Imaginary

I sat in the pew next to my mom, brother and sister behind, neck aching and head pounding, everything physically wanting to stand and leave. A feeling welling inside of me urging to stay. Singing familiar songs, possessed by thoughts of how I've sang them with passion, screaming the words, calling Him to move. I stood with the usual slight rocking, fighting the physical to engage with the spiritual. Sifting to hear the still small voice with exhaustion, pain, and apathy screaming for my attention. It has been months since receiving what I had grown accustomed to daily.

As the service moved to a time of confession, I began to hold more focus, searching and allowing myself to be searched. I followed the prompts given and confidently answered; nothing present in my life, unconfessed, that needed to be addressed between us. I sat unaware of any wrongdoing I had done or resolved to do in the future that was left previously unacknowledged. But what had I done, how had I pursued, where am I becoming not a reflection of Him, but Him, Himself?

I began to see the metaphor of my life in a cup. A cup only to be filled with Him. I saw the pride of declining to be refilled, to instead sacrifice overflow because of my own lack of effort. Living off of and rationing what was released to me months ago. I was not running on fumes, I was not running at all. My confession became not what I had done, rather, what I had not done.

I had not let Him fuel me. I had not let me be my strength. I had not lived in the present of what He is doing, trying myself to multiply the effects of what He once did for me. I had not let Him be my everything. He was. I had not.

And my confession, my release of control, my fatal attempts to produce my own joy, my own peace, my own satisfaction, I offered to Him. Admittance to reality, death to denial, I submitted.

And in a moment, I experienced Him.