Broken Cistern, Empty Summer

I make no bones about the fact that I love my job. I feel called to it. I also am the first to say that I love, love, love summer and guard my summers fiercely. I will give hours upon extra hours to my job during the school year-- weekends, overnight trips, prom, attending games and plays and concerts at night-- but I committed to myself when my girls were born that summers were preserved. I set them aside for family, for ministry, for hobbies, and for rest.

That being said, this summer has felt... empty. I know how that sounds coming from a person who just returned from a ten day trip to Cambodia, who has vacationed with family and been swimming with friends and worked a camp for foster kids and made a million tshirts. But no matter how it sounds, it's truth. I have felt very removed emotionally from everything I have been part of this summer. I have felt isolated in giant crowds of people. I've done a great job of going through the motions and have done all the things I was supposed to want to do. I've tried to play the part. But as this summer winds down, I have to say that the whole thing felt like wearing makeup. It was itchy and uncomfortable and I couldn't take a deep breath all summer. Nothing felt real. And that terrifies me.

I'm not certain at what point along the way I lost me. And I'm not sure where to find me. And the scariest part of all of this is that the thought of entering the classroom in August makes me a nervous wreck. Because do you know who can sense inauthenticity faster than anyone else? Teenagers. I think the giant disadvantage to loving a job as much as I do is how obvious it would be if I stopped. This past year was a major roller coaster and it ended on the highest of the high. The problem is, that's a long way to fall. And the landing would be a hard one.

I dug around in my Bible for a while this afternoon because there's a little teaser floating around in my brain (and I feel like it's from a Beth Moore talk) about deserts and streams and parched lands. Parched is a pretty good interpretation of the way I feel. I never did find exactly what my brain is holding onto, but I did find a far more sobering verse and explanation... Jeremiah 2:13. It's specifically about the idolatry of Israel and the turning away of God's people from Him. While I wouldn't put myself in as desperate a state as that, the idea of a broken cistern that can't hold water is one that fits. I did some more research on cisterns in Bible times and the comparison here to a cistern built by human hands instead of relying on the source of living water-- Him.

Now that... that might fit. I think religious people fall into two categories-- those who find it easy to depend on God in good times and more difficult in hard times, and those who prefer to handle the good times themselves and trust Him in the hard ones. I sit firmly in the second camp. I handle calamity pretty well. I'm the calm one in emergencies, the one who typically oozes faith in trying times. The easy life, the good times? They make me a little numb. I build my little cisterns and wait to collect the rains, then either the rains don't come or my cisterns don't hold. I think that's where I am right now. I'm sitting on the edge of the river (the one everyone else seems to be surfing and sailing and diving and splashing and having a grand old time in, mind you), trying to fill my little broken cistern all on my own. The other pathetic part is how long it took me to even realize I was so parched... I avoided and ignored and explained away the signs for weeks and even months before I finally attempted to pour water into it, only to have it trickle out.

So now....

It's time.

It's time to dive in and swim deep, quit sitting on the edge, watching everyone else, quit splashing droplets into the broken cistern I built with my human attempts at grace and fulfillment. It's time to sink in the Living Water, gulping it in as I go. It's time to let Him be God so I can remember how to be me.