The Rock

A little explanation as a part of the “first” blog post. We (Joel, Myself, and whoever is visiting at the moment (aka, Carolyn Dunbar. 😉 are beginning this blog to catalogue the hilarious, sentimental, and life altering moments of our time in Muscat, Oman. The first post is a rather serious one from Sarah a few weeks before we left. (Stay tuned for a delightful read tomorrow from Carolyn about the first night of our arrival and an entertaining post the following day involving Joel and a washing machine…)

September 21st, 2019: Its 7am and miraculously, no one else is awake yet. I’m sitting here pondering our move to Muscat, Oman in a few short weeks. Despite months of planning, the move feels real now. The house feels empty. The walls are bare. The chest freezer is open. The fridge down to the last dregs of food. I feel empty inside too. Physically. Emotionally. Relationally. Empty is too sterile of a word, I feel drained. Like all the air that puffed up our house to its real size has been let out and now its floppy…now I’m floppy…and flat. All that hot air that represents the striving and the lying, the smiling and the trying. All that hot air, the blown up image that I’ve carefully crafted – it doesn’t have substance. It was built on lies. The lie that I must “do” in order to be worth “being.” The lie that it all depends on me. The lie that If I just try hard enough, they…no I’ll be satisfied. The lie that if I “just get it right” the outcome will be positive.     

And the pump, the pump that filled the puffed up house I thought insulated me – it was fueled by fear. With each pump fear helped keep it inflated. Fear of exposure. Fear of rejection. Fear of pain. Fear that those lies were true.     

It feels as though I’m at the beach and I’m the foolish man who just built his house on the sand. I’ve always loved the end of that song, “…and the house on the sand went SMASH.” There is something so satisfying about a smash. It implies Imperfection. Messiness. Exposure. Surrender.     

So now I’m staring out at the empty sea, the sand, and my inflated house at my feet. The pump of fear has been smashed by the slow constant beating of the waves of love. The love that says, “I’ve got you.” The love that says, “Its safe to trust Me.” The love that says “I delight in you.” The love that says, “Its gonna be ok. You’re gonna be ok.”     I feel the wind on my face mingled with the spray of salt water – I actually feel it. The puffed up house no longer shuts out the love. I feel…real. Exposed. Messy. Drained. Surrendered. Loved. The irony is, my first instinct is to start looking for rocks to build with – but then I realize, they’d still be built on sand. I stand there wondering what to do. I feel the spray on my cheeks and the wind in my hair and I sense an invitation to sit.                             An invitation to weep. 

                                           An invitation to “be.”                                                  

An invitation to rest. 

So I sit… still at last. And as I glance down,

I discover I’m sitting on a beautiful, large rock.