My birthday present to myself

I was flipping through the last chapter of John Fischer's Waking the Dead to find a good quote to include here that would illustrate my point in this blog, but really, it's just what the whole chapter's about. So I suppose I'll have to be content with just saying, "read the book". It's a good one. It's all about your heart, and the last chapter is about taking time out from the busyness of life to care for it. It's easy to get caught up and not take any time for yourself. But when you don't, are you really being as effective as you could be to the other needs and people in your life? Are you even being effective for yourself?

You know, I guess this post could also be likened to my post about why I need downtime. Maybe I'm different from other people. Maybe it's just because I'm so independent. Or, maybe it's my truly spiritual side. Honestly, I need time to feel God. From The Message, Jeremiah 29:

"When you come looking for me, you'll find me. Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I'll make sure you won't be disappointed."

In my own life, I generally find this to be very true. When I take time out to really search for God, to have a spiritual experience with him... he meets me there. This week has been evidence of that for me. I've been sorting through some things in my life lately... what I think about my faith, what I think about some of my relationships with people. I was truly in need of some downtime - some "me" time and some "God" time.

I'll be honest. One of the things that I still sometimes question is the very existence of God. The statement made by the father of a child that Jesus healed has become my own prayer lately - "Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief."

So this week I set out to find some answers. I took both an afternoon as well as an entire day to sort through these things in my head. And God took me where he knew I would find him. I'm not sure how I ended up planning these things, but I did. The ideas just got themselves into my head, and well... they worked out perfectly, which I honestly should've expected. (See passage from Jeremiah above.) Tuesday afternoon I left work early and headed to what I've decided is now my very favorite location in Indy. If you go downtown and park at the White River State Park, and walk across the bridge to the west bank of the river, there are some picnic tables where you can sit and look over the river to see the city skyline. [I'd share the pictures I took, but they're currently on my computer at work.] And here, I found what I needed. A beautiful day, a beautiful view - and peace for my chaotic soul. Peace that I believe could've come from nowhere else other than the confirming presence of a caring God. Who continued to make his presence known in my evening, via a talk with a friend who called me out of the blue. He needed someone to talk to, and we hadn't seen each other in a while, so we met up for dinner. We had a good conversation - much-needed by each of us, I believe.

And then that brings me to today, which I took off from work. I decided to take a trip to Brown County. [This time I do have pictures!] By myself, which surprised some people. Maybe I'm a bit odd, but I think that if more people took these little trips and downtime by themselves, they'd understand why I relish these times the way I do. If you know me, you know that I'm not a loner. Not by any means. I'm actually a pretty social person (well, except maybe in groups of people I don't know very well sometimes). But I think it's important to be comfortable being both with people, and by yourself. Everyone should have times of both in their life.

So today. It was perfect. And I'm considering it my birthday present to myself. It was exactly what I needed. I can't describe it any better than that. I went looking, and I wasn't disappointed.