Living in the Overflow

Overflow.  The result of having too much, the extra that flows over the brim of the bowl, what a container can no longer contain.

This past weekend I stopped my hurried self and attempted to find some rest.  (To be honest, this was a challenge I thought would be impossible!) I attended the Women Alive conference where the theme for the weekend was "Resting in God".  If there was ever a woman and if there was ever a time, it was me and it was now.   My life had become a series of spinning plates and frantic schedules, dotted with happy smiles, loud sideline cheers, and little rest.  I had become weary of the busyness of routine and was finding little joy and rest in any of it.  I went away with a yearning and willing heart, knowing that even if God didn't speak to me, it would be a break from the rush of school and home and ministry and decisions and boys, and, and, and...  I knew I needed a break, and also knew that I needed a fresh touch from God.

The weekend did not disappoint.

I learned many things this weekend from many people who took the weekend to serve and speak into others lives.  Carolyn Arends is not only a phenomenal singer/songwriter, but also a gifted, speak-right-to-the-heart deliverer of God's truth (but this wasn't something I learned...this was something I already knew!).  Jody Cross and his team opened the heavens with their music and provided an avenue of blessing to flow freely.  Linda Lord captured every heart and mind with the gift and emotion of drama, speaking into our lives the truth that we are enough!

It has been a long time since I rested totally and completely.  I sat in each session and felt like a blanket enveloped and surrounded me.  Time seemed to stand still.  I was captured and enraptured.  I feel like my brain actually slowed down, absorbed something beyond the level of my Grade 3 students, and engaged in the process of resting in - of believing into - something greater than myself.

Who am I?  I am the woman Jesus loves.  I was created to participate in God's glory, and I can live in the overflow of this glory when I learn to rest in him.  I have a great need to be known and to be filled.  Jesus met the woman at the well and knew her completely.  How extraordinary!!  To be completely known is to be completely loved...deeply loved, unconditionally loved, divinely loved. And I am just that.

What am I filling myself with?  What is overflowing out of my life? "Take delight in the Lord and he will give you your heart's desires" (Ps 37:4)  Am I delighting myself in the Lord, filling myself with him, allowing him to be my overflow?  I see what I focus on.  Focus on God and then I am able to live in the overflow.  Focus on other things, and those other things become my overflow.  (A rather messy overflow, I might add!) Yucky.

My heart is overflowing - with peace, with grace, with gratitude.  I hope to live in this overflow for a very long time (forever??).  I hope to live a life that is abundant, not a life of diminishing returns.  I hope to live my life in the overflow of the divine providence that invites the restoration of the wonder and the mystery of who God is and what he can do.  What's my part to play?  That is still unfolding, but as I seek to live as the woman God loves, believing into a God who knows me and loves me completely, I believe fully that God will make that known.

For now, I rest.
For now, I believe.
For now, I am blessed.

(As I come back home and hit the reality of car pooling, meal preparing, homework completing, schedule dictating, and lesson planning, I am hoping that the peace that I encountered does not seep out of me.  Because for now, really,  I try to be the mom my kids need, the wife my husband needs, the teacher my students need,...the woman that God has called me to be.  Not an easy task, but hopefully when lived in the overflow, it will be a little be easier!)