About 18 months ago, we moved and life changed. Or maybe life changed and we moved. God said, “Go” and we did. Straight into a battle – a year-long battle. A year where I learned the importance of standing. I called it The Year of Standing.
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” (Ephesians 6:12-14)
The Year of Refreshing replaced The Year of Standing. If you ever read The Hobbits, you will see that after every major challenge, there was a period of refreshing: physical, emotional, and spiritual. One of the things I love about J.R.R Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is how he wove things of God into his stories – like challenges and refreshing.
Refreshing is not what I thought it would be. It was not a retreat where you studied God Words – like I did before The Great Challenge. The period before The Great Challenge was battle preparation. The Great Challenge called upon me to use what I learned in God’s Words. That is how I was able to stand and not fall. Refreshing is like sitting in the swing on my grandmother’s front porch, sitting beside her, resting from the heat of the afternoon sun and just being together. Words are few. Maybe drinking a glass of tea, pointing out a magnolia blossom or a bird flitting from her nest. But instead of being beside my grandmother, I was beside God.
I felt tremendous guilt for the longest time – I should be pouring over God’s Word, I thought. I should be binding and loosing. Delving into the prophets and the apostles. Where was my fervor to learn more, learn deeply, learn long?
God tells us there is a time and a season: a time for war and a time for peace, a time to heal, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to be silent, a time to heal, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them (Ecc. 3).
I sat with God, as though on my grandmother’s front porch. Spent time just soaking the refreshing, gaining strength to walk again, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Being with God, as I drove, as I walked, as I cooked, as I mothered, wifed and lived daily things. He was always with me. The Year of Refreshing is closing. Funny, He prompted that revelation through my work on The Goose Girl. I am moving into The Year of Walking.
I am not fully sure of what will unfold. But I sense a pressing in. A gathering of stones. More action in my relationship with God, time for a deeper conversation, an apprenticeship. Rising from the swing to walk. Typically, when someone says, “Walk with me” – they have something to say, something to teach you, knowledge to impart. It is an intimate times that allows revelation, instruction and encouragement.
Walking is about resuming relations in peace time or the interim between battles in a war. It is about wholeness. I survived the battled. God provided a period of refreshing. It is time to walk again.
Blue Cotton Memory 
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