“Imagine for a moment you are alone . . . no books, no Netflix, no one is home with you. The house is quiet, and so are you.
The longer you sit, the more you feel.
The silence is uncomfortable. An argument with your sister rises to the surface, the sarcastic comment your husband/boyfriend/friend made days ago still hurts, the discontent and discouragement you feel in motherhood slices open a shameful hole.
Longings begin to rise and so does guilt. Guilt over not being fully present with your people shames you, the loss of a loved one aches, the guilt for not being further along in your spiritual life stings.
The longer you sit, the more memories begin to rise, taking you back to years ago. The anger of your father makes your chest tighten. The neighborhood boy who teased you stirs up feelings of embarrassment. These complicated memories and uncomfortable feelings make you want to get up, grab your phone, reply to texts, or reach for a wine glass.
But what if, for a moment, you stay?
Imagine the very places you want to fix, avoid, power through, shout Bible verses at, stuff, or run from are actually the very way to wholeness. Imagine, instead of getting up to investigate what is under the couch or neurotically tidy the mail, you let all those feelings rise. You let them come up to the surface to breathe. You open your heart, talk to Jesus, and find love.
Imagine God is inviting you to follow these feelings. Imagine if you could stay with all those unfinished places within your soul and story and let them become your pathway to freedom.
If we’ve walked with Jesus long enough, we may feel a void inside of us. It is an uneasy place. One without words. We accepted Jesus into our hearts to escape the void. But it’s still there. We know it. It is there inside of us. It makes us feel guilty, ashamed, uncertain, and afraid.
When we withdraw, we abandon our very souls because we can’t make sense of our inner chaotic cell. Everything inside of us has become too much. We begin to believe that counseling or Jesus or communion just can’t resolve the ache we feel. We keep showing up to church or Bible study, but we slowly disengage our souls.
When we work harder, we battle on, grit our teeth and bear down. We read more books, follow more Christian women online, listen to more worship music, and silence all uncertainty. We control and contain and constantly lose ourselves in the need to keep up.
When we walk away, we give up on Jesus and the church. Our faith becomes a complex story from our past. Jesus just didn’t work out.
But what if we are in this place, not because we are doing something wrong, but because God is tending to the soil of our inner world? The process is hard because it means experiencing parts of our stories that make us cringe with painful self-awareness. But the most unlovely parts of us are the very places God is redeeming. God is moving closer.
Yes, stay. Stay where you most resist being.
You are exactly where you’re meant to be. Not fighting to get ahead and not giving up on ever overcoming, not closing the door on your faith entirely but there, right where you are. Simply opening. Simply accepting. Simply moving inward.
This is the sacred gift of staying.“
Copyright 2020, Bethany House Publishers. No part of this may be copied or used without permission. If interested, contact Anjuli Paschall.
Stay is a tender call to enter, to open, and to experience the echoing darkness buried beneath piles of mail and laundry and years of pain. This is a call to follow the fears and frustration to the unknown, frightening places inside. This is an invitation to let Jesus pull out a chair at the table of your soul and hear Him say, “Stay, you and your heart sit down.” Stay is about how Anjuli learned to become a little girl again, asking a big God if He could stay with someone small like her.
a promise + a prayer
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The word “stay” first made me think of not running away, and then to abide in Him. To stay, then, is to not go somewhere but rather remain.
I love that!
To me, stay means to wait and trust in the middle of what’s is swirling around you…or in you. I think of abide and dwell. It’s a vulnerable place of trust and being okay.
What does STAY mean to me? When I first heard the question I immediately thought of this verse:
“Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Psalms 46:10 KJV
Two years ago I had a major stroke. I am 68 years old now. And I found myself growing closer to the Lord because I had taken and had more time to STAY. The Lord still blessed me with allowing me to preserve many functions I had before the stroke. But He knew I would be
PRAYing more and STAYing more.
I enjoyed your article very much, Renee! And you perfectly described when it’s all too much!
