restless

i have a lot of stuff.

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i've never moved out of the country, i've never had my house burn down, i've never been robbed... so with the exception of the occasional garage sale, drop off at good will, or sale on eBay, basically a lifetime of possessions have somehow accumulated in my closets, under my bed, on dressers, tabletops, in media cabinets, on bookshelves, and in kitchen cabinets.

i have a lot of stuff.

it's beautiful stuff, and it's stuff that the Lord has often provided or blessed me with in some way or another throughout my life - by parents or friends, on birthdays or christmases... all the little daily accumulations of a life being lived, and all the actuations of personal preferences and tastes into the spaces you live that life in.

occasionally (ha) there is an evening when i'm at home by myself... and i often will end up cleaning and straightening things around the apartment, before i relax and enjoy my evening. and honestly, there have been so many nights when i get the apartment all looking pretty, the lamps are on, some candles are burning, a load of dishes is in the dishwasher, i'll hear the air conditioner kick on... and i'm kinda shocked.

it feels safe here, it feels like me, it's filled with some of my favorite things... i'm so grateful for it, and it does definitely add some happiness to my life.

but lately...

i've been dealing with a restlessness - one that is very familiar to me - a restlessness, an itch to get out of here. to be more than this. to have less than this. to see God bigger than i'm seeing Him now... and although some of these are merely feelings that will pass in time (as they often do), it always makes me wonder for a little while... what if? what if there is more than this? what could i possibly do right now, in my life, to deal with this restlessness? because i firmly believe that God has used this restlessness throughout my life (and through the lives of many people i know) to give me a wake up call of sorts... to keep my life from becoming stagnant, to keep my dreams from becoming wispy. so i can't just push the restlessness to the side because its inconvenient or not easy to admit or talk about... i have to learn to embrace it, wrestle it, lay it down, and offer it to the Lord as yet another piece of me wanting to look like Him.

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so. this is just fair warning... or whatever you want to call it. a pulling upward of things that could stay lying beneath the surface:

if i find out tonight that there is a specific way to fix this... if i find out tonight that there is a way to see God bigger than this... if it means me selling off everything, getting in my car, and driving to the ends of the earth -

Lord, help me, search me, know me - but that is what i would do. and if it's not - get to the place where that is what i would do. because your Holy Spirit in me, is provoking me to believe there is indeed, much more than this.