Hello All,
Yes! I am back, after a nearly two month, unplanned and unannounced sabbatical from the blog. I write you today, knowing deeply that my desire to return is a clear indication to my spirit that I am finally hearing God and being healed.
So where did I go? Well, I think I veered off the road about the time I arrived Indiana - maybe a bit before. You see, I was trying to do a lot. I was saying good-bye to my friends, my church, my home, and my parents. I was saying hello to a new home, a new living situation, a new job, and new people. I also had somethings hanging on to me - two summer internet teaching assignments and a brand new course to develop for the fall, lingering entanglements with my previous job and a sack load of unresolved healing to do around seeking the approval of others. Oh - I was also totally caught up in the fact that a dream of mine was finally coming true and now what was I going to do with it.
None of this was particularly "bad" or "unusual" or even "too much" with the provision of grace. The problem really started when two things snuck in. We will call these two things: "guilt" and "trying to fix it."
SO - Guilt. Believe it or not, when you are trying to do way too much you tend to drop the ball. I've dropped the ball more times than I care to count over the last four months (which, by the way, is never - that is, I care to never drop the ball). For example, I have a two $15.00 checks I've needed to mail; one for approximately four months, the other for two months. I have so many unreturned emails to people I love I cringe when I think about opening my gmail account. I am developing my course at a pace that places me one day behind each week and have grading stacked to the point that it would take at least two full days to get completely caught up. There are unpacked boxes and little fixes that need to be made all over the house. Oh!!! Oh!! And the worst of all, I agreed to take on a client at work, realized I was overbooked and had to refer him out. He was irritated and told my bosses - CRINGE!!!! And that's just what I can think up off the top of my head.
Now, did I meet myself with grace? Or go to God and ask Him to set my task list? No way Jose. Instead, I've been living in a perpetual state of guilt, shame and fear. I am not kidding when I say that my heart would literally start to beat through my chest when I thought about getting on-line. It represented for me a million failures, unmet deadlines and disappointed people. The other day, when my boss asked me about the complaint that client called about I was fine in the moment (Lord knows, if I had acted how I felt she might have disapproved...wink), I literally FREAKED OUT. Near tears, ruminating for hours about it, stuck, stuck, stuck. Guilt - "Your failing everyone, Paula." "You are not enough, Paula."
Surprisingly, I felt even less like getting caught up with all of that nonsense going on. It was getting to the point, that I would have to build myself up for twenty-minutes just work up the energy to open my email. Holy, Moly!
Now - Trying to Fix It. Trying to Fix it, moved in shortly after guilt. As I am intimately familiar with at this point, guilt, shame, condemnation, fear - whatever you want to call it - feels really bad. It makes me feel physically ill, like I wanna vomit. It makes me break out into a sweat. It makes me irritable and sad. Needless to say, I did not want to continue feeling this emotion. It sucks.
So, I went about trying to fix it. Rather than being entirely absent from this process, God does make an appearance in this part... at least in name. I tried to use God, like a tool, to fix the pain. I prayed. Of course, my prayers were mostly like "Oh God, this sucks. I hate this feeling. Let me tell you the five things I have planned to do to make it better." And then I would go about doing the 5 things I had planned to make it better. Meanwhile, for the first time in 3 years I was not doing my Bible Study homework with regularity, attending church with consistency or reading anything theological. I did not have one thing to write about on the blog. Don't get me wrong, I recognized these things were happening (see guilt above) and I was always trying very hard to fix it - adjusting the time of the day when I would complete Bible Study, planning a trip to a new church for the next weekend, promising myself for the 500th time I would get on the blog - but do you know what I actually did: I failed. Failed, failed, failed. The only thing that my grand plans succeeded at was adding more items to my overfull task list and more guilt for me to cope with.
I was in a state.
So what now? Well, God had been sending me little messages on the DL all the while. A card from my Bible Study girls back at Canyon. My Jackie beating her head into a wall trying to tell me to sit down and relax. David bending over backwards to try to take something off my plate, so I would just be happy for a minute. There were moments in the car, where a song would catch me and I would cry. But it didn't all come to a head until this week. Apparently, God has given me enough leash and is going to speak with a bull horn.
I have heard, in no less than four different places, that I need to SLOW DOWN and breath. An entire video devoted directly to the issue of working for victory instead of resting. You see, so long as I am working I am not trusting. God wants me to rest. Salvation = trust + rest. No work in there at all. I also learned about "the breath of God" or nooma (in Greek) from three different sources all in the same week - all saying, "Slow down, breath, let the breath of God fill you, let God fight your battles for you."
So I think I took my first big bite of rest. My first real acceptance that I don't have to dance around constantly trying to fix me in order for me and God to ok. Me and God ARE ok.
In fact, He says we are more than ok - I am his beloved child. Nothing I can do, no mistake I can ever make, will alter that. Sigh - Oh yeah... that's right isn't it?
