From Sundi Jo: This is a guest post by Abby Lewis. Abby is a massage therapist and the author of Living Still and producer of A Breath~in Stillness. You can read her blog at myjourneytohealing.com and follow her @living_still on Twitter. Learn how you can get a free copy of Living Still this weekend only. Want to submit your guest post? Click here for the details.
During my walk the other morning, I saw that most of the yards I passed were dying. There was no color left in the grass or flowers and the leaves on the trees were beginning to turn. Yet a few houses down, I saw a yard vibrant and alive, full of color and beauty. It is obvious why one yard is thriving and why the other one isn’t, right? We all know the answer to that. One has been nurtured, fed and watered, causing it to thrive while the other one has not, causing it to dry up and begin to die.
I love nature and it breaks my heart to see everything dying during this drought, to see the life and color just fade out of God’s beautiful creation. But there is something that breaks my heart even more….people in a spiritual drought.
I look around and see exactly what I saw during my walk the other morning. I see some people thriving, full of joy, peace and love and then I turn around and see others who are stressed, bitter, full of anxiety, depressed, angry and so much more. I would guess that the ones who are thriving are choosing to spend time with God while the other ones aren’t. The ones who are full of joy are choosing to feed themselves daily with the word of God while the other ones are listening to their own wisdom. The ones who are full of peace are choosing to seek the heart of God in the midst of their circumstances while the other ones are relying on themselves to figure it all out.
It breaks my heart so much to see this because 10 years ago I was there. I experienced what life was like when a person chooses to live far away from God, when a person chooses to live in a spiritual drought. I was only twenty-four years old, but I was in complete chaos. I suffered from extreme anxiety, control issues, depression and numerous addictions. My marriage was falling apart, as were my relationships with my entire family. My thoughts and words were filled with negativity and lies, and I had accumulated major credit card debt. As my problems piled up, they began to manifest physically through severe neck and back pain, as well as numbness in my left arm and left side of my face. I had no love for myself, no joy, no peace and no happiness. My entire life was in complete and utter chaos.
So how did I come out of all of this? How did I begin to thrive and be so full of life? How did I become peaceful and joyful? How did I get out of the spiritual drought I was in? It really is very simple. I chose to spend focused time with God each day, and in the midst of it, I learned the practice of “living still.”
What is living still? Living still is not adopting a life of inactivity or solitude; rather, it is choosing to live in tune with the voice of God in the midst of the inevitable noise around us. Living still is recognizing that without God, we cannot experience the fullness of life. It is choosing to trust God more than we trust ourselves. Living still is learning to rest in God’s perfect love for us. It is taking the time to listen to His still, small voice with the expectation that He will lovingly guide us, one step at a time, toward freedom. The practice of living still works. Learning to live this way delivered me from the pit and continues to transform my life each day. And, I am confident that living still can change your life too.
Read Abby Lewis’ powerful, life changing story, in her new book Living Still.
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