just be a tree

{image via DeviantArt: ElifKarakoc}

"I am sick of praying," I blurted out angrily over the phone to my boyfriend. Jared calmly said the words that I did not want to hear. They were the words that I absolutely did not want to realize for what they really were, the words I had known deep within myself that I needed to take to heart all along. He said "Sarah, maybe instead of praying for what you want, you should instead pray for what He would have for you." I knew that he was right, but I, with my bold stubborn streak deeply embedded within me, just didn't want to hear him out, or pray later on that night after I had hung up with him on the phone. I was angry that I didn't hear God. I wanted the answers to my questions within my timeline, not His. I felt hopeless.

Hopelessness is not something I want to feel during my prayer time with the Lord, but sometimes, human as I am, that is how I feel. I couldn't understand why the silent moments that I was given to entertain spending some precious time with my Lord that night frightened and irritated me so much. In those breaking moments I started asking some serious questions, "Why haven't you been answering me God?" "Have You been answering me all along and I just could not hear You?" Then the thought struck me, perhaps my ears were just deafened to His voice, because I was so tuned into my fears, my wants and the world at the time, and sadly, not enough into Him.

As I laid there in my bed tossing and turning while staring at the ceiling, heart and mind heavy, I tried to pray the same prayer that I had been praying for the past few weeks, but in a newly birthed way. I once again ran down the list of desires and needs with God, and still I felt badgered by life in the back of my mind. Finally, after shutting out all of my worries, the real desires and needs began to flow out from my mind to God, sincerely this time.

I knew that I hadn't been trusting the Lord with leading my life like how I should've been. I knew that honestly, unless I heard the answers to my prayers the way that I wanted to hear them, that I didn't really want to hear anything at all from the Lord. I am ashamed to say that I've felt that way, but it is the truth. I knew that there were things in my life...relationships even...that I needed to pray about and stop lying to myself about and just face the music, so to speak.

The next day, after accepting the reality that the Lord was speaking to me in His way, and in His time, I came across this verse that spoke to my heart: 

"But blessed is the man who trusts me, God, the woman who sticks with God. They're like trees replanted in Eden, putting down roots near the rivers--Never a worry through the hottest of Summers, never a dropping a leaf, serene and calm through droughts, bearing fresh fruit every season." (Jer. 17:7-8, The Message)

God wants my life, my prayers, my joy, my sadness and my weaknesses. For it is in my weakness that I am made strong by Him (2 Cor. 12:10). In my recent prayers I have shown my weaknesses to Him in the truest of forms, and I believe faithfully that He is the strength that is working within me and my life that I always need.

I'm learning that I just need to be a tree. A tree with roots that outstretch towards the Most High's living waters daily, dropping worry without care throughout every season that I am to be weathered through. I'm learning that even in spiritual droughts there is still fruit to be had and produced, if I will let the Great Gardener prune and replenish the tree that is me. And most of all I am learning that I need to become a Kneeology Major, Minoring in Life.