I spent the first week of 2012 on a bit of a hiatus.  It began on January 1 with a friend emailing me and asking me about the condition of my soul. “It is well”, I replied…with a little more elaboration.  Two hours later I sat in church and heard the same question and I immediately took notice.  Perhaps my friend’s question had not been an idle, how are you doing, though he said he didn’t know why he was asking.  Perhaps that’s why I took notice.  There was some mystery in the question, and its repeat suggested that the God who is Mystery was the one who was really asking the question.

So I pondered, and then asked God what his answer to the question was. “How is my soul, God?”  As the week unfolded I realized I was breaking away from my usual routines.  Easy to do since I was teaching and had to start my days rather differently in light of that.  Yet, in the breakaway, I also noticed a sense of freedom.  Glad to not be doing the routine.  Glad to be doing something different.  I also noticed that the “wellness” I believed I had was indeed there, but not in the way I had thought it was there.  I discovered a whole mixture of emotions…mostly a weariness… yet underlying the mixture was a certainty that God had me in his attentive grip and that all was well between us in that regard.

The awareness of my weariness caught me off guard.  I guess it’s kind of like when you physically keep going and it’s not until you stop that you realize how tired you are.  I had been doing a lot of good and right things.  Each day was filled with a mix of personal quiet time and caring for family and doing my job.  But I had shifted into automatic pilot and a weariness had set in…subtly but certainly.  Weary of the routines.  Weary of the late nights to pick up kids from work (or wherever) and early mornings to let our puppy out the door.  Weary of not always knowing what I’m doing at my job, or not getting what I do know done without having to pass through numerous hoops.  Weary from carrying relational losses for which the hurt seldom seems to lessen.  Weary even of the patterns of that precious quiet time.

Though none of it was ineffective and unfruitful, it had all become predictable and routine.  So that first week, when circumstances demanded a break in the routine, it was like a breath of fresh air.  Like being in a room with stale air for so long you don’t notice until someone opens a window, God opened a window and the freshness that I felt awakened me to the staleness I had drifted into.

Now that the first week has passed and I’m not teaching, I am back into the previous routine in terms of general activities.  I still get up early to let the puppy out; I still get to bed late most nights waiting to bring a child home.  I still go to work and have many moments where I really don’t know what I’m doing, and other moments where what I am doing seems to take ridiculously long to do – going through hoops.    I still feel the losses; in fact, I am more attuned to them than ever.  I have come back to that precious quiet time.

But there is a shift.  Something happened in me that week to reengage me.  I’m flying the same route but with the automatic pilot off.   And something is happening between God and me that is meaningful though right now, kind of hard to explain.  I feel the challenge – like he has thrown down the gauntlet and dared me to step into a deeper faith in his power, a deeper belief in his love, a greater capacity to see his truth.

Years ago, God used a friend to challenge me to “live”.  That challenge has so many facets to it, but the most immediate again is to live engaged, not just coasting in automatic pilot.  To be engaged, actively watching the instruments and holding onto the yoke…that yoke that Jesus said was easy.

I remember when I was a child and my dad arranged for the two of us to go up in a little twin engine plane with a qualified pilot.  My dad let me sit in the front, in the seat beside the pilot.  The pilot let me have a go at handling the yoke of that little plane once he instructed me about how to keep the plane level by watching the turn-and-slip indicator and keeping it level.  I did well for awhile and then was distracted by something outside my window and down on the ground.  My handling of the yoke followed my eyes and the next thing I knew the pilot was getting me off the yoke and righting the plane.  Apparently I had come close to rolling the plane in a downward spiral.  I laugh at the memory now though it kind of freaked out my dad and the pilot at the time and I couldn’t quite grasp what I had done.

That’s the difference between being engaged and having the automatic pilot on.  Even if the overall flight plan doesn’t change, things happen.  Challenges rise up.  Memories are carved out.  Lessons are learned.  Sleepy and weary souls are awakened.  God does a lot of “righting” though with less surprise than that pilot had.  We do a lot of growing in faith in his power, belief in his love and capacity to know his truth.

I’m glad He had me turn the automatic pilot off.