A Great Morning

I have had the most amazing morning with God.

I spent a great deal of time in scripture this morning and God talked to me about many of my desires and hopes. He also addressed some of my sins and hurts. I feel like there is too much to share it all! But I want to talk about one thing in particular, my sin.

As part of my Bible study today I was asked to consider the role fear has played in my life. Given that I have historically been a nervous nelly, constantly trying and failing to please others - I knew that it played a central role. But as a wrote, I started to realize something really profound about the role a specific fear has played in my life and in my faith walk. The fear of being wrong.

I am going to try to relay how this unfolded for me; because it's not like God spoke in an audible voice. Instead it went something like this:

First, I thought to myself - well of course fear has played a role. And immediately a thought sprang to mind, you are afraid of being wrong.

Continuing on, I spoke to myself "Yes, afraid of being wrong. And underneath that is my true fear - the fear of being hurt or disappointed." So I start to write down that I am afraid of disappointment. But about halfway through writing the sentence, I am stopped. You may very well be afraid of disappointment, but you are just plain afraid of being wrong. And now, though you know this, you're trying to lie about it.

"What!?" I think to myself. And I sit for a second and the feelings and fears I have about my marriage flash before me. Fears that my husband is unfaithful or a closet drunk or drug addict. And I hear myself saying, "But what really makes me upset about this idea is the thought that I don't know, that I would have been fooled."

Oh, there is such, such shame in being made a fool for me. I can feel its ache in my chest even writing this now. Don't let anyone see that you were foolish or naive.

For years, I had a problem with lying. Not lying in the big sense but in the little everyday sense. Like the "I'll emphasize this and leave out this" sense. And that was so about hiding wrongness, hiding any smell of foolishness.

I also let it hold me back from committing to God. I always wanted to leave room for error. I don't want to commit to Christianity too much, because "What if I'm wrong?"

That crappy question fuels more of my insecurity and the petty non-sense fights in my head. "What if I'm wrong about this, or that?" I'd better prove, over and over and OVER in my head that I am right. I am so sick of proving I am right.

And what God showed me was that faith cannot be about being right or being proven right. To the world, it is foolishness. By it's very definition, in the world's eyes faith is (equals) foolishness.

God wants to make a fool of me. Ha! Wow, am I gonna need some healing. Thank God I have a Merciful and Loving Father, a Beautiful and Anointed Son and Divine and Ever-present Spirit that are in the healing and redemptive business.