“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
Be sure to sign up for my new 5-day series called “a promise + a prayer” starting in May. Each day you will receive a note with a daily Bible promise and a simple prayer to help you stay close to God’s heart. Just a little something to help you pull away from all that is pulling on you in this season of uncertainty and overwhelming concern. And it’s free.
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This book sounds amazing! Stay to me means, rest awhile where you’re at, clear away the clutter and confusion and just pull up a seat at the table and be refreshed. Remain there, soak in His presence, listen to His quiet voice. Stay… with me and I will give you peace, lift your burdens, and comfort you.
Stay with me means to be present with myself, connected to my inner child, not abandoning myself. Allowing Christ to enter that sacred space with me, to restore me, heal me, give me peace and joy as I also connect with HIM the Lover of my soul.
When I think of the word stay, I am reminded to both wait and “be with” whatever emotion, circumstance or decision I am facing. I don’t need to rush ahead or avoid experiencing what is happening right now. Whether I am dealing with something painful or pleasureable, I need to fully experience it and allow God to “speak” as I stay with it. I can hold and be held in every moment that God calls me to “stay” with him.
LInda, I love how you described “staying” here: Whether I am dealing with something painful or pleasureable, I need to fully experience it and allow God to “speak” as I stay with it. I can hold and be held in every moment that God calls me to “stay” with him.
Thank you for sharing!
To stay means to bloom where I’m planted. We want to be transplanted when the going gets rough, but that isn’t always the best. Our roots have extended and it would end up killing us if moved. Staying is hard because we can be choked out by others or overshadowed by something grandeur. But, He has us here for a reason and we must stay and bloom where we are. Our reward will come.
Im a garden girl and I love your word picture of blooming and staying rooted where we are planted. 🙂
Stay is a fearful place a place of tears, doubt rejection and wonder. Stay say I want to know how it will end but I hesitate to take the next step in moving forward. Stay makes me hope that it can be better, more than what I see in front of me and Hope tells me it is good don’t fear trust try to start again.
What Stay means to me. Is for me to go to my Prayer Closet and listen for God’s voice. To become so vulnerable with God that I am able to to be at peace with my past.
This sounds like such a great book, Renee. Thank you for offering a free copy to someone. To me, “stay” means to sit at the feet of Jesus, listening and hanging on to His every word, like Mary. Love and blessings of peace and safety to you!
STAY: To me it means is OK to cry, call out to Jesus and tell him my honest feelings. Read and write his word and pray with my husband and friends. On a quest to read all the verses in the bible where the Lord says FEAR NOT! + sing worship songs because i know that the Lord put the LOVE of music in my soul.
Oh my goodness. To stay. To stop. When I feel overwhelmed like this, my very body screams at me to take action. To do something. Anything. I so identify with Peter at the Transfiguration when it was all too much for him to take in so he decided to build shelters. What a challenge to not just slow down, but to stop. And stay. And take time… What an amazing topic to delve into.
Just last week I was noticing how the role stay plays in my relationship with my precious dog. She’s had a tough life, many owners in our family because of both unexpected death and sickness and was never trained in any real way but I see how stay for her is a choice of trust. She must trust me as her provider and protector even when every fiber of her being wants to chase after the rabbit or hurry down the stairs on her old feeble legs. Sometimes you can read how hard it is to stay on her sweet face and I feel badly that I she doesn’t know what I know and I can’t explain it to her.
And so just as He does I realized how that’s really me with God. It’s so hard to stay in this season, we want to rush ahead and trust our own instincts but we must stay…trust our provider and protector.
For me, “Stay” means “Abide”, which is my word for the year. “Stop running, daughter, and sit at My feet. Don’t waste the quarantine. Abide in Me.” Yes, Lord!
Stay means to be still, in my opinion, remain in the moment so you can experience my fullness, my grace and my love.
When I think of the word stay, I think of remaining, being in the moment, etc.
Stay means to be focused on the one thing in front of you – not to be distracted to go toward anything else.
Stay means to me so many things…. that God will not leave me because of all the ways I have failed him. Stay… because I’m hurting and need You. Stay… because I’m so afraid I will end up all alone, unloved. Stay… because I want to be a better person, a better wife, a better mother, a better daughter, a better, sister, a better friend. Stay… because I need yYou Lord.
Stay has a number of meanings for me……………I’m a dog mom, so stay has that meaning, however hard that is for the dog…………. for me? Staying is a secure word, staying a comfortable place, where you are known. Much less scary than taking risks. Stay for me, doesn’t mean less busy, and perhaps that is where I need to focus. Busy job, busy family………. Got lots to learn, that’s for sure.
To me stay means listen, quiet down and pay attention to what my Father has for me.
For me, “stay” means to be still. I have a guest room sign that says “stay awhile” so I also view “stay” as an invitation to feel welcomed, at peace and at rest.
When I think of “stay”, I think of abide and rest. It would be something I would tell a friend – – stay a while, let’s enjoy our time together.
To stay…for me that is the hardest 6 letters…then also Be Still is another set of hard 6 letters…I am always on the go physically or in my mind. I feel restless and can’t stop moving. So in this time of STAY….I am learning that STAY means to be indwelled with God. To be in tune with Him…in His word, in His world. So I become more in tune and STAY as I pray. I feel so connected with Him in prayer right now at this time in my life that I might finally be understanding to STAY and abide in Him. No more moving…just being!
God is so timely. This is exactly what I needed today. “Staying” is not what I do. I’m a runner and right now amid this Covid19 crisis my job although secure may cause other’s to lose their job, so my thought has been to leave to make room for others and their security. Stay to me means placed as when we often say to a child “stay put” it means for just a little while. My greatest moments of staying and staying with God in any given moment and listening to him. Yet, while I seem to think I understand God’s direction one day, the next it seems I’m pulled in a different direction. I wish I could feel like I’m not being tossed about like the waves on the sea from one day to the next. I would love to read this book and find the answer to “staying” power. God Bless and stay safe everyone!