Control

If I can just keep control. How easy life would be. Except that the effort to even try to keep control makes life so very hard.

Does that mean that life can be infinitely easier by moving in the opposite direction?

So...let go and let God?

Trying to keep it together is not working. Time to let is come loose?

But if I say what I mean, people will get their feelings hurt. I am responsible for how others feel and particularly at fault if I do something to make them feel bad. So truth is too dangerous a thing to be flying around loose. NOT.

What would happen if I did not care if got angry with me? What would happen if I did not care if was disappointed with me? What would happen if I did not need to like me? What would happen if I did not need anything from ? What would happen if I was so Christlike that my only people need was to be in right relation to the Body of Christ, but I was only defined by my right relation to Christ?

I know this for sure, Father. I really, really want my stuff out of the way of the life that is meant to be, the life in the Kingdom now. Show me the lies that have me bound.

Leaning, Learning

I want so bad to make it happen. Not that I am a gogetter. I want to control. Control my emotional pain, even strong emotion that is not pain. This is the legacy. It is what I brought to the dance. I want to be stable. I do not want people disliking me.

But now I have tasted. I know there is rest from the striving. As a result, daily communication gets better. I am more honest. I am able to speak without the filter of control.

It is what I would tell them if I was dead. Because I am dead. Dead in Christ.

I am not going to be alright. Instead, I am alright. I am at rest.

Thanks, Dad.

Lunchtime Post 20101013

Tortellini, Red Wine Vinegar and Black Pepper

Fear was my default setting. It is what you could expect. Well, not really. The default position you would see was controlling behavior.

I realized last week that I have been back in church, in a real pursuit of some aspect of Christianity, for twenty years. Now please understand that most of that was not spent well. (That is a whole 'nother topic.) But I was expecting the process to reset my default. Even now, after "20 years in the Way" I see the same default setting in my soul.

He restores my soul. That is my default expectation, my hope, and a place on which I rest.

I will rejoice in The Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Praise and Worship can not come from my mouth at the same time as controlling words.

So should I control the controlling words, or just keep my mouth full of my response to my Father's loving kindness and tender mercy?

Even surfing has too many control issues.

I think there is a dying squirrel in the attic.

My ceiling fan is moving a plastic sack.

Based on the sound and the sound two days ago of a running squirrel somewhere above me, a squirrel is dying.

Based on turning around and looking for a movement that matches the sound I hear now, the fan is moving a bag.

It does not mean that a squirrel is not dying. Maybe just not in my attic.

All of this is the evidence of my physical senses. The response in my mind is the question of what action I will take to change, no, control what I am sensing. The control of my environment, so that what I sense is no surprise, so that what I sense is always pleasant, so that nothing that I sense tempts me to fear. This is one of my great addictions.

The really kicky thing about the whole bit is that the addiction is a counterfeit and a distraction from what is available. For what has already been made available to Father's kids.

Even surfing has too many control issues.

Out here in the Wilderness, nothing of my humanity has any effect. I can not control the God Wild because nothing from earth works here. My will, my intellect, my endurance, my terror, my rage. None of it works. I can not control my environment. Only worship, surrender, leaning, trust are even interesting here. And no employment of them, making holy things into human tools, has any effect. As soon as the things that are, always have been and ever shall be about and for the King are turned to be about me or anyone else, they lose what they had, become perverse in a place where perversion can not survive, and they flee from the presence of Holiness.

Father, thank you for you Holy Wild. Thank you that you like company. Please continue to teach me to lean everything, to rest everything.