Waking the Heart

The business of busyness

I feel so busy lately. Busyness. The business of busyness. It’s like a distant relative that one day shows up at your door, and you feel obligated to let him in. “Just for the night,” he promises, lugging behind him his old leathery bags full of laundry long due for a wash, a few aluminum cans, and some miscellaneous knick-knacks he’s accrued along the way. What can you say? Of course you’ll let him in. After all, he’s an old familiar face, though for the life of you you can’t remember his first name.

One night turns into two, two nights into a week, a week into a month – how long now? It’s his voice, the baritone monotone deafened-tone bellowing that grates at you, but whose noise you can’t seem to speak above. He’s taken over now not just the spare bedroom, but almost the entire house. You’ve had to retreat now to a corner of it. You’ve kicked him out several times, you think, but you were never really able to hear yourself saying it above his clamoring for attention, his neediness and distracting. You try again, louder this time. But he stays, and he lounges himself across the furniture and smears his own grease all over the house.

Tsk Tsk (Tĭsk Tąsk)

Even this journal entry cracks me up. I’m typing it. Typing it, right here on my computer screen at work. I have other programs running in the background. Programs. I’m “multitasking,” as they call it, because I cannot stop even for a few minutes and steal away to a quiet place to breathe. I can only give my heart the room it needs to stretch and yawn and awaken within the confines of a plastic keyboard and glaring monitor. And it begins to slowly feel like a Hollywood version of an insane ward – sanitized, stale, bland. Devoid of creativity or energy or passion or spontaneity or fiery strength. Just… stagnant.

Last night my muscles wouldn’t stop cramping. I could hardly sleep all night. I’d get up to stretch them, and that seemed to help for an hour or so, before I’d need to get up again and walk around the apartment. I was really tired, but still felt like taking a jog might relieve some of the tension. My legs felt like coiled springs that needed release.

That’s the state of my own heart. And really, some of the busyness that shows up at my door isn’t really bad at all. There are good things out there that I have secretly desired for a long time to give a swing at – expressions and worship and giftings taken flight. At times, though, they have a way of nagging at me, attaching themselves like tentacles or smothering vines to that coiled spring within, until full release no longer becomes possible and the aim becomes askew. It’s like mistletoe, legendary for its association with Christmastime romance and long used to decorate dancehalls and fireplace-lit living rooms, but whose real existence is as an energy-draining parasitic plant that attaches itself to (and cannot live apart from) another living organism to derive its mineral nutrients and water. Naturally, it’s a perfect design, a balancing act between tree and plant that offers both what they need. But mismanaged, or introduced to the wrong environment, a mistletoe plant can destroy its host, and kill itself in the process. And where is the romance in a bit of splintered, rotted-out, mushroom-infested tree – once glorious while it stood, now fallen and shattered and dead.

The Violence of Reality

And let me just say now for my own heart’s sake some inkling of truth that is always stolen away from me so quickly. Giving room for my heart to stand up and stretch and awaken will not equate to opportunity or meaning. Meaning and purpose aren’t found in my heart coming alive. Rather, it’s simply that my heart will never find meaning and purpose without first waking from its cramping, restless slumber. My heart coming alive isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. It’s the starting-off place. In order to live – which necessarily involves journey and battle – my heart must come awake.

The Kingdom is at hand, no doubt. Living in it requires a fierce and steely intention. “Violent men,” said Jesus, “take [the kingdom] by force.” Not half-alive, half-engaged, sleepy men. Violent ones. Ones alive with great emotional force, intense with conviction, propelled into life with God by the reality of their insatiable hunger for Him.

Jesus, this is you: the most violent and fully alive man ever to have walked this earth, who now walks the lands of heaven and of my own heart. Dwell here. Awaken me to take my place in you, with you. Rescue me from the busyness of it all and settle me into the life you’ve desired for me since the foundations of the earth. That’s what I want.