Elisabeth Adams

Have you ever thought about what a blog really is?

A pixel-thin facade, and behind it the dashboard. This hidden dashboard has a bank of gadgets and gizmos, yes, but essentially it’s a blinking cursor and a blank screen.

A place to practice the adventure and discipline of writing. A place where I’m regularly surprised by the things I end up saying.

If you could take a peek at the dashboard of my life right now, you’d see a whole bank of praying friends. They are there when I need them — and oh, how I need them! You’d see, too, the gadgets and gizmos I sometimes try to avoid the puzzlement of life. But in the end, it still comes down to me, the blinking cursor, and the blank screen.

A place to practice the presence of God.

Say what?

Listen, some folks practice medicine, right? They set up shop, settle down, and do the stuff a doctor does, day in and day out, deepening and broadening and growing in the identity of a doctor.

Some folks practice music. They sit down at a silent keyboard, take limp hands off their knees, and play. Hour after hour, note after chord after scale after crescendo. What first comes only out of stiff fingertip begins to flow from their hearts. They tell tale after tale, all to the glory of God.

Some folks practice the words of Jesus, when He said “Be in Me at all times.” Their limp and silent hearts turn away from distractions, and begin to hear the ache within. And to tell that tale to the ears of their Heavenly Father. Their roots sink deep in the soil of who He is. He animates their once-stiff fingers to type and play and sing and shout out His glory.

But the life is at the roots. It’s there on the hidden screen. Before there are words. And even if words never come.

Sometimes, they don’t.

If I had actually written all the posts I’ve begun composing in my head since the last time I was here, this blog would have been a busy place.

But (ironically? providentially?) a bit of what I wrote about last time has now come true: certain change certainly did come knocking at my door. Not a change of relationship status, but change nonetheless, and my head is spinning with decisions and calculations and ramifications and regrets and anticipations…

And hallelujah! I am forced to practice the presence of God. There’s nothing else to do but become a little child. Saying simply, “Daddy, I’m scared,” or “I’m sad right now” or “I really don’t know what step to take next.”

I practice. He is present.

All is well.