Sunset String Lights

Choosing Slow

Welcoming a new season seems to be the only thing on my mind these days.  My children are so eager for summer, and I too share in their excitement for warm days, fireflies, and campfires.

To put it simply, I believe we are all just yearning for slow.

We bought a camper on December 17 last year, my 39th birthday.

It’s been sitting in our driveway since that snowy winter day and used so far as only a recording studio for the album we have been working on titled “Time Capsule.”

No other name would do.

We are currently finishing up the last of the ten songs now and all will be released as of June 2, five days before my son must have his first surgery.

Were going to have to slow down.

I feel a chapter of our lives ending and honestly, I am getting eager to make it to that last page.  You know, the one where only half the page is filled with words and then you turn to a new beginning.

I have only been on social media for a bit over a year now and the past thirteen months have been just that incredibly social and so loud in the quietest way.

It’s been wonderful and equally exhausting.

That platform has allowed me to share the book that God urged me to create and now it is allowing me to share the songs that have captured the journey I wrote about in the book.

But all that sharing didn’t even come close to the feelings my husband and I  experienced writing the book and the  songs and creating the music.

The act of creating can bring so much healing and joy.

But it requires slow.

***

Jayson and I will be married for seventeen years this June and we have never stopped chasing the life that we seem to have caught this year.

It has caused us to sit and wonder, now what?

***

Recently an old acquaintance visited our house and noticed our makeshift music studio.  He turned to my husband and asked, “are you still doing this?”

I ask this question often. 

I also wonder often why God thought it a good idea to join two free spirited souls together and then press passions upon both of them to create.  This life is not for the faint of heart, but it’s what makes us feel alive.  So of course, we don’t stop.

There is nothing like the feeling of creating something that wasn’t already in the world because this act makes you an artist of course and who doesn’t love to wear their beret and dream?

But once the project has been created and shared with the world, there is a surprisingly empty feeling that remains.

It has been in the doing that has allowed us to understand that the joy and feeling of being alive comes in the creating.

My husband and I agree that when we are alone in our home creating the projects that God has laid on our hearts and using our talents for only Him is when we experience what the bible describes as being drunk in the spirit.

Ephesians 5:15-20

Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.  Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.  Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.  Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.  Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

    

***

I turn relaxing piano music on and allow my aging sore fingers to dance across the keyboard as my soul releases the feelings, that I don’t know how to express any other way.

 

Jayson places the padded headphones over his hair that is beginning to show shades of wisdom and allows his soul to feel the music through his tired and weathered hands.  He grips the guitar with the passion that only grows for the music as he ages. 

       

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

~Blaise Pascal

***

It’s been in the creating and living in scriptures that we have truly attempted to do everything that we have felt the Lord calling us to do with excellence.

Colossians 3:23-24

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.  It is the Lord Christ you are serving. 

And with that verse I am relieved and released from the world and the expectations that come with it.

 

I understand I am invited to draw near to my Heavenly Father and enjoy the passions and talents He has given me in creating and experiencing the joy that comes with the will He has on my life.  I am invited to slow, to imagine, to dream, to love, to laugh, to notice creation, and to press on to the everlasting life He has promised me as a believer.

And so are you… 

Friends take it from my experience.  Nothing is ever what you think it is going to be.  You may, like me not understand this until you experience some type of “success” by the world’s standards, which will leave you again empty and searching for the next thing.  If so, I pray you see it as a blessing as I have.

The only true blessings come in the communing with God.  In walking in obedience to what He has called on your life and being content with the time you spend fully in the spirit.  What a gift that is.

 

June 2, 2023, I will be signing off social media for the summer.

Our family will be focusing on healing.

Healing from the cutting of surgery, healing from the busyness we get sucked into, healing from striving, healing from the need of acceptance or need for notoriety, healing from the expectations that we now realize will never be experienced until we reach our eternal home and get wrapped up in the arms of our Father in Heaven.

We will pack the camper, park somewhere barren, and practice sitting, breathing, noticing one another.  We will remember the feeling of a book in our hands, take in the beauty of nature, and the smell of fresh cut grass and loaded grills.

Obviously we are not going to stop doing what we love, which after years of striving and searching we finally can define.

We are creators, artists, children of God, who live and love to serve Him.

With that realization we can give thanks for the passions, talents, desires, and drive within our hearts because it’s a gift to, well maybe others, but I know for sure to our souls.

It’s in that creating space we feel we are what God intended us to be.  We are of course made in His image; why wouldn’t He put a little dash of creator in us? 

I have a new manuscript that’s already been written in my mind.  In this new season I will slowly and peacefully get it on paper in the early morning quiet with the sun coming up and birds chirping as they welcome the new day with me.  Choosing slow.  No agenda, no expectations, only the joy in creating.

Jay and I have songs and melody in our blood.  It can’t be separated from who we are and we are learning to rejoice in that for simply and profoundly what it is, a joyful noise!

It’s in the creating we can find joy, in the silence we can hear God speak, and in the knowing that contentment comes from abiding, while remembering He commands rest.

Peace and Love  ~

 

 

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Heather Stover

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The Change in Us - A Story of God's Healing Power by Heather N. Stover