This has been a heavy week for me. I have been wrestling with this idea of "time with God" and what that looks like and what that is supposed to look and this week has sort of piled it on. I haven't really sat down and opened the journal, opened the bible, read through the devotional, but I get this sense that this week has been full of God in so many ways. When I think of the last few days, I just get this heavy feeling. Like there is still a lot that I am unburying myself from and I am not sure what is at the top of the pile, way above my head.

First of all, this is the first night that I have really had to myself for quite a while. not that that is entirely the fault of other people, but that is how it is. This week, I have been taking care of my sister a lot as she has been fighting a huge skin infection, so that's really the main thing. This has really been a deep experience for me. It has taken me a little deeper in understanding what it means to really give up myself, my pride, to be a part of the healing of another person, quite literally. I have been doing a lot of thinking about my relationship with my sister and what it looks like, how to deal with it. Sometimes it just feels like a very heavy weight upon my back. I really think this is one of the hardest relationships I have in my life, but that is becuase it is probably the deepest, steeped in so much of the "stuff" of our lives, so much of it shared.

And so this week has been just a good reminder of how important we are to one another. And it has been so rewarding to be able to serve another person. Not to mean that in a prideful sort of way, but in an appreciative way. Abba has been saying so much to me about how important and how freeing it is to totally give myself away in service and how to have such an opportunity is truly a precious, irreplaceable gift.

There is something beautiful in being able to share in another person's pain. I have been reminded of that in a very vivid way this week. Maybe that is more accute for me becuase I have a very weak stomache, but it has been a good reminder that these lessons in freefalling are best learned when we truly allow ourselves to feel the pain-- to not try to run or hide from the deep wounds that are dying to be healed in us if only we will acknowledge them.

It has been a heavy week in that it has just been so full. Work has been stressful. Not in a dealine sort of way, but we just have been very busy. I just feel like my days have been solid blocks of explaining, problem solving, defending the cause that we like the call the University system. Sometimes it can be very intense. We are also in the midst of training new students, which, in itself is not difficult and is for the most part exciting in its deversion, but it adds another element to deal with. The already small phone center suddenly becomes a can of sardines when you double or triple the amount of people in the space barely suitable for four. I suppose my life has just felt fairly condensed in activity, responsibility, and in physical space.

I think it has also been hard becuase it has been a very long time since I've had as little money as I do at this moment. Not only did we get our last paychecks in June held over until next Monday, I found myself needing to pay my current rent, my deposit for my new house, and my rent for that new house all at the same time. That is such a stressful topic I con't even want to write much more about that at all. I've been holding out on the same groceries from a week and a half ago and the non-perishables my mom sent with me last time I was home. Its that strange balance between needing to eat the old food before it goes bad and hoping you won't be as tired of it at dinnertime as your are now. All this and feeling the weight of my inability to even form a budget, let alone keep it. exhausting.

I feel like my pile is getting higher and higher and the deadlines of life pressing in around me. Its like I keep having this thought that i might feel better if I just got some sleep, but that simply means the faster approach of getting up and going to work again...

Abba, save me from this. Save me from all the stresses that seem to be closing in around me. All my fears, all my anxieties, all the things that I just want to do, but my little physical body just won't allow it. Rescue me out from under this. Restore my rest. All of these things are beautiful things in life, but I am having a hard time enjoying them. Quiet my heart, I ask. Quiet my racing mind and pulse tonight. I simply need your rest.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest...