The Emptying

Let me first start with a TMI warning. Girl stuff. If you can't handle it, don't read any further.

So several weeks ago I began to feel....well, it's hard to describe. Not really depressed, or hopeless. I'm still not entirely sure, but eventually it made the most sense when I called it the 'emptying'. I started seeing it as that because of the time of month it was. Every month is hard, but especially since the miscarriage and my subsequent promises. Ever since I felt that hollow feeling in January, every month I feel the 'emptying' in a way I never have before. It is no longer just cramps, I can actually feel the shedding, the discarding of  what was a part of me. It's a terribly void feeling.

But I've been realizing it is more than just that.

It started with this revelation of dependence on things other than God. Yet, instead of shedding those dependencies, it instead feels like I've been stripped of what I want to keep.  I think I'm going through an emptying for a reason. To be refilled with what God selects to be placed into my life, not me. I can select Godly things myself but that's not the point, I know because he's shown me not every thing I've done for God will go back in this vessel of my life. I just am not quite sure what I will be refilled with yet.

So. I am in this limbo. Feeling like I'm running on empty.
But.
One thing I am most certainly not empty of.

Hope.
He has given me an abundance of hope.
He has poured so much hope into my life that I'm actually ok feeling empty.

Well, part of me is.
The productive side of me doesn't like that very much, doesn't like waiting, doesn't like the resting/restoration process that works on just being rather than doing. It is perplexed, because there is meaning in purpose, and lack of purpose feels meaningless.

But my spirit finds a little more peace and joy the more I shut my productive side up. The more I focus on just being with God rather than pumping him for information, the more he reveals to me. The more I focus on my purpose just making him the center of my life every day, the less I'm concerned with anything beyond today.

It's like Spring cleaning. It's exhausting, but so worth it. And I eagerly anticipate what the Potter intends for this piece of clay.