Thank you
:Donna
Donna, you have been here before… staying at home, staying close to Jesus. I have found there are blessings hidden in this hard season and pandemic and having more time to stay with God is one of them for me. So glad my post encouraged you today.
Stay means to abide, linger, be at home.
I love that phrase “be at home.”
I love the idea of staying. But I’m a runner. Even at 50 years of age, I’m still running. I have gone through times of sitting still to journal my thoughts and feelings, and even doing art journaling, which i like better. But it’s hard for me to be consistent for long.
I long to experience the staying that stops my running. Where I genuinely feel at rest, in my mind, heart, and spirit. The kind of rest that Jesus promises in Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest”. ???
I’m not a runner, but I am a gardener so I like to be outside as much as possible. I recently heard Anjuli talk about this and she said “staying isn’t so much about sitting still, but being still and present in our emotions or uncomfortable thought processes with God instead of running from them.” Staying with him even when we’re moving but not avoiding the hard conversations He’s prompting our hearts to have with him. I do that a lot while I’m outside working in my yard and I hear from him so clearly in those times. So, you can even “stay” present with Him when you’re running. 🙂
Stay to me means always stay close to GOD know mater want your going through Stay in his word stay in his presence. Always stay with God in your heart
Stay for me = Surrendering my will and my way to allow God to move in His.
Yes, that too.
For me stay is what you do…God has allowed many trials in my life and for me I’ve always chosen fight over flight. It is who I am. However I can’t take the credit for that ability. God is my strength and refuge and without him for me staying would never be possible
When I’m faced with fight or flight, often times my heart wants to take flight for sure. It takes a lot of courage to stay present, but yes He supplies what we need.
Yes, I have had to stay in my room at a senior citizen facility. Dealing with my sugar/food addiction has not been fun, but I had already been working on it. This time of being in my room alone has forced the issue, but once I yelled, screamed, pounded on the bed, and did some journaling it has become easier. A lady where I live can leave her little dog on its leash and walk 50 feet away to go get her mail. The dog stays right where she left it and sniffs around. Another lady can tell her little dog to stay and walk 200 or 300 feet down the hall. It never moves until she tells it to come. She told us that she took several months to teach the dog to stay and gave him treats as he learned. I think God trains us to stay as we grow closer to Him and YES He gives us treats along the way. God Bless, Laurel
I love that analogy Laurel. It does take time to learn to stay, and God does reward those times when we do. 🙂 Thank you for sharing. Praying this time will be a big breakthrough for you with the Lord and sugar. In Jesus’ name amen.
I can’t help but think about our dog, Victor, and how hard it was at times for him to obey the “stay” command. He would sit with his tail wagging furiously and his expressive, expectant eyes looking up to me saying “when – when – when”. But because he trusted me, he obeyed. Moreover, he wanted to please us with his behavior. But there were those times when we turned our back, and he would lurch as if by turning around, we had given him permission to go. I’m learning that STAY is the opposite of GO. STAY means God either wants to do something instead of me, for me or to me. It all comes down to truly realizing how much He loves me. Once I get that, the trust follows. Just like Victor did. He was a rescue, so it took all of us months to develop that trust relationship. Victor died last month, and we miss him terribly. He was a blessing in many ways. Something else, God knew we needed.
I’m a big dog-lover so you’re speaking my language. I love how God showed you His ways through Victor.
Im going to think about this next time I’m working on training our two dogs, So far they’ve learned sit, lay down and beg, but I have not worked on STAY with them yet. Trust and obey. It’s hard but good.
One aspect of the word “stay” (to me) is that of quickly returning. Sometimes when someone comes to visit, and she gets up to leave, when I tell her “Stay longer,” she sits back down. Her intentions might have been to leave, but when asked, she stayed. I believe that’s what the Lord asks of me. No doubt, He desires I never leave His side, but He knows I’m prone to wander. When I get up to leave, His tender, gentle urging asks me to “stay.” So often, it’s in those very moments that I find the peace and the answer to many questions I so desperately sought. The place where I am when I return doesn’t matter: home, chair, church, outside — He is always in the same place, always right next to me. He never wanders; I do. My husband, who has been with the Lord for four years now, used to say, “God NEVER does anything TO us, always FOR us.” How can I possibly neglect staying with so loving a Heavenly Father? My relationship to Him is my primary motivation for staying.
