Nourishment & Soli Deo Gloria Link-up Party

Welcome to Soli Deo Gloria, whether it's your first time here or your 25th.  Basically, we are a community of women that seek to encourage, support, love each other with our words.  It's a fun party and I love hosting you here each week.  If you would like more information about this community, please click here.  Just a note:  Please don't feel that you have to visit every single person that links up.  We are all on a time budget.  That being said, I do invite you to pray and ask God which blogs to visit simply because there may be words for you left in that place or words that God has given you to share to those specific people.  Also, if you would like to be on the email list for reminders and the occasional prayer request, please let me know if the comments.  Blessings to everyone!

Last week, knee deep in writing a Blissfully Domestic article and two talks for my speaker evaluation group for She Speaks, I started to break down. I literally felt that I was at the end of myself.  Everything was poured out and nothing was coming back in to replenish and refuel me.  So, what's a girl to do?

She writes a poem.  

God used the words that I wrote to bring me to a whole other level of awareness of what it means to rest.  I realized that this emptiness that I've been feeling is simply malnourishment.  You see, I've nourished other parts of me --

I run to keep my body fit.

I eat healthy foods (for the most part).

I read my Bible every day.

I pray.

I surround myself with encouraging people.

I could add a plethora of things to the list, but perhaps, at times, that is the problem.  The list goes on and on, which means what doesn't happen?

Rest.

I looked up the definition and this one grabbed a hold of me:

relief or freedom, especially from anything that wearies, troubles, or 

disturbs.

Does anyone out there need some relief?  Some freedom from what wearies or troubles?

Today, my husband took the kids to a free movie at one of the local theaters so that I might have some quiet in which to work on my two talks.  Normally, as soon as the door closes, I'm off to work.  But today, that word nourishment kept lingering in my brain.  I laid on the couch and just asked God:

What does it feel like to be nourished by you, where there is no effort or pouring out on my part, where I can find freedom and feel Your presence in my midst?

And so I just laid there.  And I listened to what He said.  And this is going to sound wild, but I felt refilled after fifteen or so minutes of just being prostrate on the couch.  Craziness!  


It took stopping.  It took being quiet.  It took time away from work.  But what is work if there is no rest?


Lifelessness.


The truth is that nothing is more important than being filled with God by God. Without that, we are running on fumes.


I'm going to focus on nourishment this week and I'm also privileged to be spending time with some family that I rarely get to see.  It breaks my heart, but I'm going to take a little vacation from visiting y'all so that I can seek Him out for more nourishment.  Y'all have a good time encouraging each other at the SDG linky party and I will FOR SURE see you next week!


Oh, and one last thing before you go encourage each other:  If you are interested in writing a guest post about how you receive nourishment from God, would you please drop me a note in the comments?  I want to start a new series about this soon.  Much love and many blessings...


Photo source here and here