Blog Different

Dear friends.

Don’t take that as an indifferent salutation. Take it as a heartfelt greeting. Dear friends, dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

I need a break from writing about ISIS/Ebola/Politics. I need to spend time with Jesus.

I’m going to review the book I’ve been using for my do-it-yourself retreat in a couple of days. But I want to talk about one thing it mentioned and my reaction to it now. The book is titled Consoling the Heart of Jesus, which fits the retreat it gives exactly.

I’ve been reading it prayerfully, which is to say that I often pause in my reading to pray about the ideas I’m encountering. To be honest, the whole idea of me, consoling Jesus, almost hurt me, and not in a selfless, good way. It upset me in a selfish me-me way.

You see, I’m the mom, which is to say that I’m the consoler. I console my mother on almost a minute-by-minute basis. Without my constant care and tending, she slips immediately off into deeper dementia. Clinging to me helps her also cling to the rest of the real world. I console, on a less fraught basis, my kids, my husband, my sister, who was widowed a year ago and is quite ill with MS.

I don’t so much console as shield my Mama from the anguish of dealing with the family drug addict.

The only person I have to console me is Jesus. I go to Him for consolation many times a day.

When I prayed, I told Him that, in almost the same words I wrote here. I am the consoler for so many people Lord, and You are the only One Who consoles me. If I have to console You, too, where will I go for me?

As I was praying this, the verse, If you have done it for the least of these, you have done it for me entered my mind. I took that as an answer to my prayer. Consoling Jesus — for me, at least — is consoling Mama and the people around me.

I’m telling you this to give you a sense of what I’m going through right now, to help you understand why I can’t come back to this blog just this minute and write about the ugliness of the world. I need rest from the world of hate and death.

I am grieved to the core by the monstrous misery of our world, and my only consolation is Jesus.

That is why I’m sharing this with you now.

I’m going to Blog Different for the month of November. I seriously considered not blogging at all for a month and just going off to pray. But I want to talk about Jesus. I want to write about Him.

So this month, I’m calling a King’s X on most of the things I usually write about. I am also going to back away from writing so much. I’m going to take a month-long retreat to pray and seek the consolation of Christ and I will, as the Spirit leads me, make you part of that retreat along with me.

This has happened to me before; this lost, flattened, need to go away and just be with Christ. I imagine it happens to you sometimes, too. I’ve learned that I can trust Him with these times. He will bring what He wants out of them and it will be an enormous surprise to me what it is.

In the meantime, I have one favor to ask. Will you include me in your prayers? Also my Mama and my family, including the poor family drug addict. Rest assured that I pray for all of you on a regular basis.