This morning I heard a song whose chorus caused me to stop and listen to the words:
“We pour out our miseries,
God just hears a melody,
beautiful the mess we are,
honest cries of broken hearts….better than a Halleluah …”
I liked the concept.
And then I made my way to another very difficult yoga class. Aside from it being the second one in the space of 12 hours, it was 68 degrees and a very humid morning on the cape. Add to that an instructor that opens the door very sparingly, and I’m taking a few knees. As I was struggling in my feeble attempt at forward head to knee, thinking how much I hate this pose everyday, the instructor says, “It’s the poses we hate and struggle with the most that are the ones we need.”
I think in yoga, as in life, God knows what’s best for us. He knows when we’re sitting in the middle of a big hot mess and we cannot help ourselves, that it is exactly where are supposed to be. Just as I have to remember when I’m struggling in the middle of a pose I hate, it is exactly what I need to be doing. Just as the instructor takes pleasure in my misery, God loves when we call on Him for His strength when we have none of our own. Our cries are not misery to Him. They are a symphony. When we are in the worst of times, God is growing us and changing our lives. Most often we have to be made new by a rough time to take on what life holds next.
It’s easy for me to say this now that my rough time is ending with 2011. Believe me, sitting in my hot mess I made last January, no one could convince me that I was in a “good place”. I still have December to go and still believe it is the month to shed the final pieces of things I will no longer need when I step forward into what God has planned for me in 2012. When I heard this song I knew I cannot move onto a new path without first having walked down the tough road I have travelled this past year. I will need each and every thing I learned these past 11 months on my next journey.
So I guess, if our cries of misery are “better than a Halleluah”, even though sometimes we might think it the darkest day of our lives, it is exactly where God wants us. What we hate and what hurts the most is exactly what we need, and God welcomes our leaning into Him to survive. It is the way He changes the very way we are knitted together. Both Bikram yoga and God change us on a cellular level.
And so, as another day goes by, God doesn’t always gives us what we want, but He always makes sure we have what we need to move forward, and…I have written.
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