where excess exceeds expectation

WE DISTRACT OURSELVES-

I DISTRACT MYSELF-

Work- Play- Friends- Schedules- "Responsibility"

We use these things to mask feelings, to cover our pain, our loss, our emotions...
We call this "Living"...

I woke up in the middle of the night, and for some reason had a saying my head... a saying Ive never heard... "where excess exceeds expectations". I wrote it down, rolled over and went back to sleep. In the morning, i looked at my journal and there at the top was this curious little compilation of words that my mind for some reason put together. It made little sense to me, but i knew that if I gave it an appropriate amount of reflection, i would find some sort of meaning in the obscure thoughts of my sleep.

There are many things that really come to mind... How we live in excess... how we overcompensate for so much in our lives, how we really don't NEED the things we possess, and quite honestly how most of us (myself included) take that "excess" for granted... What i chose to dwell on though, was the excess of distraction.

Lately, Ive filled every minute of my day and night with "Activities"

wake up... check emails... meeting... gym... shower... drinks with a friend... movie with another friend... sleep... wake up.. check emails... edit... gym... shower... dinner with brother... sleep.. wake up...

I am attempting to drown out thoughts that tend to wander to certain area of my recent past... thoughts that linger and stir up a kaleidoscope of emotions, happy memories that are suddenly overtaken by a flood of sadness and longing. No longer wanting to enable this pain, I have quite simply not scheduled time for it.

To strip away the excess we surround ourselves with, the distractions, we are then left alone with our thoughts, Messy. At times painful. Sappy. Human thoughts. Time alone facing these perceptions of our feelings, can be staggering, full of so much fear and insecurity.

Unless, when we strip away all the excess, we find exactly what God intends us to find....

HIM.

JESUS.

There. Waiting. As always, for us to glance his way. For us to look past our day planners, our gym memberships, our happy hours and our meetings over high priced coffee... Waiting for us to push aside the things we clutter our existence with and truly see Him, and his love, and the beauty in that, and the power we could allow him to fill our lives with. How can we expect to truly FEEL what God has intended for us, if our lives are full of unnecessary excess?

We cant.