Linger…a disinclination to depart. In this hurried world in which we live, taking the time to linger seems to be a bit of a lost art. I’ll admit, I’m terrible at taking the time to linger and enjoy the moments…but I’m learning. A little over a year ago, I was asked to join a group of women traveling to South Asia to hold conferences for ladies in the region who are giving the days of their lives to bringing the good news of salvation to the highest concentration of lostness on earth. As the five of us sat around a table trying to find a theme to encompass our retreats, we stumbled accross the word linger. Upon finding a slightly dusty dictionary rendering the word “linger” as “a disinclination to depart,” we knew we’d found our theme. Several months later, I climbed onto a plane having spent many hours pondering that single word. Before I could teach others what I had discovered, you see, I had to learn to linger..to “cease striving and know that [He] is God” (Ps. 46:10).
A year later, I still struggle with stopping long enough to linger. But the desire of my heart is to be “disinclined to depart”–from the presence of God, from the moments with my husband, from the time spent with my newborn daughter, from the seconds of life that pass by so quickly. And so, I enter the world of blogging so that there is another venue for me linger. As I pause to reflect over the moments of life, here I will linger.
