This morning I woke up with a hint of anxiety following a plethora of unsettling dreams. The past week and a half has been filled with dreams of dimly lit places, unpreparedness, literal packing and unpacking of “junk,” and frustrated emotions that I know has everything to do with what’s been taking place in my waking life. I’ve blogged before that I daily wake up with a song to my spirit. Discernment over the past five years or so as it began happening with frequency has led me to understand that it is the way I hear God’s voice the strongest. Not as often as I should, I will write down the lyrics coming through loudest and go look up the entire song. His sustaining Word through song really is a miracle in itself.

However, this morning, with the warmth and weight of my blankets over my still cold legs, the sound of a Lauren Daigle song was simply playing as a dull, slow hum, and I couldn’t even pull together a chorus or a few words of the song. All I knew was the artist. Each search failed to match the faint humming in the background of my mind. It frustrated me. “What are you trying to tell me after that mess of dreams, Lord?!” I lost focus of Jesus during my morning Bible study and attempted to grasp at anything that might momentarily make me feel understood or distract me, avoiding prayer and not allowing myself to sit in the presence of the only One who understands eternity amidst a temporal world; the one always with me.

While I believe it is socially responsible to make sure I’m not completely in the dark to what’s going on across the globe, I have to admit that word-of-mouth and social media are usually the first places that alert me to go look into something further. At this point, CDC and my state’s website are the only places that I’m fact checking on this Corona Virus/Covid-19 pandemic. Regardless of where you look right now, everyone across the planet is facing a shaking up of their daily lives. The earth seemingly giving way underneath many. Anything that reminds us of how little control we really have causes a deep stir within. That stir has begun to display an overflow of what’s inside each human’s heart and highlight the good, the bad, and the ugly all over.

For someone that is often times empathic and struggling to discern my own feelings vs. the feelings I’m picking up from anyone around me, social media feeds are causing me to want to disengage from technology entirely right now. It is all drawing an ache inside me for nothing more than a physical embrace and someone to read a book alongside me. I’m sure that everyone living on their own or with physical touch ranking high on their five love languages (whether introverted or extroverted) is experiencing that deep inner angst right now in all this social distancing. After discussing with a friend and taking hold of the last real message of purpose I heard from The Holy Spirit, I got out of bed and began stewarding my daily responsibilities to the best of my ability. I put on a sermon clip that popped up as a notification and figured anything titled “Set Your Hope on God’s Plan” could focus my attention where it needed to be.

Suddenly, standing in my apartment, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, simply choosing to put make-up on and fix my hair (even when I may not be seen by anyone other than God Himself today), a word started to fill into the faint hum of that song in my spirit hours later..”yours.” I quickly ran over to my phone and plugged into a google search the word “yours” along with Lauren Daigle, and there it was. As I pulled the song up to hear it play, I just raised my hands up to the sky, dropped to my knees, and felt that peace that transcends understanding. Philippians 4:4-7 …And the peace of God, which transcends understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus…

You can listen to it here I am Yours. …I hear the voice of love | calling me home | to where I belong | It cripples every fear | And the ones who will kneel | will walk away healed | So, I rest in Your promises | Now I am sure of this | I’m Yours |No power is strong enough | To separate me from Your love |I’m Yours…|So, Let the water’s rise | I will stand as the ocean’s roar | Let the earth shake beneath me | Let the mountains fall | You are God over the storm | And I am Yours… See the full lyrics here.

And I was reminded again of these passages in The Holy Scripture from Matthew 8:23-27; Luke 8:22-25. In the midst of any storm; Jesus calms the wind and waves, but more importantly, He is standing there with us, and we need not fear when the water is rising. So, let the water’s rise. The fire inside of me gets set ablaze with hope when I fix my eyes on the author and perfecter of my faith. Hebrews 12:1-3

We are better together.