My dear sisters, it is so good to be here with you again, sharing the thoughts and wanderings of my little heart.  I invite you to enter into this space with a prayerful heart, calling to mind the reality that you are held in his merciful gaze.

Recently, my little heart has been stirring rather restlessly.  I have been uprooted in a recent move across the country for a new season of life that the Lord has me in.  I have been tossed about in the stormy waves of this never-ending and all-consuming pandemic.  I have been battered by the distance that has been put between the Lord and I as a result of this time, and I am struggling to fight my way back to the spiritual intimacy I shared with him before it all.  Restless and at war—that is the space my heart is in.

And yet isn’t it funny, sister, how when we are in this space the Lord still breaks in as light does through the windows and speaks a word of peace to us?  In prayer recently, the Spirit prompted me with these words: “Lay everything to rest in His Sacred Heart and let go.”  I felt a deep peace wash over my heart, like a soothing balm covering the dry places and bringing rest to the stormy seas.  I breathed deeply for what felt like the first time in a very long time and I was able to be at rest.  

His Heart is the greatest gift He gives us—an evergreen and flowering garden, filled with the fruit of love and peace and joy.  He walks with us there in the coolness of the day and shelters us from the heat of anxiety and the ocean of spiraling thought.  He pulls us in through the wounded side and beckons us to be at rest under the Tree of His Saving Mercy.  And how blessed we are to be invited into this place.  How blessed we are to be able to lay all to rest there.  

With those words and the peace that followed, I felt myself finally find a sense of release: I cannot control these circumstances and so I must lean into the intimacy he has for me here.  Oh the depth of joy that comes from laying all to rest in his garden heart!  Oh the peace that surges in me when I finally let go!  Sister—it is what we are made to do, to surrender and sacrifice the heart he has given us.  

Following these words, I felt an ache surge within me—I do not know how to fill this space that has been surrendered, I do not really know how to let go.  The gentle Lord prompted me with this question: Who do you want me to be for you?

This question, sister, is one we need to silence ourselves to hear, for the Lord is asking it to each one of us.  When I felt Him prompt me, I immediately thought of all the ways I had failed to let him be who He is for me.  But with the newness of his mercy, I allowed the surging ache to answer for me: Be the Lover of my soul, my intimate friend, the Lord, the carrier of my burdens, the knower of my soul, the One who saves, the One who does not cower in my darkness, the One who satisfies me.  It is like an unfolding; a letting go that is accompanied by a deep filling.  With the release of all that makes me restless, comes the peace of Jesus.  And in it, He is able to be who He desires to be for me.  I have dropped the chains, I have let Him roam in me, and He is free to satisfy me.

Lay it all to rest in his sacred heart and let go, daughter.  A day in, day out prayer.  I pray we might each have the grace to lay the morning, the noon, the evening in his heart, and to rest in the garden there.  His peace comes over us and finally, yes finally, we are invited to rest.