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the Stillness.

As promised/alluded to in last week’s Quick Takes, I’m recounting my latest escape to lands unknown.

I need trips likes these every so often or I go nuts and I get super cranky and find myself saying that I want to punch people all the time. It isn’t pretty. The weeks leading up to my great escape were dramatic, tiring, and chaotic. Not to mention lonely. I knew that the time was coming to get away from the clutter and reconnect with the stillness of God. The coming of a good thing, a necessary thing, a peaceful thing is almost always preceded by a time of…crap, yuckiness, stress, and dare I say, spiritual warfare. And I knew it. There was drama galore, drama with people I know, drama with friends of friends, family drama, work drama, you name it, and there was drama. As much as the drama stunk, it made getting away – and turning off Twitter, Facebook, and my phone – that much sweeter.

Thursday afternoon I pulled into Cheyenne, Wyoming too early to check in to my hotel. Since the main point of this trip was to actually go in the cathedral there, I drove to town and found the cathedral (I’d been there before, but apparently never bothered to go in). I decided to try the door and maybe take some pictures in the afternoon light. I walked up to a side door and lo and behold, it was open! I walked in and stopped just to breathe in the lovely and homey mixture of incense and old-building-smell. There was a staircase right next to me, one that no doubt led up to the choir loft. Dare I enter the sanctuary? I peered through the crack in the door, trying to decide if there was a liturgy going on. There wasn’t, though there were people in the cathedral. I opened the door, only to be greeted by the monstrance, sitting in stunning glory on the beautiful altar. While I was bummed I couldn’t take pictures, I was so thrilled at the glorious timing of God that I would happen upon Eucharistic Adoration in the Cathedral of St. Mary during Advent. Perfection! I sat and wrote in my journal and took in the splendor of the cathedral. I wrote that I was so looking forward to two whole days away, and yet now it seemed so long and I wanted to share this wonderful experience with others. “And yet,” I wrote, “wonderfully and beautifully, You call me to share this with You, and You alone, to be drawn deeper into Your heart and Your love.”

Later that night I ventured out to find dinner. I was struck by how dark the night had become (my hotel was outside of the heart of Cheyenne). The darkness was refreshing, and I remember thinking that when I/the night sky had been stripped of all light, I had to find the light within, to find it and rely on it to guide me.

What I realized on this trip is that it is a glorious feeling to leave everything behind and connect with God. I wrote this in my journal once I got back, “You want me far more than anyone else needs me. You desire me. You desire to me to disconnect from the chaos and connect to the stillness of Your heart. You will always fill me up and love on me whenever I seek you with a sincere heart.”

It was glorious. And now…some pictures to share with y’all from my lovely getaway. God is good.