Intention

She put a photo at the top of her blog of a whiteboard bursting with the words "intention" and "intent" marked all over it.  Scrawled out were heart-felt wishes and dreams ... trying to tie them up, capture them, live them out fully.  Be a good mom.  Honor my husband.  Serve God.  Minister to others.  Educate my children.  Live Healthy.  Ideals and goals of intention crying for fulfillment in her. 

I know that ache pulsing inside my heart: crying out to fulfill lofty aspirations where it matters.  Lately I am acutely aware of being called (by God and through friends who love me) to be intentional.  Doesn't that word get used up? But, still, it is so true -- we need to determine what matters, what really matters, and go for it. Life can get just used up with the "to dos" and the "shoulds" and the laundry of it all -- washing and rewashing and wishing and rewishing.  Nike's onto something.  But, then again, there is more to the "doing it" than just doing.


I'm at this juncture where I have to jump off -- like a boat is leaving the dock and there's just no way around it.  I either jump on the boat or stay on the dock and either way I don't do the other.  There's no more straddling left.  And what is it I straddle?  It is the need to grow further in trust and faith and to do so requires just "doing it."  My other foot clings to what is known and seemingly sturdy but just will not take me out where I need to go.  I hear Him call like a voice through a wooded glen ... echoing softly through my soul.  He is saying, "take this next step" and I must.  How can I not?  You'd be surprised where it leads.  It's not to more doing -- but more to my gracious undoing and not doing.

Sometimes the less is the more.  God is asking me to release frenetic planning and come away to quiet places.  I feel it strong.  The pull to be still and know.  He woos and I must go to Him.  There are sloughs between us in this wood -- sloughs of fear and past wounds, of defenses long-lost of their usefulness and of habits chosen once and now imposing.  But, He is greater than all of those.  He is the persistent Hound of Heaven.  He wants me wholly and will not  be hindered in His pursuit  He died to set me free and I all too often I will settle for half-freedom because it is good enough and comfortable enough.  But the way of the cross isn't like that.  The gospel record of His call is not a half-baked, come when you will, do just a bit, go bury your dead and take some time off type of call.  He calls and He comes and who can stand against that fire without feeling the heat?

How gentle and severe He is and He is calling me to join Him in real, abundant life.  Always there is a cross before the resurrection.  Always the cross.  Do we sweat the death so much that we would not take the cup?  We will come, as He did, to the place of "not my will, but Thine" and even fearing what that could mean, we can go with Him.  And when we do, as He did, we find the joy set before us in Him.

Will I go?  Will I do it -- be undone, be less in the doing and more in the being?  I am on my way.  Lacing up the Nike's and running to the arms that hung for me.  

And, I hope you do -- I trust you are going and will go.  What else will we take from this life but that very place we run to, that very Person who calls us, and the very person we become in the going?