At times I can have the weakest composure ever emotionally. I don’t mean that I breakdown in the middle of Lowe’s Foods when they’ve run out of the lettuce I want, (although I actually had a mini one in Barnes and Noble when I went there specifically to journal, sat down, and realized I didn’t have my journal. I think I even said, “Seriously?!” aloud. The people beside me turned to look at me at one point. Shame– an adult tantrum!) but the slightest perceived obstacle can rip up my confidence and send me into insecurity-induced paralysis. I’m better now at calling it for what it is, seeing it as something silly that I need to get over– a matter of perception rather than reality.
I always end up crying out to God kind of panic-stricken, saying “AHhhh! Oh my goodness, what am I doing, what am I supposed to do?” But I usually can chill out pretty quickly now. I don’t just wallow in that feeling of helplessness for too long.
It comes and goes, though. And I realized recently that these freak outs result from my measuring the purposefulness of my life based on whether circumstances in my life are working according to my best calculations. Further, when events fit into an understandable scheme, I believe God loves me and is working for my good. When events are not optimally favorable, I feel like He’s fallen asleep temporarily, left His post temporarily.
Think about the craziness of this! We so have this idea of karma nailed into our brains that when stuff seems crappy, we start to look for a culprit. If you are uber fundamentalist, you might blame Satan for everything. Or you might say it’s our bad deeds catching up with us. I have finally reached the conclusion, via just meditating on it and talking to God and looking at past experience and what scripture says, that life must be lived momentarily based on the assumption that A) God is perfectly loving at all times, and B) God is perfectly wise at all times, if we are to avoid these life freak outs. Trying to look at the grand scheme in light of our own notions of good and perfect and right can’t help but result in falling into thinking God is out to get us or nonexistent or in some other way of no positive consequence.
That was a mouthful, but basically I am trying to look at every occurrence as having redeeming qualities in and of themselves, as determined by God (who, if perfectly, loving and wise is most qualified to create and orchestrate). I have whined for so long about how this or that should have gone a different way. I am trying to take each moment in instead of assuming to know so much about so much.
I was in the car, on my way to Austin, TX to sow my vagabond oats, when my car stopped accelerating outside of Asheville. Even before that time, I’d felt that God was leading me to stay in Wilmington, and rarely do I think God definitively leads me to anything, but he had made this one pretty clear. As I drove I prayed for confirmation, so as I pulled to the side of the road and eventually waited for Triple A, looking at the leaves and the drizzle washing the whole scene out, I had a freakish peace. Almost relief. And mind you, this isn’t a peace that simply resulted from the beautiful fall colors. A change occurred inside of me. I don’t even feel the need to explain or justify because it’s a spiritual thing that can only be spiritually discerned. But basically, it felt like my car breaking down was the best thing in the world that could have happened at that moment because I knew that God was using this sucky outward circumstance to lead me into what He actually wanted me to do, which carries eternal significance. So, for the first time, back in Wilmington, still without car (or abode for that matter!) I am confident that a purpose compels me forward. It makes me think of Jonah, when he got on a boat that he KNEW would take him away from Nineveh which is where God WANTED him to go. The whole whale bit was one of the best things that could have happened to Jonah, to get his attention, get him turned around. That’s how I felt about my car going kaput.
A friend told me recently that “God speaks to us not from our past, but out of our destiny.” That hit me like a really strong wind. The life of a Christ follower makes way more sense backwards than forward, when insignificant or even loathsome circumstances are revealed as building up to some other thing that God was meaning to accomplish or some trait He was trying to nurture in us. We don’t have to grip the past because our trajectory is always forward. Fully present in the moment, we can be fully present in the future’s illumination. That’s so crazy to think about, that the purpose is already there, we are simply living it out, closer and closer to its realization with every moment.
I don’t even remember what this blog was about initially. Emotional breakdowns? Books? Dr. Phil? Ah well, doesn’t matter. The point is, however trite ( or sometimes too verbosely) I might express it, I’m lately finding that when my composure is crumbling, rather than continuing to dwell on what’s already said and done and can now make no difference, I am compelled forward simply by engaging in the present, by regarding each moment as for my good, somehow. And all as part of something I am being called to, rather than something I simply happen upon.