Working as a massage therapist for the last 9 years I have noticed a definite pattern to the general flow of the busyness of my work. From mid-June to about mid-October is famine season. The days are long and the weather is beautiful, and people spend longer hours enjoying the gifts of Mother Nature. It is also high season for vacations, and people spend their expendable income in other places. August is probably the most barren since people are squeezing in last minute rendezvous and parents are shopping for back to school and paying school fees through the nose. October is the begining of the feast season as the days get shorter and colder and the fall lawn maintenance causes muscle strains, all of which encourage people to meander back to the massage table. January rocks with holiday gift certificate redemptions, and February follows suite with Valentine's Day. March and April fade a little, unless there is some big snow storm that causes a flurry of auto accidents, but May sees a spike with Mother's Day.
Feast and famine ~ it's the nature of the beast.
It is also the nature of my spiritual life.
The first 6 years of my life were a spiritual feast. I was raised in faith until my parents split. After the divorce, there were 4 years of famine. When I turned 10 my mother wanted me to be baptized and reintroduced me to faith. In the years that followed, she and my siblings slipped away, but I stayed ~ until I turned 17. In my junior year of high school, I began to question certain beliefs of the faith in which I was raised, which was apparently frowned upon. "There are just some things we are to take on faith." I was black-marked, the rumor-mill ran at full tilt, and I left the church of my youth. And entered into the most extended period of spiritual famine I have experienced to date. A famine of 9 years.
Since recommitting myself to Christ, my life has been a sequence of spiritual highs and lows. I have had my share of mountain top experiences, only to have them followed-up by overwhelming spiritual attacks which cast me into the deepest, darkest pit of the soul.
Right now, I am in famine mode.
The last few month have brought with them great change in the spiritual life of our family. We have left the church that has been our family for the last 7 year in order to follow God's call in our lives. Yet, I checked out months before the official send-off. And since the send-off, we have been somewhat nomadic, having commitments here and there and everywhere that have kept us from consistently worshiping in one place. Our small group has been disbanded in the interest of focusing our energies toward a church plant, and life in general has been so stupid busy that I have put my own study on the back burner. We have been so focused on planting a church and ministering to others that I have completely neglected ministering to ME. I have spent several months in a spiritual famine.
So, now what? How can I find my way back to the feast?
History has shown me that when I finally recognize that I have been starving spiritually, I dive in and drink deep again, immersing myself in personal study and private worship. I need to attend worship services, even if not at my home church. I surround myself with people from whom I feed off of spiritually.
But this time is different. This time I don't yet have a true church home and family that I can call my Tera. I don't have keys to a building that I can lock myself into and literally, physically lay myself at the foot of the cross. This time I am not only in famine, but I am in transition. Not only am I starving, I am homeless. I thank God that I have never experienced this physically, because spiritually is rough enough.
Those of us who have been on this journey of the spirit for any length of time know that it is not a steady ascent, that it has it's peaks and valleys. I am currently in the valley, and the steep walls seem to block out the Light. But I will keep pressing onward, each step slightly higher as I climb out of the barren valley and strive toward the feast awaiting me at the next peak, knowing that it will be sufficient to sustain me through the famine in the valley that follows.
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