Be Still and Know that I am God.

Previously: I had come to the realization that I tended to be invited places I was needed but not places I was wanted. I’d realized most all my relationships were transactional. I’d also realized I had no margin in my day, week, month, or year. I worried what I’d do without what I do.

“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)

I have spent the better part of the last 20 years responding to crises of various kinds. Life has been some combination of crisis response, responsibility, vigilance, moral decision making, and all the rest of the things that go with crisis response. My nervous system learned to organize itself around purpose through pressure.

What does purpose through pressure mean? Stress, vigilance, being needed, high stakes decisions and everything that comes with these things became normal. And then everything changed. I changed it. It happened. I made it happen.

I resigned from nearly everything in my life. I resigned from a non-profit where I was chair / president, treasurer, finance, and so many other roles. I left the ministry I was involved in where I did the administration and state / federal filings, in-service worship lyrics in 4 languages and I left the environment where I did corporate training and kept office space. It wasn’t just physical space and hands on tasks / acts of service I removed.

 I removed structure, urgency, mission, external focus, and constant problem solving. Tabula Rasa in one wave of the hand, one signature on a notarized resignation. In the process my nervous system experienced an extreme destabilization.

Destabilization took everything to a different place. During crisis I had a role, direction, and a target. Now with the pressure, mission intensity, and identity structure gone, my nervous system asks, “Why am I still activated if the emergency is over?”

During the emergency, every ounce of energy had somewhere to go. Now there’s space and with space delayed emotion, bodily awareness, uncertainty, vulnerability, and fatigue come to the surface. With no one needing me, no crisis defining the day, and no external structure demanding action, it’s relief mixed with disorientation. Recalibration.

My nervous system is recalibrating after prolonged activation. It was built for survival under pressure, urgency, and usefulness. It is now learning how to live without it. Each week now is unstructured. Unstructured decompression combined with loss of externally imposed purpose especially early in the week.

Mondays and Tuesdays are especially difficult. The old structure is gone, but my nervous system still expects the activation, mission, movement, responsibility, and urgency that comes with the start of a week. Instead it encounters silence, empty space, and stillness.

My nervous system currently equates:

Stillness = lack of purpose

That’s the real equation I’m trying to rewrite

“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)