“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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I’ve never heard the name Renee Swope or Anjuli Paschall until today. Drinking my coffee this morning in my favorite place in the world (my craft room i.e. magic space), I was organizing some stamps – because that’s what I do, I’m an endless organizer on the road to never being organized enough – and decided to hop on Amazon to look for some containers that would fit in my new storage cart. While I was on Amazon, a book I had been interested in popped up and the rabbit hole began. I kept telling myself, “STAY FOCUSED! STAY FOCUSED!” This led to that and here I am. I began reading this post and my heart leapt and it gasped and it stayed. I very rarely reply to blog posts because I don’t typically make it to the end. Today, I did. When I began imaging myself alone in my house and all that’s happened in my life in the last 12 years, 5 years, 2 years, losing my 45 year old brother to pancreatic cancer 6 months ago, inside it feels like a well filling up quickly and the mounting pressure is nearly too much to withstand. But then I read, “But the most unlovely parts of us are the very places God is redeeming. God is moving closer.” For me, ‘stay’ means giving God space to do His work in me. It means the messiness, both in my house and in me, is fine. Do what I can; then, rest easy because God is the Master of cleaning up messes. It means sitting in the mess, being unorganized, feeling uncertain and focusing my energy on Him. It means leaving it all undone so that He can equip me to go out and do His will.
Im so glad you found your way here, or that you followed God’s lead to come here and stay with Him. I pray that you are finding comfort and calm for your heart as you stay near and nearer to Him each day.
It seems what I just shared had already been shared!
I have had a “good life”…..but there are sorrows that one doesn’t share, others don’t see. Challenges, insecurities, failures, disappointments…..and a deep down longing to flee, just run away.
To me, “stay” means just that – it is the antithesis of every nerve, desire of my heart. I am where God would have me to be. To truly trust Him in ALL things.
I’ve been meditating on Pslam 46; Be still and know that I’m God.
I always thought it meant, be still, like rest…which I think He wants us to do BUT in this context, Be still, was a command from the Lord, to STOP, LISTEN, ENOUGH, STOP FIGHTING! It was written in a time of war and turmoil. God wants us to cease striving and relying on “other” things, ways, people… but to totally depend on Him, believe in Him, rest in Him, and give Him the Glory!
Stay tells me to welcome the uneasy. It honestly is a little daunting. I feel like I have been struggling to find happiness and belonging the past 12 years. I grew up knowing I am a child of God, and He is who helped me still be here today; but I’ve been struggling and fighting to find a place of peace. From last year to now, God showed me I had to stop fighting to understand what’s happening around me, and to fully accept where I am in life. I was so tired of being uncomfortable and not being truely happy. God is working through me to make me wholeheartedly rely on Him. I need to stop trying to plan ahead and simply embrace where I am. I need to stop preparing for what’s ahead and depend on God as my strength. He is my Father, and I need to know that in every part of my being. I know He loves me, but I never truely understood how unconditional love worked. Last year God show me just a taste of how he would take care of me, but at that time I was also still fighting to be happy. I know God is still with me. I know I must truely depend on Him , and make Him my everything. It’s been tough to embrace the unpleasant things and call on God instead. Every day is a mental battle, but God is still showing me He is here.
Stay to me means to stay in the moment or moments as you journey through life and especially with those you love. Also stay with Jesus on the path he leads you on and in our daily journey of life. This also helps you stay in peace knowing God has got youand is always with you❤️
Stay reminds me my heart and thoughts must “stay” with God, not just when overwhelmed with anxiety and grief but to Stay awhile longer BEFORE I turn back to this world’s sadness and confusion and unanswered questions. My thoughts will come and go but my faith knows God always STAYS with me. Reminds me of the sign I saw,”if God seems far away, guess who moved.” Some days I run, I hold back tears, I hide my fears and anxiety, I try to get busy doing something else but I finally realize if I had stayed with God’s comfort, listening to my fears, crying with him, and allowing Him to stay with me, I would feel His arms and His love which would remind me He is in charge and even though I don’t understand everything,, that He is Good. His plans are good and all will be well.
Stay means to be still before God, to let go of the “noise” and distractions. However, things are always pulling for my attention, and I’m a doer. But the idea of STAYing is so appealing. I need it. I want it. But I’m so caught up in life and work and stuff. I need peace to fight my battle with Amyloidosis. It’s a devastating disease, and I’m weary. I want to learn more about STAYing.
Stay. Yes, I am a retired person who had eagerly anticipated this season after spending 45 years in Corporate America. Instead, a health crisis from my special needs adult child has me tethered to home, (this being the case long before Covid-19 reared it’s ugly head) with the exception of brief forays out for church, carefully scheduled visits with friends and/or family.
Stay. Yes, those years where Mom was “on call” 24/7″ and the summons to “Mooooooommmmm”, while exasperating, was also a part of a life populated with short people. Somehow, that same call from an adult child is less endearing, far more exasperating, and not what I signed up for. Where does Mom go to resign?
Stay. My word for 2020 turned out to be “Bloom”. In order to bloom, and grow, I need to stay, to dig in my roots, turn my face to the Son, and strive to both learn from and accept this season.
So, I stay, and seel contentment in the staying, growth opportunity in the frustration, and forgiveness at those times of resentment. I’m bid to Stay.
Stay. This is a word in due season. A sudden cancer diagnosis in January rocked my world and altered what I had planned as I looked at my future retirement. Radiation and chemotherapy have put the rest of my life on hold. Stay. As I have spent day after day, at times unable to do almost anything for myself, my loving Father God has caused me to stay, much like when I used to hold my own children in a sustained hug until they finally settled down and rested in my arms. As I have asked God to show me areas of unconfessed sin in my life, I have been able to understand Him better and repent and accept the relief of deeper forgiveness. Forgiveness I was unaware I needed until now. Stay. As I wait, He has allowed memories and hurts from the past to rise, I have examined them in light of the promises of scripture and looked at them through the lens of Jesus love for me. I have made peace with them, come to a greater understanding of how and why I am who I am. Stay. It has been a healing process for my soul and a deepening of my faith even though I have walked with him for forty years now. My cancer treatments appear to be working, but greater still is my understanding of God’s power and presence in my life at an ever deepening level.
Bobbie. Thank you for your openness. May
God bless and keep you and hold you in the hollow of His hand. Recently I was reminded that He sits right beside me, holding my hand when I need him to. Laurel
I am one to busy myself in anything I can find when emotions hit. It’s easier just to work and stay busy until they subside. To me, stay is telling me to quit running to busy work. Stop and be still. Feel the emotions and understand them. Take them to God instead of just trying to ignore them. I see this in my 9 year old son. When I can tell he is upset but then he don’t want to admit it or talk about it. It hurts my heart. I realize now how God feels when I try to just act like it’s all okay too.