Relaxing at Panera on a Tuesday morning...

So I'm sitting here at Panera just relaxing after a great night of Campus Life. At least I enjoyed it. I'm listening to a cd that was left on my desk. Over these last couple weeks, I've had a Mr. G's blue raspberry slush, a Snickers bar and this sweet cd left for me by a wonderfully loving anonymous person. I'm going to begin calling you friend. Thank you, friend, for your generosity.
For several months now, I've been living in some very entrenched self-centeredness. It's turned me very numb. Very emotionally dead. Very little feeling. Very much hiding. God has been leading me out of this state of sinful isolation. As He's done this the last couple days especially, I've been an emotional basket case. I'm listening to the cd that my friend made me and the second track on it is very emotional. Not Hawk Nelson emotional (wink wink), but meaningful emotional. I had to skip the rest of the song because I'm bawling at my table in Panera. It's like all these emotions have been bottled up for months and months. Now the doors are being opened and they are beginning to spill.
So many difficult events happen in our lives. Often they are events that we bring on ourselves because we don't want to handle things the way God wants us to. After everyone left last night, Megan got a call that she lost a friend of hers. Please keep her in your prayers the next couple days. Much sadness. Sometimes while I'm out driving, I look around and wonder what's going on in the lives of those folks I'm driving past. I started doing this 3-4 years ago when Jeni and I were driving back and forth between our home and the hospital when Kaela was in with her tumor. I wondered how many other moms and dads were driving from their home to the hospital to sit with their child who had cancer. Or was in some kind of accident. When we don't deal with the sadness and frustrations in life, they kind of function like blisters. In July, we spent a week with my parents in Wooster. I spent 5-6 hours over a couple days cutting firewood. Much of that time was swinging my splitter. I got a couple blisters on my hands. The blisters really hurt for awhile. However, if I keep rubbing the blister over and over, it gets hard and callouses over. If I let it rest, it will heal and soften back up. Our hearts do this too. If we don't get healing from the things that hurt us, our hearts will callous. Our emotions get stopped up and our eyes turn inward. Self-focus and self-centeredness takes over. The longer we stay like that, the more we choose to quiet the voices that are calling for us to do something. To get healing. So many medications. So many more self-inflicted hurts that weren't necessary if we would just work through the pain.
Isaiah the prophet said, "Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."
I'm understanding more what this passage means. I grow weary and tired when I operate in my own strength. But if I truly wait on Jesus, my strength will be renewed. It takes awhile for my roots to grow deep into God's soil and really suck out His power. But once I do, mmmmmmhmmmmmm....