Friday Freewrite Fifteen

I just had three glorious days at the Shalom Prayer Center in Mt. Angel, Oregon. What was lovely is that I didn't have some pressing emotional crisis. No one had devastated me by seething out vicious words or vitriol (like last time I was at the beach and had to spend five days working through something like that). 


It is the first extended time where I could just sit and soak. Definitely had some fears just below the surface that came in the quietness before God though. I was able to hear His voice for the immediate future. 


It took about 30 hours before heaven broke through as I unplugged from the world and just sat at a bench perched at the top of Mt. Angel and listened in the quietness. The gardeners with their leaf blowers were gone. The tractor laying fertilizer in the freshly mowed grass left, and there was just me and the wind and the birds and the gorgeous sunshine shining down on the green farmland below. 


Then I sat in the quietness of the church and just listened. Then I heard the monks at Vespers (sunset evening prayer). Then I walked down the mountain with the sun shining in my face, and You spoke clearly and distinctly and all my plans at the bottom of the hill that I had furiously journaled about in pages 5-8 were for not because "the mind of a [wo]man plans [her] way, but the Lord directs [her] steps" (Proverbs 16:9). How foolish I had been in my striving (Psalm 46:10).


Paul required my attention, and it is two hours later that I am getting back to this freewrite. I am going to go and finish Isaiah 48 first. I must complete June, and that is the last post for it.