I ain’t got no….SATISFACTION!
Each morning sometime between 6:30 and 7:30 am, Oren wakes with a cry. And each morning, I wake up to him crying and I cross the 20 feet from my bed to his bedroom. Everytime I open his bedroom door, he is standing in the same corner of his crib rubbing his eyes and whining in the way that babies do. Before he knows I’m there, I say, “Good Morning, Monkey”. Instantly, a smile envelops his entire face and he reaches out an puts his arms around my neck and squeezes as if saying, “Oh mom, I haven’t seen you in so long, oh how I missed you.” Then we turn around and head back to mom’s bed to an eagerly awaiting dad and we play for about 15-20 minutes as a family. We rough house, practice naming facial features, and tickle, etc. It doesn’t matter how stressed I am in life, how I’m feeling, or even if it was a morning I hit the alarm clock 15 times to avoid waking up, I know that this one time of my day, I can laugh, giggle, be goofy and smile I can trust that for these fleeting moments my world is right. These moments each morning satisfy my soul. I delight in them. If for some reason these morning rituals are bypassed, my day is completely off and it makes me drag my feet.
I wonder what my life would be if I delighted in a similar experience and morning routine with God. Would I be the one to eagerly climb out of bed to say “Good morning God” or would I be the one whining, rubbing my eyes waiting for my Father to pull me out of the bed and in whom I would hug as if it had been too long? I’m not sure it really matters which I would be because both provide anticipation and satisfaction of the soul.
One thing I have begun to realize is I have, if you’ve read my previous blogs, a sewage heart, a leprous soul, and both are incredibly hollow and aching. I think just as my stomach growls when I am hungry, my soul has begun to growl in thirst and hunger. I wish to be satisfied in my soul. I wish to be satisfied at an even deeper level than I am each morning with my precious boy. I wish for a deep, fully saturiating, replenishing satisfaction of my soul. I wish to be as full as David when he wrote Psalm 63: 1-5
“Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.”
and this Psalm was written from David when he was in the Desert of Judah. Wouldn’t it be nice to have satisfaction of the soul from the Lord during our “desert” moments?
I’m pretty confident that soul satisfaction is not an easy resolution. In Psalm 63, David was already used to being fed, “I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your glory”. He had already developed a routine with Christ, one in which he obviously knew what was missing. He, I’m sure, had heard the earliest signs of his soul growls, I am sure I missed them pretty clearly.
Being satisfied of the soul requires routine. It requires a daily meeting place with God. I am sure that if each morning my routine with Oren wasn’t a routine, I wouldn’t know what to expect and it wouldn’t be as satisfying. Isn’t it said that only when you loose something do you realize the value in it? Well…I am realizing the value of missing my soul satisfaction.
Today I realized that I have been stuck singing ”I ain’t got no….SATISFACTION!” it’s been stuck in my soul for awhile, but I am thankful my new song is yet to be written and hopefully the words like David’s words will be “as long as I live”.
