Fountains are kind of mysterious, aren’t they? To someone not trained in the pump/electrical situation, there’s this sense of wonder every time water comes spewing up from a pretty little patch of water. I’ve had lots of time to ponder this, and my lack of water-electrical knowledge, on our vacation in Vegas. (Hubby had a work thing. I tagged along and called it a vacation.) We ended up with a room with a view of the Bellagio fountains, which spend most of the day and night dancing and twinkling just 35 floors below me. It’s nothing short of magical.
This view means I get to see the fountains at night when they shine and sway, but also at 9 am when the maintenance crew appears. They drive out into the water in their funny looking boats and they toodle around doing *insert important fountain terminology here* to make the fountain work properly. And that evening, we’ll be treated to a slightly different version of the fountain, one with all the bulbs working or all the sprayers spraying evenly.
I even saw a diver in a wetsuit wandering between the fountain lights. Who knew that was a job?
I’ve felt a lot of guilt about taking this vacation. It’s hard to up and leave our little brood at any time. A lot of work and a lot of man-hours go into covering childcare and keeping their lives running while I’m away. The husband has worked his booty off since we arrived, making me feel even more guilty and excessive as I loll about the hotel room with a book.
However, I knew when I got here that I had heart work to do. That in the great silence of a week ahead of me, there was a chance to sit and listen, to have some Holy Spirit work done on my heart. But, as we sinners are wont to do, I fought against it. I had a stack of books I wanted to tear through, important Netflix to catch up on, and there was a definite nap in my future. I still had to check in on the kids every few minutes, monitor their school work, their device usage… So I was not still. And I could not listen.
Fortunately, about mid-week, I visited an area of the hotel where cell phones were not allowed. I handed off “emergency text duty” to my husband and locked my phone away.
I spent several hours wrapped up in my cocoon of silence. And there, finally, the Spirit and I had words. And when I left, having wrestled with my own distractible spirit and guilt-ridden heart over taking this time away, I felt like the Spirit had challenged me to 15 minutes of stillness a day. Not for meditation, not for journaling, not even for praying. For utter, total stillness. No doing.
Becuase I tend to rely on my own efforts. I trust God is at work, I know I can’t do it without Him, but I feel a need to do my part. To contribute my own little offering. And that’s not what He wants from me in every. single. moment. of the day.
Further, the only way to get any heart work done on me is to have me be utterly still and listening. A mama of seven does not often get that luxury. But here’s what I realized the next day as I sat (with a timer set for 15 minutes, so I could be disciplined about it *eye roll*) and watched the boats cleaning the fountains. All human-made items, and all humans, need maintenance. It’s part of our fallen state.
Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park doesn’t need maintenance to blow its top every thirty minutes. Sure, it needs park rangers to protect it from human interference, but God set the geyser up to do its thing without “scheduled maintenance downtime.”
And listen, somebody in biology will probably email me and tell me that there is a natural maintenance window for the geysers and I believe that our God is definitely creative enough to do it. I’m sure there are thousands of examples in nature I’m not thinking of because I don’t do biology.
But stick with me. In order for those Bellagio fountains to sparkle and shine and fairly HOLLER out glory in the evenings, they need maintenance. Regularly. They need a moment where the water goes still and the fountains power down. Sometimes it’s awkward and involves a wetsuit. Maintenance is the unpretty part of creating.
In order for me to radiate his glory, do the work He’s given me to do on this earth, to create and mother and love the way He wants me to, I need maintenance. I need heart work. I need stillness. To avoid taking this time would be like taking a hammer to my mainframe. At some point, my system would cease to work.
A good vacuum cleaner, if well cared for and if you avoid sucking up entire lego creations and hairballs on the regular, will last you for 20 years. But if you never take it in for maintenance and you let your five-year-old vacuum the cat with it, that machine may last you two years at best.
So – I took myself into the shop for maintenance this week. Nothing drastic. No major body work, just an engine tune-up, a re-training of my ears to hear His quiet voice. A stilling of the mind and heart. No wetsuit required.
Maybe you can’t get away to Vegas for a week (that doesn’t happen often for us, either), but maybe we all need to give ourselves permission for regular maintenance. Be totally quiet. Be totally still. Cease striving. Cease doing. And ask Him to do the maintaining.