The Spirituality of Blah
I had the privilege of attending a beautiful wedding last night for two wonderful people with whom I've become quite close with over the past 2 months. It had all the hallmarks of a great wedding - the vows were deliberate, agreement was made with conviction, tears were shed and light was cast through eyes that connected with each other at each moment in the ceremony. It was a blessing.I'm reminded this morning, and I don't say this to be a downer, that rarely do people doubt their commitment or their relationship on wedding days. There is simply too high a dose of joy on that one day for any shred of discontent to fully rear its head.
However, on other days...
Not necessarily the bad days, the ones where you fight more than talk, but those other days.
We call them "blah" days at our house.
"Blah" days are simply the moments where everything IS just as it is, with no real sparkle or shine to speak of. They are not bad in and of themselves, but in a world where sizzle and new-car-smell addiction rule the day it is in the "blah" days that we begin to feel like ships without a compass, tilting with the waves but completely devoid of a feeling of direction and destination.
My newlywed friends likely won't see "blah" days for a while, and that is a great grace of God, but they will come.
As a matter of fact, they come for us in this divine dialogue with the God of the Universe. We have "blah" days with God. We don't know if He hears us, or if He is listening, and our prayers feel like labor pains with no birth in sight.
It is in those days we are maturing in Him. When we can love Him through the "blah" - when we can see Him without His active, eye-tingling revelation and be content to know that God loves us beyond the absence of stimulus that we have come to know and understand.
Maturity means changing relationships. We don't talk to our spouses after 10 years the way we did after 10 minutes. We dialogue with God differently after walking the path with Him for several years versus walking the path for several days.
I pray that this is a helpful reminder - just as our relationships with each other change, so does our relationship with God.
We learn to love Him more through the "blah" than through the "ahh" and it is a wonderful thing to stand in that place with Him.
Are you content to love God without the "tingle" today? Are you frustrated and feel that God is distant? Let this time be a time of drawing and growth for you, and pray that God would help you to embrace the blah moments that come.