One definition suggests that it means to pause and reflect. It is from that definition I use the word “selah.”
I’ve had some intense things going on over many recent years. I’m sure I’ll talk again about the caregiving years in some posts soon. In this post, I will share a bit about pauses.
I’ve learned that the pause is much more significant to the one experiencing it or choosing it than it is to those on the outside looking in–unless you are in an orchestra and your score reads with a profound set of rests–then everyone experiences that profound pause.
Pauses can produce so SOOO many positive outcomes. A pause when traffic is crossing paths can avoid an accident. A pause in heavy pedestrian traffic can extend a moment of courtesy to the others around you.
On a trip to Portland, OR, this Oklahoma City native took frequent pauses to take in that lush, green beauty of their city and to smell the freshness of the air where brief rains happened daily. Then, on a recent trip to Kansas, I was amazed at the beauty of Flint Hills when we left the turnpike and took backroads for a few hours. Yes, pauses can look different from one another.
Pauses allow processes to happen. I’m thinking now about chemistry, for example. We can mix items together, but time allows something beautiful to happen. Bread will rise. The individual ingredients of a cake will become flavorful delights.
One of my Selah experiences was that of leaving the full-time ministry. It was necessary, and it was a good decision. I remember my initial communication with people around me. One man summarized that it would be like a sabbatical. A woman translated my leaving as disobedience and a less-good thing. Another person suggested that it was a refining fire.
Before I type myself into a full, eye-roll I will summarize it myself and say it was none of those things. It was, however, just a pause. I had no way of knowing that at the time. It felt like I was leaving vocational ministry permanently to take on something equally permanent–caregiving.
It was right away the most difficult thing I had ever experienced. I was cast into a level of isolation, a change of identity and purpose, an immediate reordering of priorities, and a loss of things and relationships that were important to me. It was shocking and confusing. I was disoriented in my new “role.” It affected my marriage, my home, our household income, and our freedom to come and go. Every source of spiritual refreshment, growth, and engagement was immediately changed. There was, initially, nothing familiar or grounding for my soul. Privacy was disturbed along with routines. When do I sit with God? How do I order my time? Will I ever read or study again? Oh, Lord! I longed for silence! My thoughts were curiously empty. I felt driven into the shallows. Initially, I got very little sleep.
I know that new moms deal with this often. In my case, I was now serving my fully-disabled mother. Her disability was so complete that she could do nothing for herself–not even scratch an itch…or move her hair…or shift her position…
It took months for me to begin to orient myself to the changes. I was NOT able to find that pause. It seemed that my God, my friends, and the known world were far away from me. It had another shocking effect on me…
I. Felt. Totally. Alone.
Aloneness pulled to the surface all of the internal, ignored, unformed, unhealed, fearful, judgmental, selfish, dark, confused, unbelieving things that lurked in the depths of my heart. Soon, the reckoning began. The rhythms of my former life (the one I had recently lost) had become very comfortable. It was time to see what I was made of. In some ways, the woman who suggested that this season was a “refiner’s fire” had it right! But, I don’t think my “Refiner” had put me in that situation for the purpose of refining. Instead, I think that God simply used the extremely common human experience to invite me into a deeper work. Some things were quick. Other things continue to work in me even 14 years later.
At this time, you might be asking, “How is THIS an example of selah?” Good question! If life just happens to us and we never pause to consider and to reflect, how can the days not just fade one into another until weeks and years have passed with nothing gained except some money and some age? Some of the most valuable lessons in life are learned during the mundane moments. If we persist in hurrying through life in the many ways that individuals do, we won’t be able to fully enjoy it nor will we experience the life we are living. We will remain disconnected from experience and gain nothing. This disconnect makes the already difficult experience I am going through even more difficult. There is another way.
Selah.
When I take time to wrestle my difficulty into a place of pause….and…consider what it is…consider myself in it… consider the Lord… consider the people around me… reflect on my experiences… pay attention to my reactions… really pause and take notice, well, time doesn’t rush by.
Selah.
When I left caregiving just less than 4 years later, I rushed back into my former vocation as a pastoral caregiver. I know that that quick move was an attempt to re-establish myself as my mother’s death had set me adrift again. My husband and I were living in her home knowing that we had no home of our own. We had completely shifted our life to serve her needs. So, the idea of immediately returning to my job and the identity of it was inviting to me. However, there was no pause. There was no time to think about what we had just experienced and certainly no time to grieve.
A few years later, in 2014, God invited me back to the process. He used the Lenten season to invite me to a fast of a different kind. He said, “I want you to fast despair and choose joy and gladness.” You will hear me revisit this theme often. What that invitation did for me is invite me to pause and to consider what the despair of my life was and (and this was the hard part) to choose something different in light of it. This return to the pain was excruciating. Not only was I working and caring for souls, but I was being directed to care for my own. I was clearly in that place for three years. I made time most days to consider despair (the absence of hope or the refusal to hope) that was found in my life. There was a lot of it. The point here is that I had to stop! I had to pause and bring that stuff into focus and make some clear choices in the midst of it. Will I continue in despair as I face my pain? As I consider my great loss, is there then no hope for me?
My friend, Charles, gave me some new language as I processed. He introduced the words lament, consolations, and desolations to me. I had to pause (to consider and reflect) in order to find the God of hope in the midst of my despair. This practice of selah began to put things in order for me. I began to recognize what I was thinking and what I was saying and what I was believing. All I had to do was…
Selah.
Scripture records that “Jesus entrusted himself to no man” in John 2. However, he did. Although he knew the heart of man, he surrounded himself with disciples who would both deny him and betray him.
take-away this week is that the sayings of Jesus are much harder than the Ten Commandments because he took everything up a level. To the Pharisees, he pointed out that they preferred traditions that argued against the Word of God. To the young commandment-keeping ruler with lots of money, he told to sell everything and give it to the poor (not a commandment, not a law) and then come and follow him. To the discussion about marriage and divorce, Jesus dared to say that it was only because of the hardness of heart that Moses permitted divorce. By the time I got to chapter 20 and read the fact that Jesus told them all that they would have to drink his bitter cup…well, I was done.
Laura Leigh Chats 