Hungry

I can't explain it. Groanings and longings that are too deep for words.  I try to put language to it, but it always falls short.  So I ramble, on and on, desperate for clarity and understanding. To define this stirring that is happening in the innermost parts of me.  To share with another soul what is going on with my own.

I am hungry.  Hungry for more of God, for more of my Savior, for more of His joy and peace and contentment and self-control. For more of Him reflected in my internal and external life.

It sounds awesome, right? Super holy and put together?

But I am hungry because I am desperate. So incredibly weary of the continuous struggle that seems to be life these days.  These months.  These years.  Hardship after hardship, small and large, inside and outside my skin and bones. My faith is wavering, shaking in the trials, unsteady as I move one step at a time.  I cry out, desperate for God to show me where He is at work, so that I may see Him and move more confidently .

Isn't that the point of hardship? To make us BEG for more of Him? To bring us to the only place we have left, for we are at the end of ourselves?  My cry seems to be on repeat these days, "Lord, I have nothing left!"

Somehow I make it through another day.  

But I have pleaded with Him to take me to a season where it's not just survival, but living full.  Right now I deplete the resources graciously given to me each day and am desperate for a refill when I wake to begin the next one.  Even throughout my waking hours, I sometimes need a jumpstart to my broken down soul.

I am trying to hope.  I am really trying to believe that one day these chapters in my story will be used for something good.  He has something in store for me that is beyond my wildest imagination.  I am really, really trying to camp out there.  But like I said, I am weary, my faith is weak, and my spirit is dry.  Sometimes I feel like my life is a puzzle and I am that last piece that just doesn't fit.  Or I am treading water in a glass box, trying to stay afloat while everyone else is on the outside watching me, living their lives.  Some days I am doing okay, keeping my head up so I can breathe, and other times I am just tired of swimming, of staying in the same place and not getting anywhere, of fighting this fight by myself. Or so it seems.

So I want more Jesus. Oh, I NEED Him so desperately.  Without Him I have no hope, there is no promise, there is nothing to cling to.  All my own resources are gone.  I have nothing to offer but a dry spirit.  

Ps 42:1

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
    so pants my soul for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God,    for the living God.

Is 55:1

Come, everyone who thirsts,
    come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price.

Ps 81:10

 I am the Lord your God,
    who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
    Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.

Deut 8:3

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Matt. 5:6

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.