for lent. Instant gratification. I don't even know what all that will entail yet. I do know it involved deleting facebook off of my phone this afternoon. That's right, I'm leaving the place I go first when I want to feel better about myself. When I want to feel seen, heard, noticed, validated. Popular. You see, I have a confession to make: I'm insecure. And too often, I use facebook to help me feel better about myself. But I also use food. And stuff. All sorts of things, really, to make myself feel better when life tilts off kilter. Which is more often than not.

So, this is it. I'm giving up my crutches. All of them. Crutches I won't even know I need to give up until I find myself in that spot that makes me want to act out of anger, or fear, or insecurity. And whatever it is that I want to turn to first is the very thing I will need to turn away from. I'm going to be doing a lot of turning away in effort to turn toward what has been, what is, and what will be when I stop trying to escape: my God. And before you pat me on the back and say you are proud of me, know that this has nothing to do with you. It has to do with God. Wait, actually, it does have to do with you simply because if we are friends in real life, chances are if you have talked to me on the phone, you probably haven't had my full attention. I was probably on facebook too. I apologize for that. And I promise, if you call me in the next forty days, you'll have my full attention. Because I will also be watching a lot less television too. 

Unsettle me, God. Shake me up from the inside. Take what You want so all that's left is You.