Renee,rel
Stay means being still. Not running to Netflix, TV, computers, etc. Just being alone with God & snuggling up with Him. Listening to His still small voice calm you. No more noise or worldly distractions. Just you & God in a super quiet environment. It involves the whole body, We must tune out the noisy world & tune into God. Getting relaxed/calm to just sit & wait on a loving, caring God. He will get us out of any trial or tribulation we find ourselves in. Don’t run away from problems but allow the problems to bring you closer to God’s arms. Think of it as snuggling with a loving father who deeply cares for you not matter the situation or your past!!
Blessings 🙂
That blesses me, and it’s something I’m trying to do. To be still and hear his whisper instead of running to food or tv. Blessings ??
I think to stay means to wait well, trusting God will be faithful and being with Him in the meantime.
“Stay” to me means to Abide with Him
Stay means growing roots to me. I have made myself stay where I am for the past three years and grow roots in my place of service (my job and ministry) and in my city. There have been endless amounts of change the last eight years so this has proven a good decision for me. I am now at the place where I see weaknesses. Stay means staying even though everything is not perfect.:) Thanks for the opportunity to win!
As believers, we are to stay…to persevere in the midst of our challenging circumstances as we abide in our sovereign God’s purposes for our eternal good. We may not understand His ways, but we can trust Him to faithfully do His immeasurably more in and through our lives!
What does “stay” mean to me? I stay at home more than most folks usually do because I have MCS that trigger debilitating migraines. This “stay at home” order hasn’t changed much of anything in my life, other than that folks can no longer come visit me. The idea of the Lord saying “stay” to me, as in “stay in my arms” hadn’t really occurred to me ’til I read about it here. I need to ponder this more. . . .
Stay…don’t quit. Keep moving forward no matter how hard. Keep getting back up.
My instinct is to run away when confrontations occur or disappointments run over me. By either physical escape or a mental one. It’s so painful and hard to stay sometimes.
But oh it is worth it. My greatest blessings have come because I stayed.
He stays. That gives me Hope and reason enough to stay. ❤❤
How amazing is our God! I spent all day yesterday pondering these exact thoughts. I ended the day praying that God would unpack the layers of my soul and show me what needs to be healed. It is going to be painful to dig through all the wounds life has put in my soul but it is necessary “surgery”! I have to get to the bottom of the lies that I have believed about myself over the years. It will take pain to get healing. This concept of “stay” is a perfect follow up to my thoughts and I think it is confirmation of my next steps. It is time to sit in His way and let Him heal me and make me whole. Thank you!
What a beautiful encouragement! Thank you for sharing this. This weekend I accepted God’s invitation to stay…asking Him to help me accept my failures, to lovingly look at my cringey self with His grace and to find the freedom that has been a step away for so long. This morning I woke up lighter. Learning to sit with the chest crushing emotions is hard but with God, I’m determined to stay. To sit in His presence and heal in order to help others in a way I’ve always longed to be helped.
I’ve been feeling God speak to me during this “stay at home” order, saying to “stay calm and trust Me!” I have a daughter who is a nurse, and has been working with Covid patients, and my husband is an essential employee in a hospital, where he is possibly exposed to Covid on a daily basis. But my heart is calmed when I continue to seek Him, and trust His promises. Today I read Jeremiah 29:11, remembering the truth that He has plans for my future that are good! I will stay in His truth!
Thank you!!
Bobbie,
I understand your fears. My hubby & I both work in hospitals. He does CT & has scanned several positive patients. But we are trusting that God will keep us healthy & safe during this time. Praying God can calm your fears & bring you closer to Himself. Jeremiah 29:11 is my life verse. Love knowing that He has our best interest at heart!!
Blessings 🙂